Most people try to be equally close to everyone, and it burns them out or waters everything down. I sort my relationships into three tiers on purpose, and I'd recommend you do the same.

Inner Circle is two to five people. This is where I'm fully honest, where I say the hard thing without editing it first. These are the people I call when something falls apart, not just when something goes well. This tier gets the highest investment because it returns the highest trust.

Growth Circle is my peers, people in the same season as me, building something of their own. This isn't mentorship in either direction, it's mutual. We refer clients to each other, celebrate each other's wins without competing over them, and call out each other's blind spots because we respect each other enough to do it.

Wider Community is everyone else I show up for consistently. I don't need to know their whole story to pour into them. I need to know they can count on me. This is the tier most people skip because it doesn't feel intimate, but it's often where the most good actually happens, because you're showing up for people who don't have that consistency anywhere else in their life.

None of these tiers are fixed. People move between them as seasons change, and that's supposed to happen. The mistake is having no tiers at all and treating every relationship the same, because then you have no honest language for why some relationships take more and some take less.