How often should you really text a friend?
The question sounds trivial — and that is exactly why most people never ask it deliberately. Instead, contact patterns are driven by notification spikes, guilt trips after long silences, or whoever happens to appear in a social feed. None of that is a cadence. It is drift.
Research on social network maintenance, particularly the work coming out of Robin Dunbar's group at Oxford, has produced a surprisingly concrete answer: the right frequency is not the same for every friendship, and it maps cleanly onto which of Dunbar's three inner layers that friend sits in. Once you know the layer, the cadence falls out almost automatically.
Why cadence beats willpower
The most common reason people lose touch with friends they genuinely care about is not that they stop caring — it is that staying in touch without a rhythm requires active decision-making every single time. "Should I reach out now? Is it too soon? Will it seem needy?" That cognitive load compounds over months, and eventually silence becomes the path of least resistance.
A cadence converts the open-ended question "when should I text?" into a closed-ended one: "Is today around the time I should check in?" That shift is psychologically significant. It replaces a judgement call with a schedule check, which is much easier to follow through on — especially for the larger layers where dozens of relationships need some form of attention.
A cadence also removes the guilt from the equation. If you missed last week's inner-layer check-in with a close friend, knowing that you aim for weekly contact tells you clearly: do it today. You don't need to spiral; you just need to catch up.
The three-layer rhythm
Dunbar's research established that human relationships organise into concentric bands — not because we consciously place people there, but because that is how the brain's social maintenance capacity actually works. The three inner layers are where most deliberate contact decisions happen:
- Inner layer (roughly 5 people) — about weekly. These are the people who constitute your emotional core: the ones you would call if something went seriously wrong. Dunbar's contact-frequency data consistently shows this layer requires roughly weekly interaction to maintain at full depth. That doesn't have to be a long call — a brief, warm message counts. But the gap should rarely exceed two weeks without some form of real connection.
- Close layer (roughly 15 people) — every three weeks. The sympathy group. These are close friends who know you well; you would attend their major life events and expect them to attend yours. The research suggests contact every two to four weeks keeps these relationships genuinely warm rather than merely dormant. An exchange every three weeks is a workable target that won't overwhelm your schedule.
- Wider layer (roughly 50 people) — every six weeks. Good friends, not close friends — the people with whom you have real history but less day-to-day overlap. Contact here is less about depth and more about continuity of the relationship's existence. A genuine message every month or so — not a mass broadcast, but something that reflects that you thought of them specifically — is enough to prevent the relationship from quietly expiring.
These intervals are not invented targets. They derive from Dunbar's empirical findings on how often contact must occur for a relationship to remain at its current intimacy level rather than slowly downgrading to an outer layer. Contact frequency and relationship depth are mutually reinforcing: stop investing and the relationship migrates outward over time.
What to do when you're overdue
The calculator will flag any friendship where the time since last contact has exceeded the recommended interval. The right response is simple and proportionate:
- Inner layer overdue: Reach out today — not with a long explanation of where you've been, but with a warm, direct message or a call. Prioritise synchronous contact (call, voice note, in person) where possible; the research shows it is significantly more relationship-maintaining than text alone for this layer.
- Close layer overdue: A genuine message in the next day or two is fine. Acknowledge the gap lightly if you want to — "I've been in a head-down stretch, wanted to check in" — and ask a real question about their life. The warmth of the question matters more than the gap's duration.
- Wider layer overdue: A short, specific message is all it takes. "Saw this and thought of you," or "how's [the thing they were excited about] going?" These messages cost 60 seconds and meaningfully reset the relationship clock.
The goal is not a zero-overdue dashboard — that would be a full-time job. It is awareness: knowing which friendships are running hot versus cold, so that when you do have a spare ten minutes, you reach for the right person. Join the waitlist to be first to hear when Endearist launches — the app is built around exactly this kind of gentle, cadence-aware contact layer.