We are not meant to maintain relationships with this many people in one lifetime Press enter or click to view image in full size image from personal archive © Monika Velin One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned for the past ten years as someone who’s lived in three different countries is I wish I knew much less people. Like much much less. My teenage self wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the thought because all of my life I wish I had an interesting social life. I never realized the dissatisfaction that I have around human connection actually stems from too much social exposure — perpetuated by the age of social media. The boundaries have become so blurry that they defy what we know from research. We are only able to maintain around 150 stable relationships — not throughout one single lifetime, but at any given time — due to cognitive limitations and energy constraints (often referred to as Dunbar’s number). Social media completely masks this and puts us in a blind spot.…