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Compartmentalization lets you keep separate areas of your life separate – and avoid fallout from ideological clashes or failing relationships.
As you become more active socially, some things get hairier. You meet more and different kinds of people. You start to run in some very different circles. And eventually you end up with friends and connections who are completely incompatible with one another. The broader and more diverse the people in your life become, the more you need to take care who you introduce to whom.
Further, the more integrated your various circles and lifestyles are, the easier it is for problems in one to snake their way into others.
To fend off mismatches and problems bleeding from one area into another, you use lifestyle compartmentalization.
Contents
The ability to compartmentalize your lifestyle is a handy one to have. It lets you prevent mismatched acquaintances clashing. It lets you avoid friends wanting you to choose themselves or others. It keeps you out of scenarios where your girlfriends judge your buddies and try to get you to stop hanging out with them.
It's easy to compartmentalize your lifestyle, yet it's something not a lot of people do. It feels good to introduce people we like to other people we like. It's lazier too - rather than do one thing and talk about certain topics with your buddy Eric, and do another thing and talk about other topics with your buddy Kevin, and do yet another thing and talk about still more/different topics with Kate, the girl you've been seeing for a couple months, why not invite them all to hang out together and do one thing, and talk about the same things with them all?
Yet failure to compartmentalize your life leads to a more limited life - because when those different people from different walks clash, they tend to decide a.) maybe they didn't know you as well as they thought, if you have this type of friend, and b.) you're going to have to decide who you really want to be with: themselves, or those other folks?
Comments
Variation or flawed logic?
Generally, I noticed two kinds of people compartmentalizing: girls and overly cautious men. Thus, I learned that compartmentalization is generally for fearing people. However, reading this article, coming from you, I start getting confused a bit.
What's your take on it?
First time to this concept
Thanks as always Chase. First time I ever heard about compartmentalization. I really had some problems in the past with being judged from introducing one circle to another circle, they just think that how could I have this/that type of friends and all that non sense. So now I found the key to solving all that judgments.
As if most of us have had that social life.
Chase,
I am not sure if I missed a post on this or not, you did talk about this on one post called meeting people in a new city but I have found that there isn't much talk about building a social life here or even most places out there. Now I know that one Vegas writer also contributed to it but I feel like this maybe could use more discussion for those of us late to the party.
I went to a very snotty university where making friends was tough, it was just a giant popularity contest where rich frat guys and football players were the only ones being social. Now that I am out in the working world, I am having problems here.
No friends from university to really rely on.
Work friends are not really true friends for the most part.
Tough to get much going with intramural sports.
Finding it near impossible to make party friends.
I just feel so out of the loop, is there an article of yours you can refer me to?
Great knowledge on a nuanced topic!
Really interesting article!! Got so much out of this. Thanks for the well-written, detailed thoughts, there's a lot to reflect on that can be applied here.
The View from The Compartment
Thank you for sharing the how-to on this way of life. I have not compartmentalized anything in my life so yes, I’m coming from a standpoint of not experiencing it post-compartmentalizing when everything seems to be in place. However, I come from the experience of living in a defined compartment. Assuming that all of what was said in your article is true, then it appears that you have a preference in choosing friends and girlfirends who voice or pass judgment and you are allowing them to back you up into a corner against a buzzsaw to decide who is going to be your friend. So, your solution is to restructure your life to keep distance between people and avoid this judgement, why? You are the sole owner of your life and the CEO of all operations. What I mean is if you are the only decision maker of your life and no one else. If you are confronted with this issue where a friend judgmentally shares how they feel about someone you know and makes you feel that you should chose, then you take first action and get rid of them before the end of that conversation.
In my experience with the few friends who compartmentalized, I was placed in a box with pre-determined rules that were set by them. I didn’t have an opportunity to learn or agree about these rules and it sometimes felt cruel. What you fail to tell in this article is the tremendous amount of lies and deceitful behavior that is required to keep distance between these groups. I cannot believe how much I’ve been lied to by these friends, which they are no longer friends and one of them I have built so much resentment on how I found his actions insulting and with no consideration or respect. Because you don’t ever want to intermingle these groups, you must hide what you are doing, where you are going, how often you are with, these other groups which leads for a lot of time unaccounted for. You state in your conclusion, “Remember: the less people know about you, the more they will fill in the blanks however they care to fill in the blanks.” That can be a very wreckless way to allow others fill in the blanks. Because you are not sharing your life, not necessarily in being nosey, but to share yourself socially, you will come across as a secretive, not private person and they will become suspicious of you. As I say “private,” I’m referring to privacy where people want to protect something, such as their kids, personal life, a possession, personal data, but there is a fine line between private and so private that you put people in the position of filling in the blanks and begin to do their own investigation, and they will. What is foundational to compartmentalization are the lies and deceitful behavior from you as you try not to inform other friends in other compartments about anything that is not relevant to their compartment. Buddy, that is a lot of time and a lot of information. Eventually, you will slip and they will pick up and run on that, or they unveil something that leads to the demise of the friendship, your character, and if it’s by a girlfriend who you keep attracting that is judgmental, or anyone whom you’ve developed some kind of commitment, the disasters could be endless. I can only agree that compartmentalization is good for the workplace where you separate work from home. Your boss will appreciate your focus at work and your spouse will appreciate you not bringing work home. The other aspect is that compartmentalization seems to be the haven for cheaters who are those in need of sustaining a private or secret life away from their mainstream life which is a different article all together. One of our early Presidents said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar,” Abraham Lincoln.
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