It’s common to assume that a primary value of close friends and family, also known as our “strong ties,” is the ability to confide in them, making our closest relationships the natural outlet for discussing personal difficulties. However, in their 2024 article, Mario Small, Kristina Brant, and Maleah Fekete challenge this idealized view. They ask a fundamental question that reshapes our understanding of social networks: How common is it for people to avoid the very people they are closest to when facing personal issues? The answer suggests that the most isolated people in society might be those who feel compelled to avoid their closest confidants.

Small et al. used a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults collected in 2019. Respondents were asked to name up to seven people they felt close to and then report whether they talked to, or avoided talking to, each person about specific recent personal issues. This approach allowed the authors to capture avoidance not merely as silence, but as a patterned social process.

A fascinating distinction the study makes is between “passive” and “active” avoidance. Passive avoidance, which makes up a large portion of the avoidance reported, occurs when a person never even considers a close tie as someone they could talk to about a particular issue. Active avoidance, on the other hand, happens when someone considers sharing their problem but deliberately decides to hold back. 

The researchers found that avoidance is very common even among strong ties. Contrary to the expectation that intimacy naturally produces openness, Americans are just as likely to avoid a given close friend or family member as they are to talk to them when facing personal issues.Contrary to the expectation that intimacy naturally produces openness, Americans are just as likely to avoid a given close friend or family member as they are to talk to them when facing personal issues. The study also found that avoidance is not limited to “difficult” relatives or specific taboo topics like politics or sex, but is widespread and situational. It depends largely on the specific combination of the person and the topic, meaning a person might avoid their mother regarding a career failure but confide in her about a relationship issue, while doing the reverse with a best friend.

Beyond individual relationships, Small and colleagues argue that avoidance is shaped by the broader structure of our social circles, including group density and power dynamics. In tighter-knit friend groups, people may experience slightly less avoidance, possibly because collective support reduces the risks of opening up. At the same time, power imbalances such as fearing backlash from an influential, controlling, or higher-status family member can intensify avoidance in ways that looking at a simple one-on-one relationship fails to capture. These findings point to avoidance as a group-level phenomenon, not just a matter of personal preference or an interpersonal mismatch.

Small, Brant, and Fekete’s research challenges the traditional definition of a “strong tie” as a high-trust social connection. Their findings suggest that our closest relationships are characterized by avoidance as well as trust – and that navigating close relationships involves a constant, fundamental need to both conceal and reveal.