The Adventurous Friend: Who Pulls the Group Out of Its Routine
The adventurous friend brings what routine can’t provide on its own: the sense that there are still new things left to discover together.
This article is part of an informational series on social style. It’s meant for informational purposes and doesn’t replace guidance from a psychology professional.
The function you fill without realizing it
Research on friendship doesn’t reduce the bond to stability or emotional support. Shared novelty (trying something different together, stepping outside the familiar) is also a function of friendship in its own right, and the friendship quiz measures it with four statements: proposing experiences the group hasn’t tried, getting bored if you always do the same thing, encouraging others to join an improvised plan, and bringing new people or ideas into the circle.
If you recognize yourself in all four, this is your predominant function.
It’s a different role from keeping everyday contact alive, which tends to fall more to the organizer friend.
How it shows up day to day
- You propose plans the group wouldn’t have thought of on its own.
- You easily say yes to something improvised or unusual, even without much planning ahead.
- You tend to be the one who connects your circle of friends with new people or scenes.
- You encourage others to join a different plan, even when they hesitate.
A recognizable scene: for three years the group has had dinner at the same bar on the first Friday of every month. One day you suggest swapping dinner for a Korean cooking class at a place nobody knows. Two people hesitate, one complains, and in the end everyone goes. Months later, that’s the night everyone remembers most from the year.
Why novelty bonds: the self-expansion model
Psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron proposed the self-expansion model: we seek out relationships partly because they broaden who we are, giving us access to experiences, perspectives and resources we wouldn’t have alone. Relationships feel more alive when they keep providing that expansion, and routine tends to dim it.
The most cited evidence is a study by Aron, Norman, Aron, McKenna and Heyman (2000). In two surveys, couples who reported sharing more “exciting” activities were more satisfied with their relationship, and that link ran through lower boredom. Then, in three lab experiments, couples who did a novel and somewhat challenging seven-minute task together rated their relationship more highly afterwards than couples who did a routine task.
Two nuances for reading it well:
- These are studies with couples, not friends. Extending them to friendship is reasonable, because the mechanism (boredom versus expansion) isn’t exclusive to romantic love, but it has less direct support.
- The effect comes from the shared activity, not from novelty itself. What bonds is living through something new together, not one member of the group doing it and telling the others.
Seen from here, the adventurer isn’t just the one who gets bored first: they’re the one who brings the raw material of that expansion into the group.
A question Socrates was already asking: do we bond by being alike or by completing each other?
In the dialogue Lysis, one of Plato’s earliest texts on friendship, Socrates asks several young men what makes two people become friends: similarity, with like attracting like, or difference, with each seeking in the other what they lack?
The dialogue is famous precisely because it never reaches a closed answer, and it shows that defining friendship is harder than it looks.
The adventurous friend fits the second possibility well: they tend to bring the group exactly what it didn’t have on its own, a different idea, an unexpected plan, a perspective nobody else would have suggested. Almost 2,500 years later, the question of whether we bond by being alike or by completing each other still has no single answer, and this style is a good example of why.
Your growth edge
The constant search for novelty can make small, repeated rituals (the usual get-together, the same spot every year) feel less natural or even boring to you.
Those rituals serve a function of their own: they give the bond a stable base on which novelty is easier to enjoy. And not everyone experiences the new in the same way: for some people in the group, the usual plan is exactly what makes the friendship feel safe. Tending to the repeated as well as the new usually makes for fuller friendships.
Do you recognize yourself in this style? Find out with the friendship quiz.
Sources
- Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C. and Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples’ shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273-284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.273
- Plato. Lysis.
Want to know more about yourself?
Discover your result with one of our related tests.
Frequently asked questions
Is the adventurous friend the same as the organizer?
No. The organizer keeps contact alive and coordinates; the adventurous friend specifically brings the novelty, the different plan nobody else had suggested. The two can combine, but they're distinct functions.
Why do I get bored with routine more than other people?
It relates to the need for novelty and stimulation, a well-documented trait in personality psychology; here we look at it applied specifically to friendship.
Is this a 'less serious' style than the others?
No. Shared novelty is just as legitimate a function of a bond as stability or emotional support.
Can being too adventurous cost me friendships?
The risk shows up if the search for novelty crowds out rituals and consistency; tending to both usually gives the best result.
Are there studies on the effect of doing new things together?
Yes, although most have been done with couples. Arthur Aron and his colleagues (2000) found that couples who shared a brief, novel and stimulating task afterwards rated their relationship more highly than couples who did a routine task. There's less experimental data on friendships.
