The friendship rainbow is an insightful and easy-to-use tool for self-evaluating and understanding the dynamics of your relationships. This model allows you to quickly identify patterns and make informed decisions about how to nurture, improve or even let go of a friendship.

This model visualizes friendships as a spectrum, with low resource input high resource output relationships on one end (represented by the color red) and low resource output high resource input relationships on the other end (represented by the color violet). It helps you understand when a friend requires more attention and investment of your time, energy, and resources, and when a friend is not as desirable to be invested in.

Low benefit friendships (red) that require a lot of tender love and care, involve one person receiving significantly more benefits such as emotional support, companionship, financial or practical help, than they are giving. These types of friendships may feel one-sided and may be challenging to maintain over time. On the other hand, low benefit given to a friend relationships (violet) involve one person giving significantly more benefits than they are receiving. These types of friendships may lead to feelings of resentment or burnout if not addressed. In such cases, it may be wise to re-evaluate the friendship and possibly let it balance out on its own, or simply remove them from your friendship network altogether and place them in a more suitable emotional compartment such as an acquaintance.

Equal benefit friendships (green) are characterized by a balance of give and take, where both individuals feel that they are receiving and giving roughly the same amount of benefits. These types of friendships tend to be the most sustainable, fulfilling and fair to both parties.

It's important to understand that friendship dynamics can change over time and that no friendship is perfectly balanced all the time. Life circumstances such as job loss, illness, or a move can temporarily throw a friendship out of balance, but with good communication, a healthy friendship will adjust over time. The friendship rainbow helps you understand the circumstances that cause fluctuations in social exchanges, anticipate them and adjust your behavior accordingly.

It's also worth noting that dynamics of social exchange in friendships can vary depending on culture, context, and people involved. For example, some cultures may place a greater emphasis on reciprocity in social exchange or prioritize loyalty over balance. When evaluating your friendships, it's important to consider what matters to you and to keep things in perspective by looking at variables such as time invested, thought invested, and resources invested. This will help you keep a realistic view on where these people are on the friendship rainbow instead of where they seem to be.