The Anchor Score
Adrift in the Storm
I’d cleared my schedule for a dinner I was eager for - a chance to connect with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. Then, an hour before, the text arrived.
“So sorry, work got crazy! Raincheck?”
The excuse was always valid, but the pattern was exhausting. First, the pang of disappointment. Then, something worse: the slow burn of foolishness for having been so eager to connect.
"Ah bummer - yeah, sounds good," I would muster, and toss the phone on my kitchen island, where it lay silent.
For years, I treated this as a puzzle to be solved. Why does a once-close friend now take weeks to return a text? I became an amateur detective of the heart, inventing theories for their behavior. Maybe they were struggling. Maybe work really was that crazy. Or maybe, I would fret, they had discovered some unpalatable truth about me, and my invitation to the adult table had been quietly revoked. The guesswork was tiring, and it was unkind - mostly to myself.
Over the years, I saw a strange paradox. The friends who cancelled most often were not the ones with the most demanding lives - the surgeon, the new parent, the small business owner. Instead, the pattern emerged with friends who, after making plans with genuine enthusiasm, wore their busyness like a garment. For some, it felt like a performance - for others, perhaps an unconscious shield against a life that felt overwhelming. The result was the same. Their talk was a whirlwind of competing plans and packed weekends. Their unavailability was a constant headline.
Then there were the others. The friends with staggering responsibilities who rarely spoke of them. They didn’t export their chaos. They simply managed it. When they committed, they showed up. When they could not, they said so with a quiet clarity that respected my time as much as their own.
I realized that the performance of being overwhelmed was a far more reliable predictor of flakiness than actual, legitimate busyness. One is a story. The other is a circumstance.
My breakthrough came when I stopped asking why and started observing what. The reason for any single instance didn't matter. The pattern did. This led me to a truth Brené Brown captures perfectly.
The fog of unreliability - last-minute changes, unanswered texts, emotional ambiguity - is profoundly unkind. It forces you into a state of anxious guesswork or feigned indifference. It's the same defense mechanism attachment studies reveal in children who act aloof, even as their hearts silently race in distress.
I was tired of being adrift in that cold sea of guesswork. I needed to stop guessing at the currents and cast an anchor into the bedrock of what was real. (And if it takes using up my lifetime supply of nautical metaphors to show you how, so be it.)
The Anatomy of the Anchor Score
I landed on a simple framework I call the Anchor Score: a measure of a relationship's potential for closeness, based upon your subjective experience. You can assess it for anyone in about sixty seconds.
It takes the five key behaviors of a secure connection - first identified by psychiatrist Amir Levine under the acronym CARRP - and turns them into a simple, practical score. For a mnemonic, imagine a pirate boasting of his favorite invasive fish: "CARRP, matey!"
For any person in your life, rate your relationship on each quality below. Give a 2 for high, a 1 for medium, and a 0 for low.
- C - Consistency. Is the rhythm of your connection reliable? It doesn't have to be frequent, just predictable. Or does it arrive in intense bursts, followed by a confusing silence?
- A - Availability. Do they make time for you? Does getting on their calendar feel like a collaboration, not a puzzle?
- R - Reliability. Is their word their bond? Do their words and actions align?
- R - Responsiveness. When you send a signal, do they send one back? Relationship researcher John Gottman calls these outreach attempts - a text, a shared link, a quick question - "bids for connection." A responsive person doesn't have to drop everything, but they turn toward these bids. They send back a signal that says, "I see you. You matter." Research shows this single quality is highly predictive of a relationship's long-term success.
- P - Predictability. Is their temperament a steady climate, or do you find yourself dressing for all four seasons before a single interaction?
Now, add up the points. The result is a number from 0 to 10. This is their Anchor Score.
Interpreting the Anchor Score
This score is not a judgment of character. It's a diagnosis of the connection as you experience it. Other people may (and often will) experience the connection differently. That's expected, and it in no way invalidates your impression.
- 7-10: A secure, steadying presence. A safe harbor. Invest your time and energy here.
- 4-6: Ambiguous, or too soon to tell. The connection is inconsistent. These friendships (or friendly acquaintances) can be wonderful, but you learn to interact with them wisely. Enjoy the connection, but don't build high-stakes, time-sensitive plans around them.
- 0-3: A connection characterized by inconsistency, apathy, and guesswork. It offers no stability and may actively drain your energy. Love them, if you must, from a distance. Invest your limited time elsewhere.
A Compass, Not a Calculator
I know what you might be thinking. A "score" for friendship? Isn't that a bit... clinical?
We live in a culture that loves to systematize the human experience: to schedule every minute, to track every penny, to optimize every calorie. Applied to the messy business of the heart, this impulse feels cold. In Silicon Valley, I've met people who proudly set elaborate "relationship OKRs" with their spouses or conduct regular "personal business reviews" of their connections.
Intellectualization is a powerful defense mechanism. (Ask me how I know.) When all you have is a hammer - or a spreadsheet - it’s easy to convince yourself that you're being sophisticated when you're really just avoiding a feeling.
But the Anchor Score isn't about that. It's a compass, not a calculator. It is not another complex system. Its purpose is to inform your intuition, not replace it. Think of it as a private prompt for mindfulness - a quick mental checklist to align what your gut is telling you with what your eyes are seeing. It’s a tool for finding clarity, and for treating your future self with kindness.
The tool's real power emerged once I inevitably turned the compass on myself. It’s easy to catalogue the ways others create fog. It’s humbling to ask: What is my Anchor Score in my friends’ lives? Am I the reliable presence I hope to find? The goal isn’t to prove you were once a good friend. It's the evergreen challenge of being one now. It shifts the framework from a tool for judging others into a guide for grounding friendships in integrity - yours, most of all.
Finding Safe Harbor
Once you start seeing these patterns, you cannot unsee them. You realize that, for the most part, people show you who they are, early and often. A person's Anchor Score within a relationship is remarkably stable.
The lens is sharpest for new connections. Think of that new acquaintance from a party. The spark is there, but scheduling a coffee is a struggle. Texts go unanswered for days. The old me might have persisted, assuming effort would be rewarded. The new me sees these early low scores on Reliability and Responsiveness for what they are: a forecast of stormy seas. It’s the freedom to wish them well and turn my own ship toward a calmer shore.
This realization is liberating. It allows you to stop wishing someone were different. It’s not about writing people off - it's about interacting with them wisely. It gives you the language to ask for what you need. Instead of vague resentment, you can say, "For me to feel close and secure in our friendship, consistency is really important." It turns a shapeless hurt into a specific request. Clear is kind.
But the Anchor Score's greatest gift is not in identifying the unsteady ships. It's allowing you to fully see, sometimes for the first time, the anchors that have been holding you steady all along. It shines a light on the friends and family members who practice a humble, consistent form of love - not with grand pronouncements, but with the quiet gravity of just showing up.
Secure friendships are built on a shared agreement of how to be with each other. The Anchor Score gave me a language for that agreement. It cleared away the fog of uncertainty. It helped me understand that the best relationships aren't a puzzle to be solved, but - at long last - the solid ground beneath your feet.