
Originally Posted by
Sir Knight
As to "many walls," well, it was explained to me as the "castle theory" in elementary school. Your social life is envisioned as a castle. Beyond the lands of your castle are villages, wherein reside the various service workers who serve you lunch at restaurants and fix your water heater and drive you in taxicabs. Essentially people whom you interact with on a daily basis but whom you don't really know well enough to want to get closer to, and thus, you keep them outside of your castle. Beyond the villages are Ye Unknown Lands, which, basically, are full of people you haven't met yet.
On the very exterior of the castle is the moat, which is cold and full of crocodiles. This is where your enemies go. You want your enemies to be cold, and eaten by crocodiles. The only way over the moat is by means of the drawbridge. If you leave the drawbridge up you're a total recluse and you're going to starve to death. Starving to death, in this metaphor, means to die lonely. So you have to keep the drawbridge down if you want to have any kind of social life, but you need to keep it guarded so that any random barbarian can't just invite himself in. Guards, in this metaphor, being, like, your evaluatory processes for how you determine what you want in a friend. So if someone passes the drawbridge guards then they find themselves in The Outer Courtyard of Acquaintenceship. Its the largest courtyard anyone has, because the most people are going to go here. People who you think are mostly trustworthy (or, at least, haven't stabbed you in the back yet) and who you're on pretty good terms with, but whom you're not sure whether or not you should allow them into the castle further yet. You might do simple favors for them or help them out with simple things, but you're probably not going to be offering them a shoulder to cry on or helping them move their couch up three flights of stairs yet.
So they may try to get past the second set of Guards into the Inner Courtyard of Lukewarm Friendship. People whom you know of as the right kind of people who most definitely wouldn't stab you in the back or abuse you in some way. People who won't use your friendship for evil purposes. If they try that shit after they've been invited into the Inner Courtyard, they're probably going straight to the Moat. But generally, they're only in the Inner Courtyard because you trust them enough to let them in.
After that, there's the Keep of Forbidden Knowledge. The Keep is very well fortified and its got, like, a trillion armed guards armed with crossbows on top of it watching for any sign of intrusion. No one gets into the keep without invitation, because inside the keep their are secrets. Your secrets, specifically. Only very few people are allowed into the Keep of Forbidden Knowledge. You have to really trust that these people aren't going to use those secrets for personal gain, so you have to be careful about who you let in.
Beyond the keep is the Central Courtyard of Everlasting Friendship. People are only allowed in here when they've proven that you can let them mill about in the Keep without them being tempted to screw you over in any way. So, basically, these are the people for whom you would take two or three bullets for, and for whom you would drive hundreds of miles to be with. Solid, reliable friends who will be with you until the end, so to speak.
Then, beyond even that, is the Inner Sanctum of Absolute Trust. The easiest way to get in here is to just be born here. That is to say, your children. People who began life outside the castle walls will have a very difficult time getting here, as we are talking about unconditional love here. The people who make it here are the people you would gladly die for and for whom you would undertake the most horrifying and certainly lethal tasks for to save. Which doesn't happen much in real life, but its the thought that counts, god damn it.
Anyway, that's castle theory. Depending on how private a person you are, you may increase or decrease the number of courtyards and guards between people and your inner sanctum.