What Makes Us Friends Anyway? Part 2

Defining Friendship

Last time I wrote about friendship, I stated my two big tests for the F word:

• Is the person interested in your life to extent that they think about you?
• Do they care about you?

Basic, yes, perhaps a bit limited, but when I tried adding other criteria, such as comforting someone in times of need or giving honest feedback and advice, I concluded that they were probably broadly covered by the two criteria or otherwise problematic.

For example, does a friend really give you honest feedback? Is it better to be frank and forthright or diplomatic and sensitive when asked the ever prescient ‘does my bum look big in this?’

Let’s give the definition of friendship a bit of a deeper interrogation: it is the bedrock of our independent existence after all. Real friends make us feel comfortable about being ourselves, transform boredom into enthusiasm and, most importantly, eradicate our loneliness. With this in mind, what else can be added to the definition and how do your friends stack up?

Does my definition stand up to challenge?

Well, plenty of people can be interested in other people’s lives for nefarious reasons. How many times have you seen someone’s eyes light up at the prospect of making money from a ‘friend’ unfortunately. The person licking their chops at the prospect of rinsing you of cash might also ‘care’ about you in a very rudimentary way, in that they want to protect their asset.

There needs to be a certain level of unconditionality or at least reduced conditionality on gaining materially from the other person to make it real friendship. Strike complete unconditionality, which surely only exists in the closest of family relationships (and maybe shouldn’t exist even then). There needs to be a fair exchange of care and ‘being there for you’ to make it friendship, doesn’t there? You can’t genuinely be a friend if you take, take, take and do nothing in return? You can’t have unconditional friendship.

Proportionality is therefore another key element to defining friendship and can be added to my two bullet points that define friendship. If one friend is always making all the effort and the other passively going along with things without ever reaching out, something could be wrong.

People-pleasing friends often have low self-esteem: maybe life-circumstances are such that they are grateful for any relationship, even with someone who makes minimal effort in return. This happens a lot more than we would like to admit, often without conscious ill intent. Sometimes both people are okay with the status quo, but it can come as a shock when one person realises that they mean pretty little to their ‘friend’ who.meanwhile cannot understand what the big deal is.

Being there when it matters

What about being there in times of need? Is this another acid-test of friendship? When I mentioned that I was constructing a definition of friendship, my own friends insisted that it was this factor that mattered: when the ‘shit hits the fan’ who is going to be in your corner?

This is a complex one though. ‘Hour of need’, when is this: feeling down hour of need; or ‘dog’s died’ hour of need; or even ‘read my mind’ hour of need? There are so many differences in the importance of the same issue that it is very hard to predicate friendship on being there at key moments. There are people out there for whom a late lunch is an emergency and others who could be cutting off their own arm and still be fine about life.

Of course, there are some universally agreed times of need, but even our reaction to these can be problematic. Rather than say we need help, we bravely claim that things are okay, expecting somehow that our sullen look or despairing aura will be picked up and sympathised with, despite our lack of sharing what’s going on.

Even when friends get that there’s an issue, as with anything emotional, people react in different ways. Is a friend not a friend if they don’t have the words when you need them? Many people are not great about comforting ‘people and would rather hide away, not because they don’t care, but because of the fear of getting it wrong.

So, are friends, people with the confidence to risk getting it wrong? Maybe, because when we need our real friends around us, we can also be so sensitive that we throw it all away. But this then goes back to ‘caring’ enough to take the risk. Therefore, I’m not going to be adding it to my definition.

Evolving definition of friendship

This means the new must-haves for friendship are:

• Is the person interested in your life in a non-selfish way?
• Do they care about you enough to risk speaking up or taking action?
• Is the friendship balanced in terms of effort?

I’ve added a bit more to my definition of friendship but I feel there is more to say. Stay tuned to read my evolving thinking after I’ve explored this topic more with my Communikarma friends. I predict that we’ll be talking about friendship in the age of social media and how friendship changes through life. Until then, like me, you may want to reflect on how many friends you’ve really got!