Friendships

There are times in my life when I become very introspective and start to over-analyze almost everything. Especially when it comes to friendships. I almost feel like an alien at times, trying to figure out the social norms of our society. What is this thing called friendship?

I turned to Wikipedia for answers. And I realize that friendships are more complicated than I realized, because there are many types of friends. I think my problem is not realizing that.

• Agentic friends look to each other for help in achieving practical goals in their personal and professional lives. They value sharing time together, but only when they have time available to help each other. These relationships typically do not include the sharing of emotions or personal information.
• A buddy is someone with whom you engage in a particular activity. 
• A family friend is the friend of a family member or the family member of a friend.
• Internet friends are similar to pen pals and  may evolve into a real-life friendship.
• Best friends/close friends are characterized by intimacy, trust and a sense of permanence. The contacts between the close friends tend to be frequent.

North Americans view friends differently than other cultures. Friends tend to be people whom they encounter fairly frequently, and that are similar to themselves in demographics, attitude, and activities. While many other cultures value deep trust and meaning in their friendships, Americans will use the word "friend" to describe even acquaintances. Many studies have also found that Americans eventually lose touch with friends, which is an unusual occurrence in many other cultures. In fact, studies show that one quarter of all North Americans have no close confidants.

In fact, Paul Hollander wrote in 1973 that in North American society, the term "friendship" is applied to relationships which in most of Europe would be called acquaintance-ships. Many observers of our society have suggested that our friendships tend to be superficial, short-lived, and limited in intimacy. Our friendships do not often become lifelong exchanges of solidarity and moral and emotional support.

Friendships are rarely one-sided though, as it takes two individuals to negotiate the boundaries in a relationship and a friendship will not survive very long if only one person is making the effort to sustain the relationship without any help or recognition from other person.

So it seems my difficulty is in realizing the types of friendships I have, accepting what they're not, and setting my expectations accordingly. I need to be aware that friendships can change just as life changes; close friends drift apart and become acquaintances or even just Internet friends, while agentic friends may evolve into closer friendships.

The take away lesson from all of this is when your friends show you the type of friend they are, believe them, and you won't be disappointed by expecting more than they're willing or capable of giving to the friendship.

This work by Suzette Seveny is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.