Ever thought about paying someone to be your friend?

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Nah, I won't paid for "friends". I'd rather being alone.

But I would accept money for being someone's friend

Kalister1 makes a great friend.
$5

For me paying some one to be my friend seems like "prostitution".

I not saying it is completely f**ked up for some people who desperately seek companionship of some sort to pay people either in money or services (eating out at restaurants)

I wouldn't pay someone to be my friend but I'm about to pay to have a tree removed from my front yard and the amount would be $1000. This tree is huge and around forty years old. I'm sorta feeling strange and depressed about it too. I'm avoiding thinking about it too much because I don't like considering the tree won't be here tomorrow. I will miss that tree and if it was healthy and not looking like it was about to fall on someone's car I would keep it. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes so I am going to stop thinking about losing my tree.

I know a somewhat wealthy family that paid an older student to be their son's "buddy" for a summer. He was a good 6 years older iirc and was basically an extroverted mentor designed to socialize the kid and get him around an extrovert whose company he enjoyed.

I dont think its a terrible idea.

Interesting comment. As I read that I thought about my therapist in Cincinnati, Ohio---I liked going to him because I felt like he was truly interested in hearing what I had to say. And I listened to him. I guess I could sort of think of him as a friend...in a professional way too.

I remember seeing a news article in the UK where a family were paying someone to be a friend for the elderly grandfather. All his friends had died, or were in nursing homes, or had moved away. His family advertised for someone who would go out with the grandfather for walks, go places he enjoyed and go to the pub with him.

I think they got quite a lot of interest, and they found another quite elderly man who wanted to befriend their grandfather. I don't think they paid him very much tbh. They would pay his travelling costs, and make sure he had enough money for drinks, meals and for any tickets they needed to buy.

The two old men seemed to be very happy with the arrangement, and it meant that they were company for each other.

I can relate to that! I'm the same with the psycotherapist I've been seeing for a while now. Even admitted it to her that if I had one or two close friends I could confide in, I wouldn't need her anymore. She was fine with that. I suppose with lower levels of community these days, it's more acceptable for people to admit to having to pay for what doesn't seem available for free. I'm sure we're not the only ones.

I wish having someone to talk to wasn't so money-dependent. Ever since I've stopped having money to pay the therapist (= paid friend) I've got nobody to talk to.

have just had a thought.......many of us do pay someone to be a friend.
cats? dogs? rats? etc
some food and attention and they're friends for life,and cats choose their friends,if someone keeps giving them crap food and not enough attention they may go to someone who's feeding applaws or science plan instead.

Hans Christian Andersen did that!
(Some say he might have been an aspie too.)

Once, back in eight grade.

I feel uncomfortable playing consoler type people even...it just kind of feels wrong (not that it necessarily is, but for some reason it sort of feels like I'm paying someone to be a friend or something).

We should be provided with friends by the National Health Service:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/healt ... ml?_r=1&em

The only problem being that the article is clearly based on some of the rubbishiest of rubbish sociological research I've ever seen. And the media loves promoting rubbish sociological research!

I'm amazed that any reputable source dare quote research based on "34 students at the University of Virginia". Yet this is the norm these days. "RESEARCH PROVES BLONDS ARE MORE ATTRACTIVE - IT MUST BE IN OUR GENES!! !" trumpets the headline. Only later, in the small print do they say "researchers asked 36 students at the University of Nonentities"......

Having said that, it appears that research now proves that Friends distort your perception of the slopage of hills. Personally I'd rather have no friends and reduce the risk of heart attack through attempting a hill that is steeper than it looks because of some peculier influence that friends are exerting.

Interesting that now they're saying having a spouse/serious partner doesn't affect health, but having friends does. Only a month ago research proved that married people lived longer. Utter rubbish, fiction masquerading as fact the lot of it! (what are they selling?)

Having lots of friends doesn't make you live longer. It just feels like it.

I confess, I actually have thought about paying people........to Go Away.

Seems like a good idea, except they always start complaining about the working conditions and demanding pay raises.

Then the union gets involved and they go on strike and act like everybody else in the world.