Friends!?

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What do we mean by friend & friendship?

Friend (noun) :

Friendship:



In essence, a friend is someone on whom we come to rely on emotionally, but not sexually, and is usually not a relative.

Let me redefine the question: How do know you have a "friend"? Is someone nice you just like to talk to occasionally a friend?. When has the social threshold been reached for justifying the use of the word?

I would only call him or her an enjoyable acquaintance and continue on.



Many years ago, Bill Cosby talked about friends being people who let (trust) each other (to) drink out of each other's soda bottles without first wiping them off.

Have you heard the old, bad joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto when the Ranger got a snakebite on his ass? Tonto allegedly turned out to *not* be the kind of friend who would suck out the poison to save the other man's life.

A man I had once hoped would be my friend used to say this:

"If in your lifetime you succeed in making one true friend, you will have done what millions of people have failed to acomplish."

Friends can trust each other to watch out for each other and to be there for each other, and people who are truly willing and able to do that seem to me to be few, and far between. But, I think even a casual acquaintance can be a "friend" as long as s/he and I both see the relationship in about the same way and know what to reasonably expect.

So, according to all those suggestions, I don't have friends! Nobody who sees the relationship the same way I do & so on!

Please allow me to elaborate a bit ...

Seeing the relationship in about the same way and knowing what to reasonably expect does not necessarily mean each person feels or expresses the same sense or level or degree of commitment. Someone who is willing to at least answer the phone or respond to an e-mail or meet up for a walk through the park in a friendly way could be considered a friend even if s/he never asks for or accepts a sip from your soda bottle. What I mean to be saying is to accept and consider friendly people as friends while being reasonable about our own expectations. Some people have more to offer than others, and friendship does not necessarily have to be dependent upon matching levels of contribution ... and when you eventually meet someone who willing gives more than you might have to offer, you have found a true friend.

What I can 'reasonably' expect isn't worth doing, as far as I can make out. Unless there's something I can do to improve it, a lot!
Been looking at Survival Guide, Choosing Friends
Can't do what he says true friends do & don't know anybody who does.