I have two friends, women. They themselves were friends long before I met either of them, and in the last few years, they were the best of friends. I write "were" because as far as I can tell, they are friends no more, and neither will discuss it. This saddened me greatly, so I write this short treatise on friendship, their friendship, in hopes that one or both will bite their tongues, swallow their pride, kiss and make up and resume their friendship, OR officially call it quits, say good-bye forever and end it, instead of living in limbo. For those of you with a short attention span, please feel free to stop here.

Friendship! What a beautiful thing! Long before any of us blurred our realities with hormones, lust and sex, there was friendship. Simple, pure and innocent friendship. In our earliest youth, we meet someone, we decide we liked them and if they liked us, voila, we were "friends". In those days of pre-school or Kindergarten, we found it essential to find and make friends, since it was our first opportunity to make social contacts outside of our families. So important in those formative years,we got something that perhaps we could get from no other source- validation - a believable secondary source that clearly said we were "good" and "worth it". We liked someone, and they liked us back. It's as complex and simple as that. Sure, we have parents, siblings, but they ~have~ to like us, or live with or at least put up with us. Friends have no natural obligation to do so. Why does one human pick another to befriend, ally themselves with, protect, defend, comfort, console and... trust? Certainly, in a merely evolutionary sense, to make ourselves vulnerable like this is bad, however the benefits must outweigh the detriments. Apart from combating loneliness, making friends is a way of protecting ourselves, from the harshness of the world, and particularly from the harshness of other people that are not your friends. In Kindergarten or grade 12, your friends will defend and protect you, even if you do not need it, for there is safety in numbers. But there is something else, not just a survival instinct; there is joy of friendship. We are ~happy~ to have friends, to see them, to spend time with them, discover their lives, personalities and intricacies of their minds, as well as open ourselves to be discovered. And therein lies the danger too - another person out there that knows YOU, all your dirty little secrets, what makes you tick, what ticks you off, and most importantly, they know how to hurt you. As in all relationships, there is joy and pain. There are inevitably disagreements, discussions, fights. ..And make-ups, where all things are forgiven, amends made and the friendship is resumed, hopefully (but not always!) a little stronger (or sadly a crumbling wall with another missing brick). This is the double edged sword of friendship, to get, you have to give. And there is risk.

What is it that makes friendships persist, or terminate? There is a saying - "Birds of a Feather Flock Together", which obviously means that we seek and keep friends that are similar to ourselves. Maybe similar interests (even one), similar histories, common language etc., but ~something~ attracts us to this person, and it is not sexual!*
It's no surprise that we seek people that resemble us - a kind of narcissism - we reflect ourselves in our friends. We choose friends with characteristics or traits we possess or admire or even lack. We are also happy to know that we are not alone in our thoughts and opinions - "who we are" - and that at least one other person agrees or sympathizes with us. Unfortunately, with passing time and experience, new friends, spouses, jobs, and distance, friends can drift apart and relationships attenuate, weaken. Like a marriage, or any relationship, friendships take some effort on both sides, and without that visible effort, neither party can feel that the venture is longer viable or worthwhile. The End of Friendship. But does this really need to happen? Think about it. People never really change, not at their cores. Whichever things initially attracted you to that person, that person still possesses, no? So unless YOU yourself have drastically changed (or your friend has), the friendship can be salvaged! I'm not saying that it can be how it was on the first day. Nor would you want it to be, Think of all times you spent together, shared experiences, suffering. Was your friend there for you? Did they offer to help you without thinking? Who did you share your innermost thoughts with? Who helped you through the toughest times in your life? Do all these things mean nothing? All those experiences changed you both, and in some way made you who you are today- your lives are indelibly intertwined forever! It doesn't matter that you do no have the exact same personalities or interests - that would be too boring! But there does have to be an element of the same validation and respect that initially created your friendship, and this you-just-for-the-sake-of-you, is hard to verbalize and communicate, too often assumed.

Why friendship? Why not mere "acquaintanceship"? That rather depends on what your definition of friendship includes, what class. For example, you have coworkers (5), maybe coworkers you really like (4), people you could spend time outside of work with (3), Then you have 2nd class "friends" - people who you see socially, almost by accident, but you don't really make any effort to maintain or start a closer relationship with. You call them friends, since they are not enemies - they are almost neutral. Then you have your best friend (1st class), your confidant, and soul mate (but in a different way than your spouse/bf/gf). There is a place and need in your life for each of these types, but to dismiss or demote your best friend to acquaintance is also an admission that you were wrong. You made a bad choice, initially, or you misjudged. Could it really be that you were so mistaken?

Don't always assume it's about you (yeah, I know, that excuse "really, it's me, it's not you!") Sometimes your friends may be very busy, at home, school or work. Maybe they are having family or marriage or financial/health troubles and are too proud to talk about them even with you! If your friend is an introvert or prone bouts of depression, isolation etc, it doesn't mean it's your fault. If they are involved in abusive relationships, drugs or alcohol- you have a long road ahead to help them. If you are a good friend, you may get some clue with regular communication - even a "how are you" text or email can help. Also, remember that a solid friendship is not reliant on absolute regular dependency. Your friendship should be stable enough that it can withstand some lapses, with both of you knowing that you are still friends, and not becoming paranoid about being abandoned. Friendship is about trust and confidence, self-confidence.

Why save friendship? Because friendship is a gift we give to ourselves, but delivered from and through another person, someone we cannot control. True friendship is worth saving, even through the ups and downs of life. It's worth saving if only because it is at the same time so natural, and yet goes against the laws of nature, both strengthening and testing us. Friendship is anti-entropic - it is creating something from apparently nothing, and keeping it alive, simply by a bridge of thought and action, by choice.

In my mind, there is no doubt that friendship is a type of love. The Greeks have many names for types of love - and three of them are Agape, Philia and Storge. Agape is a pure love, "love of the soul". Friendship is like this. Storge is fondness through familiarity - that fits too. It is not exactly Philia, friendship-brotherly love, or parent-child love. It is a love of equals, not superior/subordinate. It is more than our jumpy neural nets settling down and getting accustomed to a particular person (psychological affection- getting accustomed to "use to" someone).

Someone once wrote that (romantic) love is "friendship set afire", and thus friendship alone would be what you should have with your life partner, just minus the fire! Many people believe in "friendship first", as often the novelty and monotony of sex wears off, there is still friendship to maintain the relationship. In short, if we demand that our lovers also be our friends, it only underlines that friendship is the prime need and as important (if not more so) than other physical needs.

If only life and love could be reduced to binary simplicity - yes or no. If only we could just walk up to a person and say, "I like you, I want you to be my friend", like when we were 4 years old. That would be that, no embarrassment, no explanation. Just facts. The reality is that an adult doing this today would likely be charged with harassment, or in a work environment, sexual harassment, no matter what the genders. We are taught not to show all our cards, as this makes us vulnerable, especially to rejection. "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine". But who goes first? If friendship is about acceptance and appreciation, then the end of friendship is about denial and rejection. The pain of being cast aside or away is always hard to deal with, creating self doubt, lack of confidence, denial and difficulty in re-creating trust with someone else. Denial? Indeed! You question what you ever saw in that person - how could you have been friends so long, why? Can you ever trust your feelings or intuition ever again? We all have felt the daggers of betrayal and rejection. Even in Kindergarten we were heartbroken when our best friend quietly went and sought someone else as best friend. Those scars were easily healed, but ones from 10 year old friendships will not heal so easily. Sure, eventually, one gives in and takes another leap of faith (in love and friendship both), probably to be hurt once again. Lather, rinse, repeat....

I read a 2006 study that suggested close friendships were on the decline in modern times. Over 25% of those polled stated that they didn't have anybody they considered a close friend or confidant. Oddly, one of the main reasons given was that due to homophobia, particularly close same-sex heterosexual friendships among men are avoided for the sake of appearances. This didn't appear to be the case for women. However, modern times being what they are, we count more people in our circles of friends, as virtual-friends, Facebook, Myspace, MSN, email and even DA-friends. Even though we have often never met these people, they can be more real, and more helpful than our real flesh-and-blood friends, maybe because they are somewhat anonymous and we aren't forced to deal with them in our everyday lives.... does it make them any less friends? Does it make them any more disposable?

So pick your friends carefully and wisely! Don't take them for granted and leave your friendships to fall into disrepair! Tell (or show) your friends regularly that you value them! (even if they are not the needy types)... and remember: jobs, coworkers, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands, wives can come and go (47% divorce rates!), but real friends can last a lifetime!

Final note: When I was in grade four, my teacher gave us a trick
so we would remember how to spell "friend" - as many of us were
transposing the I and E.
The mnemonic was: "a FRIEND is a FRIEND to the END" ("friend" ends in "end")
So, A-M & ST, take heed! (robo steps down from soap-box)

I end my verbosity with a quote:
"My friends are my estate." - -- Emily Dickinson

To all my friends, see you at the END!
h

P.S.:
Let me know your thoughts, experiences...

*PPS: Some material I came across in my years of scholarly study of love,
indicated that ALL platonic attraction (i.e.friendship) was actually based on SEXUAL attraction, even in same-sex friendships!! That is, not to say that you ~want~ to sleep with all your friends, but that there was a basis, however minute, of sexuality. One mechanism could be that we are attracted to people that share our sexual tendencies, ie. nerds hang out with nerds, players are friends with other players, hoochie-mamas with hoochie-mamas etc. There didn't have to be any direct homo-erotic attraction- no fear! How figure!