Friendship

What is friendship? Friendship is an in-depth relationship. Friendship is comfortable and relaxed. Friendship requires meeting the needs of both friends.

Building a friendship from casual friends. Building  friendships takes time. Friendships  require self-disclosure so any friendship has risks, Talking and listening builds friendships. Friendships require equality and loyalty from friends.

Maintenance of friendships is crucial. Friendships can not be neglected. One-on-one contact is a prerequisite of friendships. Friends must be flexible. Conflict must be resolved for friendships  to continue.

Friendships do end. Friendships may not last. Friendships can lose importance and die gradually. Some friendships end abruptly with unresolved conflict. The worst enemy of friendships is change by one or both friends. There is usually pain with the loss of friendship.

Setting Limits in Friendships Friendships as well as all other relationships must have limits. You set limits with your friends because you care for them and your relationship with them, not because you don't.

Manipulation: If you think you are being manipulated, either by a friend, mate/lover, or relative, take this short test to check it out.

Conversation: Being able to carry on a comfortable conversation with a social acquaintance is a matter of practice and following certain procedures in communicating. It also works for best friends, too.

Toxic Friends and Toxic Friendships Not all friendships are good for you. How to recognize toxic friends.

Types of friendships

Associate: not a true friend—sharing of emotional ties are absent. An example would be a coworker with whom you enjoy eating lunch or having coffee, but would not look to for emotional support. Many "friends" that appear on social networking sites are generally associates in real life.

Best friend (or the closest friend): A person with whom someone shares extremely strong interpersonal ties with as a friend.

BFF ("Best friends forever"): Slang used primarily in the USA by teenage and young adult women to describe a girl friend or close best friend.

Blood brother or blood sister: Either people related by birth, or a circle of friends who swear loyalty by mingling the blood of each member together though not recommended for risk of blood disease such as HIV.

Boston marriage: An antiquated American term used during the 19th and 20th centuries to denote two women who lived together in the same household independent of male support. Relationships were not necessarily sexual. It was used to quell fears of lesbians after World War I.

Bro/ or Bruh: Slang used primarily in the USA, Australia and New Zealand by teenage and young adult men to describe a boy friend or close best friend. This term is currently used to describe the modern generation of college-age male party-goers. The name is typically associated with attention-seeking males who like to get drunk and party constantly. A bro is someone whom one identifies with on a deeper level. While partying might influence one's bros, a true bro is one who sticks by you, through thick and thin. While one male might call another a bro, the true Bro is a person who is the male's brother. A friend so close, that blood relations do not matter.

Sis: Also slang used primarily in the USA like "Bro" but for women and girls.

Buddy: In the USA, males and sometimes females often refer to each other as "buddies", for example, introducing a male friend as their "buddy", or a circle of male friends as "buddies". Buddies are also acquaintances that you have during certain events. The term may also refer to an online contact, such as the AOL Buddy List.

Casual relationship or "friends with benefits": A sexual or near-sexual and emotional relationship between two people who don't expect or demand to share a formal romantic relationship. This can also refer to a "hook-up".

Family friend: A friendship extended to family members of the friends. Close relation is developed in those societies where family setup is strong. This term is usually used in the Indian subcontinent.

Comrade: Means "ally", "friend", or "colleague" in a military or political connotation. This is the feeling of affinity that draws people together in time of war or when people have a mutual enemy or even a common goal. Friendship can be mistaken for comradeship. Former New York TimesChris Hedges wrote: war correspondent

We feel in wartime comradeship. We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those, who will insist that the comradeship of war is love – the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication. [...] Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship – that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime – is within our reach. We can all have comrades.^[9]

As a war ends, or a common enemy recedes, many comrades return to being strangers, who lack friendship and have little in common. Sometimes they even become enemies in another war.

Cross-sex friendship: A person having a friend of the opposite sex with having little or no sexual or romantic activity: a male who has a female friend, or a female who has a male friend. Historically cross-sex friendships have been rare. This is because often men would labor in order to support themselves and their family, while women stayed at home and took care of the housework and children. The lack of contact led to men forming friendships exclusively with their colleagues, and women forming friendships with other stay-at-home mothers. However, as women attended schools more and as their presence in the workplace increased, the segregated friendship dynamic was altered, and cross-sex friendships began to increase. Cross-sex friendship has once been a sign of gender deviance, but now it has been loosened because of the increase of gender equality in schools and the workplace, along with certain interests and pastimes such as sports.