To ask your definition of a friend?

[daisiesonmydress]

To me a friend is someone

-you feel comfortable and relaxed with
-on your side but can be honest
-you can confide in

• has your best intentions at heart
• you can trust

-you like spending time with -you could contact during the night if worried -you can sit silent with comfortably

Using the above I would say I have three good friends. Others are more friendly acquaintances or relatives.

Do you agree? Or do you define friendships differently. Anything you'd add?

Someone who laughs at the same things and gets references to events in the past.
Someone who is properly interested in you and your life and remembers the important details.
Someone who can disagree with you but still like you.
Someone who shares your interests and passions.

I could go on. I am fortunate In having a lots of very good friends.

All of the above

People that never ask about your life are not proper friends. The ones that are take take take but seem lovely on the surface but it's a more unbalanced and shallow friendship.

I have a mixture of both and I'm learning to step away from that type for personal issues. I like hanging out but I'm stepping back from continuing to share worries and concerns.

I'll stick to the ones that remember to text me or ask me about stuff that's going on in my life

All of the above

PLUS really enjoy their company

Basically my three best friends are family to me an I always feel so sorry for posters sad they don’t have close friends

For example, I have an acquaintance friend who is a heavy near alcoholic drinker. She has a close group of friends who are the same. The underlying premise is you must drink heavily to be part of the gang. They are supportive to her as long as she keeps drinking. She depends so much on them and I suspect is one of the reasons she won't try and sober up. She'd be chucked out.

I don't see that as having friends but she does.

Another one: someone you could go years without seeing and it’s still easy between you when you pick up again.

I have a lot of people I would call friends, but they're split into two distinct groups. The first is anyone I feel comfortable really being myself with - I keep my inner self quite private, so being totally comfortable with someone usually implies several other things, e.g. they're trustworthy, non-judgemental, we have quite a bit in common, I have a lot of respect for them etc. Also they have to be someone I'd meet up with one on one, so I wouldn't count a colleague I get on well with but only see at work, or someone I only ever meet up with as part of a group. I probably have about five or six people in this first category

There are many more people who don't meet these criteria who I'd also call friends. Some of them are people where I like them a lot but it would be weird to hang out one on one (e.g. my boss), some I don't feel comfortable being completely open with (e.g. because they have very strong political views that I don't share), some are really good fun to spend time with but I wouldn't choose to if it weren't for circumstances bringing us together (e.g. friends of friends or most colleagues), and some are people who might end up in the first group one day but I just don't know them well enough yet. Or the other way round, where we used to be really close but now haven't seen each other for 10+ years. At a rough guess, this is probably around 20-25 people. They're definitely more than just friendly acquaintances - I go back decades with some of them - but it's a distinctly different relationship than the one I have with the first group.

In your example, hypothetically, if I was also into heavy drinking and I enjoyed spending time with those people then I might count them as second category friends. (Non-hypothetically I probably wouldn't enjoy spending time with them because I don't drink a lot and they don't sound very nice! But presumably your friendly acquaintance does.)

As a real example that's maybe related, I have some work friends who are often quite critical of other colleagues for reasons I think are silly and inconsequential. We probably wouldn't get along very well if I self-righteously interrupted every time to tell them they were being judgemental and shouldn't talk like that behind people's backs, so I don't. I still think of them as friends because I enjoy spending time with them and there's lots of other things about them that I do like, but they're not first category friends because a lot of the time I'm not saying what I really think.

Mutual understanding.

Mutual support.

Compatible personalities (Not the same as 'same'. Just personalities that mesh well together, not clash).

Mutual interests, lifestyle, values (Not every single one but enough to see eye to eye often - especially on important issues - and do things together).

Enjoy each other's company and genuinely like each other.

True friends are hard to find and if you have one or more, you're one of the lucky ones.

I personally don't like how people define friendship based on what the other can do for them. It's a two-way street.

“Someone who makes you feel good about yourself when you spend time with them”.

Someone wise told me that once and I think of it often. If you leave someone’s company feeling bad about yourself then they aren’t a good friend. Even if a friend has to tell you something unpleasant etc they can always do it in a way where you also feel loved, valued.