The Seven Types of Friends You Have.

In an attempt to get my blogs focus off of the string of posts on romantic love I will be doing a short series on a different and more important kind of relationship, the friendship. Well kind of, and mostly. So without further delay in a similar style to buzzfeed, here are the 7 types of friends you have.

1. Let's start at the top, the pinnacle of non-romantic relationships. The supreme relationship, the Best Friend. The first person you go to, you tell them anything, everything. They are the easiest person in your life to talk to, you share secrets, inside jokes, and even if you're apart for any period of time it’s as smooth as butter to just slide right back into where you were pre-separation. They are your favourite person in the world. There have been books written, movies made, and songs sung about best friends, and still they haven't quite captured the true essence of the Best Friend. Best friends are important, and not just to you as a person, but as a thing to have and to be, they make you better, and you make them better. It truly is hard to put into words what a best friend is, they can be very much indescribable. 

2. Now let's move on to Close Friends, these aren't your best friend, you might tell them things but not to the extent that you do your best friend. These are the people that may fit into the below explained categories initially but have surpassed the limitations, these are the people you want to spend time with socially but not all the time, they don't always necessarily make it better. They are the people you choose to have in your life. You care about these people, but you wouldn't drastically change your life for them. Unlike with your Best Friend you can live without a close friend. I have this belief that if close friends are meant to be, they will. And this sparks a quote, Jeff Goldblum's character Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, "Life, uh, finds a way," which I believe the same goes for true close friends.

3. Your Oldest Friends are just that. The friends that you've had for the longest time. These are your neighbours growing up, your cousins, the children of your parent’s best friends, the kid from Sunday School who happened to be your age and start at the same school for kindergarten as you. These are the people whom you have the most inside jokes with for the reason that you've spent the most time with them. Because they've known you longest, they know your past, what you've been through, all the things you dealt with growing up. They've been there for you in the past, and even if you haven't talked or spoken in a while you still hope that if you need them or they need you, that you'll still hope that if you need them or they need you that you'll still be there for each other. And in the end, it really does just come down to a matter of time.

(This next one is a concept I've been working on for a while.) 
4. The Second Class Friend, or Second Glance Friend; either one or both work. These are not your close friends, these are not the first thought friends, and these are not the friends you think to call or text on your first scroll through your address book, maybe during a second glance through though. The S.C.F.s are the easiest to reschedule or break plans with because you're not that close to begin with (right? Only if it's mutual after all). This is not the best kind of friendship as one might guess, for either of the people involved, the person who is the S.C.F. can end up feeling left out, unimportant, forgotten about, and inversely making people feel those things is a pretty shitty thing to do to people. They may not end up being all that close to you, but they are still people none the less. As much as people might not be your best friends, or close friends, it doesn't mean that they have to feel lesser or second class, the primary word is friend after all.

5. Facebook Friends (I feel oh so tempted to just leave that one just as it was, and add no explanation behind it, but I do also feel as though that would be a bit of a cop out.) Unlike the S.C.F. there is no doubt about the level of friendship between you two, you have no filter on who your Facebook Friends are, you can collect Facebook Friends. In the long run this might seem harsh but Facebook Friends are inconsequential, they can run the gamut from people that you once met at a concert, to people you worked with for a month, to those people you went to high school with and don't talk to. 

6. On to Work Friends. Common misconception is that you don't actually have to work with your Work Friends. These are the friends of convenience, you might work with them, you might have a class with them, or even just live near them. This is a friendship precipitated on proximity. You befriend these people as a means of survival, to not rock the boat, or to even just combat the monotony of everyday life. These are basically entry level friends. Because there's the most growth potential there, these are the people you tend to spend a decent amount of time with. This is all of course within which ever given social construct that brought you together, you don't tend to spend much if anytime outside of the social construct with these given people.

7. Lastly Internet Friends. These are not conventional friendships, you don’t have to have necessarily met these friends, but they also don't have to be from the internet either. The term Internet Friends can encompass pen pals. These are distant friends, but not necessarily physical distance. But even if it isn't a physical distance, you don't spend physical time with these friends. These friendships are not immediate, meaning that you can't have the same communication expectations of these friends as others, you have to give your internet friends time to reply, time to read what you need replied to. In saying this it does not mean that you can't get close to your internet friends or that they can't be relied upon because they can be, but you can't just call them up in the same way you would with a close friend. But they can also be your most patient of friends, because in the same way that you can wait for them, they wait for you. They don't tend to leave overly easily and they tend to be quick to hop back into an old rhythm after a long period of not talking. They are good friends to have, but not if they happen to be your only friends.

Finally, Acquaintances. Now I know I said 7 types of friends, and acquaintances makes 8, but acquaintances aren't your friends. They are people you know, or have met maybe once or twice before. They are pre-friends, they are those people you work with and don't want to be friends with but put up with them because you feel obligated to, they are even the person you made out with that one time at a party. But in general the interesting thing about acquaintances is that they are not as the word implies, quaint, they don't tend to last, they fade into the void. In saying all this I should make sure to reassure you that you are not unfriendly towards these people but they are wholly not your friends. I don't want to say that they don't matter, but it's just that they don't matter to you, just yet, they could but they also couldn't. I swear I am not trying to make the existence of acquaintances sound bleak, but if I am explaining the types of friendships I feel as though I would be amiss if I were not to mention them.

Now, I am sure I didn't cover every single possible type of friendship because they are many and varied and as "predictable" as human behaviour might be, it is strange weird and confusing, and therefore cannot necessarily be defined in average terms. But hopefully, this helps in some way, maybe just informs, but maybe not help per say. I wrote this to help illustrate that non-romantic relationships can be just as weird and complicated as romantic ones, once again because people are weird. And if anyone tells you otherwise they are wrong.

Post Script: As you can see beginnings and endings are still not my strong suit in writing these. But I am writing, and that's what truly matters in the end.