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.