Friends, those are not the people you meet on Facebook. Although they are in there too. The people you can count as your best friends in everyday life can be counted on the fingers of one hand – or ahead, two. And if you have a best friend, you can count yourself lucky. You may recognize this…
Do you want to know who those friends are? Then the adage In need one learns one's friends know. Real friends are the people who stand on the doorstep with a pot of soup when you're in bed with a forty-degree fever. Who call you when you are sad, abandoned or lonely and promise you that everything will be fine. They are also the people with whom you can have endless conversations or roll over on the floor laughing. And what makes those friends different from those four hundred Facebook friends? Reciprocal benevolence. That, according to many philosophers, is the basis of true friendship. You have to want to give and be able to receive.
Yet everyone knows friends which are not helpful at all. Who are never on the doorstep with the proverbial pot of soup. Who even forget your birthday. They are friends – and maybe even one – that are an extension of yourself. An alter ego, or a mirror in which you see yourself. In that respect, friendship is a form of love.
The Greek word for friend, philos, comes from the verb philein, to love. But unlike in romantic love, friendship always comes from both sides. You can love a man or woman who doesn't love you. You can even love your family without them loving you. But friends who don't love you are not your friends.
According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, there are three kinds of friendships † Friendships that are useful (think of the pot of soup), that are pleasant (because the other person is pleasant company) or that are good. And by good he means friendships with people who have good qualities. Who are loyal, faithful, honest, admirable. In short, someone who is good. In the perfect friendship, all three come together. That friend who's willing to take you to the airport in the middle of the night, with whom you can laugh uncontrollably and who is essentially a good person. The highest form of friendship, according to Aristotle, is the last. Friendship with someone who is a good person.
Reciprocity, which is so important to friendship , is easiest when it comes to that highest form of friendship. With a useful friendship you can say:if you walk my dog, I will take out your garbage during the holidays. The for-whatever principle doesn't sound very pleasant, but it is the basis of this kind of friendship † For friendships that revolve around the pleasant, you can say:I would like to go out with you for an evening because you are such a nice company. And as long as the other person likes to be with you, the friendship will continue. But for a friend you value for his character, it's very easy to keep answering the friendship.
Friendships based on usefulness or pleasure are often temporary bonds. Research shows that most friendships are renewed every five years. The college friend you spent evenings in the cafe with can suddenly be a vague acquaintance five years later, simply because you no longer have time to go out together. The neighbor who was always there for you can become a stranger to you once you move. But the friends you admire for who they are, with whom you share important moral values, with a little luck they will still be on your deathbed.
Moral quality is in your character. It's not what you have – money, connections, status – but who you are. And while that too is somewhat changeable, it is still much more durable than anything that's somehow on the outside. Friendships based on who you are are therefore more sustainable than friendships based on what you do or what you have.
If friendship is so important, isn't it helpful to have as many as possible? Do you live extra long and extra happy if you have five hundred friends? Perhaps, but that cannot be investigated because no one has five hundred friends. Nonsense, say the Facebookers among us, because they sometimes have a thousand friends. In the real world, says English evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, it's not possible to have endless friends. Dunbar has been researching the number of friends people have for years and came to the conclusion that most people have only two to ten dear friends. Close friendships require an investment of time and attention. Even if you wanted to, you don't have time to maintain more than ten friendships, it turns out. For every new friend that comes in, another one drops out. Simply because the attention for one is at the expense of the other.
According to Dunbar, the quality of a friendship is determined by the time we invest in it. Having more than five best friends is impossible, Dunbar says. Assuming you see each of those friends face-to-face on a regular basis, which is necessary to maintain the friendship. Most people have limited time and it takes time to maintain friendships. Our brains can't handle more friends either. Every friendship requires memory capacity. For example, you need to remember when your friends have their birthday, where they work, what their partners or relatives are called, where they live and even what their vacation plans are. But it's not just basic information you need to remember, you need to store emotional data as well. Empathize with your friends when they are in love, happy, sad or anxious. That sympathy also costs processing capacity. According to Dunbar, our brains can't remember more information than all this data from a maximum of ten or maybe fifteen people.
Knowing that friends are useful and pleasant and that it is healthy to have friends, the question remains how friendship is formed. Friendship must grow, they say. But everyone knows that one friend whose friendship was at first sight. Like you've known each other for years. To become friends it is necessary to share personal information. You have to open yourself up to the other person, tell them what bothers you, what concerns you. And the other has to do the same in turn. Without sharing your deepest feelings, fears or desires, there can be no intimacy, and without intimacy there can be no friendship. And because opening up makes yourself vulnerable, you have to feel safe with that other person. Being able to trust that your 'secrets' are in good hands with that other person.
The origin of friendships is as complex as the origin of love relationships. Sometimes you can only wonder why you fall in love with one and not the other. As you do not always understand why you are friends with person A and not with person B. Unfortunately, the answer is much more prosaic than we can hope. The best predictor is proximity. In an American study, residents of a two-storey apartment complex were studied at length to see how friendships developed. The people on the ground floor were more likely to befriend each other than the people who lived on the first floor. Mutual friendships also developed on the first floor. Only the people on the ground floor who lived near the mailboxes were more likely to befriend both the residents of the ground floor and the people of the first floor.
Not only proximity is a predictor for the development of friendships , so is our social group. The best predictor of friendship is if someone is from the same social group as you. That's why friendships often develop in places that undermine our social identity confirm. You play different roles in life. So you can be a father and lover, an excellent tennis player, fond of reading, mountaineer and politically left oriented. Your best friend may be a woman who hates children, is unsportsmanlike, smokes like a heretic and votes the far right. It's just more likely that our best friend is someone who constantly affirms us. Which is like a fine mirror and shows us that the choices we make in life and the roles we play are the right ones. If you're also willing to see each other every week, exchange personal information, empathize, admire each other and be there for each other in times of need, then look no further. Then that is love called friendship.
Text Manon Sikkel, Image Getty Images
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