To be honest, I'm not sure I can. I have a lot of friends with varying degrees of closeness, openness, affection, etc. For me, friendship is like smut, I know it when I see it. :)
There are just far too many stupid jokes in that vein for me to choose one... Should I fall back on the "it takes one to know one" thing? Or say "I wish our 'friendship' were more like smut"? The possibilities are dizzying.
This probably isn't an entirely inclusive definition (ie I have friends who don't meet it).
I call someone a friend if we presently interact relatively often on a personal level, eg calling each other, having dinner, living together, or I used to have that relationship and have not entirely lost contact with or had an enormous fight or something.
People who happen to go to similar parties to me, people I work with, friends-of-friends I don't usually call friends. It seems to take about a year of knowing someone to gain the level of social intimacy I call "friendship" but not everyone I've known for a year becomes my friend.
The more intimate type of friends, ie the type of people who you cry to or who help you out of a bad bind and the like I call "close friends." I actually tend not to have these outside of my romantic relationships although that's not a principle. I think it's a product of my parents' very close best-friends-life-partners dynamic (which is in turn a product of my father's personality): I tend to assume that a romantic relationship will double up as an intense friendship and not really seek that level of intimacy elsewhere. I'm sure there are a few of my friends who would provide it if I needed it (as I might for them).
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keryx![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 08:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 08:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 12:20 pm (UTC)I call someone a friend if we presently interact relatively often on a personal level, eg calling each other, having dinner, living together, or I used to have that relationship and have not entirely lost contact with or had an enormous fight or something.
People who happen to go to similar parties to me, people I work with, friends-of-friends I don't usually call friends. It seems to take about a year of knowing someone to gain the level of social intimacy I call "friendship" but not everyone I've known for a year becomes my friend.
The more intimate type of friends, ie the type of people who you cry to or who help you out of a bad bind and the like I call "close friends." I actually tend not to have these outside of my romantic relationships although that's not a principle. I think it's a product of my parents' very close best-friends-life-partners dynamic (which is in turn a product of my father's personality): I tend to assume that a romantic relationship will double up as an intense friendship and not really seek that level of intimacy elsewhere. I'm sure there are a few of my friends who would provide it if I needed it (as I might for them).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 05:35 pm (UTC)