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. :)
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).
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.
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(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 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 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 05:35 pm (UTC)