Friendships are essential to all of us. We cherish the friendships we have, because our friends are, well, our friends. It can be hard to define friendship in words. We can try, nevertheless, by saying it is two people sharing a bond or a platonic intimacy, or even call it the resulting relationship from proximity and sharing of opinions. But all of these feel like floundered attempts and fail to capture what friendship is.
The best way to understand friendship is to look around, you’ll find friends everywhere around you. The clouds are friends with the sky, the birds are friends with the tress, and we are friends with each other. Look back to your life, I’m sure you will have an uncountable number of friendships. Sometimes friendships don’t even have to amount to something, it’s just a simple liking for each other, it is liking each other’s company. But sometimes it also means much much more. Sometimes friendship means responsibility, it means to care and affection, it means to support and protection, it means camaraderie. We all have different meanings of friendship, and even more different ways of how we celebrate that meaning in each of the friendships we share with a multitude of people we can call friends.
Other than the obvious reason friendships are important i.e our friends make us feel like belonging and we like and find happiness in their relationship with us, friendship is also important for a number of other factors. Friendships fulfil our need for affiliation. You may wonder what the need for affiliation means. Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, has founded a theory of what are the needs of a human, needs that need to be met for their well-being. There are three levels in this hierarchy- needs that are basic (the most essential, like food, water, clothes, physical security), once these are met we move on to try a fulfil psychological needs (that contribute to our mental and emotional health like feelings of belongingness in families and friendships, and confidence in ourselves), and on the top, we have self-actualisation needs that enable us (once fulfilled) to unlock our full potential. And as briefly explained, one part of the psychological need is the need for affiliation or the need to belong and be valued by those who we value and the need to feel cherished by our loved ones. Our friendships help us fulfil that need. Friends also play a big part in our self-esteem, even if not directly. Being friends with the right people, people who care about you and genuinely believe in you are bound to create an environment for you where they reinforce the positives in you and are conducive to your growth. And a bonus to that is maintaining these friendships and successfully keeping them around and having their presence in your life can feel like an achievement in life itself, an achievement you will surely applaud yourself for.
Friendships are also important in the sense that they influence a great deal of the decisions you may make in life. Knowingly or unknowingly they also influence a lot of your taste and preferences as well. Maybe you hated horror movies before, but because a close friend of yours thrives in the adrenalin boost horror movies provide, you decide to give it a shot too. Only to realise, maybe horror movies aren’t that bad, maybe you like them too. Inversely, you may be one of the people who are very used to the accessibility of single-use plastics, but after a close friend informed you about the dangers they cause to the environment and are a major reason we are hurtling towards climate decline at an alarming rate, you are more mindful of the waste you create. It might seem like small things, but they become a part and parcel of your life.
This is exactly why it is important to be attentive to the friendships you foster, and the people you let into your life and mind. Bad influences can dig pits for you that you may have a hard time climbing out of. It is in your best interests to befriend people who are positive and bring positivity to your life and uplifting for you. It is also important to maintain your friendships in a way that enriches your life and its experiences rather than draining you. Because you might come across a lot of people in life who seek to benefit from their friendship to you without much regard to whether or not it benefits you too. A good way to help you ‘organise’ or make sense of the friendships you have and help you decide whether they are facilitating towards you both or are draining you, and the amount of energy and effort you should be putting into them is to assign levels to them!
Without further ado, let us get into it. Here are 4 levels of friendships that may briefly succeed in providing a framework that can help you assess your friendships better-
1. Acquaintances
These are people you are well-acquainted with and quite possibly nothing further. People you meet occasionally, may know the name of or even know a few basic details about their life. You are at least civil and at best friendly with them, but they are also not people you would discuss the current political climate or exchange views on your favourite movie with. It would be wrong to say they have no effect on your life because even the briefest moments and simplest comments can leave an impact and have everlasting effects on your thinking. But it is also unlikely that their opinions or comments will affect you to the point where you may be convinced to adjust or change major aspects of your life. You may, but it wouldn’t be because of their opinion alone, it would be because you might agree or share the opinion on your own and they were perhaps a starting point. An example to help you understand this - imagine a work party. A fellow employee from another department may be standing close by, someone you have seen around quite a few times. You know their name, the department they work in, and the fact that like their coffee with excessive amounts of sugar because they were in front of you in the coffee break room and you saw them dump a few spoonfuls of sugar which stood out to you, but not much else. If you happen to converse with them this evening, and they were to discuss the benefits of veganism, it is highly unlikely you are going to turn into a vegan the next day. Or even within the next year. You might if you have been thinking of it for a while, have been more conscious of what you put into your body ar even because you agree with the ideology behind it. But not because another employee told you. These are the friendships that are cordial, and that is all there is to it. These are friendships you should reserve your effort and energy from. A polite smile or nod of acknowledgement, a few times of asking how their day has been every now and then is the most interaction this kind of friendship calls for. You won’t feel remorse if they quit and move to another company for a job and you surely won’t miss them if you moved on to another company as well. There is no benefit or loss in these kinds of friendships and not worth the effort of confrontation if your values don’t align with theirs. It is best to slowly distance in such a case.
2. Casual Friendship
These are friends that you actually call friends, you like them and their company and put in some effort beyond the simple greetings and pleasantries. These a friendships that do influence you but not in an intense manner. You know their likes and dislike, you have a general idea of the kind of person they are in your head. Even if their opinions and ideas don’t have to match yours, it would be nice if some of them overlapped. A good example of these kinds of friendships would be the ones you share with your neighbour or even your roommate.
A neighbour would start as an acquaintance at first and may even remain at that, but if you live long enough in one place and your neighbour is a friendly person and you are a sociable person as well, chances you will become decent friends. Now you get to know them a little more beyond the basic information about each other. You tend to know their likes and dislike in the sense you may know they sleep early or maybe they are a night owl. You may observe they order a lot of take-out or that they are an avid fan of cooking and love trying out new dishes and even bring some over for you to taste. They may know you like listening to music as you finish household tasks because they can faintly hear music playing during the day, or that you have a pet. If you both grow familiar enough, you may even discuss things that affect both of you, like building/neighbourhood policies or if you both share a landlord you can give each other a heads up about discussions you may have with them.
A roommate tends to be a closer friendship, even if only attributable to the physical proximity. You definitely know what an average day in their life looks like, you know what they eat and what they don’t because chances are you share the same kitchen and same fridge. And because you are co-inhabitants, chances are there is an amount of mutual respect and consideration there given you both live together and want as little conflict in your personal space as possible. So the both of you try to uphold your end of responsibilities. Even workplace friendships can be classified as casual friendships. These are friendships that may not heavily influence your perspective on life or even cause changes in behaviour, but they are potent enough to at least make you think and give a considerable amount of consideration to what they say and think if only to understand them better rather than incorporating their values. If a conflict arises, it deserves to be at least discussed once before we decide to distance ourselves from them. They require our effort but not to the extent where it is raking up too much of our time or is making us juggle tasks.
3. Close Friendships
As the label suggests, these are people you consider to be close friends. You value their opinions and their perspectives a lot. If they are to hold opinions you may not agree with, you may not change your opinion but you may take a more neutral stance on it simply because you think their opinion is not entirely baseless. A good example of these kinds of friendship is your classmate or your friend group in university or college. Even some workplace friends/ co-workers who have to come to consider as good friends, and care for them more than you do for your other co-workers would fall into this category. It is quite simple really, these are friends you like and care about and look up to, their presence matter to you, and you want them to like you back as well. Close friendships often last a long time. These are friendships you make time for, and not just catch up on when you happen to have the time. These are friendships that do influence you, so it is necessary to make a call whether the friendships are a positive influence in your life or whether it is one that drains you or may potentially be harder to maintain in the future. This is the kind of friendship, where you try your best to resolve it if a conflict takes place, and you both try to salvage it and try to work forward because you are both important to each other. But sometimes you cannot resolve the conflict and drift apart. It can be painful, and you may even feel their loss initially, but do learn to move on eventually.
4. Core/Intimate Friendships
These are the closest friendships you will have in your life. These are people who you call your best friends, they are the closest to you and have been (or you intend to be their) friends for a long time. It is likely they know you as well as you know them, which is a lot. You know their likes and dislikes and their opinions, sometimes even more than them. They may have seen you at your most vulnerable and have probably stood by you through thick and thin. They are your support system and are irreplaceable to you. It goes without saying that this kind of friendship requires the most of your effort, time and energy but to be honest it doesn’t even feel like effort most of the time. They greatly influence you, you are very likely to assimilate and if not assimilate then accommodate their outlooks because you trust them enough that if they uphold this opinion there must be some sense, logic and value to it. It is very likely that your core principles and values align, and you think and behave alike if not similarly. And conflicts in these kinds of friendships tend to be resolved sooner rather than later, and with a lot of mutual respect and compromise due to the unwillingness to lose each other’s friendships. These are the friendships that you hold on to for life, and affect you a lot.
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