The Friendship Bond

What makes someone a friend? There is no exact answer to that question. Based on "The Friendship Bond" by Mary Brown Parlee, the questionnaire on friendship, which appeared in the March issue of Psychology Today, was trying to figure the reason behind the power of friendship out. However, social critics did not partly agree with the questionnaire result because it contains some contradictions. How can people feel satisfied with their friendships and feel lonely at the same time? Those contradictions lead to the reevaluation of what are truly factors that determine friendship. Like Mary said, "friendship appears to be a unique form of human bonding." Uniqueness means a tolerable absurdity. Thus, friendship consists of some absurd factors but those factors are really applied by most of people. In my opinion, factors which determine friendship are trust, the degree of intimacy, and their activity.

Friends trust each other. Even though they are wrong, they will still trust their friends instead of strangers who are right actually. It seems illogical and makes us think, "is the friendship bond alive and well?" People choose to trust their friends because they think they know what personality do their friends have. How can I trust strangers if I do not know who they are, said most of people. However, friends are still friends as long as their trust level is high or at least, exist. Friends can turn into haters or strangers if they do not trust their friends anymore. It is also applies to the strangers. If the strangers gain the trust more and even more, the strangers can turn into friends. Moreover, friendship grows by trust. If the trust gone, then that is it: it is over. It is logical anyway to have the way of thinking like that.

To trust each other, actually the first step is get close to them. Friends are friends because they are close. For example, A, B, and I are in the same faculty. A is my classmate while B is not. Both A and B are my acquaintances. In this case, I will say A is my friend instead of B because I meet and interact with A more frequently than with B. It will be a twist if B is closer to me than A. Then I will say, "B is my friend actually." How people get close with each other to becoming a 'friend'? It depends to themselves. There is no exact factor of it. People can get close with other people because their race, point of view, interest, culture, sex are similar. However, people can get close too because of their differences. We can say it is the matter of comfort. Comfort leads to the closer distance, both physic and heart.

Last but not least, people will define other people as a friend by their activity that they do together. We are friends if we are gossiping and judging other people together. We are friends if we do sarcasm together. We are friends if we talk heart-to-heart too often. We are friends if we do acting weird and crazy together. And etcetera. No matter how abstract we and our friends do, as long as there is a bond which gets stronger by trust, it seems every craziness is alright.

Maybe people will partly or even disagree with all points that I pointed out. However, I just write what I see and what I feel after observing people around me behave with their friends. Although there are still many factors can determine friendship, three factors that I mentioned above are the most essential factors.