What is friendship? A plain answer, and what it looks like as adults

What is friendship, in simple words?

Friendship is a close bond between two people who choose each other, enjoy each other's company and look out for each other, without being family or a couple. Nobody signs anything and nobody has to stay, so a friendship lasts as long as both people keep showing up for it.

An example: Carla and Ines are 46 and met fifteen years ago in the laundromat on the ground floor of their old building, where neither flat had room for a washer. Carla moved across town six years ago and bought a washing machine the same month. She still carries her sheets to the laundromat every Sunday morning, because that's where Ines is. They fold for each other, two corners each, and talk about work, their parents and whatever went wrong that week. Today the sheet twists halfway, and they laugh so hard they have to shake it out and start again. A younger neighbor once asked Carla why she doesn't just do her laundry at home. "The laundry is the excuse," she said.

Three things that make a bond a friendship

First, it's chosen. You don't get friends assigned to you the way you get cousins or coworkers. Two people meet, like each other and decide to keep seeing each other.

Second, it goes both ways. Both people give something: time, attention, help, a laugh at the right moment. When only one side calls, plans and listens, the bond starts to feel more like a favor than a friendship.

Third, nothing forces it. There's no paperwork, no shared last name and no promise in front of a crowd. That makes friendship easy to lose, and it's also why it feels so good when it lasts. Every year a friend stays is a year they chose you again.

What friendship looks like once you're grown

Adult friendship is quieter than the kind you had at twenty. You see each other less, and you plan more. Weeks can go by without a word, and the next call picks up where the last one stopped. A grown friend is the person who helps you carry boxes into a new flat, hears about the new job before your family does and remembers the name of your difficult neighbor.

It also changes shape as life does. A friend moves to another city, gets married or takes a job with long hours, and for a while you talk once a month instead of every day. Many friendships survive that. They come back when life slows down, and the two of you are still the same pair.

Being a friend, in grown-up terms, means being someone the other person can count on and be themselves with. Many adults have only a handful of friends like that, and it can take years to find them. If you've moved or your circle has thinned out, making friends as an adult covers how people start over.

Friendly, an acquaintance and a friend

Being friendly is a manner. You can be friendly with the bus driver, a new coworker or the woman who walks the same dog route as you. An acquaintance is someone you know by name and like chatting with, but you don't share much of your real life. A friend is the person who knows what's going on with you, and whom you would tell when it does.

Where the line between the last two falls is the subject of acquaintance vs friend, which also explains what people mean by a close friendship. Friendships come in levels too, from the gym friend to the person who knows everything, and types of friends lays them out. An older way to sort them goes back to ancient Greece: friends who are useful to each other, friends who have fun together and friends who care about each other for who they are.

Friendship next to family and a partner

Is friendship a relationship? Yes. It's one of the main relationships in an adult life, even though it has no official name or ceremony. It just works by different rules from the other two big ones.

Family is given. You don't pick your brother, and he stays your brother whether you speak or not. A partner is chosen, but that bond usually comes with romance, a shared home and a spoken commitment. A friendship is chosen too, without any of those. When people compare friendship vs relationship, they usually mean friendship vs a romantic relationship, and the clearest difference is that friends promise each other nothing out loud and often keep their word anyway.

The lines blur, and that's fine. Some friends become so close that people start calling them family. For friends who feel like family, there are sister friend quotes and brotherhood quotes. Some couples say their partner is also their best friend, and they mean both words.

None of this makes friends less important. For many adults, a friend is the one who has been there longest.

True friendship and best friends

When people ask what true friendship is, they usually mean the qualities of a good friend, like honesty and turning up when it counts, and characteristics of a good friend goes through them. Loyalty in friendship means taking your friend's side when they aren't in the room, and keeping what they told you to yourself. A best friend is the rare one at the top of the list, and you can read about that bond in what makes a best friend.

Why some friendships feel easy

Some friendships feel easy from the first week. Others take work, even when both people mean well. Typeza sees personality type as part of that, and as part of why friendship means slightly different things to different people. Six of the 16 types:

• Ideator wants a friend who says yes to an odd plan and talks about ideas until late.
• Harmonizer wants comfort: an easy evening and a friend who notices when they're tired.
• Commander wants loyalty you can see, from a friend who backs them up in public.
• Dreamer wants steady warmth and a friend who understands without a long explanation.
• Guardian wants someone who keeps their word, this year and every year after.
• Organizer wants a friend who turns up on time and helps with the practical things.

Carla is a lot like an Organizer. She likes a fixed Sunday slot, and she's never late for it.

A few words people use about friends

• Fast friends are people who got close very quickly, sometimes within a single evening.
• A family friend is a friend of the whole family, often someone your parents have known for decades who now knows you too.
• Friend or foe is an old way of asking whether someone is on your side. A person who seems to be both has a modern name, and frenemy explains it.
• An old friend is someone you've known for a long time, whatever their age.
• A close friend is one of the few people you'd call first, on a good day or a bad one.

See why one friendship flows and another takes work

Type is often part of why. Typeza puts the types of two people side by side. It names the relationship type you two have, so the easy days and the awkward ones between you start to make sense. You can take the friendship compatibility test for free and then pass your result link to the friend you have in mind.

Questions people ask

How do you describe friendship?

Describe what the two of you do for each other. "She's the one I call first, and she always picks up" tells people more about a friendship than any general word.

What is the value of friendship?

A friend gives you a place to be yourself that isn't home and isn't work. Over the years, that one person can know more of your life than almost anyone else.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Friendship". The three kinds of friendship from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII: friendships of pleasure, of utility and of virtue.

Written by Virko Kask, founder of Typeza
Written with the help of AI tools.