Friendship, according to Aristotle, is "a single spirit in two bodies."
Friendships have always played a significant part in all of our lives and will continue to do so. Friendships are "voluntary, informal, intimate, and private" interactions having social and personal advantages in our culture.
Types of friendships:
Lifelong Friends
Best Friends
Close Friends
Social Group Friends (friends you socialize with but with whom you are not particularly close)
Activity Friends (friends with whom you engage in specific activities, such as “gym buddies,” members of your book club or dinner club, church circles, and so on)
Friends of Convenience (the folks with whom you might share carpooling duties, youth sports team parents, neighbourhood groups, and so on)
Acquaintance Friends (people at work, people you see each day when you’re walking your dog, folks you know to speak to, but not about anything of consequence or especially personal)
Friendship Formation
The shift from strangers to acquaintances to friends is referred to as the formation phase of a friendship. Individuals interact throughout this period to get to know one other and form the affective relationship that distinguishes a friendship. Both adolescents and adults have a proclivity to develop friendships with people who are similar to them. Even young toddlers are drawn to peers their own age and gender. By middle childhood, similarity in behavioural features and activity choices becomes increasingly essential. Similarity in attitudes, values, and views, as well as shared interests and activities, may serve as the foundation for friendships as people approach adolescence and adulthood. Adults are even more inclined than youngsters to develop friendships with people who are similar to them in terms of gender, age, race, and socioeconomic standing.
Process of Friendship Formation
Friendship formation is a constant process. We are always meeting new individuals and hence have an infinite number of possibilities to form friendships. "Friendship development continues throughout life," from our early childhood years to our later years as elders. Friendship is said to have stages, particularly during the creation of a friendship. Friendship formation, according to Adarns and Bliezsner (1994), "involves transition from stranger to acquaintance to friendship."
Factors of Friendship Formation
Individual aspects include "physical attractiveness, social skills, responsiveness, similarity, or qualities that make persons ideal friends." These characteristics are what draw individuals together. Situational factors are the qualities of a relationship that allow it to develop. They include the duration of interactions as well as the frequency with which individuals communicate. Finally, relational factors refer to how one individual in the relationship interacts with the other.
Friendship Maintenance
The maintenance phase of friendship entails participating in exchanges that help to keep the connection going. Friends sustain their connection through engaging in a number of behaviours such as sharing interests, participating in recreational or leisure activities together, and offering support and advice. Typical subjects of conversation among friends include family difficulties, other interpersonal interactions, and everyday activities. The regularity with which friends communicate is a key factor of the success of friendship maintenance. In other words, friendships are not static; exchanges are necessary to keep a connection going. Perhaps the most important predictor of the frequency of contacts between friends is convenience. As a result, it is simpler to sustain friendships with people who live nearby (e.g., neighbours) than with those who live far away (e.g., long-distance friends).
The reciprocal affective relationship is one of the most noticeable differences between a growing friendship and a close friendship. As people become closer, what began as a mutual like of one other usually turns into a higher emphasis on reciprocal self-disclosure, intimacy, and emotional support. Individuals' satisfaction with the support and companionship they receive from a friend influences their investment and the amount of work they put into preserving the connection. Surprisingly, after an emotional relationship of a certain degree has been created, the quality of contacts rather than the number of interactions affects the effectiveness of keeping a friendship. In other words, friends with a long history and a strong emotional connection may not need to communicate as regularly to sustain their friendship.
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