Tell us what your friendships mean to you

[dot-matrix]

 Friendship means different things to different people.  I don't think I personally ever realized this until very recently.  The word is casually tossed around by some to include aquaintences for others it has a much deeper meaning and is bestowed on only a few in a life time.   What does friendship mean to you.  You may choose more than one option up to three choices.

 
 
 

[David In Indy]

It's the first three you listed Dotte; honesty, loyalty and trust. At least for me it is. If I had a fourth choice it would be support.

[Kelda]

its hard to pick just 3 -

I would have picked 5 if I could. honesty, loyalty and trust. support, have fun with

I chose support, honesty, have fun.

[mvansand76]

Great poll, can we move it to How We Live? (sorry David...  )

[Wishes]

I voted "trust"

I don't have a lot of friends but the my friends are people I know I can tell anything to without judgement. To me that is a true friend. They are also the people you KNOW you could call at 2 AM in an emergency and they would be there for you.

I have an older male friend near by and while we don't hang out together we have both told each other if we ever needed anything day or night-CALL. We all need people like that in our lives.

[moremojo]

I voted for loyalty, trust, and emotional intimacy. Honesty is pretty important too, but I feel it is implied under the rubric of trust. Friendships are relationships, which can sometimes be forgotten in the go-go-go world of early twenty-first century America. Friends are people with whom you share your life, with whom you go through life, who are there for you when you're down and are pleased as punch when you're up. Likewise, you are the support and helpmate for both their travails and joys. Friendships aren't necessarily as intimate as romantic/in-love/married-or-partnered relationships, but they're important just the same.

As one might glean from my description, I make a distinction between true friends and acquaintances. One can be friendly with acquaintances without necessarily being friends with them.

[delalluvia]

Once upon a time, I would have chosen emotional intimacy, but to have friends I thought I could share emotional moments with either rear back, shocked at my weakness in displaying my grief, theiir faces twisted with distaste and discomfort or have friends of a few years write me notes of undying friendship and closeness - until we graduated school, then even though we went to different colleges in the same town, began to act like strangers after a few months, as if our close friendship of years in high school couldn't and wouldn't translate to college, to have these same friends call me after a few years, apologize, tell me how much they care and miss me, make plans with me for the next weekend...then never show or call again or decide, after I shared the emotional heartache of being dumped by my lover with them, decide they wanted to remain 'neutral' in the breakup between me and my boyfriend has really embittered me.

Now, sadly, I have no friend in my everyday life with whom I can be emotionally intimate, to share dreams, hopes, joys and pains.  They have all betrayed me or let me down in that department and so, I keep these feelings to myself and keep my friendship with them at a superficial, hanging out level.

As a child, I had looked forward to having close friends - the ones you read about in books and stories, saw on TV shows, the friends with you till the day you die, loyal, steadfast and true.  I've tried hard my whole life to find that, to be that, but now...

I've shared more with all of you here on this board, than I have with any 'friend' in my life right now.

[moremojo]

I am very sorry to learn of all the disappointment you've had, del. Really good friends, the kind of friends I was describing (which tends to be more an ideal than a reality for most), are rather rare. But they can and do exist, and I hope we can all keep our hearts open enough to be receptive to that experience when it does come our way.

Peace,
Scott

[injest]

I have more of what I would call friends online than in real life.

I do have one friend in real life that I really feel would stick by me regardless of what happened in our lifes.

I picked Support, loyalty, trust.

[Kelda]

I do think that you can share more with online friends sometimmes than you can in reallife - maybe its because noone can see your embarrassment or worry or whatever and you can be totaly truthful, frank etc etc.

I would say in real life I'm quite sociable and have lots of people I would call friends - but many of these i speak to far less than I 'speak' to people on this board.

[injest]

plus since none of you know anyone I know I can tell the truth about how I feel without worrying it will come back on me.

[CellarDweller]

I am fortunate that I have a large circle of friends in real life, online, and many times, my online friends have become real life ones.

I picked support, loyalty, and trust.

[Kerry]

I voted for loyalty, honesty and trust, but consider emotional intimacy, support and "for fun" to be equally as important. Tough question to answer. Asking one to define friendship is like asking one to define God. Indefinable IMHO. It's a spiritual thing.  

[Dagi]

I voted for Trust, Loyalty and Honesty .... everything else just follows on naturally from there.  But if you don't have these three, you have nothing.


Susie 

Nothing to add......couldn´t have said it better.....

Dagi

[Artiste]

They mean all the world to me!

Juest like family too !

May it be so with you too ! Oui !

Au revoir,
hugs!