Friendship

Friendship ;">

Friendship is a relationship between two people who hold mutual affection for each other.Friendships and acquaintanceship are thought of as spanning across the same continuum. The study of friendship is included in the fields of sociology, social psychology,anthropology, philosophy, and zoology. Various academic theories of friendship have been proposed, including social exchange theory,equity theory, relational s,dialectic and attachment styles.

The value of friendship is often the result of friends consistently demonstrating the following:

• The tendency to desire what is best for the other
• Sympathy and empathy
• Honesty, even in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth
• Mutual understanding and compassion; ability to go to each other for emotional support
• Enjoyment of each other's company
• Trust in one another
• Positively strong, deep, close reciprocity, mutuality — equal give-and-take between the two parties
• The ability to be oneself, express one's feelings and make mistakes without fear of judgement.

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Ancient Greece

Friendship was a topic of moral philosophy which was greatly discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics. This was less discussed in the modern era, until the re-emergence of contextualist and feminist approaches to ethics. Openness in friendship was seen as an enlargement of the self; Aristotle wrote, "The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self; and therefore, just as his own being is choiceworthy him, the friend's being is choice-worthy for him in the same or a similar way." In Ancient Greek, the same word was used for "friend" and "lover".

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Islamic

In Islamic culture, friendship, also known as companionship or ashab, is taken seriously and numerous important attributes of a worthwhile friend have emerged in Islamic media. These include, for both men ("brothers") and women ("sisters"): The notion of a righteous (or "Saalih") person, who can appropriately delineate between that which is "good" and that which is "evil", has appeared prominently; concordance with the perspectives and knowledge of other Islamic companions is considered to be important; forgiveness regarding mistakes and loyalty between friends is emphasized; and, a "love for the sake of Allah" is considered to be a relationship of the highest significance between two humans.

The view of the Islamic culture is to keep the relationships between boys and girls to a minimum; on the other hand, however, the only opportunity for a prudent relationship between boys and girls is when they have a serious plan for marriage. Beyond the limits of the family and religious marriage (See Mahram), virtually all emotional, intimate and love relations are despicable and religiously unlawful or a path to pave the way towards great sins. In the past there had been a social acceptance relying the local and traditional criteria which could practically lead to timely marriage at the beginning of puberty; given the above, the main question is how it is possible to regulate the time gap which exists between puberty and the time of marriage, under the present circumstances where as a result of the expanded network of relationships, the society encounters reduced age of puberty and increased age of marriage. The theory of Islamic friendship seeks to seek feasibility of a regulated management of the period between puberty and the time of permanent marriage, and that upon the theory of Islamic friendship.

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Asia

In Central Asia, male friendships tend to be reserved and respectful in nature. They may use nicknames and diminutive forms of their first names.

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Near East-Middle East

It is believed that in some parts of the Near East-Middle East, friendship has been described as more demanding when compared with other cultures; friends are people who respect each other, regardless of shortcomings, and who will make personal sacrifices in order to assist another friend, without considering the experience an imposition.

Many Arabian people perceive friendship in serious terms, and will deeply consider personal attributes such as social influence and the nature of a person's character before engaging in such a relationship.

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Germany

Germans typically have relatively few friends, although friendships that do develop typically last a lifetime, as loyalty is held in high regard, and provide a substantial amount of commitment and support. Germans may appear aloof to people from other countries, as they tend to be cautious and keep their distance when it comes to developing deeper relationships with new people. They draw a strong distinction between their few friends and their many acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors, and others. The development from becoming an acquaintance to a friend can take months or years, if it ever happens.

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Russia

In Russia, one typically accords very few people the status of "friend". These friendships, however, make up in intensity what they lack in number. Friends are entitled to call each other by their first names alone and to use diminutives. A norm of polite behavior is addressing acquaintances by full first name plus patronymic. Acquaintances could include relationships that elsewhere would be qualified as real friendships, such as long-standing workplace relationships, or neighbors with whom one shares an occasional meal or a customary drink.

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United States

Americans also use the term “friend” very freely, referring to someone they have known for a few weeks as a friend, perhaps for lack of a term for someone who is more than an acquaintance but less than a friend (Copeland, 2001). The rise of social networking websites, initially with Friendster, followed by others like Myspace and Facebook, which popularized the concept of "Friend requests", also diluted the traditional meaning of "friend" due to the casual way that many users accept friend requests from people who they have met only once or none at all, whom, once the request is accepted, goes into the first person's "friend list". In the contemporary social media world, "friend" is used in a very casual, low-relationship threshold, manner.

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Friendship quality

(Berndt, 2002). -Children prize friendships that are high in prosocial behavior, intimacy, and other positive features. -Children are troubled by friendships that are high in conflicts, dominance, rivalry, and other negative features. -Friendships are high in quality when they have high levels of positive features and low levels of negative features. -High-quality friendships have often been assumed to have positive effects on many aspects of children’s social development. -The direct effects of friendship quality appear to be quite specific. -Having friendships high in positive features enhances children’s success in the social world of peers, but it apparently does not affect children’s general self-esteem. These findings are surprising because numerous studies with adults suggest that friendships and other supportive relationships enhance many aspects of adults’ physical and mental health, including their self-esteem -High-quality friendships may also have indirect effects on children’s social development. Most theories of social influence include some form of the hypothesis that children are more strongly influenced by their friends’ characteristics the higher the quality of those friendships.

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Quality of Friendship

Friendship is “Life Enhancing” (Helm, 2012). By engaging in activities with friends, pleasure and happiness are intensified. The quality of friendships relates to happiness because friendship “provides a context where basic needs are satisfied” (Demir, 2010). By experiencing a good quality of friendship, the individual is led to feel more comfortable with who they are as a person. Ultimately, good quality friendships connect with the meaning of life satisfaction. Higher friendship quality directly contributes to self-esteem, self-confidence, and social development (Berndt, 2002).

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Quality of Friendship: Two Dimensions

Friendship has two dimensions (Demir, 2007). The two dimension include: quality and conflict. The quality of friendship is important for a persons well being and it contributes to the closeness of friends. Within the quality of friendship, it is important to have healthy and interesting interaction. This type of interaction leads to a higher quality of friendship. The second dimension is conflict, which connects with the quality of friendships. High quality friendships have great ways of resolving conflict which ultimately leads to a stronger and healthier relationship.

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Friendship development through childhood

At the early school age, friendships are based on the sharing of toys and objects and the enjoyment that is received from performing activities together. Friendships at this age are maintained through affection, sharing, and creative play time. Sharing is hard for children at this age level as they are very self-oriented. However, children are likely to share more with someone they consider to be a friend than with someone who is just a peer (Newman & Newman, 2012).

As a child moves from early school age to middle childhood, they face the developmental task of friendship. At this stage in life, children become less individualized and more aware of others. They begin to see their friends point of view and have fun playing in groups of peers who have the same interests as them. They also experience peer rejection as they move through the middle childhood years. It is important to teach a child that it is natural to sometimes be unaccepted by others but to remain positive about the friends they still have. Establishing good friendships at a young age helps a child to be better acclimated in society later on in their life (Newman & Newman, 2012).

In a 1974 study,Bigelow and La Gaipa, in one of the first studies conducted regarding children's friendships, found that expectations of a best friend become increasingly complex as a child gets older. The study investigated the criteria for "best friend" in a sample of 480 children between the ages of six and fourteen years of age.

Their findings highlighted three stages of the development of friendship expectations.

• First stage: emphasised shared activities and the importance of geographical closeness.
• Second stage: emphasised sharing, loyalty and commitment.
• Third stage: revealed growing importance of similar attitudes, values and interests.

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• Study of friendships in adolescent development

  Friendships in adolescent development include positive influences on how they act, feel, and think, and also problematic aspects including negative peer pressure. To find out which one is more prominent, one needs to consider the characteristics of friends and how these friendships form. A study was conducted by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health where 9,234 American adolescents were examined to determine how their engagement in problem behavior (stealing, fighting, sexual activity, truancy) was related to the kinds of friends they had and to the peer networks and schools in which these friendships were located. Findings revealed that adolescents were less likely to engage in problem behavior when their friends did well in school, participated in school activities, avoided drinking and had good mental health. Also, these positive characteristics are greater when done together within the social group. How adolescents are affected by friendships could be shaped by their location in their group. For example, the one who is most central to their peer networks were the most influenced by their friends. Results also found that adolescents have less problematic behavior when they attended schools with similar characteristics to their friends (friends who did well at school at an academically rigorous school). Ones that engaged in more problem behavior resulted from friends with opposing characteristics to the school (friends who drank at an academically rigorous school). Thus, whether adolescents were influenced by their friends to engage in problem behavior depended on how much they were exposed to these friends and whether they and their friendship groups "fit in" at school.
  
  
  
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  Types of friendships

  Acquaintance

  not a true friend—sharing of emotional ties is absent. An example would be a coworker with whom one enjoys eating lunch or having coffee, but would not look to for emotional support. Many "friends" that appear on social networking sites are generally acquaintances in real life.

  

  
  

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  Best friend (or close friend)

  A person someone shares extremely strong interpersonal ties with as a friend.

  

  
  

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  Blood brother or blood sister

  Either people related by birth, or a circle of friends who swear loyalty by mixing the blood of each member together; the latter carries the risk of transmitting infections such

  

  
  

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  Boston marriage as HIV.

  An antiquated American term used during the 19th and 20th centuries to denote two women who lived together in the same household independent of male support. Relationships were not necessarily sexual. It was used to quell fears of lesbians after World War I

  

  
  

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  Bromance

  a close non-sexual relationship between two (or more) men, a form of homosocial intimacy.

  

  
  

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  Buddy

  In the USA, males and sometimes females often refer to each other as "buddies", for example, introducing a male friend as their "buddy", or a circle of male friends as "buddies". Buddies are also acquaintances that one has during certain events. The term may also refer to an online contact, such as the AOL Buddy List. It also refers to a close friend.

  

  
  

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  Casual relationship or "friends with benefits"

  A sexual or near-sexual relationship between two people who do not expect or demand to share a formal romantic relationship. This can also refer to a "hook-up".

  

  
  

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  Family friend

  A friendship extended to family members of the friends. Close relation is developed in those societies where family ties are quite strong. This term is usually used in the Indian subcontinent.

  

  
  

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  Comrade

  Means "ally", "friend", or "colleague" in a military or political connotation. This is the feeling of affinity that draws people together in time of war or when people have a mutual enemy or even a common goal. Friendship can be mistaken for comradeship. Former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote:

  We feel in wartime comradeship. We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those, who will insist that the comradeship of war is love – the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication. [...] Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship – that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime – is within our reach. We can all have comrades.

  
  

  As a war ends, or a common enemy recedes, many comrades return to being strangers who lack friendship and have little in common. Sometimes they even become enemies in another war.

  

  
  

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  Cross-sex friendship

  A person having a friend of the opposite sex with having little or no sexual or romantic activity: a male who has a female friend, or a female who has a male friend. Historically, cross-sex friendships have been rare. This is because often men would labor in order to support themselves and their family, while women stayed at home and took care of the housework and children. The lack of contact led to men forming friendships exclusively with their colleagues and women forming friendships with other stay-at-home mothers. However, as women attended schools more and as their presence in the workplace increased, the segregated friendship dynamic was altered, and cross-sex friendships began to increase. Cross-sex friendship, once a sign of gender deviance, has been loosened because of the increase of gender equality in schools and the workplace, along with certain interests and pastimes such as sports. Cross-sex friendships are not always a socially accepted norm of amity, and some of those friendships could develop into romantic feelings (romantic friendship). When these feelings are not mutual, they can often backfire, making it hard for the two to remain friends.

  

  
  

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  Frenemy

  A portmanteau of the words friend and enemy, the term frenemy refers to either an enemy disguised as a friend (a proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing in the world of friendships) or someone who is both a friend and a rival. This is also known as a love–hate relationship. Most people have encountered a frenemy at one time or another in the same places one might find friends — school, work, the neighborhood. The term frenemy was reportedly coined by a sister of author and journalist Jessica Mitford in 1977 and popularized more than twenty years later on the third season of Sex and the City. While most research on friendship and health has focused on the positive relationship between the two, a frenemy is a potential source of irritation and stress. One study by psychologist Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad found that unpredictable love–hate relationships characterized by ambivalence can lead to elevations in blood pressure. In a previous study, the same researcher found that blood pressure is higher around friends for whom one has mixed feelings than it is people whom one clearly dislikes.

  

  
  

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  Imaginary friend

  a non-physical friend created by a child or even an adult. Sometimes they are human; other times, they are animals, such as the life-size rabbit in the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey. Imaginary friends are also created for people desperate for social interaction but are isolated from contact with humans and pets. It may be seen as bad behavior or even taboo (some religious parents even consider their child to be possessed by an evil "spirit"), but is most commonly regarded as harmless, typical childhood behavior. The friend may or may not be human and commonly serves a protective purpose.

  

  
  

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  Internet relationship

  a form of friendship or romance which takes place over the Internet. Some internet friendships evolve into real-life friendships. Internet friendships are in similar context to pen pals. These friendships are also based on the thought that they may never meet in real life, they know each other for who they are instead of the mask they may use in real life.

  

  
  

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  Mate

  In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, blokes often refer to each other as "mates", for example, introducing a male friend as their "mate", or a circle of male friends as "mates". In the UK, as well as Australia, this term has begun to be taken up by women as well as men.

  
  

  

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  Open relationship

  a relationship, usually between two people, that agree each partner is free to have sexual intercourse with others outside the relationship. When this agreement is made between a married couple, it is called an "open marriage".

  

  
  

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  Communal friendship

  a friendship in which the friends gather often to provide encouragement and emotional support in times of great need. This type of friendship tends to last only when opposing parties fulfill the expectations of support for the relationship.

  

  
  

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  Agentic friendship

  a friendship in which both parties look toward each other for help in achieving practical goals in their personal and professional life. These friends help with completing projects, study for an exam, or help a friend move out. These types of friends value sharing time together, but only if there are no other priorities and the friend is actually available to help in the first place. Emotions and sharing of personal information is of no concern to this type of friend.

  

  
  

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  Pen pal

  people who have a relationship via postal correspondence. Now pen pals have been established into internet friendships with the use of chat or social networking sites. They may or may not have met each other in person and may share either love, friendship, or simply an association between each other. This type of correspondence was encouraged in many elementary school children; it was thought that an outside source of information or a different person's experience would help the child become more worldly.

  

  
  

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  Jhiro Enriquez <3

  
  

  i miss my Bestfriends =((