On the True Meaning of Friendship

In his appropriately named treatise on friendship, De Amicitia, Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero begins by discussing how critical friendship is: “Nature loves nothing that is solitary, but always inclines toward some sort of support.”

Similarly, the poet John Donne intoned, “No man is an island.” Even Seneca, one of the great Stoic philosophers, advised his readers to “seek out the company of those with whom they can be their best selves.”

Cicero reminds us that the fruits of our labor are best enjoyed when shared: “There is no meaning in achieving goals, success, fame if you are all alone.”

Indeed, an NIH-funded 80-year longitudinal study found that close relationships kept people happy and healthy throughout their lives more than money, fame, social class, IQ, or genes. But what does it really mean to be a friend?

On Bearing Witness

An ineffable boon of friendship is bearing witness to moments both great and small. The word for hello in Zulu, the most spoken native language in South Africa, is “sawubona.” More than a mere greeting, sawubona literally means “I see you” and conveys:

I see the whole of you — your experiences, your passions, your pain, your strengths and weaknesses, and your future. You are valuable to me.

As the English poet David Whyte beautifully described in a word meditation,

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self. The ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

In a pivotal scene from the movie Shall We Dance, when asked why she wants to be married, Susan Sarandon’s character remarks that we all just want someone to bear witness:

We need a witness to our lives. There are 8 billion people on the planet … I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything — the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things … all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’

Bearing witness is not for the faint of heart and often functions as a litmus test of sorts, as true friends will remain a part of your life regardless of how rough the waters get.

On Being Bound

By its very virtue, bearing witness leads to the development of empathetic bonds that cause us to revel in our friends’ triumphs and successes as well as feel pain when they’re suffering.

In a scene from the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, based on a true story, the character of Mr. Rogers demonstrates the word for friend in sign language using interlocking index fingers.

The connotation is obvious: friends are inextricably bound, their journeys irrevocably intertwined. Similarly, in “Any Human to Another,” the poetess Countee Cullen wrote:

Your grief and mine

Must intertwine

Like sea and river

Be fused and mingle

Diverse yet single

Forever and forever

Cullen emphasizes that we each have a responsibility to carry one another’s burdens and share in each other’s pains and sorrows, and this responsibility is an important act of self-sacrifice.

Speakers of several Indian languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, and Kannada know that the word “mitra” means friend. The heart’s mitral valve is named for its resemblance to a bishop’s miter cap whose name comes from the Greek word mitra (belt), which comes from a proto-Indo-European root meaning “to bind.”

Thus, we once again arrive at the image of friends being bound together. Critically, Cicero warns that true friendship can’t exist except between good people, for “friendship (amicitia) is derived from the word love (amor) and leads to the establishing of goodwill.”

He expounds, “Friends show proof of loyalty, uprightness, fairness and generosity; they are free from caprice, and passion and insolence, and have great strength of character…If you remove goodwill from friendship, the very name of friendship is gone.”

On Dynamic Boundaries

In the age of the internet, boundaries of friendship have changed considerably since physical proximity is no longer a requirement. The word “friend” is used much more liberally nowadays and without qualification.

In his book, Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships, Oxford evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar posits that friendships can be accurately illustrated as a series of concentric circles representing different levels of friendship.

While Dunbar’s number of 150 is frequently cited as the maximum number of relationships one can maintain, considerably less attention is given to the number of close core friendships one can maintain.

Distribution of Dunbar’s survey data on personal friendships formed a series of layers with each successive layer being three times larger than the layer preceding it. The innermost layer of 1.5 includes our life partners. Of note, Cicero once wrote, “The bonds of affection always unite two persons only, or at most, a few.”

The next layer of five close friends includes people who will drop everything in order to support us in times of distress. A study by Jeffrey Hall concluded that it takes an average time investment of 200 hours for someone to go from an acquaintance to a best friend. Hall explains,

It is possible to know someone for years, but not develop a friendship, and to know someone for 6 weeks and become best friends…the amount of time that has passed since meeting provides insufficient information about friendship development.

The size of each layer is generally fixed but may depend on certain personality characteristics. For example, extroverts tend to have more friends in each layer than introverts who typically prefer to have fewer friendships and invest more time in each.

In an amusing scene from The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon decides to kick Raj out of his immediate circle to avoid the “herculean task” of maintaining five close friendships.

On Common Ground

Dunbar lends credence to the old adage “birds of a feather flock together” with his seven pillars of friendship, which may be used to predict the likelihood that two people will become friends. These dimensions of homophily are:

1. Growing up in the same place, especially during core teenage years
2. Speaking the same language
3. Having similar educational or career trajectories
4. Enjoying similar hobbies and interests
5. Sharing religious, moral, or political views
6. Having the same sense of humor
7. Sharing similar musical tastes

Notably, Dunbar says these pillars are interchangeable. None is more important than any other. The more of these pillars friends have in common, the closer they tend to be. We typically share 6–7 pillars with friends in the innermost circle, but only 1–2 pillars with friends in the outer circle.

Not only do we share more interests with our closest friends, but we also appear to share more genes than we do with strangers. In fact, friends seem to be as closely related as fourth cousins. While we tend to share genes relating to smell, we tend to have very different genes relating to immune activity, a finding also observed among spouses.

James Fowler, a professor of political science and medical genetics at the University of California, San Diego, explains:

One of the reasons why we think this is true is because it gives us extra protection. If our spouses have an immune system that fights off a disease that we’re susceptible to, they’ll never get it, and then we’ll never get it. And so it gives us an extra layer of protection.

On Romantic Love and Friendship

Earlier during the pandemic, headlines covering a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggested that we may be happier with friends than our children or romantic partners, but lead author and Southern Methodist University professor Nathan Hudson cautioned,

Our study suggests that this doesn’t have to do with the fundamental nature of kith versus kin relationships. When we statistically controlled for activities, the ‘mere presence’ of children, romantic partners, and friends predicted similar levels of happiness. Thus, this paper provides an optimistic view of family and suggests that people genuinely enjoy their romantic partners and children.

In other words, what we do with our loved ones may be a bigger predictor of happiness than whom we spend time with. Regardless, Dunbar suggests that the time and energy invested in long-term romantic relationships requires the sacrifice of two people. He writes, “Falling in love will cost you two friendships.”

Two people will move from your circle of close friends to your circle of best friends, and two people from that circle will move into good friend territory, essentially producing a domino effect. If you were to have asked 16th century philosopher Michel de Montaigne, he might’ve said the sacrifice isn’t worth it.

While some of his ideas read as misogynistic by modern standards, Montaigne was ahead of his time in several respects. In his seminal essay *On Friendship,* Montaigne explored the bond of friendship and suggested that friendships should be prioritized over romantic relationships:

The love of friends is a general universal warmth, temperate moreover and smooth, a warmth which is constant and at rest, all gentleness and evenness, having nothing sharp nor keen.

Unsurprisingly, Montaigne also believed, “If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than [romantic] love.” Along a similar vein, Nietzsche said, “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“Marry your best friend,” advises American psychologist, therapist, and researcher John Gottman. “The simple truth is that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this, I mean a mutual respect for, and enjoyment of, each other’s company.”

Real-world data seems to back up that advice, as a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that people who consider their spouse to be their best friend experience much higher levels of life satisfaction than people that don’t.

Researchers reported that “the well-being benefits of marriage are on average about twice as large for those (about half of the sample) whose spouse is also their best friend.” Inc. columnist Melanie Curtin expounds,

When deciding on a mate for life, we can place a lot of emphasis on a wide variety of factors: [Are they] educated enough? Do [they] make enough money? Do we have similar values? Do I get along with [their] parents? Do we know how to fight well? Do [they] make me laugh? [Are they] reliable?

This science suggests that if you want a fulfilling partnership and satisfying life, there’s one question to add to the list that should arguably be put at the top:

Is she/he/[they] my best friend?

A best friend has your back. A best friend supports your dreams. A best friend is someone you can call anytime, anywhere, without feeling like they’ll resent you for it. They’re the person you put as an emergency contact and the first person you think about when something wonderful happens at work. They know all your quirks (and love you anyway). They can challenge you in deep ways because they know the ins and outs of your psyche (and love you anyway). They’re the kind of person who’ll make soup and draw you a bath when you’re sick, even if they’re busy, because they genuinely want you to feel better.

If you’re looking for a way to examine the status of your current or future romantic relationship, it’s probably wise to keep this in mind.

On Renewing Friendship

Wall Street Journal columnist Elizabeth Bernstein explains that reconnecting with friends in person post-pandemic may be a tricky road to navigate. One or both parties may feel hurt or abandoned, as it’s been a difficult time for everyone. Respectfully addressing these feelings through “active repair” and then focusing on reconnecting may be the best path forward.

Sometimes we may unintentionally gaslight our friends or partners by sweeping conflict under the rug or dismissing it as “water under the bridge.” Gaslighting occurs when certain behaviors make other people question their version of reality.

While glossing over a spat may seem like a positive way to avoid further conflict, failure to acknowledge hurt feelings and the events that transpired can be a form of gaslighting. Unsurprisingly, avoidance strategies usually lead to negative relationship outcomes.

Dr. Claire Jack, a therapist and anthropologist explains, “Disregarding someone else’s emotional and processing needs in this way, over time, has the effect of silencing them. What point is there in discussing things with you if you deny the significance of what happened before?”

Avoidance strategies often end up condoning bad behavior and trivializing the damage caused as a result. Active repair strategies, on the other hand, involve active listening, apologizing, talking things through, arriving at a compromise, and displays of affection, all of which have the potential to bring people even closer together than before.

Most importantly, active repair involves acknowledging what happened and validating a person’s feelings by understanding where they are coming from. Friendship requires both parties to be open to difficult conversations and receptive to change. While some of the great philosophers insist on the constancy of friendship, friendship can change over time and even grow into something better akin to a fine wine.

Considering our frailties and shared vulnerability to misfortune, perhaps there is no sweeter panacea than that offered by friendship, in whichever form we’re fortunate enough to experience it. To celebrate the sanctity of friendship, I’ve compiled a playlist. Enjoy listening in the company of your dearest friends!