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Your idea of a good friend likely started out with the person at your table who shared the red crayon with you in exchange for the blue. Later that wasn’t enough. It eventually became the person who shared their lunch desert with you. Maybe that person let you copy their homework in middle school. You progressed into wanting someone who would listen to you vent about your parents, and helped you with your college entrance essays. Whatever your idea of a good friend might be, many of us define our friendships as roles of paramount importance in life. Yet the word “friend” seems to be one of the most loosely defined words in the English dictionary. So I’ve decided to step in and help people define, or at least mull over and conceptualize, what a “friend” really means.

Friends always have your best interest at heart. My freshman year, I lived with a roommate named Josh. We were both weirdos (in the coolest way) - me with a Harry Potter obsession and him with his Spiderman bedding. We grew incredulously close, and in my mind I always defined us as “best friends”. Later he introduced me to a girl he liked and I ended up dating her for the next 4 years (yes, I’m aware this is an a*hole qualifier). Had I really been his best friend, I would’ve kept his interests at heart and never tossed him to the wayside, and our friendship would’ve prevailed to this day. We no longer speak.

Real friendship takes time. There will always be someone you encounter that you naturally hit it off with and makes you think, “we could really be friends”. I would be remiss to not acknowledge the importance of this kind of bantering, however, there is a lot to be said about friendship that has matured with time. These are the friends that could pick you up dinner when you’re lying bed depressed because they know your favorite food and how much tabasco sauce to emblazon it with. These are the friends who saw you date the same indifferent jerk the last two times and can spot you entering another blasé relationship before you go down that path again. These are the friends that you’ve fought with and cried with and have proven their love for you is more than an ephemeral acquaintance in your current phase of life.

Real friends are not one dimensional. Real friends aren’t even two dimensional. Real friends are 3D - they are multilayered humans who are entitled to a spectrum of emotions, interests, and repulsions…all of which you have or are currently exploring. This means that your Saturday night clubbing buddies who you exclusively drink and club with are not friends. That’s your raging crew. The girls that get together 3x/week for cheer practice are not your friends - as close as you might be and as much as they might know about you - that’s your cheer squad. People often have difficulty seeing this differentiation with co-workers or peers. You might even go out occasionally together to have a drink after work and whatnot, but at the core of your relationship is a work alliance. Don’t forget it.

Real friends push you. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have anything to offer past a good listening ear and a body to go to the movies with, you can’t offer me real friendship. My best friends expand me. They recommend books to read, movies to watch, take me to experience new cuisines, museums, etc. They push me to talk to that cute girl in my book circle, or call me out when I’m being the baby in a relationship and need to suck it up and apologize. My real friends don’t consider my current job a “career” for me specifically because they know I’m much more competent and want and expect the best for me. All of these expectations are requited. If you have nothing interesting to offer me, I’m really not interested.

Real friendship is based on reciprocity. A lot of people have mistakenly thought their feelings for me were equal in magnitude to my feelings for them. Truth is, they just weren’t…and that’s okay - a good friendship takes two just like a relationship. I’ve never been too much of a jerk and pointed out point-blank that I don’t care about them. But there have been a select few who have had the analytical skills and foresight to call me out on not caring about them, and the number one indicator was that I didn’t reciprocate with anything. These people may not have ever gained my friendship, but they certainly garnered my respect.

Real friends exist in small quantities. Some of us have a ton of friends. Their facebook friends total over 1,000 and on their birthday, the HAPPY BIRTHDAY messages span multiple pages. But real friends can exist in small quantities. Think about it: friendship is a lot of work, communication, caring, hanging out, etc. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for you to invest that much effort into (realistically) more than 5 people — TOPS. As flattering as it might be, whenever people try to enter my close friendship circle, it always astonishes me that they aren’t cognizant of this rule. Maybe they aren’t aware that I already do have close friends, or that I don’t have time to invest in just one more person. But whatever the reason, limit your friendships to a smaller number and the quality of these friendship will be much greater.

What makes a good friend to you?