Sunday, August 22, 2010

Friendship



Friendship - Non-personal friendships

Although the term initially described relations between individuals, it is at times used for political purposes to describe relations between states or peoples ("the Franco-German friendship," for example), indicating in this case an affinity or mutuality of purpose between the two nations.

Regarding this aspect of international relations, Lord Palmerston has said that, "Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests."

Friendship - Interspecies friendship

Friendship as a type of interpersonal relationship is found also among animals with rich intelligence, such as the higher mammals and some birds. Cross-species friendships are common between humans and domestic animals. Less common but still of note are friendships between an animal and another animal of a different species, such as a dog and cat.

Friendship - Colloquial nomenclature

A number of colloquial terms have been used to describe friendship and the context in which a friendship is fostered. These are briefly described below.

* A friend who supports others only when it is easy and convenient to do so is called a fair-weather friend.
* A friend who sticks by you through "thick and thin" is a true friend.
* A friend with whom you are sexually intimate but don't consider yourself to be dating is said to be a Casual relationship. This is also referred to as being "friends with benefits".

Friendship - Friendship contrasted with comradeship

Friendship can be mistaken for comradeship. Comradeship 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. Former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges has written: "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. As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. 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." [3] As a war ends, or a common enemy recedes, comrades return to being strangers, who lack friendship and have little in common.

Friendship - Bibliography

* Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
* On Friendship, Cicero
* Hein, David. "Farrer on Friendship, Sainthood, and the Will of God." In Captured by the Crucified: The Practical Theology of Austin Farrer. Edited by David Hein and Edward Hugh Henderson. New York and London: Continuum / T & T Clark, 2004. 119-48.

Types of Friendships




* Romantic friendship
* Soulmate
* Best Friend or Best Girlfriend
* Pen pal
* Internet friendship
* Compadrazgo
* Comrade
* Buddy
* Cuddle Buddy
* Boyfriend/Girlfriend
* Romantic life-partner
* Platonic life-partner
* Compadre/Commadre
* Godparent
* Godsibb
* Good Friend
* Gossip
* Facebook friend
* Families of choice or Chosen families
* Friends with access/Friends with benefits
* Sexualized friendship
* Kula
* Pili hoaloha
* Boston marriage
* Blood brotherhood
* Kasendi
* Classical friendship
* Ritual friendship or Religious friendship
* Companionate love
* Intimate relationship
* Love
* Platonic love
* Romantic love
* Brotherhood or Sisterhood
* Drinking buddy

Friendship




Friendship - Developmental issues

In the sequence of the emotional development of the individual, friendships come after parental bonding and before the pair bonding engaged in at the approach of maturity. In the intervening period between the end of early childhood and the onset of full adulthood, friendships are often the most important relationships in the emotional life of the adolescent, and are often more intense than relationships later in life. These friendships are most often with one's age and sex peers, though equally intense bonds can form with older or younger individuals.

Friendship - Cultural variations

A group of friends consists of two or more people who are in a mutually pleasing relationship engendering a sentiment of camaraderie, exclusivity and mutual trust. There are varying degrees of "closeness" between friends. Hence, some people choose to differentiate and categorize friendships based on this sentiment.

Friendship - Russia

The relationship is constructed differently in different cultures. In Russia, for example, 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. Everyone else is addressed by full first name plus patronymic, and is known as an "acquaintance." These could include relationships which elsewhere would be qualified as real friendships, such as workplace relationships of long standing, neighbors with whom one shares an occasional meal and visit, and so on. Physical contact between friends is expected, and friends, whether or not of the same sex, will embrace, kiss and walk in public with their arms around each other, or arm-in-arm, or hand-in-hand, without the slightest embarrassment or sexual connotation.

According to Oleg Kharkhordin in a paper on the politics of friendship, in Soviet society, friendships were "a suspect value for the Stalinist regime" in that they presented a stronger allegiance that could stand in possible opposition to allegiance to the Communist party. "By definition, a friend was an individual who would not let you down even under direct menace to him- or herself; a person to whom one could securely entrust one's controversial thoughts since he or she would never betray them, even under pressure. Friendship thus in a sense became an ultimate value produced in resistance struggles in the Soviet Union [2]."

Friendship - Greece

In Ancient Greece, in a text in defense of pederasty, Plato asserts that, "the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had a strength which undid their power." Plato, Symposium; 182c

Aristotle categorized friendship into three different categories:

1. Friendship of Utility
2. Friendship of Pleasure
3. Friendship of Virtue

Friendship - Asia

In the Middle East and Central Asia male friendships, while less restricted than in Russia, tend also to be very intimate, and also involve a great deal of mutual non-sexual but affectionate touching, holding of hands and so on.

Friendship - Modern west

In the Western world, intimate physical contact has been sexualized in the public mind over the last one hundred years and is considered taboo in friendship, especially between two males. However, stylized hugging or kissing may be considered acceptable, depending on the context. An exception are young children, whose friendships, usually of a homosocial nature, typically exhibit elements of a closeness and intimacy suppressed later in life in order to conform to societal standards.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

About Friendship




If There Is One Ingredient Which Adds

Warmth And Love To Our Lives

It Is FriEndship



If There Is One Relationship To Help

Us Through All The Others

It Is Friendship



Friends Surround Us With The Beauty

Of There Caring With Friends We Can

Share What We See What We Feel

And What We Love




Friends Help Us With Our Problems

Because They Listen And As They Listen

We Begin To Hear The Lauguage Of

Our Own Hearts




With Friends We Can Walk Along The

Remembered Paths Of Our Lives

And Completely Share Our Experiences




With Friends We Can Work The Soil Of

Forgotten Dreams That Needed To Be

Tended And Nutured Once Again





With Friend We Can Plant The Seed

Of Our Hearts New Dreams

We Can Always Return To A Friend Like

Going Back To A Special Place

And Find The Same Warm Feeling

Unchange By Time Of Distance




Life Gives Us Friends So We Can Share

The Precious Times And Memorable

Moments Of Being Children And Teenagers

And Adults And Parents And Grandparents



Life Gives Us Friends So We Can Share

The Growing Up...And Growing Down

And Old




With Friends We Have A Place To Go To

Be Accepted And Understood

Together We Can Cry

Our Thoughts Are Heard

Our Feelings Are Held

In The Heart Of A Friend





With Friends Our Lives Are Made

More Full , More Rich More Open

Beautiful And Blessed.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Friends like you



Friendship is precious!

not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life;

and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things,

The greater part of life is sunshine.




Of all the blossoms in life's garden,

friendship is the most fragrant.



A friend is a gift where worth cannot

be measured except by the heart




Be full of sympathy toward each other,

loving one another with tender hearts and humble minds

Friendship is sharing openly, laughing often,

trusting always, caring deeply.



We can pour our heart out to a friend

knowing that gentle hands will take

and sift it, keep what is worth keeping,

and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away!



Thank YOU for being my friend,

as amazing of a gift your friendship is to me.

MAY LOVE JOY AND PEACE BE YOURS



Sunday, August 15, 2010

HAPPY INDIPENDENCE DAY







Friendship - A tradition in decline



In recent times, some thinkers have postulated that modern friendships have lost the force and importance that they had in antiquity. C. S. Lewis for example, in his The Four Loves, writes,
To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it. We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few 'friends'. But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as 'friendships', show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philia which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book.

Likewise, Paul Halsall claims that,
The intense emotional and affective relationships described in the past as "non-sexual" cannot be said to exist today: modern heterosexual men can be buddies, but unless drunk they cannot touch each other, or regularly sleep together. They cannot affirm that an emotional affective relationship with another man is the centrally important relationship in their lives. It is not going too far, is it, to claim that friendship - if used to translate Greek philia or Latin amicita - hardly exists among heterosexual men in modern Western society.

Mark McLelland, writing in the Western Buddhist Review under his Buddhist name of Dharmachari Jñanavira (Article), more directly points to homophobia being at the root of a modern decline in the western tradition of friendship:
Hence, in our cultural context where homosexual desire has for centuries been considered sinful, unnatural and a great evil, the experience of homoerotic desire can be very traumatic for some individuals and severely limit the potential for same-sex friendship. The Danish sociologist Henning Bech, for instance, writes of the anxiety which often accompanies developing intimacy between male friends: The more one has to assure oneself that one’s relationship with another man is not homosexual, the more conscious one becomes that it might be, and the more necessary it becomes to protect oneself against it. The result is that friendship gradually becomes impossible.

Their opinion that fear of being, or being seen as, homosexual has killed off western man's ability to form close friendships with other men is shared by Japanese psychologist Doi Takeo, who claims that male friendships in American society are fraught with homosexual anxiety and thus homophobia is a limiting factor stopping men from establishing deep friendships with other men.

Recent western scholarship in gender theory and feminism concurs, as reflected in the writings of Eve Sedgwick in her The Epistemology of the Closet, and Jonathan Dollimore, in his "Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Friendship




Friendship is a human relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection. Friends will welcome each other's company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of putting the other's interests before one's own. Their tastes will be similar and may converge, and they will share enjoyable activities. They will also engage in mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors. Yet for many, friendship is nothing more than the trust that someone or something will not harm them.

Value that is found in friendships are often the result of a friend demonstrating on a consistent basis

* the tendency to desire what is best for you.
* sympathy and empathy
* honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth
* mutual understanding

It is often considered that a true friend is capable of deep feelings, which may be unexpressible, except in times of great trouble, when they come to your aid.

In a comparison of personal relationships, friendship is considered to be closer than acquaintanceship, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and acquaintances. For many people, friendship and acquaintanceship lie along the same continuum.

The principal disciplines studying friendship are sociology, anthropology and zoology. Various theories of friendship have been proposed, among which are social psychology, social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment styles. See Interpersonal relationships

Non-personal friendships




Although the term initially described relations between individuals, it is at times used for political purposes to describe relations between states or peoples (the "Franco-German friendship", for example), indicating in this case an affinity or mutuality of purpose between the two nations.

Regarding this aspect of international relations, Lord Palmerston said:
“ Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.[20] ”

This is often paraphrased as: "Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests."

The word "friendship" can be used in political speeches as an emotive modifier. Friendship in international relationships often refers to the quality of historical, existing, or anticipated bilateral relationships.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Friendship and health




The conventional wisdom is that good friendships enhance an individual's sense of happiness and overall well-being. But a number of solid studies support the notion that strong social supports improve a woman’s prospects for good health and longevity. Conversely, it has been shown that loneliness and lack of social supports are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, viral infections, and cancer as well as higher mortality rates. Two female researchers have even termed friendship networks a “behavioral vaccine” that protects health and mental health.[18]

While there is an impressive body of research linking friendship and health status, the precise reasons for this connection are still far from clear. Most of the studies are large prospective studies (that follow people over a period of time) and while there may be a correlation between the two variables (friendship and health status), researchers still don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect relationship, e.g. that good friendships actually improve health.

There are a number of theories that attempt to explain the link, including that: 1) Good friends encourage their friends to lead more healthy lifestyles; 2) Good friends encourage their friends to seek help and access services, when needed; 3) Good friend enhance their friend’s coping skills in dealing with illness and other health problems; and/or 4) Good friends actually affect physiological pathways that are protective of health.[19]
Love


Love is closely related to friendship in that it involves strong interpersonal ties between two or more people.

In terms of interpersonal relationships, there are two distinct types of love:

1. Platonic love: is a deep and non-romantic connection or friendship between two individuals. It is love where the sexual element does not enter.
2. Romance (love): considered similar to Platonic love, but involves sexual elements.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Types of friendships




The following is a list of terms that are used throughout the world to describe some types of friendships.

Acquaintance: a friend, but sharing of emotional ties isn't present. An example would be a coworker with whom you enjoy eating lunch or having coffee, but would not look to for emotional support.

Best friend (or close friend): a person(s) with whom someone shares extremely strong interpersonal ties with as a friend.

BFF ("Best Friend Forever"): slang originally coined on the internet and used primarily in the USA by women to describe a girl friend or close best friend. The slang BFF has been around longer than the internet.

Blood brother or blood sister: may refer to people related by birth, or a circle of friends who swear loyalty by mingling the blood of each member together.

Boston marriage: an American term used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to denote two women that 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.

Bro: In the USA, common term for best friends among men, oftentimes in college or early adulthood.

Buddy: In the USA, males often refer to each other as "buddies", for example, introducing a male friend as their "buddy", or a circle of male friends as "buddies".

Casual relationship or "Friends with benefits": the sexual or near-sexual and emotional relationship between two people who don't expect or demand to share a formal romantic relationship.

Comrade: means "ally", "friend", or "colleague" in a military or (usually) left-wing 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.[10]

As a war ends, or a common enemy recedes, many comrades return to being strangers, who lack friendship and have little in common.

Cross-sex friendship is one that is defined by a person having a friend of the opposite sex: a male who has a female friend, or a female who has a male friend. Historically cross-sex friendships have been rare. This is caused by the fact that 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.

Frenemy: a portmanteau of the words fr(iend) and enemy, the term frenemy refers to someone who pretends to be a friend but actually is an enemy---a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing in the world of friendships. Most people have encountered a frenemy at one time of another, either at school, at work, or lurking in their 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 they have mixed feelings than it is when they’re around people whom they clearly dislike.[11]

Fruit flies,[12] fag hag (female),[13] or fag stag (male):[14] denotes a person (usually heterosexual) who forms deep ties or close friendships with gay men. Men (gay or straight) who have lesbian friends have been referred to lezbros or lesbros.[15] The term has often been claimed by these straight members in gay-straight friendships, however some feel that it is derogatory.[16][17]

Imaginary friend: a non-physical friend created by a child. 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.

Internet friendship: a form of friendship or romance which takes place over the Internet.

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.

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's called an "open marriage".

Pen pal: people who have a relationship via postal correspondence. They may or may not have met each other in person and may share either love, friendship, or simply an acquaintance between each other.

Roommate: a person who shares a room or apartment (flat) with another person and do not share a familial or romantic relationship.

Soulmate: the name given to someone who is considered the ultimate, true, and eternal half of the other's soul, in which the two are now and forever meant to be together.

Spiritual friendship: the Buddhist ideal of kalyana-mitra, that is a relationship between friends with a common interest, though one person may have more knowledge and experience than the other. The relationship is the responsibility of both friends and both bring something to it.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND!....




"Oh! We're BEST friends! We're going to be together forever and never stop talking and tell each other EVERYTHING!"

Heard it before?

Yeah, I thought so.

Here's something else you might have heard: (Three months later) "Yeah...I've been really busy..." *Crickets*

I call these my HI!/Bye, loser! friends. Yeah, there are fair-weather friends, there's fowl-weather friends...and then there's the 'I like you for a while and then you get boring and I go on to the next poor soul who's stupid enough to let me suck the life out of it.'


Maybe we all have 'em, or maybe my luck just sucks majorly, but it seems like that's all I'm starting to hear.... Even from the people I thought would never abandon me.


Yet, here I lie.


Friendship is so fake now-a-days...people just want to hear what they want to hear. If you don't give them what they want, they leave you in the dust with a nice 'Screw you!' sticker on your forehead and tire-tracks across your middle.

Pretty soon you won't be able to see me anymore, just tire-tracks and stickers from burned-out friendships. It's all I'll talk about, think about, cry about. It sounds pretty awful...But what can I do? It seems like I'm powerless against this fake-friendship monster. It's chewed me up real good and has now spat out the remains, which - let me tell you - ain't MUCH.

You know, people SUCK.

I don't have ONE friend who's stuck with me for the long-haul. Pretty soon they get bored of me...or annoyed...or angry...and that's the end. They can't work it out, they can't tell me what's wrong...they can't fix ANYTHING! I'm tired of it! It makes me sick! I must be SO annoying or something! There most be something REALLY wrong with me that people don't care enough to be my friend for more than a year or two.

I guess that's just it. That's the end. That's the climax. The end of the line. The end of the rope. The end of the end. People don't care about me. Ok. Fine.

Yeah, sure I wished someone did...but I guess that's just too much to ask.

I think I'll go find a dark corner and cry. Have a nice little pity-party. Oh yeah, that makes me feel great...being a selfish git is always on my top-priority list. You know, I do my best to be a friend that sticks with you through thick and thin, and here you go leaving me dead by the road. Thanks. Thanks a LOT.

Ramblings to a so called best find...



How can you claim to be my best frind and then have no time for me or put in no effort into the friendship. We were so close for so long until you used me and betrayed me after i confided in you that i have trust issues. But i forgave you, i decided that our friendship was worth more and important enough to invest time and effort into. Why cant you? Your the one who used me as a cover to sneak around behind your mans back with me knowing!! Your the one who decided to tell your man my secrets just to keep him!!! And im the idiot who forgave and took you back into my life..... Why cant you put the same amount of effort in that i do? Am i know longer as important to you? Why do you introduce me to people as your best friend and then ignore me for most of the night. Only do you come back to me after everyone else has left. Have you always been this way? Have i just been blind to it? Did my lack of self confidence at the begining of our friendship result in you treating me this way? Maybe forgiving you wasn't the best choice for me? Did i make a mistake. Have our 12 yrs of friendship meant nothing? I need to re-assess your place in my life and how much time i now devote to you.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Friends




Friendship . . .

. . . is you.
. . . is love.
. . . is shared.
. . . is forgiving.
. . . is understanding.
. . . is shared secrets.
. . . heals many hurts.
. . . is not judgmental.
. . . is shared laughter.
. . . is slow and steady.
. . . can be angry at times.
. . . is dependable and true.
. . . is more precious than silver or gold.
. . . is meant to be savored like fine wine.
. . . is not perfect, much like we are not perfect.
. . . does not hold grudges or demand perfection.
. . . makes all the wrong things in life, right somehow.
. . . is meant to be gulped like lemonade on a hot summer day.
. . . is always there, through times of trial, happy times and hard times.
. . . just happens, but once discovered, needs to be tended like a beautiful garden.
. . . is a road to be traveled slowly, remembering the sights and sounds.
. . . is strength when you are too weak to notice its there.
. . . is a cherished moment of mutual understanding.
. . . reaches into your heart and grabs a firm hold.
. . . is a refreshing rain on a hot day.
. . . is sunshine through the clouds.
. . . cannot be forced or induced.
. . . is relaxed and comfortable.
. . . is a shoulder to lean on.
. . . is an ear to whine to.
. . . gets better with age.
. . . is shared tears.
. . . is shared pain.
. . . is shared joy.
. . . is shared.
. . . is love.
. . . is you.

Sunday, August 1, 2010



God must have known there would be times

We'd need a word of cheer

Someone to praise a triumph

Or to brush away a tear






He must have known we'd need to share

The joy of "little things"

In order to appreciate

The happiness life brings


I think He knew our troubled hearts

Would sometimes throb with pain

From the trials of life's misfortunes

And the goals we can't attain

He knew we'd need the comfort

Of an understanding heart

Someone to give us strength and courage

To make a fresh new start




He must have known we'd need to share

The joy of "little things"

In order to appreciate

The happiness life brings



I think He knew our troubled hearts

Would sometimes throb with pain

From the trials of life's misfortunes

And the goals we can't attain



He knew we'd need the comfort

Of an understanding heart

Someone to give us strength and courage

To make a fresh new start



He knew we'd need companionship

Unselfish... lasting.. .true

And so God answered the heart's great need

With a beloved friend...like YOU!



Have A Blessed Day
May God Bless You And Those You Love Each Day