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.