Friendship Best Thing You Have
Or Is It
What Is Friendship?
"A relationship between friends."
''a state of mutual trust and support between allied nations"
Friendship is a type of relationship between two people who care about each other. But such a dry definition doesn't do the concept of friendship justice. Consider these examples: A friend is the first person you want to call when you hear good news. A friend remembers that you don't like pickles on your sandwich. A friend will accompany you on the most boring of errands and make them seem fun.
In other words, friendship is wonderful, and much ink has been spilled in citing the virtues of having friends. That's not to say friendship is easy, though. It demands time and effort, and it requires that people put someone other than themselves first sometimes. But in exchange for that work, a friend can provide an immense amount of support and comfort in good times and in bad.
Younger Friendships
Studies show that children with friends have a greater sense of well-being, higher self-esteem and fewer social problems than children without friends. Here’s how to help your child find healthy, fulfilling friendships.
Teenage Friendships
For teenagers, good friends can be like a personal support group. They can provide:
- a sense of belonging, a feeling of being valued and help with developing confidence
- a sense of security and comfort in being with others going through the same experiences
- a source of information about the changes that puberty brings, and what’s going on physically and emotionally
- a way to experiment with different values, roles, identities and ideas
- experience in getting along with people of the opposite sex (friendships before the teenage years are often single sex)
Adult Friendships
As part of their unconstrained and personalized interaction, friends benefit one another in innumerable ways. They listen, encourage, give advice, help with chores, loan money, have fun, exchange trivia, share confidences, and simply "are there" for one another. The specifics vary from time to time and from one friendship to another.
Several scholars have suggested ways of grouping these benefits into a manageable number of categories. Many researchers consider just two classes of rewards adequate for most purposes. These two classes are most often labeled as instrumental and expressive. Instrumental rewards involve receiving tangible resources such as goods or money, and obtaining assistance in completing tasks or reaching goals. Expressive rewards involve receiving emotional support, encouragement, and personal advice from an understanding confidant. Israeli psychologists Mario Mikulincer and Michal Selinger (2001) developed a somewhat different two-way classification, proposing that individuals pursue friendships to fulfill either affiliative(companionship) or attachment (socioemotional) needs.