The Inner Circle

This is the first post in my new series on Friendships.

I decided to do this series as the art of making friends and keeping them is something I struggle with and I suspect many of us do too. When you're a child making friends seems easy. You simply go up to a fellow kid in the playground and ask them to play and bingo...you're friends. When you're an adult, it's not so easy. Time is one issue. We get so bogged down with errands, hobbies, family, church etc that often we don't have time to pursue meaningful friendships or deepen existing ones. We might say that we have 'friends from work' but really I've found as soon as I leave that workplace, the 'friendship' dies as well.

Which is the question I want to raise in this post....what is a friend?

Many times I've found myself saying, "I have a friend who...." then I've stopped myself and thought hang on, are they really a friend? Or are they merely an acquaintance?

When I was in Year 10 at school, we were looking at the issue of friendships and relationships in Health class and were given an exercise sheet containing three circles one inside the other. On this sheet, we were put many of our friends into categories. The circle on the outside was to contain acquaintances. The middle one, friends or good friends and the inner circle was to contain the names of our closest friends.

I struggled with placing some people in a circle. Sometimes I seemed closer to certain friends than others. Where was that same person going to place me? What if I placed them in my closest friends circle and they listed me as a mere acquaintance? I know of a few lopsided friendships like that. One person sees another as their close friend and would probably have them in their bridal party whereas the other sees the first person as more of an acquaintance and may not even invite them to their wedding. Ok, I know all friendships are not this lopsided but sometimes our 'friends' do perceive us and the importance of the friendship differently to what we do.

Now I don't want to get technical and picky here. We all have a fair idea of who our close friends are but I think our definitions of close friends, friends and acquaintances do differ quite a bit from each other. Here are my definitions and what I consider to be a close friend.

Close friend: My idea of a close friend (or best friend for some people) is someone who I can share important and personal things with. They are someone who I'm either in contact with regularly or if not, I can meet up with them months later and it's like we've never been apart.

Friend: To me, a friend is someone I have a relationship with based on our own terms. That is, it's someone I would see individually and not just in a group. I have to have some personal contact with this person and the friendship doesn't die simply because one of us moves away etc. We see the relationship as important enough to maintain despite changes in our personal circumstances. I still have meaningful discussions with friends although maybe not as deep as with close friends.

Acquaintance: Separating friends from acquaintances is a hard one for me. In the past, I've always seen people from church or work as friends but maybe we're just acquaintances. This group includes people that we may see regularly but do not have much of a personal relationship with or do not know very well. We tend to see them as part of a group or through other friends but never individually. Our relationship is usually based around an organisation or activity and since the relationship was only surface level, it usually dies when the activity ceases.

I know not everyone will agree with my interpretation and that's fine. Nor can we always categorise the people in our lives easily. Sometimes the level of closeness in a relationship fluctuates and I have quite a few people in my life who sit on the cusp of close friend/friend. One general observation I've made is that guys tend to have wider friendship circles than girls. At school, the guys tended to be friends with most of the other guys whereas the girls were more cliquey, had a distinct circle of friends and tended to be more exclusive.

Now it's over to you. Do you have lots and lots of friends or do you have a more tight-knit inner circle of close friends? When do you count someone as a close/best friend? Have you had the same close friends for years or do your friendships tend to change from year to year?