Unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into friendships. And unlike other voluntary bonds, like marriages and romantic relationships, they lack a formal structure. You wouldn’t go months without speaking to or seeing your significant other (hopefully), but you might go that long without contacting a friend.

Friendships are unique relationships

Self Improvement

There are three expectations of a close friend that people describe and value across the entire life course.<ul><li>Somebody to talk to</li><li>Someone to depend on</li><li>Someone to enjoy</li></ul>The beautiful, special thing about friendship is that friends are friends because they want to be, that they choose each other and can choose to get in, and can choose to get out.

3 Expectations of friends

<ul><li>In childhood, friends are mostly other kids who are fun to play with</li><li>In adolescence, there’s a lot more self-disclosure and support between friends, but adolescents are still discovering their identity, and learning what it means to be intimate. </li><li>During young adulthood, friendships become more complex and meaningful. They're more likely to seek out friends who share their values on the important things.</li><li>The middle-aged persons define friendship as “being there” for each other but reported that they rarely had time to spend with their most valued friends, whether because of circumstances or through the age-old problem of good intentions and bad follow-through.</li></ul>

Friendships 

<ol><li>Just keeping a relationship alive. Saying “Happy Birthday” on Facebook, having a friend’s tweet—these are the life support machines of friendship. They keep it breathing, but mechanically.</li><li>Keeping a relationship at a stable level of closeness. Being able to write a message, being able to send some support comments if necessary.</li><li>Making it a satisfying relationship.</li></ol>

Levels of maintaining a relationship

<div><section>The voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in a way more formal relationships aren’t. In adulthood, as people grow up and go away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit. You’re stuck with your family, and you’ll prioritize your spouse. But where once you could run over to Jonny’s house at a moment’s notice and see if he could come out to play, now you have to ask Jonny if he has a couple hours to get a drink in two weeks.The beautiful, special thing about friendship, that friends are friends because they want to be, that they choose each other, is “a double agent,” Langan says, “because I can choose to get in, and I can choose to get out.”Throughout life, from grade school to the retirement home, friendship continues to confer health benefits, both <a>mental</a> and <a>physical</a>. But as life accelerates, people’s priorities and responsibilities shift, and friendships are affected, for better, or often, sadly, for worse.* * *The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”<gpt-ad><gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset></gpt-sizeset></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad>During young adulthood, friendships become more complex and meaningful. In childhood, friends are mostly other kids who are fun to play with; in adolescence, there’s a lot more self-disclosure and support between friends, but adolescents are still discovering their identity, and learning what it means to be intimate. Their friendships help them do that.But, “in adolescence, people have a really tractable self,” Rawlins says. “They’ll change.” How many band t-shirts from Hot Topic end up sadly crumpled at the bottom of dresser drawers because the owners’ friends said the band was lame? The world may never know.<a> </a>By young adulthood, people are usually a little more secure in themselves, more likely to seek out friends who share their values on the important things, and let the little things be.To go along with their newly sophisticated approach to friendship, young adults also have time to devote to their friends. According to the Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, young adults often spend between 10 and 25 hours a week with friends, and the <a>2014 American Time Use Survey</a> found that people between 20 and 24 years old spent the most time per day socializing on average of any age group.College is an environment that facilitates this, with keggers and close quarters, but even young adults who don’t go to college are less likely to have some of the responsibilities that can take away from time with friends, like marriage, or caring for children or older parents.Friendship networks are naturally denser, too, in youth, when most of the people you meet go to your school or live in your town. As people move for school, work, and family, networks spread out. Moving out of town for college gives some people their first taste of this distancing. In <a>a longitudinal study</a> that followed pairs of best friends over 19 years, a team led by Andrew Ledbetter, an associate professor of communication studies at Texas Christian University, found that participants had moved an average of 5.8 times during that period. </section></div>

Bite‑sized knowledge
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Friendships are unique relationships

3 Expectations of friends

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Bite‑sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

How Friendships Change When You Become an Adult

Friendships are unique relationships

3 Expectations of friends

Friendships

Levels of maintaining a relationship

How to make friends as an adult

Decluttering Friendships: When Is It Time to Let Go?

10 Types of Odd Friendships You're Probably Part Of

Bite‑sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career