The way I see it, there are at least eight types of friendship that human beings may wish to classify, understand and characterize.
There’s no doubt that social connections are important to our overall health, happiness and quality of life. There can be eight or many more, depending on our personal point of view. However it is up to us to keep a healthy lifestyle and stay happy.
Some folks have lived a lifetime in the same place, others have moved around, while another group has moved from one nation to another requiring adjustments like learning another language and adapting to a different climate or culture.
- Lifelong Friends
- Best Friends
- Close Friends
- Social Group Friends (friends you socialize with but with whom you are not particularly close)
- Activity Friends (friends with whom pyou engage in specific activities, such as “gym buddies,” members of your book club or dinner club, church circles, and so on)
- Friends of Convenience (the folks with whom you might share carpooling duties, youth sports team parents, neighborhood groups, and so on)
- Acquaintance Friends (people at work, people you see each day when you’re walking your dog, folks you know to speak to, but not about anything of consequence or especially personal)
- Frenemy ( This is an oxymoron and a portmanteau of "friend" and "enemy" that refers to "a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry" or "a person who combines the characteristics of a friend and an enemy.
How many of these do you have and which ones can you really count on and place a personal value on? Making the effort to connect and communicate with some of these people our lives can change and improve our own lives for the better.
Feeling that we are part of a larger community can positively affect our personal satisfaction, overall health and longevity,
