what are friends for?

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the basis for friendship is in my opinion the use of each other. ex. you come to my house with a bag of weed. i have playstation, munchies, or some budweiser. it's like an unspoken agreement

Most people are too cowardly to admit this to themselves, so they romanticize it into something that it's not, until one day, nobody had any friends. We are approaching that point. I tried explaining this to one friend, and we aren't friends anymore.

The purpose of having friends is to form emotional bonds. That may not be easy, or perhaps even impossible (?) for many of us, but when it works it creates a feeling of togetherness and belonging.

Different people define friendship differently. It really depends on what you want out of the relationship. Somebody to identify with who you feel reasonably comfortable around and can pass the time with enjoyably is my personal def. but a lot of my so called 'friends' didn't quite live up to it. Hmmm.

I think some people collect friends as that's their nature to be friendly and they work hard to make friends with everybody. But the issue is when they will not take no for an answer. It's not that you don't want to be their friend, it's just seeing them sitting there and an office chat is enough for you and them.

I can only imagine and have a friendship being based on a common hobby or something like a school friend where your on the same course. I have a friend that goes to and arty cinema with me, also walks and likes computers and good food. I work at it and mean well, so it works out ok.

To fulfill the need people "normally" have of social interaction.

In most cases, indeed, each party has something the other wants as stated by the OP. Although you can find plenty of examples out there of longtime friends where there's a healthy give-and-take, these friendships are still not altrusitic in nature and when push comes to shove...

I had lots of friends from childhood lose interest in me simply because I embarked on a different path on life and am not of the same economic strata. They conveniently disappeared.

My parents have these friends who are extremely rich-- multi-millionaires. My parents have been struggling financially for a long time since my dad got sick twenty years ago. These friends loaned my parents money... with interest. Thousands of dollars for them is like five or ten bucks to us and I don't understand why they couldn't just give my parents the money straight up. When I asked my mom about it (I found out because I had been snooping in her checkbook-- this was about ten years ago) my mom said "People don't just give away money like that. It was a loan." We still talk about it and I still don't understand why, if they were our friends, the interest was necessary. My mom just shakes her head.

My parents still think these rich friends are among the best they've ever had.

Nope I don't understand friendships at all...

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You know I did have 1 friend who admitted something like this or at least the good in maintaining "connections". I think friendship differs for every1. The way I look at it is that humans are social creatures, we interact with each other. Bonds are formed, whatever the nature of those bonds vary amongst people. Whether u wanna call it a friendship of acquintance varys

Heres the nature of some varying friendships Ive encountered thruout my life, or acquintances whateva u wanna call em.

1) Close Friend- You share a lotta stuff with each other, emotional issues, very honest to, make fun of each other, know each other very well
2) Stupid friend- constantly poking fun of each other, inside jokes, debating about stupid stuff
3) Story friend- where u sit around and talk forever about stupid stories
4) Common topic friend- where u talk about the same topic over and over again
5) Emotional friend- Talk about each others problems all day long...
6) Common activity friend- bond over common activity, common class etc
7) Fun friend- Have fun with, joke around, not limited to anything specific
Parental friend- Person acts as a parent, mentor whateva
9) Gossiping friend- talk mostly about other people, and who is annoying u at that current moment
10) Pleasantries friend- exchange nice pleasantries all day long(dont care for these 1, quite the boring friendship)
11) Might as well flip the parental friend, mentee friend: person u give advice and mentor, help em grow as a person(never done this before)

People often fall in multiple catagories.

I like the categories you made. Sorry if thats odd but I wanted to tell you >.<

oh no its not...thanks , and to add to that the more catagories people fall into, the more meaningful the friendship is.