🤔 10 Unusual Types of Friends We All Have 👥
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It's good to be a child, a schoolchild, a student. At a young age, you don't have to think about friendship and work on relationships. Friends just exist because that's how it happened. From birth, we live the life that our parents chose for us. Our friends live this way, and the differences are not so significant as to interfere with friendship. So friends are sure to appear. During our student years, we find ourselves in an environment that is ideal for forming friendly relationships. It is easy to meet all the necessary conditions for a strong friendship. Sociologists believe that there are three of them:
- Proximity (in a geographical sense).
- Constant unplanned meetings.
- Something that allows you to relax in the presence of another person and begin to trust them.
So the number of friends in universities and colleges grows. Maybe they are real, maybe these relationships are short-lived. But you do nothing special to make them or maintain them. They develop by themselves, you are just an observer. One day, student life ends. The people you communicate with take their places in your environment, each in their own social circle. This example looks like this: Imagine that your life is a mountain. You are at the top. In the green sector are your first circle friends. Those who have become your brother or sister. These are the closest people: they are the first to know about all the events in your life, you love them with all the shortcomings, they give a speech at your wedding, you know them inside and out. These relationships are eternal. Even if you do not communicate for months, each meeting proves: nothing has changed. Unfortunately, life is such that your worst enemies are also in the first circle. People who can ruin your day with one sharp remark, because only they know where to hit. These are people towards whom you feel a burning irritation, envy, with whom you compete. In the first circle, the stakes are high. 
Below, in the yellow zone, are friends of the second circle. These are just good friends. Relationships with them are much calmer than with brothers and sisters from the first circle. They can invite you to a wedding, but not as a best man. If you live in the same city, you meet once or twice a month with great pleasure, but if someone leaves, you may not talk to each other for a year or two. And if something important happens in their lives, mutual friends will tell you about it. Even lower down the slope is the orange zone, where there are fake friends. You can sit together in a cafe over a cup of tea and decide that you should meet again, but five years will pass and it will turn out that in this time you have not drunk any tea together. These relationships exist in a large company or on social networks. Even if someone from this circle suddenly inherits a million, you will care little. Sexual partners for one night appear from the orange zone. The third circle smoothly flows into the huge category of acquaintances. It contains people with whom you will stop to exchange a few words if you bump into them on the street. You send them business letters, but you will not meet at the cinema. If you hear that someone from them has had a misfortune, you can sigh sadly, although in fact you do not care at all. Finally, acquaintances dissolve in a sea of strangers. Depending on your character and how you have spent the last 25 years, your mountains can look different. For example, this is what the life of a person who does not let anyone close to him looks like. 
Or a person who tries to be everyone's best friend. 
Even the last sociopath has his own mountain.
No matter what your mountain looks like, when youth is left behind, sooner or later (usually between 25 and 30 years old) there comes a day when you understand: making friends has become difficult. Without a doubt, friends will appear (work, your spouse's company, children will help), but you are unlikely to add them to the first circle of relatives or even to the second circle. People who meet in adulthood cannot spend all day with each other or chat all night long. And this is necessary for the birth of such strong relationships. Over time, you realize that real friends appeared in your life by chance, spontaneously, and you did nothing special for this. You met them, firstly, not on purpose, and secondly, at a time when you still knew little about yourself. Therefore, the people closest to you are randomly distributed according to the graph below. 
Over time, fewer and fewer people remain in squares 2–4. We grow up, we begin to respect ourselves more and set a higher bar in communication with other people. But the fact remains: many relationships that were formed in our formative years stick to us. And even if the friendship is far from ideal, among our close friends there are people with whom communication does not bring more joy and meaning to life. We will talk about ideal friendship later, but for now let's look at 10 types of strange friends that are around us.
1 A friend who doesn't ask questions
You will have a good day. Or a bad one. You will be happy at work or quit. You will fall in love. Or you will catch your lover cheating on you and kill them both in a state of uncontrollable rage. It doesn’t matter, because no event can be discussed with a friend who doesn’t ask questions. Never, under any circumstances, will he take an interest in your life. Why does he behave this way? There are three explanations.
- He is completely self-centered and wants to discuss only himself.
- He is afraid to get close to people and does not want to talk about personal things (neither his own nor yours), he agrees to support only abstract conversation.
- He knows that you are extremely self-centered. If you ask him a question, you will talk about yourself all evening.
To make such a friendship meaningful, take just two steps. First, if you are bored with this person, remove them from your first social circle. This is your green zone, it is sacred, self-obsessed people have no business there. Move such a friend to the second or third level and enjoy rare meetings. Second, continue to communicate. Perhaps you will even use such a friend “in the dark”. Meet once every couple of months, but do not touch on personal topics in the conversation. Believe me, you can communicate with a person for many years, but not even know whether he or she has brothers and sisters.
2 A friend in a common company with whom you will not be left alone
In any group there are a couple of people who do not communicate with each other one-on-one. It is not that they do not talk because they do not like each other. They get along great. They simply have nothing in common except mutual friends. If they are alone in a room, they freeze like stone statues. There is nothing worse for them than to be in the same car if the group goes somewhere by car. Smaller mishaps also happen all the time. For example, if such people are the first to arrive at a meeting place or when the third friend goes to the toilet. It is not at all necessary that these people will never be able to become friends. Sometimes no one dares to take the first step and change the current state of affairs.
3 A friend who always laughs
This is a friend who is afraid of serious communication, so that any meeting with him turns into a skit, and you must always be in high spirits when talking. Sometimes the skit is that you must laugh all the time. And constantly joke, sprinkle sarcastic remarks, otherwise your friend is overcome by fear. Another version of the always ironic friend is a person who loses his temper as soon as you break through his shell and say something honest. Such people hate sincere interlocutors, because they make them crawl out from behind the armor of sarcasm and irony and show their true face. The third version: your communication is described by the phrase “you're cool, I'm even cooler, why isn't the rest of the world so cool.” Of course, your friend does not consider you ideal. When he talks to someone else, he dissects you. The trick is to always be on his team. The only comfortable mode of coexistence is to stand on an imaginary pedestal together and throw mud at the world around you. You can play along with such a friend and everything will be smooth, even if deep down you despise each other and yourself. Or you can take it upon yourself to disagree with him. For example, to protect a person from criticism. This will destroy your fragile team and cause a response. Your strange friend will most likely agree with you, will say something like: “Well, yeah, you're probably right.” Congratulations, this means that for the first time you have earned this person's respect. And it also means that behind your back he will criticize you five times more than before. No matter how you look at it, the mask of an always cheerful person is a wall behind which your friend hides so as not to let anyone too close. If you have enough strength to break the ice and calm down such a sociopath, he can become a real friend. If the person is completely closed, then nothing can be done, such a friendship is doomed. Although if you like to constantly grin, then why not.
4 Friend by obligation
Think about a friend you rarely see. Before you set up a meeting, you call and text for a long time to find a time that works for both of you. But when you wake up in the morning and realize that today is your schedule for a friendly dinner, you are not at all happy. Maybe you do not want to be friends with this person, even they annoy you. Most likely, you do not realize that this friend does not want to see you either. Friendship with mutual obligations assumes that the relationship is a burden for both of you. But each person thinks that the other person really wants to see him. So you can’t find a place in your schedule to meet. When people want to communicate, they find opportunities and ways. This friendship lasts because you do not think about it at all that you do not like this relationship. Or you consider meeting this person part of the story of your life. But even if you understand that you do not want to communicate, you do not know that your feelings are mutual. Difficult friendships can last forever.
5 Friendzoner
This friendship could have turned into a happy marriage, but your boyfriend or girlfriend does not see you as a partner. There is just one little thing missing. You may also find yourself in a situation where someone loves you. No matter how you look at it, this is not the healthiest relationship in your life. If you are in the friend zone, isn't it time to get out of it? Even if you have to stop communicating. Because while you are dragging out such a relationship, you are destroying your self-esteem and looking like a little crying seal. Take a step, where is your self-respect? Perhaps it is a bold decision that will make the object of your love look at you with different eyes. If you are the one friendzoning, then know: there is a person in the world who is suffering, and you like it. Because every time you see someone else's pain, your vile ego is overflowing with pleasure. You are so pleased that you are even ready to deliberately warm up someone else's interest and not say yes or no, in order to feed on the blood of a friend wounded in the very heart, like a vampire. Go and do something else.
6 Historical friend
A historical friend is one of your first, because you met when you were kids. You were friends for years, even though you were an odd couple. Many old friends fall into this category. But a historical friend is someone you would never be friends with if you met now. You don't like who this person has become, and the feeling is mutual. You are no longer right for each other. Alas. You have been close friends since you were four, and there is nothing you can do about it.
7 A friend with whom you go in different directions
When you're a child or a student, most people your age are on your level. But when it comes to independent advancement, people take different paths in life, so that recent friends suddenly turn out to be completely different people. Everyone around 30 goes through this stage. Some think about how they will live at 50. And some remain 20 years old. In some ways, turning 30 is akin to puberty, only in a different sense. There are also hidden situations in which paths with friends diverge. Let's say Zhenya gives up material well-being partly because of her calling as an artist, partly so as not to envy rich people. And Sasha despises all bohemians because she considers creative people slackers or envies their freedom of expression. Sasha and Zhenya have problems. Maybe they still like each other, but they can no longer be as close as before. Each of their life paths challenges the path of the other, which leads to awkwardness in communication. This also happens when your moral values do not coincide.
8 A friend with whom you don't need enemies
“Enmity” is very harmful to you. I am not talking about those cases when a friend feels a pang of pleasure if you fail or break up with your partner. And not even about those who envy your success. These are poisonous emotions, but they can sometimes arise even in real friends. I am talking about real “enmity” – a relationship with a friend who sincerely wants to harm you. Just because he wants to. Most likely, you have been communicating with your enemy for a long time, and the problems did not start yesterday. Hatred hides complex psychological reasons. It is generated by the internal pain of your enemy, his shortcomings and regrets. And you, by your very existence, hit where it hurts. A slightly less dark, but no less dangerous situation arises when your enemy sees your weaknesses and sensitive points and constantly presses on them out of sadistic pleasure or to raise his own self-esteem. Such a friend knows exactly how to hurt you, because you are similar in something or you have something in common. Moreover, he will ruin your life constantly, at any convenient opportunity, but so cleverly that you will not always even notice it. Be that as it may, if such a person has appeared among your friends, immediately throw him out of your social circle. The cooler your relations become, the better. With the increase of distance between you, the poisonous power of the enemy dissolves.
This person is not a star for anyone but you. You know what I mean. There are a few people whose social media pages you know all too well. And these people have no idea that you are so interested in them. I must say that there are probably people who know when you changed your hair, even though you haven’t seen each other for seven years. This is a friend from the third circle or just an acquaintance who ended up on the list of strange friends because you managed to make your relationship burdensome without even communicating with the person. You had to be able to do that.
10 One-sided friendship
Friendship can be skewed in a number of ways. Someone is higher up in your friend pyramid than you are in theirs. Someone wants to communicate more than the other. One of your friends listens 90% of the time and speaks only 10% of the time, and when it comes to difficulties, communication is more like a therapist’s appointment. In general, the balance between what you give and what you take from the relationship is disrupted. Ideally, when both sides contribute equally to the friendship. But if the ratio is about 65/35, that’s also okay. After all, the difference can be due to personal characteristics. Sometimes, even a larger gap in who contributes how much to the relationship is not so bad. But only if it suits both parties. There are several questions, the answers to which show who is who in a friendship. When one person talks longer than the other, does the “talker” interrupt the other? Does one friend’s opinion carry more weight? Is one of the friends allowed to sometimes behave nastily towards another? Another test of lice is to find out who sets the mood in the company. Let's say friends meet, but they have different moods. Sooner or later, the mood comes to a common denominator. Whose mood usually wins? For example, Sasha is in a bad mood, Zhenya, on the contrary, is on the rise, and Valya adjusts to Sasha and is bored until Sasha starts having fun. But if Sasha is happy, and Zhenya is moping, then Valya even forgets about her bad mood and tries to smile in order to get on the same wavelength with Sasha. In this example, Sasha has the strongest position among the friends.
It's not all that bad
You might think that everything is bad. But let's mentally return to the graph with squares. We discussed those friends with whom the relationship does not bring pleasure and benefit. That's why we listed the worst options. But there is also such friendship that is worth the effort. Nothing is ideal, but there are also true friends. Those from communicating with whom life becomes better for both parties. And if a friend falls into the first square of the graph and at the same time into the first circle of communication – this is one of the cornerstones on which your life is built. Reliable friends make us happy, investing time and effort in such friendship is a life strategy for many years to come. But closer to 30, we think that we have:
- there is no time specifically for friends;
- the available time should be divided equally between people from the first and second circle of communication.
And we will fall into an eternal trap. When we do not see our friends for a long time, we start talking about something supposedly important first. About career, marriage, family problems. Theoretically, after you discuss important issues, you can move on to jokes, chatter and actually friendship. In fact, if we do not devote time to friends, and then start asking about all the news of the last months, then there is not a minute left to actually enjoy friendship and discuss anything other than recent events. So, there are two items on the agenda:
- Think about your friends who are not in the first square. Move them off your friend mountain. Not in the sense of stopping communicating with them altogether. Treat them well as before, do not forget about them. But if something does not suit you, do not be with these people all the time. In general, cleanse your environment.
- Spend more time with real friends. If you are already about 30, then you are unlikely to find other real friends. They deserve to receive five, ten times more attention than other acquaintances. And just having lunch during a break is not enough. Real friendship deserves a close atmosphere. So now go and plan an evening with your best friend.