Friendship Review of Related Theories
intimacy. Besides, we need them to help us cope with stress and uncertainty, to take care of our physical needs and even to help us in the development of our personality.
Paul Peterson states on his website that friendship has some certain characteristics which differentiate it from any other relationship. They are honesty and
trust, emotional feeling and service and loyalty Peterson 1. Firstly, honesty and trust are the most important things because an honest affirmation or correction to a friend
can help him to be better. This honesty is strongly linked to trust because sometimes we need to share confidential problems. One will not easily tell his secret to a stranger.
Most of the time he will tell his secret or confidential problem only to someone close to him, the one whom he trusts and knows well. Friends will also give us an honest
opinion about us and may sometimes give an honest and supportive praise. Secondly, it is an emotional respect which deals with love, receiving and
understanding. Emotional respect will give a strong support to a friendship because through love we will not leave our friend who is in trouble. A good friend will stay
closer to us when nobody is near. This friend’s love will lead us to receiving and understanding, because a friend will help each other and receive him just the way he
is. Through receiving, friendship gives forth, in the sense of understanding of each character, ways of thinking, emotional atmosphere and behaviors.
Thirdly, it concerns service and loyalty. Here service refers to some helping action that we can do to our friends. Service may also appear when our close friend
wants to share his feelings or problems and we play our role as a good listener to him. This empathy shows our feeling to share and our understanding to him. While loyalty
means that a friend will not speak badly about him when he is not around. No matter how bad our friend is in other people’s eyes, we are the ones who know him well. We
will give him an honest opinion to help him to change for the better. In friendship each individual can build his or her own feeling about friends. Beebe 439 states that
friends are the sources of help and comfort in times of stress. The experience of friendship in life also gives us some contributions in making us into unique persons.
Friends will develop gradually in our life over time and in some stages. Not all friends are good friends. Some of them will be as an acquaintance, others as casual
friends and other group will be close friend. Acquaintance concerns people whom we know about but we do not consider them as friends. We know them based on our
occupation and daily activities. The communication only tends to be functional and superficial. We just talk with them about work, school, or what we will do over a
holiday, but when we speak to them, we limit our self-disclosure to keep our feeling and attitudes to ourselves. Casual friend will be closer than acquaintance. We likely
reveal personal information to them. We begin to do such things like studying, having a meal or going to a movie together. Casual friends will help one another in time of
need. Close friends are near and dear to us. The communication and conversation will be highly intimate. The relation deals with and includes our emotional feeling. And we
trust them more complete information to share about ourselves Beebe 420. One of the key factors of friendship relation is intimacy. It determines whether
someone is merely an acquaintance or really a close friend. According to and article “Life As A Whole-Social Relationship” written by Beck, friends are open to each other
so that our spirits can unite and exchange energies of consciousness. It has been said that friends are two bodies with a single mind. Thus true friendships are oneness and
intimate sharing.