Friendship is an idiosyncratic bond one shares with another human. Rather than describing what is Friendship, I am going to describe the different types of bonds I've experienced and encountered throughout my lifespan, and the reason for this is because when it comes to human communication and anthropological interaction, things are never black and white, but gray, being that every human and its environment is idiosyncratically different, therefore each interaction is different. In my opinion, there are six types of human bonds (order is arbitrary):
- Lineal: (Family and relatives) For most of us, this bond is apparent since the first memory of consciousness you may recall, perhaps even your first memory was with a family member. This type of bond is unconditional, for some strange but acceptable reason, we protect, love, and nurture our family members regardless of any presumptions or circumstances of the world without expecting something back nor being rewarded from doing so. Such protection, affection, and nurturing is innate within the bond, always present, and it increases exponentially as we develop and cement the bond further with time.
- Formal: (Coworkers, Colleagues, Professors, etc.) This is a behavioral and circumstantial type of bond, which only becomes apparent in the presence of certain people in our lives. Such bond is usually linked with professional and academic standards, where a certain set of subtle and invisible rules apply to the code of conduct. I am not going to lie, I find this bond quite strange, but I can understand to a certain extent why it is present in our lives. We want to make the professional and academic world less mundane and crude, therefore we use our appeal and human empathy to do so and mitigate the insufferable cycles of such a world in peoplehood.
- Sexual: This bond is apparent and shared with another human only on intimacy. Usually shared with the Romantic or/and Platonic bond (depending on how open-minded you are), which constitutes another fascinating aspect of being human, that one of physical contact, love, and caress that is shared when both parties have a strong desire for one another. This is a vital human bond, whether you like it or not (I very much hope you like it though).
- Romantic: (Significant others) The drug of love. The least harmful drug there is out there. A human romantic bond is quite similar to the Linear bond in that protection, care, love, and nurture is also unconditionally present. A key difference in this bond however is the presence of a Sexual bond, which, one might argue, makes it stronger than the Linear bond in terms of familiarity with the other party. Who knows you better, your family, or your significant other? The answer of course depends on time, however, I would bet that most humans would choose the latter as their answer due to the closeness this bond entails.
- Platonic: (Friends) I find this bond quite significant as well. For some, humans from our family become our friends as well, we develop a platonic bond. What differentiates any human with a friend is trust. These types of bonds involve a great amount of trust, these types of bonds are shared with humans that know us, that understand us to a certain extent, our inner workings, our behavior, our desires and our history. We share experiences with people sharing this bond with us, they know us differently than our Romantic bond as we usually do not share a Sexual bond with the Platonic bond (although several exceptions might arise, especially with the opposite sex), we trust our well being to friends, we form a team whenever all humans involved in such bond are present, a team with shared interest, shared desires, shared goals, and even sometimes, shared history and background.
- Superficial: (Acquaintances, Peers, Classmates, etc.) Although not precisely a bond itself, there is a difference between people you do not know at all, and superficial bonds. The latter share appears when one shares a similar external activity, feature, or interest with another human, and such share is the only link between you and that other human. Thereby, this type of bond with the other human is merely defined by that share's nature only. Which is quite interesting as the only thing(s) in common with that human is that shared interest/activity, nothing more, nothing less.
Each bond has several more sub-bonds than differ based on cultural, religious, economical, racial, geographic, subjective, and many other attributes. Furthermore, every human is innately different, these bonds are not applicable to every single one of us, but instead serve as a reference to classify superficially the interpersonal relationships we experience in our world as humans. Every single anthropological bond serves as an unconscious understanding of human communication, human relationships, and human psychology.