Types of Friends

[Disclaimer: This post is not about friendship. It’s about friends. All types mentioned in this post are of friends and they are not discriminated on your level of friendship. Rather it is about different kinds of friends that you make in due course of time in your life. If anyone is offended by anything mentioned here then they are requested to mention it as comments. I will remove/edit that section accordingly.]

A friend is defined as “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.”

This definition is fine but another definition says a friend is “a person who is not hostile.”

It is like saying “I’m in North Pole because I’m not in South Pole.” Almost no one in this world is hostile to me (okey, except for those rickshaw drivers who deliberately try to kiss my car with their metal lips every time they pass by me), but that doesn’t mean that everyone is my friend. And I am pretty sure that our milkman in Calcutta was not hostile to us. He never mixed rat poison or phenyl in the milk, he just mixed water everyday. But that certainly doesn’t make him my friend.

A great philosopher once said “Friends are like bras: close to your heart and always there for support. But if you get the wrong one they will only induce irritation and pain.”

So you have to be careful while choosing your bra friend. Knowing different types of friends that exists will help you decide whom and when to take an acquaintance to the next level of friendship.

Friends can be classified into many types based on different parameters.

Based on the level of physical intimacy permitted friends can be divided into four major kinds.

1. Close Friends: This kind of friends are allowed to grab arms, shoulder but are not supposed to hold hands. They go out in groups for movies, adventure sports, camping etc. It is usually a tightly-knit group of 3 to 5 friends. They call each other on semi-regular basis but call duration never exceeds 5 minutes for boys and 55 minutes for girls.
2. Best Friends: In addition to type 1 privileges, best friends are allowed to hold you by waist and search for your car keys in your jeans pocket which they are then going to take out for indefinite time while you keep waiting for them. Occasionally they slap you or hit you so hard that you see the constellations in broad daylight that are yet to be discovered. You call them almost every day and they know all your secrets. Starting from your latest crush in college to your childhood molestation by some random guy.
3. Boyfriend/Girlfriend: They are allowed to do anything. When I say anything I mean ANYYY THING.
4. Just friends: This is an interesting type of friend. Nobody knows the exact limit of physical intimacy allowed for a Just Friend except for the Just Friends themselves. They never hold hands in front of other friends but go for one-on-one lunch or dinner. They go out a lot (just the two) but don’t call it a date. They call each other everyday and talk for hours. While midst of other friends they are seldom found to pass short and sweet smiles at each other and when asked ‘What’s going on between you two?’ they blush like sunrise and say ‘Nothing yaar. Just friends.’

Friends can also be divided into two broad categories-

1. Friends that you haven’t met, and
2. Friends that you have met.

Type 1 friends or Friends that you haven’t met can be of different kinds. In old days there used to be Pen Friends. Pen friends or pen pals are people who regularly write to each other, particularly via postal mail.

With the advent of technology pen friends are gradually replaced by a new kind of friends known as Online Friends or Virtual Friends. These are the people you meet via various social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. This also includes Chat Buddies, Blog Buddies and Gaming Buddies. In several occasions such friends get promoted to type 2 when you like them enough and ultimately decide to meet them in real life.

Girls enjoy some extra privilege in this sector. They are often flooded with erratic Orkut requests like ‘wanna b frands’ or ‘plsss b my fraand’ and in almost all these cases, even if the girl accepts the friend request, she never expects to meet them in real life and avoids any kind of interaction that might lead to such circumstances.

Type 2 friends or The friends that you have met can be further divided in various categories. Some of the major types are as follows-

• Quick Friends: You meet them regularly for a short period of time and you share a hearty conversation with them in that short time span. You chat with them one-on-one but never have lunch or dinner together. Neither do you intend to although you have invited each other in several occasion. This types of friends are usually the people whom you meet only in train, bus or lifts.
• Mates: These are the people you are friend with just because you have to share a lot of time together. There is no way you can avoid them and you end up seeing each other regularly. They include Class mate, Batch mate, work mate and room mate. (Not to be confused with intimate or Playboy Playmate.)
• Friends for a reason: Remember the friend who used to attend all lectures and take notes so that s/he can provide you with all those just before the exam. Or the friend who’s father is a millionaire. They provide you cars when you plan a trip or fund occasional parties without any occasion. They are categorized as the friends for a reason. This type also includes The Connected Guy who is friend with the local drug dealer or knows someone everywhere and is always willing to flaunt their contacts. They are specially helpful when you are looking for a free pass to any hip party.
• Friends with benefits: 😉 (You already know more than required ’bout them.)
• Shoulder to cry on friends: Easily one of your most selfless friends. One has to be a very good listener to qualify into this grade of friend. They listen to you pointless procrastination for hours on a regular basis and take immense interest in your plight (or atleast pretend to do so). They agree with you when you say that nobody appreciates the enormous amount of sacrifice that you did to them by not hitting them right in their nose. Moreover they mollify you and say ‘this too shall pass’.
• The last type includes those people who makes you realize that you are not the best when it comes to judging people. You thought them to be nice and became friends only to be aware of your mistake much after the damage has been done. They often cause emotional distress, initiate misunderstanding with other good friends or even worse. They include- 1. The Promise Breaker, 2. The Double-crosser, 3. The Discloser, 4. The Gossip maker, and 5. The User. We call them Pest Friends.

Now you know about different types of friends so choose your friends carefully and enjoy the pure bliss of friendship.

Let us know what kind of friends you have and what kind of friend you are.