In the Bhagavata Purana, the poor Brahmin Sudama visits his childhood friend Krishna at Dvaraka. His wife has found a few handfuls of parched and beaten rice for him to bring as a gift. Krishna receives him with great warmth and eats the rice as his favorite food.
friendship
An Intensely Private Person
In January 2018 a reader wrote to Alison Green’s advice column Ask a Manager. “I’m an intensely private person,” the reader said. “My immediate supervisor once asked me point blank what my family member’s diagnosis was.” Coworkers had also felt slighted that the reader did not share more.
Green defended the reader’s privacy. “Workplaces aren’t families,” she wrote. “You definitely don’t need to do it with colleagues.” She also warned that “it can get weird and uncomfortable when everyone else in your office is a sharer and you’re not.” She offered a friendly line to use instead: “It’s a nice break to just be able to focus on work when I’m here!”
Best Buddies
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia served together on the Supreme Court. After Scalia died, Ginsburg released a statement on February 14, 2016. She recalled their earlier years together on the D.C. Circuit: “we were best buddies.” She also wrote, “We disagreed now and then.”
Their disagreements made her work better. When she wrote for the majority and received a Scalia dissent, her final opinion was “notably better” than her draft. He “nailed all the weak spots” and “gave me just what I needed.”
I Love You, Man
In the comedy I Love You, Man (2009), Peter Klaven is a Los Angeles real estate agent. He proposes to his girlfriend Zooey, and she accepts. But “he does not have any close male friends to share the news with, only family and female acquaintances.”
Peter overhears Zooey’s friends talk about his lack of guy friends. So he makes “a series of overtures toward various men.” They go badly. Then he finds a friend through work. At an open house at Lou Ferrigno’s mansion, which Peter is trying to sell, he meets Sydney Fife.
Fewer Confidants
In June 2006 the American Sociological Review published a study of the people Americans confide in. In 1985 Americans named on average 2.94 close confidants. By 2004 the number had fallen to 2.08. A quarter of Americans had no close confidants at all.
The finding was disputed. The sociologist Claude Fischer said the data “seem internally inconsistent or simply implausible” and “shouldn’t be relied upon.” A software error was later found that had miscoded 41 responses. One of the authors said the corrected results still showed a significant decline.
Where Americans Make Friends
In May 2021 the Survey Center on American Life asked 2,019 adults about their friendships. Twelve percent said they had no close friends. In a 1990 Gallup poll, only 3 percent had said so. The survey also asked where friendships begin. “Americans are now more likely to make friends at work than any other way.” Of people with close friends, 54 percent had met one at their own or their spouse’s workplace.
A Pew Research Center survey in July 2023 used different questions. In it, 8 percent said they had no close friends, and 38 percent said they had five or more.
Friendly to the Potentially Useful
In 1985 Robert N. Bellah and his co-authors published Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. The book describes an older idea of friendship with several parts. “Today we tend to define friendship most in terms of the first component: friends are those we take pleasure in being with.”
Usefulness is a different matter. The authors write: “we are quite aware of the importance of being ‘friendly’ to those who are potentially useful to us.”
Nobody Came
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, crowds come to Gatsby’s parties. The narrator, Nick, describes them: “People were not invited—they went there.” He adds: “Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.”
After Gatsby dies, Nick waits for people to come to the funeral. “But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.” One former party guest, the man Nick calls Owl-eyes, is amazed: “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.”
Gatsby’s associate Meyer Wolfshiem also stays away. “I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he tells Nick. Then he offers advice: “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
Two Hundred Hours
In 2018 Jeffrey Hall, a communication professor at the University of Kansas, published a study of how friendships form. It takes roughly 50 hours together to move from acquaintance to casual friend. Becoming a friend takes about 90 hours, and becoming a close friend takes more than 200 hours.
Hours spent working together counted for less. Some adults had spent hundreds of hours with colleagues and still called them acquaintances. Hall’s advice was: “If you work together, go to lunch or out for a drink.”
Work Friend
American English has a set of words for friendships that belong to the job.
Work friend. This is a friend at work, and not necessarily anywhere else.
Work wife and work husband. This is a close partner at the office, with no romance.
Work bestie. This is a best friend at work.
Former coworker. This is often said of someone who was once a daily contact.