Levels of Friendship

So I was talking to Rock Girl the other day about what I see as friendship, and I hit upon an explanation that perfectly explains what this friend phenomenon means to me and why I see it the way I do. I figured this would be worth sharing so I'd remember it, and so maybe someone out there might find this insightful. I've done no real research here. I'm just typing.

First, it is important to understand what I would call "life segmentation." Our lives are split into different, very distinct facets where we have to know or do certain specific actions in order to maintain a level of peace within that segment. The most common segments in one's life include home, work, school, church, hobby, and family. The difference between home and family involves the difference between immediate and extended family and the social aspects of the latter. In each of these parts, we know people, and I'm sure you'll notice in thinking of your own life that people in these individual segments don't often cross. This is an important aspect of my view on friendship.

Now, my list of levels

1. Someone you know - Whether we know it or not, we know a lot of people. If this were written in Spanish, I would have used two different words for "know" because the first involves knowledge while the second involves personal information. Thing is, we can all probably think of a long list of names of people we know who inhabit our various segments. I can name people in a variety of professional capacities in my office, I know lots of people's names at church, and I can list random people who I know by name and function who fit into various parts of my life, but I know little more about them beyond their name and function. Those people are not friends or acquaintances. They are just people who exist that you know who rank only slightly above the unknown because at some point you learned their name. This is not a diss to any of them, mind you. I just can't tell you that the guy who works in the mail room (whose name I do know) is a friend of mine on any level any more than the various spouses of the people on the worship team. They are just people I can identify by name.

2. Professional Acquaintance - This is a person who occupies a single segment of your life that you speak to on a regular basis, but rarely, if ever, about anything other than topics that fit within the boundaries of that segment. If they're at work, the conversation is always about work stuff. If they're at church, the conversation revolves around church stuff. These are people about whom you might know a little more such as spouse or children, but you never sit down for a discussion on a personal level. You know what their function is within your segment, and you generally stick to that. When referred to at all, these people often are described as their function above all else.Your boss (or the person in charge of your segments) is the most common person in this category.

3. Acquaintance - This is a person who occupies a single segment of your life that you can speak to about something involving other segments. These people are generally referred to as friends, but when you talk about them to people in other segments, they are almost referred to as "the friend at work" or "someone from whatever." Their friendship is grounded within that segment, and while it might survive outside of that segment, that step has not been taken. If you pay close attention to how this list runs, you might even catch that it sounds like the steps of a relationship. That's because before you can (should) get romantically involved with someone, they have to become a friend first. The "friend zone" is dreaded among the dating, but the fact is that people who are looking for a long term relationship will pass through these steps, sometimes quickly. However, when dealing with people who are friends, the vast majority of friendships that are referred to as friendships live right here.

4. Friend - A friend is a person who comfortably occupies more than one segment of your life. At some point, after knowing of this person, then learning what they do, and then getting to know them on a personal level, the segment wall was broken and they crossed over into a different segment. Where this occurs is tricky because the person has to fit within more than one segment on a regular and easy basis. My most recent attempts to cross people over from acquaintance to friend have failed because they never hit any kind of regular or comfortable basis. These are going to be people on whom you can call when you need someone, and they're generally going to get to know people who are within the other segments of your life because they can fit by your side regardless of which segment you happen to be in at the time. Getting an acquaintance to become a friend requires effort on the part of both sides, and while basic friends tend to travel along this path in a very leisurely manner, dating tries to cram all of these steps together and rush them as quickly as possible, which is why dating seems so difficult to some. The people in this area are very special because you won't have very many of them, and as such, people will sometimes refer to them as "best friends," but to me, that term is reserved for one more level. The major difference between this level and the next is that this bond is still breakable. Someone here can be pulled in other directions, whether by personal interest, another person, or life itself, and end up leaving the friendship, albeit with some difficulty sometimes.

5. Best Friend - The rarest of them all. Sometimes, this person is actually a family member, but if they are not biologically related, they might as well be family. This is a person you would trust with your life because you know they trust you with theirs. You unconditionally love this person. Unconditional love is not the romantic kind of love, though you should definitely be at the best friend level with someone before you marry them. Unconditional love means that no matter what happens, good or bad, the relationship you have with this person cannot be broken except through something very, very significant or traumatic. Building someone from level 1 to here takes significant time and effort, and so very few friendships ever reach this level. When they do, though, it is something special.

0. Family - I have to place family members off to the side because family is usually forever whether anyone likes it or not. The bond we share with the ones to whom we're related is different from the levels of friendship though they can occupy places in those levels. Our family relationships can sometimes be firmly placed in certain levels of my list, but more often than not, they circumvent the level convention because we usually have very little choice as to their presence. Hence, you have that unconditional love element often running through the family even though they might only feel like a professional acquaintance. Weird thing, relationships.

Ok, so that being said, I found that upon examining my life, I have no friends. I have quite a few acquaintances, but they all live firmly within their boundaries. Facebook doesn't count as breaking the segments. I have people at work, and they stay there. I know the worship team, and they stay there. I know other people at church, and they stay there.

There is exactly one person who lives on the border of acquaintance and friend in my life, but attempts to cross that line have failed. He invited me into his hobby segment, and while I enjoyed it, I never belonged there, so the comfort bit failed. I have him as an xbox friend, but we've only ever played one game together. I have borrowed games on occasion, but that doesn't really count as crossing the lines. He did buy my books, and I have him in some level of confidence on their future, but all those conversations took place within the office. It is within that segment that the relationship with him lives, so he remains merely an acquaintance.

If you disagree with my list, I don't care. This is how I see the world. It works for me. Someone might try to reclassify everything to show that maybe I do have friends, but reclassification is an exercise in futility. It won't change reality. I live in the real world. This list is simply a way of organizing it.