It has become clear to me that what some people consider to be a friend is not quite as demanding and intimate a relationship as how I define it. So now I will list the qualities I believe a true friend should have:

A True Friend...
• ... makes an effort to know what is going on in your life.
• ... cares about the choices you make in your life.
• ... rejoices when you rejoice.
• ... feels pain when you hurt.
• ... does not want to see you in pain.
• ... does not say things just because it's what you want to hear.
• ... is truthful.
• ... says things you don't want hear.
• ... will disagree with you.
• ... will not turn their back on you because you have problems or disagreements.
• ... does not wait until you ask for their help to give any.
• ... trusts you to make your own decisions.
• ... is there to catch you when your own decisions go bad.
• ... helps you to see yourself and your situation from another angle.
• ... isn't someone you have to go places with (or kick it). (I consider Leah a true friend even though I've never been within 500 miles of her as long as I've known her.)
• ... most importantly, allows you to do all of these things for them.

A true friend is hard to come by and not someone you can find by hanging out in bars and pool halls. I have many people in my life, but i consider very few of them to be true friends. The word "friend" itself has become a shallow, overused part of our language. We call people our friends who we see might come into contact with once a week or people about whom we know nothing but the most trivial of details. Those are not friends but merely social contacts and acquaintances. A true friendship requires a level of intimacy between the two friends. I don't mean physical intimacy as many people today would think when hearing the word intimacy. Instead, true friends share an emotional intimacy. And much like physical intimacy, this emotional intimacy requires a commitment between the friends. Most people do not like to go around sharing thier most personal of feelings with just anybody off the street, but instead someone who they know and trust and can expect to be there emotionally for them when they need a friend.

After high school, many of my friends and I went in different directions. I've managed to stay in contact with a few of them, but our friendships have crumbled from lack of maintenance. It requires effort to keep up a friendship, more than just calling a person up and asking them to go out to a club or hang out at your place for a holiday. When I see one of these former friends of mine, I feel no sort of connection as I did in the past. I haven't been there for them and don't know what they've experienced or how they've changed over the years. The person looking back at me might have the same name but they are not the same person I was friends with.

After high school was one of the first times I'd ever felt truly lonely. I had met a few new people at school, but hadn't formed any meaningful, deep relationships with anyone yet. Combined with the dissolution of my friendships from high school, I felt a void in my life that I wasn't sure how to fill. After a particulary bad ending to a friendship, I turned to the internet to find new friends. It was all too easy to find people to talk to and chat with on the internet. I targeted females to make contact with because I also had a selfish physical motivation as well. In just a short while my buddy lists had grown to include hundreds of new women to talk to and interact with, and even a few to meet with in person. I thought my life was going great because now I had all of these new "friends." I could spend my days working and then come home and spend hours upon hours chatting and talking with my friends. I felt good about myself because I felt interesting and people seemed to want to know me. But it didn't take long for me to notice that my new friends no longer chatted with me or called me or emailed me. And my long list of friends eventually dwindled down to just few with only one real friendship ever being formed.

Feeling lonely again, decided to increase my offer of intimacy to include physical intimacy. I didn't really hide it anymore, I made it known what I wanted. I wanted physical pleasure and was certain I'd be able to find it. In fact, that's how I met Deb. Summer was ending and I just wanted to mess around some girl before going back to college. She had just ended a relationship and was feeling much of the same way I was so we hooked up a few times during that last month. After returning to school, I thought I would be done with her forever. She was cute and all, but she wasn't my dream woman or anything and she was kind of annoying. So I did nothing to keep our relationship going and even tried to stop some of her attempts. It's not really in my character to be the cold, emotionless, sexual predator I had been trying to be, and I eventually softened up to her. With no way to be physical with her, I began to form an emotional relationship with her. I began to feel the pain she was feeling, which was not something I was accustomed to or ready for. But I felt as if a real friendship was developing between us. And for the last year and some months, I would say we were real friends, perhaps my best friend.

But now that friendship is crumbling and slipping away. And why? Well I'm not really sure why. I'm not doing anything different than I have. Since the beginning of our friendship I've cared about what she does, I've shared my thoughts on the situations she's put herself in even if she didn't like them, and she's done the same for me. I don't want her to just end up as another name on my buddy or number in my cell phone. I have enough of those. I want a friend. I want a real, true friend.