Aristotle, in his magisterial Nicomachean Ethics, identifies three types of friendships: friendships based on utility (or advantage), friendships based on common pleasures (such as hobbies and interests), and friendships based on character (aimed at mutual moral and emotional development).
Let’s examine each of this in detail, with special attention to the friendships of character.
Friendships on Utility are those based on mutual advantage or purely transactional. This includes workplace “friendships”, often referred to as “networking”. Both parties benefit from such a relationship, but lack a deeper emotional connection. Such relationships are time bound and usually fade away once the benefit ends to one or both.
Friendships of Pleasure are perhaps the most common type today, often mistaken for deeper connections. These friendships revolve around shared enjoyment or interests yet rarely satisfy a core need – the need for meaning. Often, such friendships are mired in competitive consumption – striving for “positional goods” that enhance one’s social status rather than a deep personal fulfillment (keeping up with the Jones’s). Such friendships are also rife with unspoken envy and shallow interactions that ultimately diminish character.
The highest form of friendship, according to Aristotle, are the Friendships of Character. These friendships are based on virtue and mutual improvement. It necessarily involves sharing one’s inner life with the other. I would propose calling them soul level relationships, characterised by deep understanding, acceptance and a shared commitment to moral and emotional growth. David Fideler in his accessible book “Breakfast with Seneca” describes this the lost art of friendship. In today’s age, genuine friendships of this kind have become rare, replaced by superficial social connections. We have mistaken social media connections as “friends”.
Having said this, utility and pleasure friendships still have their place. Given our constraints of time and energy, it is practical to maintain these relationships. The loss, though, is when we lack deep friendships altogether. Having no deep friendships is a great misfortune in life.
How can we cultivate deep friendships?
We begin with self-awareness. As we begin to ask ourselves “Who am I?, “What am I here for?”, “What makes my life meaningful?”, we start a journey towards greater self-understanding. This is not an easy path, and such deep questioning can precipitate great sorrow, confusion and uncertainty in life. These so called tough emotions, are, in fact, fuel for us to go deeper and enquirer harder into ourselves.
We can learn to accept our tough emotions, and be okay with not knowing perfectly, not understanding fully. We are, in a sense, making the map as we walk though life. The image that comes to my mind, is “the Age of Empires” – a now classic computer game. In that game, the entire terrain isn’t known up front. One begins to “open up” the terrain from the darkness as one begins to slowly explore the territory. We are similarly going through life without knowing who we are, or where we are going, or indeed what we are called upon to do. But we must explore, we must move away from the comfort of our small psychological homes and build our own maps.
The courage to do this comes by developing emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is not really an intelligence at all. Intelligence is a cognitive ability. Emotions, are closer to “us” – they are raw, sensations with a strong bodily component. This is why they feel so unsettling, and appear to take us over by overriding reason. The secret to emotional intelligence is to separate emotions from thinking. When we can see emotions just as a raw sensation, the energy behind the narrative of the emotion fades away. We do not then, “meta suffer”. This is the beginning of emotional awareness.
As we begin to develop greater emotional awareness, vulnerability becomes possible. Sharing difficult emotions- such as failure, fear, envy, lust – without a sense of shame, fosters intimacy. Then the friendship flowers. It allows each other to compassionately listen, exchange perspectives and develop a deep feeling of having been understood. This is the beginning of deep soul level friendships.
As you work on yourself with great awareness, share some of your intimate discoveries with others and see how they respond. If they avoid, distract or provide topical solutions such we realize that we are seeking depth in wrong company. On the other hand, when others respond by asking deep questions, relate their own challenges, without turning the entire conversations to their problems, they are likely candidates for genuine friendships .
Ultimately, the lost of friendship can be rediscovered through deliberate self-reflection and emotional vulnerability. This journey, although challenging, can be deeply rewarding.
Journey of a thousand words 