11.3: Friends

Overview

Friendships are an important form of interpersonal relationship because they are generally voluntary relationships built and sustained through ongoing communication and mutual choice. Unlike relationships that may be established through family, legal, or professional structures, friendships often depend on individuals' continued willingness to invest in one another. Communication allows friends to develop trust, express support, negotiate expectations, manage conflict, and establish the level of intimacy that characterizes their relationship.

Friendships can take many forms and can change as people's circumstances, identities, interests, and social environments change. Understanding friendship requires attention to both the benefits and challenges of these relationships, including companionship, emotional support, reciprocity, boundaries, conflict, and relationship maintenance. Studying friendship communication helps us understand how individuals create meaningful connections and how interpersonal behaviors influence whether those connections are maintained, transformed, or discontinued.

Learning Objectives

• Define friendship as a form of interpersonal relationship.
• Identify communication characteristics associated with different types of friendships.
• Explain how communication contributes to friendship development and maintenance.
• Analyze how expectations, boundaries, reciprocity, and conflict influence friendships.
• Apply interpersonal communication strategies to strengthen and maintain friendships.

Friendship Characteristics

William K. Rawlins, a communication scholar and one of the most influential figures in the study of friendship, argues that friendships have five essential characteristics that make them unique from other forms of interpersonal relationships: voluntary, personal, equality, involvement, and affect (Rawlins, 1992).

All Friendships are Essentially Voluntary

Friendships are based out of an individual’s free will to choose whom they want to initiate a friendship relationship with. We go through our lives constantly making decisions to engage in a friendship with one person and not engage in a friendship with another person. Each and every one of us has our reasons for friendships. Take a second and think about your friendships. Why did you decide to engage in those friendships? Of course, the opposite is also true. We meet some people and never end up in friendship with them. Sometimes it’s because you’re not interested or the other person isn’t interested (voluntariness works both ways). We also choose to end some friendships when they are unhealthy or no longer serve a specific purpose within our lives.

Friendships are Personal Yet Negotiate

The second quality of friendships is that they are personal relationships negotiated between two individuals. In other words, we create our friendships with individuals and we negotiate what those relationships look like with that other individual. Recall that every person has complex intersectional identities. Individually we exist with an array of group memberships and individual idiosyncrasies. However, even if the characteristics of every person can be connect back to a group, we go not enter into friendships with the entire group, but rather a unique individual we decide we want to be friends with. For those that are sports fans, we may see images of people sitting next to each other communicating closely but wearing attire that promotes opposing teams on either side of a rivalry. Just because they are friends with one another doesn't mean they are friends with every person who roots for their rival. Hence, these are not group relationships; these are individualized, personal relationships that we establish with another person.

Friendships Have a Spirit of Equality

The next characteristic of friendships is a spirit of equality. Rawlins notes, “Although friendship may develop between individuals of different status, ability, attractiveness, or age, some facet of the relationship functions as a leveler. Friends tend to emphasize the personal attributes and styles of interaction that make them appear more or less equal to each other.” (Rawlins, 1992). It’s important to note that we’re not saying a 50/50 split in everything is what makes a friendship equal. Friendships ebb and flow over time as friends’’ desires, needs, and interests change. For example, it’s perfectly possible for two people from very different social classes to be friends. In this case, the different social classes may put people at an imbalance when it comes to financial means, but this doesn’t mean that the two cannot still have a sense of equality within the relationship. Here are some ways to ensure that friendships maintain a spirit of equality:

• Both friend’s needs and desires are important, not just one person’s.
• Both friends are curious about their friend’s personal life away from the friendship.
• Both friends show affection in their own ways.
• Both friends demonstrate effort and work in the relationship.
• Both friends encourage the other’s goals and dreams.
• Both friends are responsible for mutual happiness.
• Both friends decide what activities to pursue and how to have fun.
• Both friends are mutually engaged in conversations.
• Both friends carry the other’s burdens.
• Both friends desire for the relationship to continue and grow.

Friendships Have Mutual Involvement

The fourth characteristic of friendships is that they require mutual involvement. For friendships to work, both parties have to be mutually engaged in the relationship. This does not mean that friends have to talk on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis for them to be effective. Many people establish long-term friendships with individuals they don’t get to see more than once a year or even once a decade.

The concept of “mutual involvement” can differ from one friendship pair to another. Different friendship pairs collaborate to create their sense of what it means to be a friend, their shared social reality of friendship. Rawlins states, “This interpersonal reality evolves out of and furthers mutual acceptance and support, trust and confidence, dependability and assistance, and discussion of thoughts and feelings.” (Rawlins, 1992). One of the reasons why defining the term “friendship” is so difficult is because there are as many friendship realities as there are pairs of friends. Although we see common characteristics among them, it’s important to understand that these characteristics have many ways of being exhibited.

Friendships Have Affective Aspects

The final characteristic of friendships is the notion of affect. Affect refers to “any experience of feeling or emotion, ranging from suffering to elation, from the simplest to the most complex sensations of feeling, and from the most normal to the most pathological emotional reactions. Often described in terms of positive affect or negative affect, both mood and emotion are considered affective states.” (Affect, 2018). Built into the voluntariness, personal, equal, and mutually involved nature of friendships is the inherent caring and concern that we establish within those friendships, the affective aspects. Some friends will go so far as to say that they love each other. Not in the eros or romantic sense of the term, but instead in the philia or affectionate sense of the term. People often use the term “platonic” love to describe the love that exists without physical attraction based on the writings of Plato. However, Aristotle, Plato’s student, believed that philia was an even more profound form of dispassionate, virtuous love that existed in the loyalty of friends void of any sexual connotations.

All friendships are going to have affective components, but not all friendships will exhibit or express affect in the same ways. Some friendships may exhibit no physical interaction at all, but this doesn’t mean they are not intimate emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually. Other friendships could be very physically affective, but have little depth to them in other ways. Every pair of friends determines what the affect will be like within that friendship pairing. However, both parties within the relationship must have their affect needs met. Hence, people often need to have conversations with friends about their needs for affection.

Dialectical Approaches to Friendships

Earlier in this book, we introduced you to the dialectical perspective for understanding interpersonal relationships. William K. Rawlins proposed a dialectical approach to friendships.²³ The dialectics can be broken down into two distinct categories: contextual and interactional.

Contextual Dialectics

The first category of dialectics is contextual dialectics, which are dialectics that stem out of the cultural order where the friendship exists. If the friends in question live in the United States, then the prevailing social order in the United States will impact the friendship. However, if the friends are in Malaysia, then the Malaysian culture will be the prevailing social order that impacts the friendship. There are two different dialectics that Rawlins labeled as contextual: private/public and ideal/real.

Private/Public

The first friendship dialectic is the private/public dialectic. Let’s start by examining the public side of friendships in the United States. Sadly, these relationships aren’t given much credence in the public space. For example, there are no laws protecting friendships. Your friends can’t get health benefits from your job. Religious bodies don’t recognize your friendships. As you can see, we’re comparing friendships here to marriages, which do have religious and legal protections. In fact, in the legal system, the family often trumps friends unless there is a power of attorney or will.

As a significant historical side note, one of the biggest problems many gay and lesbian couples faced before marriage legalization was that their intimate partners were perceived as “friends” in the legal system. Family members could swoop in when Partner A died and evict and confiscate all of Partner A’s money and property unless there was an iron-clad will leaving the money and property to Partner B. From a legal perspective, marriage equality was very important in ensuring the rights of LGBTQIA individuals and their spouses.

On the opposite end of this dialectic, many friendship bonds are as strong if not stronger than familial or marital bonds. We voluntarily enter into friendships and create our sense of purpose and behaviors outside of any religious or legal context. In essence, these friendships are autonomous and outside of social strictures that define the lines of marital bonds. Instead of having a religious organization dictate the morality of a relationship, friendships ultimately develop a sense of morality that is based within the relationship itself.

Ideal/Real

From the moment we are born, we start being socialized into a wide range of relationships. Friendship is one of those relationships. We learn about friendships from our family, schools, media, peers, etc.… With each of these different sources of information, we develop an ideal of what friendship should be. However, friendships are not ideals; they are real, functioning relationships with plusses and minuses. This dialectic also impacts how we communicate and interact within the friendship itself. If our culture tells us that people must be reserved and respectful in private, then a simple act of laughing with another person could be an outward sign of friendship.

Interactional Dialectics

It’s important to understand that friendships change over time; along with how we interact within those friendships. For communication scholars, Rawlins interactional dialectics help us understand how communicative behavior happens within friendships. (Rawlins, 1989). Rawlins noted four primary communicative dialectics for friendships: independence/dependence, affection/instrumentality, judgment/acceptance, and expressiveness/protectiveness.

Independence/Dependence

First and foremost, friendships are voluntary relationships that we choose. However, there is a constant pull between the desire to be an independent person and the willingness to depend on one’s friend. Let’s look at a quick example. A few weeks ago, you and one of your friends both mentioned that you wanted to see a new film getting released. A few weeks later, it’s a Friday afternoon and you’re done with class or work. The movie was released that day, so you go and watch a matinee. You decided to engage in behavior without thought of your friend. You acted independently. It’s also possible that you know your friend hates going to the movies, so engaging independent movie watching behavior is very much in line with the norms you’ve established within your friendship.

On the other side, we do depend on our friendships. You could have a friend that you do almost everything with, and it gets to the point that people see you as a duo and are shocked when both of you aren’t together. In these highly dependent friendships, individual behavior is probably very infrequent and more likely to be resented. Now, if you went to the movie alone in a highly dependent friendship, your friend may be upset or jealous because you didn’t wait to see it with them. You may have had the right to engage as an independent person, but a friend in a highly dependent friendship would see this as a violation. This story would cause even more friction within the friendship if you had promised your friend to see the movie with them. You would still be acting independently, but your friend would have a stronger foundation for being upset.

Ultimately, all friendships have to negotiate independence and dependence. As with the establishment of any friendship norm, the pair involved in the relationship needs to decide when it’s appropriate to be independent and when it is appropriate to be dependent. Maybe you need to check-in via text 20 times a day (pretty dependent) or talk on the phone once a year; in both cases, friendships are different and are in constant negotiation. It’s also important to note that a friendship that was once highly dependent can become highly independent and vice versa.

Affection/Instrumentality

The second interactional dialectic examines the intersection of affection as a reason for friendship versus instrumentality (the agency or means by which a person accomplishes her/his/their goals or objectives). As Rawlins noted, “This principle formulates the interpenetrated nature of caring for a friend as an end-in-itself and/or as a means to an end.” (Rawlins, 1989). We already discussed the importance of affection in a friendship, but haven’t examined the issue of friendships and instrumentality. In friendships, the issue of instrumentality helps us understand the following question, “How do we use friendships to benefit ourselves?” Some people are uncomfortable with this question and find the idea of instrumentality very anti-friendship. Have you ever had a really bad day and all you needed was a hug from your best friend? Well, was that hug a sign of affection? Or did you use that friendship to get something you wanted or needed (instrumentality)? We all do this to varying degrees within friendships. When it comes time to move out of an apartment, everyone will be grateful to have a friend with a truck.

The problem of instrumentality arises when one party feels that they are being used and taken for granted within the friendship itself or if one friend stops seeing these acts as voluntary and starts seeing them as obligatory. First, there are times when there is an imbalance in friendships, and one friend feels that they are being taken advantage of. Maybe the friend with the truck starts realizing that the only time their friend really reaches out to see if they’re available to haul something large. Second, sometimes acts that were initially voluntary become seen as obligatory. In our example, maybe the friend who needs the truck starts to see what was once a nice, voluntary gesture as an obligation. If this happens, then the use of the truck becomes part of the rules of the friendship, which can change the dynamic of the relationship if the person with the truck isn’t happy about being used in this way.

Judgment/Acceptance

In our friendships, we expect that these relationships are going to enhance our self-esteem and make us feel accepted, cared for, and wanted. On the other hand, interpersonal relationships of all kinds are marked by judgmental messages. So, how do we navigate the need to be accepted and the reality of being judged? A lot of this is involved in the negotiation of the friendship itself. Although we may not appreciate receiving criticism from others, criticism may demonstrate to another person that we value them enough to judge. Now, can criticism become toxic? Yes. Maybe you’ve experienced a friend who criticized everything about you. Perhaps it got to the point where it felt that you needed to change pretty much everything about how you look, act, think, feel, and behave just to be “good enough” for your friend. If that’s the case, then that friend is clearly not criticizing you for your betterment but for their own desires.

Expressiveness/Protectiveness

The final interactional dialectic is expressiveness/protectiveness. This dialectic questions the degree to which we want to express ourselves in our friendships while determining how much not to express to protect ourselves. As we discussed earlier in this book, social penetration theory starts with the basic idea that in our initial interactions with others we disclose a wide breadth about ourselves. Still, these are primarily surface level topics (e.g., what’s your major, what are your hobbies, where are you from). As time goes on, the number of topics we express decreases, but they become more personal (depth). In a friendship relationship, we have to navigate this breadth and depth in deciding what we express and what we protect.

Ultimately, this is an issue of vulnerability. When we open ourselves up to people and express those deeper parts of ourselves, there is an excellent likelihood that disclosure of these areas could cause greater harm to the individual self-disclosing if the information got out. For example, one of our coauthors had a friendship sour after our coauthor’s friend started talking to our coauthor’s parents about our coauthor’s sexual orientation. Our coauthor saw this as a massive violation of the confidentiality of what was self-disclosed in their friendship. This friend still speaks to our coauthor’s parents 20 years later, but our coauthor hasn’t spoken to this former friend since the trust was violated. All friendships are an exploration of what can be expressed and what needs to be protected. We all have some friends that we keep at arm’s length because we know we need to protect ourselves, since they tend towards being overly chatty or gossipy. At the same time, we have other friends who get to see the real us as we protect less and less of ourselves in those friendships. No one will ever completely know what’s going on in our heads, but deep friendships probably come the closest and also make us the most vulnerable.

Stages of Friendships

As we’ve already discussed, friendships are not static relationships we’re born with. Instead, these relationships are dynamic, and we grow with them. To help us understand how we ultimately form friendships, William Rawlins broke this process into seven stages of friendships (Rawlins, 1981).

Role Delimited Interaction

The first stage of friendship is called role delimited interaction. The basic idea behind this stage is that we all exist in a wide range of roles within our lives: shopper, salesperson, patient, driver, student, parent, spouse, etc. In each of these different roles, we end up interacting with a wide range of different people. For example, imagine you’re just sitting down in a new class in college, and you talk to the stranger sitting next to you. In this case, you are both interacting within your roles as students. Or perhaps you get your hair cut and styled by the same person 6 times a year and in these meetings you chat and enjoy each other's company. The interactions are facilitated by the roles and context. Outside of those roles and that context, you may never meet and never have the opportunity even to develop a social relationship with this other person. This does not discount the possibility of random, chance encounters with other people. Still, most of our interpersonal relationships (outside of our family) stem from these roles and the communicative contexts they present.

Friendly Relations

From role delimited interaction, we may decide to move to the second stage of friendship, friendly relations. These relations are generally positive interactions, but they still exist within those same roles. In our example, we start chatting with our classmate or our hair stylist. At this point, though, most of our interactions are still going to be within those roles, so we end up talking about the class, fellow students, the teacher, homework assignments, or general chit chat about life and the community. Notice that there is not a lot of actual self-disclosure happening within friendly relations. Some people can maintain friendly relations with others for years. For example, you may interact with coworkers, religious association members, and neighbors within this type of relationship without them ever progressing to the next stage of friendship. According to Rawlins, friendly relationships move towards friendships because they start to exhibit four specific communication behaviors:

• Moves away from what is required in the specific role relationship;
• Fewer stereotyped lines of interaction;
• Individual violations of public propriety; and
• Greater spontaneity.

First, we start interacting in a manner that doesn’t resemble the original roles we had. In our example, we start interacting in a manner that doesn’t resemble the roles of students when they first meet. Second, we move away from lines of communication that are stereotypes for our roles. For example, some possible stereotyped lines for two students could include, “what did you think of the homework;” “did you bring your book with you today;” “see you next class;” etc. In each of these lines, we enact dialogue that is expected (or stereotyped) within the context of the class itself. Third, more of our normal selves will start to seep into our interactions, which are called violations of public propriety. Maybe one day your classmate turns to you before class, saying, “That reading for homework was such a waste of time.” In this case, they are giving you a bit more insight into who they are as a person “These violations of public propriety single an individual out as having an essential side which is not so easily circumscribed by the protocol of a situation.” (Rawlins, 1981). Lastly, we see increased spontaneity in our interactions with the other person. Over time, these interactions, although still interacting within their formal roles, take on more social and less formalized tones. Maybe one day you disclose a story to your barber about some juicy family gossip. Being spontaneous outside of the role script is a move toward friendly relations.

Moves-Toward-Friendship

At some point, people decide to interact with one another outside of the roles they originally embodied when they initially met. This change in roles is a voluntary change. In our example, maybe one day your classmate invites you to get coffee after class, and then another day, you ask them to get lunch before class. Although it’s possible that a single step outside of those roles could be enough that a friendly relation is moving towards a friendship, there is generally a sequence of these occurrences. In our example here, the first move was inviting us to coffee, but we then reciprocated later by asking them to lunch. In both of these cases, we are starting to step outside of the original friendly relation and changing the nature of our original interactions.

Nascent Friendship

When one enters into the nascent stage of friendship, the friends are no longer interacting within their original roles, and their interactions do not follow the stereotypes associated with those roles. Eventually, we start to develop norms for how we communicate with this other person that are beyond those original roles and stereotypes. Ultimately, this stage is all about developing those norms. We develop norms for what we talk about, when we talk, and how we talk. Maybe our classmate makes it very clear that she doesn’t want to talk about politics or religion, and we’re perfectly OK with that. Maybe we keep the bulk of our interaction before and after class, or we start having lunch together before class or coffee after class. The norms will differ from friendship to friendship, but these norms allow us to set parameters on the relationship in this early stage. These norms are also important because keeping them demonstrates that we can be trusted. And when we show we can be trusted over time, the level of intimacy we can develop within our relationship also increases.

It’s also during this period that others start to see you more and more as a pair of friends, and external forces may begin to impact the development of your friendship as well. To bring in another example, this may be common among parents who become friends with one another through the friendship of their children. They may begin to talk about school, nutrition, behavior, development and other elements of parenting same-aged kids, and then eventually expand from there. They may meet for child play-dates outside of school hours, and one friend may bring the other a coffee while they are attending their children. However, they may be limited by the amount of time they can spend together due to the constraints of children's schedules. The nascent stage is characterized by experimentation and development, negotiating the nature of their relationship.

Stabilized Friendship

Ultimately nascent friendships evolve into stabilized friendships through time and refinement. It’s not like one day you wake up and go, “My friendship has stabilized!” It’s much more gradual than that. We get to the point where our developed norms and interaction patterns for the friendship are functioning optimally for both parties, and the friendship is working smoothly. In nascent friendships, the focus is on the duo and developing the friendship. In stabilization, we often bring in new friends. For example, if we had found out that our classmate had coffee with another person from our class during the nascent stage of friendship, we may have felt a bit hurt or jealous of this outsider intruding on our growing friendship. As stabilized friends, we realize that the classmate having coffee with someone else isn’t going to impact the strength of the relationship we already have. If anything, maybe you'll find other friends to grow the friendship circle. However, like any relationship, both parties still must make an effort to make the friendship work. We need to reaffirm our friendships, spend time with our friends, and maintain that balance of equity we discussed earlier in this chapter.

Rawlins also notes that friendships in the stabilized stage can represent three different basic patterns: active, dormant, and commemorative. (Rawlins, 1994). Active friendships are ones where there is a negotiated sense of mutual accessibility and availability for both parties in the friendship. Dormant friendships “share either a valued history or a sufficient amount of sustained contact to anticipate or remain eligible for a resumption of the friendship at any time.” (LaBell & Mayers, 2016). These friends may not be ones we interact with every day, but they are still very much alive and could take on new meaning and grow back into an active friendship if the time arises. Commemorative friendships are ones that reflect a specific space and time in our lives, but current interaction is minimal and primarily reflects a time when the two friends were highly involved in each other’s lives. With commemorative friendships, we still see ourselves as friends even though we don’t have the consistent interaction that active friendships have.

In a study conducted by Sara LaBelle and Scott Myers, the researchers set out to determine what types of relational maintenance strategies people use to keep their friendships going across the three different types of friendship patterns (active, dormant, & commemorative) The researchers recruited participants over the age of 30 to examine the intersection of relational maintenance and friendship types. All three friendship types use positivity, relational talks, and networks related to relational maintenance to some degree. However, active friendships were more likely than commemorative friendships to use understanding, self-disclosure, assurances, and tasks to maintain their friendships. No differences were seen in relational maintenance strategies between active and dormant friendships nor dormant friendships and commemorative friendships.

Waning Friendship

Unfortunately, some friendships will not last; they will become waning friendships. There are many reasons why friendships may start to wane or decrease in importance in our lives. There are three primary reasons Rawlins discusses as causes: “an overall decline in affect, an individual or mutual decision to let it wane based on identifiable dissatisfaction with the relationship, or a significant, negative, relational event which precipitates an abrupt termination of the friendship.” (Rawlins, 1993). First, some relationships wane because there is a decrease in emotional attachment. Some friends stop putting in the time and effort to keep the friendship going, so it’s not surprising that there is a decrease in emotional attachments. Second, both parties may become dissatisfied with the relationship and decide to take a hiatus or spend more time with other friends. Lastly, some relationship-destroying event could happen.

A wide range of different events could end a friendship. In a study conducted by a team of researchers led by Amy Janan Johnson, the researchers interviewed college students about why their friendships had terminated (Johnson et al., 2004). The most common reasons listed for why relationships fell apart were 1) romantic partner of self or friend, 2) increase in geographic distance, 3) conflict, 4) not many common interests, 5) hanging out with different groups or different friends, and 6) other. It’s important to note, that while this set of findings is interesting, it was conducted among college students, so it may not apply to older adults.

Post-Friendship

The final stage of the friendship is what happens after the friendship is over. Even if a friendship ended on a horrible note, there are still parts of that friendship that will remain with us forever, impacting how we interact with friends and perceive friendships. You may even have symbolic links to your friends: the nightclubs you went to, the courses you took together, the coffee shops you frequented, the movies you watched, etc. all are links back to that friendship. It’s also possible that the friendship ended on a positive note and you still periodically say hello on Facebook or during the holidays through card exchanges. Just as all friendships are unique, so are their experiences of post-friendship reality.

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Attributions

• 10.1: Friendship Relationships by Jason S. Wrench, Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter, and Katherine S. Thweatt is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/interpersonalcommunication.
• 10.2: Stages and Types of Friendships by Jason S. Wrench, Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter, and Katherine S. Thweatt is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Original source: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/interpersonalcommunication.