Friends, How many of us have them?

Whodini had a song back in the days entitled "Friends" and I as I type this you probably hear the melody ringing in your mind..."How many of us have them? Friends! Ones we can depend on."

I use the term friend very loosely and even that is an understatement. To me I feel like some people are placed into your life for a reason, others for a brief interval of time, a season if you will.

Anybody who has a grandmother who has ever preached to them about anything, has heard the old saying or a derivative of the saying "You have to know people for all four seasons."

Usually that applies to relationships, but in most cases relationships are friendships that have blossomed into something much more.

There are three types of friendships that I would like to dissect and discuss in today's lesson, none of which you will find in your Webster's or your Britannica. The friend types are as follows:

Circumstantial/seasonal friends, mutual friends, and TRUE friends.

The first group of friends I mentioned are the circumstantial/seasonal friends. The reason why I chose to dissect these first because these are the most prevalent type of friends that you will encounter in life. Circumstantial/seasonal friends are those that come into your life due to a given circumstance and generally you hear from them during a given time of year (season) or they only stick around/are loyal to you for that given season. These friends are super easy to distinguish from the rest, primarily because the basis of your friendship isn't really substantial. These are the friends that you are friends with because you were paired up as roommates in college, or if you're the opposite sex and you're only friends because one or both of you are in a relationship and don't want to cheat, but secretly you have the hots for each other. Or my favorite scenario of them all, you don't want to be in a serious relationship with them, so all you choose to refer to them as, is your "friend." These types of friends are great while they last but, like summer or winter, they eventually come to an end only to return later down the road, making it cyclic to some degree. The friendship itself is totally dependent upon the circumstance and these types of friends won't be there through the thick, just usually through the thin. You'll spot it once you have a disagreement and you're no longer friends. These friends in particular may decide to resurface or you may discover new ones just like them due to the circumstance, henceforth, Circumstantial/seasonal friends.

For me the circumstantial/seasonal friends were females 99% of the time. Females who I could only consider friends because in my mind the relationship would never advance beyond that or in a few instances where the relationship ended and it would never go back to the way it was thus only being "friends" due the circumstances. The other one percent were males who were only my friend as long as we had the same classes, or lived in the same dorm, or played on the same teams. When I was younger and didn't understand the difference I expected a lot from these individuals, but as I grew wiser I was able to foresee a short life expectancy for the "friendship." It should be to no one's surprise that once they jumped ship, it effected my life only in a positive way...one less gift to worry about during the holiday SEASON.

The next type of friend you will encounter in your life is the mutual friend. These friends can sometimes be the debris of a destroyed circumstantial/seasonal relationship. These are the friends you met while in a relationship with somebody else or who were friends with your seasonal friends but they have chosen to remain friends with you. The flip side to the mutual friend is that many of the topics that are discussed could pertain to your recently removed friend. If you acquired this friend as a result of a circumstantial friendship with somebody else and they are any good to you, they won't trouble you with the nonsense of that person that linked you two in the first place. These friends can have the tendency to be biased so you have to watch what you say because it may cause even more friction than that of which was already created. Not all mutual friends are those of a former friend. Some mutual friends are just friends that you only talk to when you visit, or hang out with one of your true friends. When these friends do something that is very questionable you most likely say "That's _____'s friend," and you don't mean anything negative by it. What you really mean is that your friend who knew them the longest must assume full responsibility of that person's negligence.

I have mutual friends that fall on both sides of the spectrum. My mutual friends who I met through former friends/relationships are those I speak to on occasion, usually about safe topics that won't lead to any drama, unless I'm pulled into it. I generally try to keep away from that, but it happens. I also have mutual friends who shall remain nameless, that do some questionable things every time we hang out or go on a trip and I must make it clear of which friend of mine was a friend of his first, so he can assume FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS NEGLIGENCE.

Last but certainly not least are the true friends. These friends are the ones you talk to frequently and even in some rare cases you don't talk to them so frequently but when you do, you are reminded of all the things that brought you two together as friends in the first place. I said previously I use the word friend so loosely because these are the types of people who, no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter how bad you slip up, no matter how bad they slip up, your friendship does NOT change. By some chance it does change, it changes for the better and brings you two closer together. These are the people you love as family, whose kids you would spank if they weren't around lol, whose parents are like a second set of parents to you, whose belongings are your belongings, most importantly these people really hold you down. True friends are the people you truly can't not live without and truly have made a significant impact on your life and will continue the trend until death do you part.

It's crazy for me because marriage is not something that I think about on the regular but when I think of who my true friends are I think about if I were to wed, who would be my groomsmen and how many of them would I have. Or in some instances I think if I only could have X amount of groomsmen who would get selected. Each day it gets tougher, which makes me thankful that I won't be getting married anytime soon lol. I say true friends are truly your friends because you speak to them on the regular, but that's only one side of it. I was talking to one of my best friends just two weeks ago about one of my best friends from my childhood, that I lost touch with once I got to college. A few days later I got an email from that friend who I hadn't seen or heard from in like 4-5  years...crazy right? You may think well, the one friend told him to hit you up...That's not it either, because they aren't friends. It was such a coincidence that it added to my inspiration for this blog entry. I also have true friends who unfortunately for them I have to break it off with because of some circumstantial bullshit that I try to look past and work through, but I'm getting no cooperation on the other end. Normally I wouldn't stress it but this circumstantial bullshit is effecting my financial situation in a negative way. I can't remain friends with somebody who knows that their negligence in a joint venture has caused negative effect on me financially and could care less. That's not what true friends do.

People are in your life for reasons, people are in your life for seasons. I was always taught that you have to know people for four seasons before you can fully say you know that person because quite frankly, people act differently, during different times of the month or year. I chose to write this blog about friends because I think a lot of times people misunderstand what the meaning of a friend should be. Each person's idea won't be the same but they should at least share some of the same principles listed throughout the blog. Hopefully this blog has enlightened some and entertained all. What I'd like to say in closing is just because a person is classified as one of the three types of friends doesn't mean they can not progress or in some cases regress into one of the other friend types. Seasonal friends can grow into true friends, mutual friends can as well. What has happened to me most recently is one my true friends has slipped into a seasonal friend and is making no effort to do his part in conjunction with my efforts, to correct a terrible financial situation for the both of us, which is why I now fully understand the motivation for Whodini's "Friends."

How many of us truly have them?