"What do you look for in a friend?" is a question I routinely ask new friends of mine as I get to know them. The answer's always been the same: "I just want someone honest, funny, trustworthy" and so one- the regular laundry list of positive traits. I've begun to believe that this isn't entirely true. People are friends with others that they don't trust at all sometimes. They're also friends with boring people and people who have nothing to give at all. And sometimes people who have everything to give simply do not work out. I believe a friendship is a partnership, and that there is an interchange involved in most friendships.

Ten Different Types of Friendship

1. Friends of mutual need: Some friends serve specific metaphysical needs. Some Many people have a gap in their life in which they need to either give or take to fulfill something personal. By giving, they justify a trait they value in themselves and would like to ascribe to. By taking, they are able to fill a need. Some friends are able to both give and take with one another, which creates a lasting friendship for as long as relevant needs arise. When nothing is being personally fulfilled in the friendship, it can begin to drift away.

2. Friends of leisure: These friends have agreed to join in and keep one another company when they're having fun. They enjoy their external behaviors and/or appreciate some talent of their (poker skills, sense of humor, sexual entertainment, taste in movies, etc.) These friendships do not usually include deep attachment.

3. Functional friendships: These friends are convenient to have. They could be a roommate who you get along with but would never know outside of the situation, a friend who can help during an event, or someone with whom you trade computer repairs for an oil change. Whatever the scenario, you share a mutual and shared beneficial agreement between yourselves.

4. Friends of past experiences: Sometimes a friendship is formed primarily because both friends have "been through so much together". This friend knows a great deal about their live, they have many shared experiences, or they have shared so many emotional gifts together that they've either become so comfortable or so "stuck" with each other that causing the friendship to end would involve someone being hurt. These friendships form artificially fast on sites like LiveJournal and MySpace, where leaving a friend is a formal step and impossible to do without an announcement.

5. Romantic friendship: In this situation, one or both friends sees the other as a potential romantic partner. This can also apply to people who would never actually get into a relationship but nonetheless harbor fantasies about. These friendships can sometimes be very real and long lasting. Since these people want to grow closer, they open up and become as close a friend as possible to keep the door opening more and more. They are usually on their way to either ending or evolving, but they can sometimes translate to perpetual flirtation.

6. One-sided friendships: One friend is being used by the other. This can be for money, services, a career advantage, sex, information, a tactical social stance, living space, etc. I would include in this situations where the need of the other individual (such as loneliness) is deliberately being manipulated. These relationships are generally unhealthy unless the one being taken advantage of is perpetually oblivious.

7. Professional Friendship: This is a friendship formed between someone in a position of authority (such as a teacher, psychologist, or boss) and a student, client or subordinate employee. These are friendships where a power relationship and the threat of "unprofessional behavior" form a permanent and measured distance between both individuals. These bonds can be very intense and important to both parties, but they are necessarily limited by the boundaries they were created in.

8. Arbitrary friendship: These are friendships that are formed entirely impersonally simply by one aspect of that person's character. Examples include women sticking together, two individuals who both came overseas from Madagascar to the USA and befriend one another, prisoners showing solidarity with fellow prisoners, or the Christian concept of fellowship.

9. Relationship friendship: As opposed to relationships where women are subordinate to men or a relationship of sheer physical or monetary attraction, this is a relationship where friendship has been formed. This connection goes beyond love and includes a sharing of values, senses of humor, appreciated pastimes, and interests. The physical familiarity of these friendships and the pretense of love can make this a friendship in which much can be assumed and there are few boundaries.

10. Intellectual friendship: This is a friendship where there is little by way of shared values or interests, but both parties find the other philosophically or intellectually interesting. Such is the relationship shown in the movie "Silence of the Lambs" between Hannibal and Clarice, but it's also shared by any pair of people who are mutually fascinated by the other's knowledge and/or background.

It's a nice idea to think that all friends can be perpetually kept, but realistically friends will naturally move in and out of one's life. People tend to ambiguously feel their way through these relationships unless they're particularly unhealthy. What I find in this, however, is that I'm not making space for those in my life who are most important.