preview

Friendship, Love, And Love

Satisfactory Essays

Friendship and romantic love are two of the most fundamental relationships that human beings engage in. As social animals, most humans are naturally drawn to form bonds of affection with other people. Both friendship and love, however, are difficult to fully define and conceptualize. The fundamental meaning of each has changed throughout the course of human history and appears in different forms among different cultures. Modern interpretations of friendship and love will guide this explication, as we seek to define both terms, the theories behind friendship and love, the attributes of friendship and love, and how both change over time.
Miller (2012) stated that proximity plays an important role in that our friendships and romances tend to grow from interactions with those near us. According to Miller (2012), friendships serve as a “source of pleasure and support” (p.213). People engage in friendship for three basic reasons: for fun, for convenience, and for well-being. It is the last type of friendship that is the deepest and most meaningful. Affection, communion, and companionship are benchmarks for defining friendship, which is considered a “voluntary, personal relationship, typically providing intimacy and assistance, in which two parties like one another and seek each other’s company” (Miller, 2012, p. 213). However, friendship lacks the exclusivity or sexual desires needed and found in romantic relationships (Miller, 2012). Thus, we can clearly define friendship as a

Get Access