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Comment by lazybreather | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't relate to any one of those fully. Boy is there a difference in culture! For us friends are not for helping when needed, networking, getting jobs for us or what not. In most cases of 'friends', its a non-transactional relationship. You just like talking to them, spending time with them. Yes, there are other 'acquaintances' for other things. Not sure if we need to make it so complicated.

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Isn’t that Fun Friends and Mutual Interest Friends?

I'm probably from a similar culture and friendship here means a very close personal relationship similar to, or in some cases even stronger than, familial relationships. I feel that the original post's concept of friendship is very shallow compared to that. Friendship in my culture transcends such categorization.

> my culture

You should both tell us what it is so that others may give a different opinion

Not really. I kinda feel like the categorization contains group of people you are social with, but does not have actual category for a "real friend". These are all groups of acquittances, people you are polite to who are polite to you back. Mutual interest friends sounds to be activity related acquittances. Once you are not in activity, neither of us cares. Fun friend is person you to go be drunk with or on trip with.

But person I actually trust and can talk about more private issues openly, someone that may be fun or not but I feel deeper non-romantic connection to seems to be missing.

Isn't that backstage intimate? The article says that role is typically filled by a partner, but it doesn't Have to be.

By the descript, backstage intimate is too much. I am not talking about people who are almost my romantic partners.

There obviously are levels to being intimate. You can be more intimate with someone than with someone else. It also varies with time.

A better way to look at those categories is that they are dominant archetypes (like eigenvectors) that are variably fractionally fulfilled by each relationship. The archetypes are "real" in the sense that they accurately describe/compress reality, much like many datasets can be quite accurately compressed down to some major eigenvectors.

The description still does not really fit what I have in mind.

And backstage intimate is horrible term too. My friends are not intimate nor backstage. Intimate is something else entirely, it does not fit the relationship at all. I talk more openly with them, but I am not intimate in emotional sense with them at all.

The backstage part have similar issues. In what sense are they backstage?

Yes, I started to actively search for that category: People you REALLY like to spend time with, people you are happy when they write you and people that are happy when they write you: Deep connection friends, soulmate(s) (friends), "chosen family", maybe even those that would donate one of their kidneys for you!

This subjective drivel must have been written by someone who does not have those kinds of friends and does not understand them. I would categorise friends and acquaintances completely differently.

> You just like talking to them, spending time with them.

Maybe the author considers that transactional...

aren't those "backstage intimate"?

The author does not use a single word of emotion to describe what he calls "backstage intimates", so I reject this label for the kind of friendships I talk about. I would primarily describe them based on emotions! Intimacy, platonic love, deep appreciation, being confidents!

The greek storge variant of love comes closest to what I am talking about. I have three friends like that, I trust them on a deep level, we often talk about our deepest feelings, in complex ways they love me and I love them. I even share physical closeness with them, when we meet we are as close as a long distance couple that just met again in real life. With two of them I occasionally have sex when we see each other, opposed to my FWB I do not have a connection to beyond sex. They are beacons of light in my dark life and among the most valuable things I have.

> platonic love

> With two of them I occasionally have sex

these are two conflicting descriptions.

The semantics aren't too important to me, but my gut says no: What else than an extension of platonic love is it, if you can combine and the trust and affection it creates with mutual physical attraction that culminates in sexual relations?

This was a common criticism in my circles (friends, work colleagues, acquaintances in tech meetups) in the mid-to-late 00s with Facebook: They called all contacts "friends" and in German that really sounded off to many of us. You wouldn't be "friends" with your relatives or boss or colleague at work, for example, those are entirely different kind of relationships. We assumed that this was a badly translated Americanism.

Google Plus and it's "circles" of contacts was a better design in that regard.

For me a real friend is somebody you can do important things together with, where trust is needed. I've never had a huge need for idle conversation. Life is in action. But people have unnecessarily limited themselves to think they are only allowed to do important things within their day job.

I think most real friendships among adults last when people also do business, projects and networking together. Just sitting and reminiscing on old memories, gossiping, or commenting on unimportant things gets old quick.

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