Figuring out friendship

I want to follow up on my previous blog post about being a single friend. Every so often as a writer you might write something that almost says everything you want it to say, but not quite. I probably didn't get to the heart of what I wanted to say because it would have been too long, so here's the second part I guess.I'm starting to understand how different people are in their approaches to friendship. Some see friendships as permanent fixtures in their lives that they can dip in and out of at their leisure. Some see them as temporary until they find their perfect romantic partner who will become their 'number one hang'. And then there are those of us who put their friendships on the same level as others might put family.In my experience, as the latter of the three, I probably put my friendships on such a high pedestal because of something lacking in the familial area. If like me, you didn't have the most conventional upbringing and some things were very inconsistent, the phrase 'you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family' probably means a lot to you. You didn't just choose friends who would be there on a Saturday night for a boogie and a laugh; you chose the friends that would be there on a Wednesday night when you were stressed out and needed a good moan. Or the friends that inspired you and had nothing but wisdom to share. Or the friends that paid for your dinner when you were flat broke. So basically, the friends that were also your absent parents when you needed them to be.Perhaps this seems like an exaggeration but it's true; at least it is for me, anyway. In my world I regard a good friend just as I would a sibling; they mean the world to me, I'd never trade them in, and I plan on knowing them for the rest of my life.I am not naive enough to believe that everyone views friendships this way, especially not those who already have very close family relationships and feel pretty much set in that area. I can appreciate that I might be their 'dip in and out friend', but that I also might just be their friend. It's a word with multiple meanings to everyone depending on what relationships with people you've had in the past, what friendship means to you in general, and whether it's something you don't even give a second thought to because it just is.I still stand by what I said in my previous post; friendship is important to me. However I've come to realise that even though others may not think the same as I do when it comes to friendships, that doesn't necessarily mean that they care any less. However it does mean that you won't always meet eye to eye in that friendship, and you might find yourself questioning it sometimes.For an over-thinker like me, these questions dip in and out of my radar, much like a fair-weather friend.

Image credit: friends by Lluisa Iborra from the Noun Project