Friendship: A Taxonomy

The ones I see in real life, the ones I only text, the ones I wish could have been at my wedding

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

One of my hobbies is thinking about friendship. I marvel at how complex they can be, how many gradations of relationships can exist that can still dwell comfortably in a general category of “friend”. To me, romantic relationships are simpler: You’re either in it or you’re not. Friendship feels infinitely nuanced and more undefinable.

Technology has complicated this even further. It used to be that you had a friend, full-stop. You talked to them on the phone and saw them in person. I suppose there were the occasional penpals, and the summer camp friends who you reunited with for six weeks a year, but that was it. Now I have:

• Friends I see frequently, in real life
• Friends I don’t see that often but I text frequently
• Friends I talk to on the phone
• Friends I “see”, via Zoom or FaceTime
• Friends I email but rarely text or call
• Friends I communicate with via social media, by way of comments and replies on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter; and the smaller subset, friends I communicate with privately through Facebook Messenger or Twitter direct messages