RULES OF FRIENDSHIP

In addition to inquiring about actual activities, we asked some specific questions about what people would or would not do with friends, both in general and in certain hypothetical situations. We wanted our survey to give us an idea of some of the rules that governs, or perhaps define, behavior between friends.

As a both theory and the data suggest, one rule of friendship is that friends confide in each other, sharing intimate aspect of their personal lives and feelings. Perhaps most significantly, bad as well as good news can be shared. Even though in our society, one’s success is often equated with success at work, 89 percent of our sample said they would tell a close friend about a failure at work.

Furthermore, over two thirds (68 percent) said that if they had terminal illness, they would tell a friend. Eighty seven percent of the those respondents say they talk with friends about sexual activities (60 percent discussing activities in general, 27 percent in detail).

Our respondents clearly indicated that in some situations, the rules of friendship involve the right to ask for help (presumably the obligation to help a friend is also implicitly acknowledge). When asked who they would turn to first in a crisis, over half said they would turn to friends before family. This was true for all sub groups, and higher proportion of men than women said they go it alone.

Yet friendship has limits. Only 10 percent of the sample said they thought a friend should help another commit suicide if the friend wanted to but was too feeble to do it alone (41 percent said no and 36 percent were opposed to suicide).

In short there are no striking contradiction between people’s descriptions of actual friendships, their beliefs about friendship in general, and their perception of the rules that apply to those friendships. This consistency and the enthusiastic description of friends and friendship we received, suggest that our readers are satisfied with their friendships, even though 67 percent of the respondents also acknowledge feeling lonely sometimes or often.