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[INTP] what is friendship?

think2much

New member
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
239
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intp
-someone you talk to
-someone you hang out with
-who's there for you

I try to do all these things and I cannot seem to make any friends. The more I try to be social the more I dislike people. Everyone is so fake these days and only seem to care about themselves. In my life I never had a friend and I feel very lonely. There isn't anything interesting to talk about.
 

Rasofy

royal member
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Mar 7, 2011
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5w6
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sp/sx
friendship.jpg
 

Lexicon

Temporal Mechanic
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JINX
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5w6
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sp/sx
The answer is cats.
 

Kriash

Resident Apple Hoarder
Joined
Mar 18, 2010
Messages
124
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INFP
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2w3
I think it's about finding someone you don't feel you have to try to be anything other than yourself around.
Friendship is quite chaotic and illogical. I think part of this is because people are weird (all of them, not a normal person in the world)
Perhaps whatever you are doing, you need to not do. If you are actively searching for people to be friends with, maybe you're coming off as needy?
I hope that you find a friend or two soon. Can be hard to be alone.
 

think2much

New member
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
239
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intp
I think it's about finding someone you don't feel you have to try to be anything other than yourself around.
Friendship is quite chaotic and illogical. I think part of this is because people are weird (all of them, not a normal person in the world)
Perhaps whatever you are doing, you need to not do. If you are actively searching for people to be friends with, maybe you're coming off as needy?
I hope that you find a friend or two soon. Can be hard to be alone.

every person I hung out with felt comfortable around me. Most people see me as acquaintances rather than friends. Trying to figure out why I can't have a relationship with someone.
 

gromit

likes this
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Mar 3, 2010
Messages
6,508
-someone you talk to
-someone you hang out with
-who's there for you

I try to do all these things and I cannot seem to make any friends. The more I try to be social the more I dislike people. Everyone is so fake these days and only seem to care about themselves. In my life I never had a friend and I feel very lonely. There isn't anything interesting to talk about.

That is tough. People I'm friends with, yes we do all those things, but it started out because we both saw something we admired or valued in the other person or just 'clicked' in some way. Sense of humor or a common interest or clever conversation or something like that. You are initially drawn to one another and then put in effort to spend time together or look out for one another because the other person as an individual means something to you, and you mean something to her/him.

If you feel like everyone is interested only in themselves and that there's nothing worthwhile to discuss with people, then perhaps you are trying to make friends with people with whom you do not share a natural affinity. Or, it's possible that you are misinterpreting their signals (or they are misinterpreting your signals).
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
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The answer is cats.

Not really. Cats are selfish little bastards who just stink up your bathroom, use you for food, tear up the carpet, chew on the furniture, eat your roommates' pets (after endlessly tormenting them), and only come hang out when it's something they feel like doing regardless of how bad you need the attention.

They are just little narcissists.
 

SilkRoad

Lay the coin on my tongue
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That is tough. People I'm friends with, yes we do all those things, but it started out because we both saw something we admired or valued in the other person or just 'clicked' in some way. Sense of humor or a common interest or clever conversation or something like that. You are initially drawn to one another and then put in effort to spend time together or look out for one another because the other person as an individual means something to you, and you mean something to her/him.

If you feel like everyone is interested only in themselves and that there's nothing worthwhile to discuss with people, then perhaps you are trying to make friends with people with whom you do not share a natural affinity. Or, it's possible that you are misinterpreting their signals (or they are misinterpreting your signals).

Just wanted to second this! :)
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
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Being an INTP doesn't help. We don't take things at face value and probably scrunitize our relationships far more excruciatingly than some others; we don't overtly show emotion or connection to others unless we make an effort; we seem rather detached, which can turn others away a bit even when we're really investing from our end.

But I think the first part has a big say in this -- I think we demand a lot more of "real" relationships, where most people seem to be able to feel close to each other without having to jump through so many hoops and experience some crazy amount of intensity. Look at family relationships, for example; people often don't challenge those, but we kind of expect there to be more than biology driving them.
 
Joined
Jul 8, 2010
Messages
450
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ESFJ
And some of you had the nerve to bitch about my impersonation....as if it wasn't spot on.
 

ceecee

Coolatta® Enjoyer
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
15,908
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8w9
-someone you talk to
-someone you hang out with
-who's there for you

I try to do all these things and I cannot seem to make any friends. The more I try to be social the more I dislike people. Everyone is so fake these days and only seem to care about themselves. In my life I never had a friend and I feel very lonely. There isn't anything interesting to talk about.

yes everyone is SO fake, including the people seriously replying to all your threads that say the exact same thing. NO ONE wants to be friends with someone who has the ability to bring them down to a level just above depression. Get some help then see about making friends.
 

Pseudo

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Jul 2, 2012
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5w4
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so/sx
Being an INTP doesn't help. We don't take things at face value and probably scrunitize our relationships far more excruciatingly than some others; we don't overtly show emotion or connection to others unless we make an effort; we seem rather detached, which can turn others away a bit even when we're really investing from our end.

But I think the first part has a big say in this -- I think we demand a lot more of "real" relationships, where most people seem to be able to feel close to each other without having to jump through so many hoops and experience some crazy amount of intensity. Look at family relationships, for example; people often don't challenge those, but we kind of expect there to be more than biology driving them.


Agreed completely with this. Other people hang out with a person once and consider them to be a friend they can call up and hang out with. INTP's meet a person 10 times and still feel like it might be overbearing to call the person or approach them in public. I had much more success (though minimal) by imitating my ESFJ friend. She'll put herself out their and ask people to do things and if they say no she doesn't take it as a total rejection of her as a person. I'm still not comfortable with people or swimming in friends but I have made a few new connections just by constantly reminding myself that people are going to be mad at me for showing interest in them. If you think someone might be interested in something (an event, music, whatever) let them know about it, you'll build up a relationship on that and maybe they'll introduce you to other people who also are into that.

Try not to get down on yourself or humanity. That'll only make it harder.
 

SilkRoad

Lay the coin on my tongue
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yes everyone is SO fake, including the people seriously replying to all your threads that say the exact same thing. NO ONE wants to be friends with someone who has the ability to bring them down to a level just above depression. Get some help then see about making friends.

Yes, this too!
 

Mia.

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Jan 4, 2012
Messages
821
“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
― Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life for a Life

“This is how it works. I love the people in my life, and I do for my friends whatever they need me to do for them, again and again, as many times as is necessary. For example, in your case you always forgot who you are and how much you're loved. So what I do for you as your friend is remind you who you are and tell you how much I love you. And this isn't any kind of burden for me, because I love who you are very much. Every time I remind you, I get to remember with you, which is my pleasure.” ― James Lecesne

“A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.” ― Frank Crane

“Because the difference between a friend and a real friend is that you and the real friend come from the same territory, of the same place deep inside you, and that means you see the world in the same kind of way. You know each other even before you do.” ― Laura Pritchett, Sky Bridge: A Novel

“When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.” ― W. Somerset Maugham

“We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.” ― David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” ― Bernard meltzer

“Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?” ― Jane Austen

“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh.
"There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.” ― Khalil Gibran, The Collected Works (Everyman's Library

“the language of friendship is not words but meanings.” ― Henry David Thoreau

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series

“...I hadn't realized how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to.” ― Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep

“Sam and Patrick looked at me. And I looked at them. And I think they knew. Not anything specific really. They just knew. And I think that's all you can ever ask from a friend.” ― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself.” ― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.” ― Dean Koontz, Fear Nothing

“I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” ― Plutarch

“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.” ― Socrates

“Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.” ― William Shakespeare

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” ― C.S. Lewis

“The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.” ― Barbara Kingsolver

“In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.” ― John Churton Collins

“No friendship is an accident. ” ― O. Henry, Heart of the West

“Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.” ― Richard Bach

“A faithful friend is a strong defense;
And he that hath found him hath found a treasure.” ― Louisa May Alcott

“I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."
"To establish ties?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world....”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time, it can purify with your love, and falsity and need will fall away. It will bring you onto new ground where affection can grow again.” ― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsaid between two people.” ― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.”
― Jim Henson, Favorite Songs from Jim Henson's Muppets

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same. Elbert Hubbard

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity. Robert Hall

“Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.” ― Walter Dean Myers, Slam!

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down. Arnold H. Glasow

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” ― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. Marlene Dietrich

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. Marcel Proust

Life has no blessing like a prudent friend. Euripides

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. George Santayana

Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Amos Bronson Alcott

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. Toni Morrison

The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple? Eugene Kennedy

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” ― William Shakespeare

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.” ― Jess C. Scott, 1: The Intern

“I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.” ― Jon Katz

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” ― A.A. Milne

“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”
― Charles Lamb, The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb

“.. a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself..” ― Steve Lopez, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music

“I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching--they are your family.” ― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty

“Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.'
You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
 

disregard

mrs
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
7,826
MBTI Type
INFP
Friendship, to me, is a combination of support, laughs, gossip and shared interests.

Oh, and a reasonable degree of trust.
 

KDude

New member
Joined
Jan 26, 2010
Messages
8,243
Not really. Cats are selfish little bastards who just stink up your bathroom, use you for food, tear up the carpet, chew on the furniture, eat your roommates' pets (after endlessly tormenting them), and only come hang out when it's something they feel like doing regardless of how bad you need the attention.

They are just little narcissists.

I have a lot in common with cats. It works out.
 

1487610420

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 13, 2009
Messages
6,431
Not really. Cats are selfish little bastards who just stink up your bathroom, use you for food, tear up the carpet, chew on the furniture, eat your roommates' pets (after endlessly tormenting them), and only come hang out when it's something they feel like doing regardless of how bad you need the attention.

They are just little narcissists.

So, people who like cats are broken, codependent, needy masochists, right? :thinking:
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
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Okay, who googled the word "friend" and posted the results in this thread?

:doh:

So, people who like cats are broken, codependent, needy masochists, right? :thinking:

YES! NOW YOU"VE GOT IT!

I have a lot in common with cats. It works out.

My cat is a BAAAAAD kitty!!
 

SD45T-2

Senior Jr.
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Feb 18, 2012
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1w2
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Friendship is magic. Duh. :alttongue:
 
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