I have a lot of friends. But I try to keep the number of close friends down to a very small group.

So what does close friendship mean to me?

1) I am always glad to hear of the success of my close friends. I take personal pride (for no rational reason) when my friends are doing well. The better and more successful they are, the happier I am about it. Their victory is my victory. Their good fortune is mine.

2) I try to be very loyal to my close friends. I keep their confidence. I stand up for them. I don't tolerate criticism about them behind their backs. I am on their side. I'm not neutral. I'm not unbiased. I am not objective. I make no bones about it - I am a partisan for my close friends. A zealot. Don't mess with them.

3) I don't judge them. I want to have close friends who feel they can truly be themselves around me. I do not look at differences in lifestyles or life choices as being opportunities to judge them and find them wanting. I assume my close friends are as intelligent as I am and have made their life choices based on what works best for them. I respect them for who they are.

4) I don't keep track of favors. I recognize my own strengths and weaknesses. I've been materially successful in life so I like to do things for my friends but I try to be empathic enough about it to know when it might make them uncomfortable (I sometimes fail at that).  I feel confident that my close friends feel the same about me.  I'm not looking for balance, if I can help, I will. Period. I don't do things looking for something in return.

5) I keep the number of close friends down to a minimum.  I have a lot of friends. I could even break it down to 4 levels: Acquaintences, Friends, Good friends, and close friends.  It would require a hall to have all our friends together in one place. I could throw a decent sized party at our house for good friends. But I could fit all my close friends into our living room. It matters to me that they know how much I value their friendship and that it's not some nebulous large group. It can't be shallow.

Someone might ask, what's the difference between good friends and close friends? It's a matter of degree. But it's not linear. That is, there's a significant difference between good friends and close friends in terms of how much the 5 things I listed above apply.  With good friends (or friends or acquaintences) I will tend to provide as much if not more than I receive of the 5 things I listed. But usually a good friend isn't a close friend either due to geography/scheduling or because they lack one of the 5 qualities.

It's not really that hard to seperate out good friends from close friends. Think of the friends you have. Now think of how many of them exhibit the 5 things I just listed.

Seriously. How many of the friends you have are happy for you when something goes well as opposed to being not so discretely jealous? How many of them make you feel like you're being judged? How many of them are truly loyal? Do they tell people things you told them in confidence? Or maybe you had too much to drink and your loose lips said things that you wouldn't normally say. Which friends of yours would keep those things in confidence? Which friends do you feel would protect you but in a non-paternalistic way but instead as a true ally?

Sometimes there are good friends who would be close friends but simply can't be due to geography, schedules, etc.

But just as often good friends aren't close friends because they don't have all of the 5 qualities. They're still good friends. People you'd like to get together with and hang out because you like their personalities. But maybe they once told your "group of friends" some personal issue that you had intended to be private.

Or maybe when you bought that new car you could tell they weren't happy for you (in my case, that's actually a big issue -- consider this -- MOST people talk about their jobs or even brag a little bit about what they've done lately. I have to be very careful about that, I've come to realize that even with close friends I recognize there's a threshold. Are they happy if you make $100k per year while they make $80k? How about $500k? How about $1M? What about $3M? Where do you draw the line?). As some know from my blogs, I recently bought a cottage on the lake. Career-learned empathy makes it pretty easy to tell which good friends are happy about it and which ones are secretly thinking "Must be nice..." (the words of death).

Or maybe they not so subtlely look down at your wife because she's (gasp) a home maker. That because she gets fulfillment raising our 3 children and taking care of our lives that she's somehow not..quite..as..good as the woman who works in an accounting office or whatever.

Or maybe you found out that they've been criticizing you to other people.

That doesn't make them not good friends but it definitely keeps them from becoming close friends. And hell, I'm guilty too. I have good friends who have faults that I've discussed with my close friends. "Yea, and then his kid took a marker and scribbled on our freshly painted wall and he didn't even punish the kid other than saying 'no no, don't do that..'" Not every good friend is a candidate for being a close friend, there's a lot of other intangible attributes involved too.

So to whoever is reading this, I hope you have lots of friends, many good friends, but only a few close friends.