For a bunch of years, you\u2019re in a certain life your parents chose for you, and so are other people, and none of you have that much on your plates, so friendships inevitably form. Then in college<\/a>, you\u2019re in the perfect friend-making environment, one that hits all three ingredients sociologists consider necessary<\/a> for close friendships to develop: \u201cproximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other.\u201d More friendships happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe they\u2019re the right friends, maybe they\u2019re not really. But you don\u2019t put that much thought into any of it \u2014 you\u2019re still more of a passive observer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But once student life ends, the people in your life start to shake themselves into more distinct tiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the top of your life mountain, in the green zone, you have your Tier 1 friends\u2014the people who feel like brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are the people closest to you, the ones you call first when something important happens, the ones you love even when they suck, who make speeches at your wedding, whose best and worst sides you know through and through, and whose relationship with you is eternal; even if you go months or years without hanging out, nothing has changed when you find yourself together again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, depending on how things went down in your youth, Tier 1 can also contain your worst enemies, the people who can ruin your day with one subtle jab that only they<\/em> could word so brilliantly hurtfully, the people you feel a burning resentment for, or jealousy of, or competition with. Tier 1 is high stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Below, in the yellow zone, are your Tier 2 friends: your Pretty Good friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pretty Good friends are a much calmer situation than your brothers and sisters on Tier 1. You might be invited to their wedding, but you won\u2019t have any responsibilities once you\u2019re there. If you live in the same city, you might see them every month or two for dinner and have a great time when you do, but if one of you moves, you might not speak for the next year or two. And if something huge happens in their life, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll hear it first from someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toward the bottom of the mountain in the orange zone, you have your Tier 3 friends: your Not Really friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might grab a one-on-one drink with one of them when you move to their city, but then it surprises neither of you when five years pass and drink #2 is still yet to happen. Your relationship tends to exist mostly as part of a bigger group or through the occasional Facebook Like, and it doesn\u2019t even really stress you out when you hear that one of them made $5 million last year. You may also try to sleep with one of these people at any given time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lowest part of Tier 3 begins to blend indistinguishably into your large group of acquaintances (the pink zone): those people you\u2019d stop and talk to if you saw them on the street or would maybe email for professional purposes but whom you\u2019d never hang out with one-on-one. When you hear that something bad happens to one of these people, you might be sad but not too affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, acquaintances gradually blend into the endless world of strangers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And depending on who you are and how things shook out in those first 25 years, the way your particular mountain looks will vary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, there\u2019s Walled-Off Wally:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Phony Phoebe, who tries to be everyone\u2019s best friend and ends up with a lot of people mad at her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even Unabomber Ulysses has a mountain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever your particular mountain looks like, eventually the blur of your youth is behind you, the dust has settled, and there you are living your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sure, you\u2019ll make new friends in the future\u2014at work, through your spouse, through your kids\u2014but you won\u2019t get to that Tier 1 brothers <\/em>level, or even to Tier 2, with very many of them because people who meet as adults don\u2019t tend to get through the 100+ long, lazy hangouts needed to reach a bond of that strength. As time goes on, you start to realize that the 20-year frenzy of not-especially-thought-through haphazard friend-making you just did was the critical process of you making most of your lifelong friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And since you matched up with most of them A) by circumstance, and B) before you really knew yourself yet, the result is that your Tier 1 and Tier 2 friends\u2014those closest to you\u2014fall in a very scattered way on what I\u2019ll call the Does This Friendship Make Sense?<\/em> Graph:<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, who are all those close friends in the three non-ideal quadrants?<\/p>\n\n\n\n As time goes on, most of us tend to have fewer friends in Quadrants 2 through 4 because A) people mature, and B) people have more self-respect and higher standards for what they\u2019ll deal with as they get older. But the fact is, friendships made in the formative years often stick, whether they\u2019re ideal or not, leaving most of us with a portion of our Tier 1 and Tier 2 friendships that just don\u2019t make that much sense. We\u2019ll get to the great, Quadrant 1 friendships later in the post, but in order to treat those relationships properly, we need to take a thorough look at the odd ones first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are 10 common ones:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll be having a good day. You\u2019ll be having a bad day. You\u2019ll be happy at work. You\u2019ll quit your job. You\u2019ll fall in love. You\u2019ll catch your new love cheating on you and murder them both in an act of incredible passion. And it doesn\u2019t matter, because none of it will be discussed with The Non-Question-Asking Friend, who never, ever, ever asks you anything about your life. This friend can be explained in one of three ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Giving you the benefit of the doubt here, we\u2019re left with two possibilities. Possibility #1 isn\u2019t fun at all and this person should not be allowed space on Tier 1. The green part of the mountain is sacred territory, and super self-absorbed people shouldn\u2019t be permitted to set foot up there. Put him on Tier 2 and just be happy you\u2019re not dating him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Possibility #2 is a pretty dark situation for your friend, but it can actually be fun for you. I have a friend who I\u2019ve hung out with one-on-one about four times in the last year, and he has no idea Wait But Why exists. I\u2019ve known him for 14 years and I\u2019m not sure he knows if I have siblings or not. But I actually enjoy the shit out of this friend\u2014sure, there\u2019s a limit on how close we\u2019ll ever be, but without ever spending time talking about our lives, we actually end up in a lot of fun, interesting conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In almost every group of friends, there\u2019s one pair who can\u2019t ever be alone together. It\u2019s not that they dislike each other\u2014they might get along great\u2014it\u2019s just that they have no individual friendship with each other whatsoever. This leaves both of them petrified of the lumbering elephant that appears in the room anytime they\u2019re alone together. They\u2019re way too on top of shit to ever end up in the car alone together if a group is going somewhere in multiple cars, but there are smaller dangers afoot\u2014like being the first two to arrive at a restaurant or being in a group of three when the third member goes to the bathroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thing is, sometimes it\u2019s not even that these people couldn\u2019t <\/em>have an individual friendship\u2014it\u2019s just that they don\u2019t, <\/em>and neither one has the guts to try to make that leap when things have gone on for so long as is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a friend who\u2019s terrified of having an earnest interaction, and as such, your friendship with him is always in some kind of skit\u2014<\/em>you always have to be on <\/em>when you\u2019re interacting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes the skit is that you both burst out laughing at everything constantly. He can only exist with you in \u201cThis is so fucking hilarious, it\u2019s too much!\u201d mode, so you have <\/em>to be in some kind of joke-telling or sarcastic mode yourself at all times or he\u2019ll become socially horrified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another version of this is the \u201calways and only ironic\u201d friend, who you really <\/em>bum out if you ever break that social shell and say something earnest. This type of person hates <\/em>earnest people because someone being earnest dares <\/em>him to come out from under his ironic safety blanket and let the sun touch his face, and no fucking thanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A third example is the \u201cYou\u2019re great, I\u2019m great, ugh why is everyone else so terrible and not great like us\u201d friend. Of course, she doesn\u2019t really think you\u2019re perfectly great at all\u2014if she were with someone else, you\u2019d be one of the voodoo dolls on the table to be dissected and scoffed at. The key here is that the two of you must be on a team at all times while interacting<\/em>. The only comfortable mode for this person is bonding with you by building a little pedestal for you both to stand on while you criticize everyone else. You can either play along and everything will go smoothly, even though you\u2019ll both despise yourselves and each other the whole time, or you can commit the ultimate sin and have the integrity to disagree with the friend or defend a non-present party the friend criticizes. Doing this will shatter the fragile team vibe and make the friend recoil and say something quietly like, \u201cHm \u2026 yeah \u2026 I guess.\u201d The friend now respects you for the first time and will also criticize you extra hard next time she\u2019s playing her pedestal game with a different friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What these all have in common is the friend has tall walls up, at least toward you, and so she builds a little skit for you two to hang out in to make sure any authentic connection can be avoided. Sometimes that person only does this out of her own social anxiety and can become a great, authentic friend if you can just stomp through the ice. Other times, the person is just hopelessly scared and closed off and there\u2019s no hope and you have to get out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, I can\u2019t stand <\/em>these interactions and am in a full panic the entire time they\u2019re happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think of a friend you get together with from time to time, which usually happens after a long and lackluster email or text exchange during which you just can\u2019t <\/em>find a time that works for both of you \u2014 and you\u2019re never really happy when these plans are being made and not really psyched when you wake up and it\u2019s finally on your schedule for that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe you\u2019re aware that you don\u2019t want to be friends with that person, or maybe you\u2019re delusional about it \u2014 but what you\u2019re most likely not <\/em>aware of is that they probably don\u2019t want to see you either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are lopsided situations where one person is far more interested in hanging out than the other (we\u2019ll get to those later), but in the case we\u2019re talking about here, both parties often think <\/em>it\u2019s a lopsided situation without realizing that the other person actually feels the same way \u2014 that\u2019s<\/em> why it takes so long to schedule a time. When someone\u2019s excited about something, they figure out how to get it into their schedule; when they\u2019re not, they figure out ways to push it farther into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes you don\u2019t think hard enough about it to even realize you don\u2019t like being friends with the person, and other times you really like the idea or the aesthetic of being friends with that particular person \u2014 being friends with them is part of your Story. But even in cases where you\u2019re perfectly lucid about your feelings, since neither of you knows the other feels the same way and neither has the guts to just cut things off or move it down a tier, this friendship usually just continues along for eternity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somewhere in your life, you\u2019re probably part of a friendship that would be a marriage if only <\/em>the other person weren\u2019t very, very, extremely not interested in that happening. 1 for 2 on yes votes \u2014 just one vote away \u2014 so close.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You might be on either side of this \u2014 and either way, it\u2019s one of the least healthy parts of your life. Fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re on the if only <\/em>side of things, probably the right move is to get your fucking shit together? Ya know? This friendship is one long, continuous rejection of you as a human being, and you\u2019re just wallowing there in your yearning like a sobbing little seal. Plus, duh, if you gather your self-respect and move on with your life, it\u2019ll raise their perception of your value and they might actually become interested in you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re on the Oh yeah,<\/em> definitely not<\/em> side of the situation, here\u2019s what\u2019s happening: There\u2019s this suffering human in the world, and you know they\u2019re suffering, and you fucking love it<\/em>, because it gives your little ego a succulent sponge bath every time you hang out with them. You enjoy it so much you probably even lead them on intentionally, don\u2019t you \u2014 you make sure to keep just <\/em>enough ambiguity in the situation that their bleeding heart continues to lather your ego from head to toe at your whim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both of you \u2014 go do something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Historical Friend is someone you became friends with in the first place because you met when you were little and stayed friends through the years, even though you\u2019re a very weird match. Most old friends fall somewhat into this category, but a true Historical Friend is someone you absolutely <\/em>would not be friends with if you met them today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re not especially pleased with who they are, and they feel the same way about you. You\u2019re not each other\u2019s type one bit. Unfortunately, you\u2019re also extremely close friends from when you were four, and you\u2019re both just a part of each other\u2019s situation forever, sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout childhood and much of young adulthood, most people your age are in the same life stage as you are. But when it comes to advancing into full adulthood, people do so at widely varying paces, which leads to certain friends suddenly having totally different existences from one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone within three years of 30 has a bunch of these going on. It\u2019s just a weird time for everyone. Some people have become Future 52-year-olds, while others are super into being Previous 21-year-olds. At some point, things will start to meld together again, but being 30-ish is the friendship equivalent of a kid going through an awkward pubescent stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are darker, more permanent Non-Parallel Life Path situations. Like when Person A starts to become a person who rejects material wealth, partially because she genuinely feels that pursuing an artistic path matters more and partially because she needs a defense mechanism against feeling envious of richer people, and Person B\u2019s path makes her scoff at people who pursue creative paths, partially because she genuinely thinks expressing yourself is an inherently narcissistic venture and partially because she needs a defense mechanism against feeling regretful that she never pursued her creative dreams \u2014 these two will have problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They may still like each other, but they can\u2019t <\/em>be as close as they used to be \u2014 each of their lives is a bit of a middle finger at the other\u2019s choices, and that\u2019s jst awkward for everyone. It\u2019s not always that bad \u2014 but to survive an Off-Line Life Situation, friends need to be really different people who don\u2019t at all want the same things out of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Frenemy roots very hard against you. And I\u2019m not talking about the friends that will feel a little twinge of pleasure when they hear your big break didn\u2019t pan out after all or that your relationship is in bad shape. I\u2019m not even talking about someone who secretly roots against you when they\u2019re not doing so well at some area of life and it hurts them to see you do better. Those are bad emotions, but they can exist in people who are still good friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m talking about a real Frenemy \u2014 someone who really wants <\/em>bad things for you. Because you\u2019re you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You and the Frenemy usually go way back, have a very deep friendship, and the trouble probably started a long time ago. There\u2019s a lot of complex psychology going on in these situations that I don\u2019t fully understand, but my hunch is that a Frenemy\u2019s resentment is rooted in his own pain, or his own shortcomings, or his own regret \u2014 and for some reason, your existence stings them in these places hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A little less dark but no less harmful is a bully situation where a friend sees some weakness or vulnerability in you and she enjoys prodding you there either for sadistic reasons or to prop herself up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Frenemy knows how to hurt you better than anyone because you\u2019re deeply similar in some way and she knows how you\u2019re wired. She\u2019ll do whatever she can to bring you down any chance she gets, often in such a subtle way it\u2019s hard to see that it\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever the reason, if you have a Frenemy in your life, kick her toxic ass off your mountain, or at least <\/em>kick her down <\/em>the mountain \u2014 just get her off of Tier 1. A Frenemy has about a 10th of the power to hurt you from Tier 2 as she does from Tier 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This person isn\u2019t a celebrity to anyone other than you, you creep. You know exactly who I\u2019m talking about \u2014 there are a small handful of people whose Facebook page you\u2019re uncomfortably well-acquainted with, and those people have no <\/em>idea that this is happening. On the plus side, there are people out there you haven\u2019t spoken to in seven years who know all about the new thing you\u2019re trying with your hair, since it goes both ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a rare Tier 3 friend, or even an acquaintance, who qualifies as an odd friendship because you found a way to make it unhealthy even though you\u2019re not actually friends. Well done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a lot of ways a friendship can be lopsided: Someone can be higher on their friend\u2019s mountain than vice versa. Someone can want to spend more time with a friend than vice versa. One member can consistently do 90% of the listening and only 10% of the talking, and in situations where most of the talking is about life problems, what\u2019s happening is a one-sided therapy situation, with a badly off-balance give-and-take ratio, and that\u2019s not much of a friendship\u2014it\u2019s someone using someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then there\u2019s the lopsided power friendship. Of course, this is a hideous quality in many not-great couples, but it\u2019s also a prominent feature of plenty of friendships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A near 50\/50 friendship is ideal, but anything out to 65\/35 is fine and can often be attributed to two different styles of personality. It\u2019s when the number gap gets even wider that something less healthy is going on\u2014something that doesn\u2019t reflect very well on either party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some obvious ways to assess the nature of a friendship\u2019s power dynamic: Does one person cut in and interrupt the other person while they\u2019re talking far more than the other way around? Is one person\u2019s opinion or preference just kind of understood to carry more weight than the other\u2019s? Is one person allowed to be more of a dick to the other than vice versa?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another interesting litmus test is what I call the \u201cmood determiner test.\u201d This comes into play when two friends get together but they\u2019re in very different moods \u2014 the idea is, whose mood \u201cwins\u201d and determines the mood of the hangout. If Person A is in a bad mood, Person B is in a good mood, and Person B reacts by being timid and respectful of Person A\u2019s mood, leaving the vibe down there until Person A snaps out of it on her own \u2014 but when the moods are reversed, Person B quickly disregards her own bad mood and acts more cheerful to match Person A\u2019s happy mood \u2014 and this is how it always <\/em>goes \u2014 then Person A is in a serious power position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Does This Friendship Make Sense graph above, the friendships we just discussed are all in Quadrants 2, 3, or 4 \u2014 i.e., they\u2019re all a bit unenjoyable, unhealthy, or both. That\u2019s why this has been depressing. On the bright side, there\u2019s also Quadrant 1\u2014all the friendships that do <\/em>make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No friendship is perfect, but those in Quadrant 1 are doing what friendships are supposed to do: They\u2019re making the lives of both parties better<\/em>. And when a friendship is both in Quadrant 1 of the graph and <\/em>on Tier 1 of your mountain, that friendship is a rock in your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Investing serious time and energy into those is a no-brainer long-term life strategy. But in the case of most people over 25\u2014at least in New York\u2014 I think A) not enough time is carved out as dedicated friend time, and B) the time that is carved out is spread too thin, and too evenly, among the Tier 1 and Tier 2 friendships in all four quadrants. I\u2019m definitely guilty of this myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something I call the Perpetual Catch-Up Trap. When you haven\u2019t seen a good friend in a long time, the first order of business is a big catch-up \u2014 you want to know what\u2019s going on in their career, with their girlfriend, with their family, etc., and they want to catch up on your life. In theory, once this happens, you can go back to just hanging out, shooting the shit, and actually being in<\/em> the friendship. The problem is, when you don\u2019t make enough time for good friends, seeing them only for a meal and not that often \u2014 you end up spending each get-together catching up, and you never actually get to just enjoy the friendship or get far past the surface. That\u2019s the Perpetual Catch-Up Trap, and I find myself falling into it with way too many of the rocks in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, think about your friendships, figure out which ones aren\u2019t in Quadrant 1, and demote them down the mountain. I\u2019m not suggesting you stop being friends with those people\u2014you still love them and feel loyal to them, and old friends are critical to hold onto\u2014but if the friendships aren\u2019t that healthy or enjoyable, they don\u2019t really deserve to be in your Tier 1, and you probably shouldn\u2019t be in theirs. Most importantly, doing this clears up time to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, dedicate even more time to the Quadrant 1, Tier 1 rocks in your life. If you\u2019re in your mid-20s or older, your current rocks are probably the only ones you\u2019ll ever have. Your rock friendships don\u2019t warrant two times the time you give to your other friends\u2014they warrant five or 10 times!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your rocks deserve serious, dedicated time so you can stay close<\/em>. So go make plans with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not all friendships are meant to last forever. When you\u2019re a kid, or in high school or college, you usually don\u2019t have to work too<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/650740729_1403027535191567_2239898008413711810_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6557,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6555\/revisions\/6557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It looks something like this mountain:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Infographic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_7e7975.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_58a04a.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_5276fe.jpg\")
![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_143827.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThen one day, usually around your mid or late 20s, it hits you: It\u2019s not that easy to make friends anymore.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Graph\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_30caf2.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n1. The non-question-asking friend<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_6edd15.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n
2. The friend in the group you can\u2019t be alone with under any circumstances<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_f216e5.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n3. The non-character-breaking friend you have to be \u201con\u201d with<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_9664b6.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n4. The double-obligated friendship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_1c13d7.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n5. The half-marriage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_d108b7.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n6. The historical friend<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Stick](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_7e3c3d.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n7. The non-parallel life paths friendship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_a63e65.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n8. The frenemy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_2992a5.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n9. The Facebook celebrity friend<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Comic](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_5147e0.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n10. The lopsided friendship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/origin_a41c6d.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBut hey, not all friendships are grim.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Rock friendships don\u2019t just make us happy \u2014 they\u2019re the thing (along with rock family and romantic relationships) that makes us happy.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There are two orders of business right now:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n