I can't speak on behalf of
-valuers everywhere, but I'll describe my own views of friendship. I value and use tons of
.
My best friend and I met when very young. She's another IEI. We had lots of crazy adventures,
everything was very intense. She's like a sister to me, we've been friends "forever" and will remain so.
I have a lot of long-term friends. I don't expect or demand long-term from people, but it often goes that way. I'd say this is because we initially made very deep connections that
stand the test of time, survive external life changes.
My friendship history is punctuated by moments when time seems to stop. The friend and I both seem to know how the other person is perceiving reality.
We are conscious of each other, of the moment, of affection and understanding. We are grateful to see and be seen, to be accepted and loved for who we really are.
Just that feeling of being "home" in the other's presence.
So do
and
have some huge impact on how one views, cultivates, and maintains friendships? I would only say that even if I seem changeable on the surface, my love and loyalty for my "real" friends is fixed. They can count on me.
Same with less close, less "important" friends, really. They can expect me to be consistently inconsistent, or inconsistently consistent, whatever. Whatever we shared, I can find it again at any given moment.
If you and I were friends 15 years ago, chances are if we meet again I will find that exact same connection with you. I'm good at that, even if you aren't--let's say I grasped something about you, something essential, and formed an inner image of that essence, and I reflected it to you in the past, and that felt like friendship. From then on, your image lives in me, and when we meet again, I will easily reflect that same (constant yet evolving) image to you.
Lastly, the word "stimulation" keeps coming up, and that just doesn't find a place in me. I do like it when a friend is intellectually stimulating, for example, but it's not the end-all be-all. And I don't NEED others to emotionally stimulate me, as I have plenty of emotion all on my own. Stimulating adventures are cool, fun, but again, not the ultimate point of friendship for me. Understanding, connection, not stimulation.