one for you, two for me. friends, such a delicate balance. it's never a very technical thing but in the interest of science and the six hour workday, let's break it down a bit. what is a friendship in purely scientific terms? a friendship is an exchange. an exchange consists of giving and taking and two way roads. two people who engage in one sided giving/taking are only using each other. using each other is only okay if once in awhile, both parties get tooken.



a friendship is built upon exchange. when you first meet someone, you have to extend them something to show your interest in friendship. be it a cookie, an invitation or some intimate detail. conversation is not considered an olive branch, because it is conversation that helps to determine if you want to bother trying to be friends. from that first meet and greet step, people move into the state of exchange. the purest way to think of this is by using the analogy of emailing.



you email someone, it sits there waiting for an email back. your friend emails you back. now it's your turn. and so on. both of you start to match each other in length and quality of emails. the more you email, the more you share, the better friends you become. in this way, favors amongst friends are exchanged. one for one to the point where equilibrium in the friendship is reached. then you might go into the deep dark world of random emails, perhaps alot from one person, with few responses from the other, or you just email less frequently, adjusting for other social callings and various random factors. a friendship should always be like this. exchange. nobody needs the other, nobody demands anything the other won't give. friendship becomes give and take.



of course, over time, a true friendship neglects to keep an account of these exchanges. you gain faith that you will receive back at some later time when you give early. friends build up a line of credit and there is no need for cash to be exchanged at each interaction. of course we must, as people, take into account the personal giving and taking that each individual is capable of. this is all very relative of course. if i give my twenty percent to you, it might not be the same objective twenty percent you give to me but there is understanding that a friendship is built upon relative measures of how much each one gives.



this too is key to friendship. some people are givers. some are takers. we have to look at each person separately and not compare them to other friends but to how much they give/take based on their own individual makeup. when you demand that one person perform like another, then you are overlooking the fact that not everyone is the same. this can lead to problems of course. but if you feel like you are getting "ripped off" in a friendship, big drama might ensue, or you might just decide to drop your friend. because if the friendship no longer serves both parties, it is no longer a friendship. friendship is not a business but it is a capitalistic enterprise.



so to summarize. we meet. i give. you give. i take. you take. i give. i give. you give. you give. i take. i take. i take. i take. i take.