FRIENDSHIP: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FRIENDS

NAME CLASS DATE

: HINH KIM TRU NGUYEN (JOE) : EAP3 : 24/1/2010

Friends play an important role in everyones life. No matter who you are, human cannot survive without friends. People make friends together because of many reasons, some people want to earn more experiences from their friends and some of them hope to meet true friends or the others just make friends just for some personal benefits. Anyway, everyone also hopes they can have more good friends than bad. However, in the real life, not all of people are good but many of them are bad. Although some men are not good people but also they can have a lot of friends. Why even can the bad guys have friends? Is it really fair? The reason is for them to be able to make friend with the others because those people are suitable with them. There are many different ways to define the friendship. It depends on the people, because of the different personalities so the friends they want to find should not be the same. For instance, friendship is defined that Friends are people I enjoyed passing few minutes or few hours with by Liane Holliday willey (Tony Attwood, 2008) (1). Generally, Friendship should be known as the relationship between friends. In the life, people can meet many people and have a large number of friends. However, most of their friends will have the different thoughts, attitudes and lifestyles. Thus, people will have many different kinds of friendship such as: imaginary friends, therapeutic friends, cyber and virtual friends, younger or older friendship and so on (Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, 2009) (2). Firstly, imaginary friends who are created inside peoples mind are used to improve and discover themselves. Moreover, this kind of friend also helps people to understand more about friendship. This is also one of the most important parts for the developing childhood. (Elizabeth HartleyBrewer, 2009) (3). Secondly, cyber friends are known as the friends that people met on internet. Recently, many arguments are discussed about cyber-friendship to bring benefits or harms to people? It is not difficult to believe that just only about 10 percentages of cyber-friends who can become the true friends (John M. Grohol, 2009) (4). In addition, if the cyber-friends are bad, many troubles will happen in peoples life such as: junk-mails, spammers, viruses etc. As a result, people should pay more attention and think carefully before making friends with strangers on internet. Then, younger and older friendship is also one of the good relationships in friendship. Some teenagers believe if they have the other friends who have already grown up, they can earn more true experiences from older friends and sometimes, when teenagers have problems, the older friends also can give many better advices, opinions their own ideas.

Actually, no matter how many kinds of friendship in the world, there are only two most basic types of friendship which are include good and bad friends. Bad friends are the people who have the bad characters and always try to entice their friends to follow them into the long term bad ways of life Furthermore, controlling, lying and causing the distress to friends are the other types of personality of bad friends (Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, 2009) (5). In addition, some people are always jealous with their friends, they can use many ways to defeat and win their friends. Competition is advantage, because of having competitors, people have to keep developing and improving themselves if they do not want to be losers. For instance, competition in class can make students want to study and become the best student. Thus, competition is good for school environments. On the other hand, due to the competition people will become more and more inhuman. Power, standing and money are the elements which make people decide to use any ruses to become winners. Then, the losers will keep finding other ways to destroy their boss to replace him (Vicki Bennett, 2001) (6). Finally, the friendship between people will disappear. Having many friends are not difficult but it is harder to have good friends than bad friends. The true friends will not leave their friends in troubles, they will always beside their friends to find solution. They encourage when one is sad, they entertain when one is lonesome, and they listen when one has problems (Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, 2009) (7). Good friends should not be measured only base on the time they spent together. With good friends, one is able to have a more meaningful life. It is very difficult to find a definition of a good friend for everyone to agree. Since everyone has different personalities, friends who they look for could be very different. Nonetheless, the three main qualities that define a good friend are loyal, understanding, and encouraging. With good friends, people would have higher self-esteem, confidence and motivation. Friends will encourage, inspire, and support each other. A true friend will be honest, loyal, and will not share secrets with other people without his/her friends' permission. They could trust each other. Having good friends is already difficult, but it will be more if people want to have best friends. Best friends should be chosen in list of good friends. Furthermore, the best friends are very very special because people can feel that they know each other very well. Some people think the best

friends like their brothers/sisters (Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, 2009) (8). Therefore, if you can have a best friend in your life, you should have right way to treat them. Unfortunately, sometimes people do not know how to respect what they had. When people have good friends, they should know and have some elements to keep their relationship in long term such as: the honest, do not hurt and sabotage friends, try to avoid lying, forgive quickly and do not jump in and talk all the time, listen more to points of views of friends (Vicki Bennett, 2001) (9) . Firstly, be honest in friendship, you should show the others who you are and what you believe in. People should set a standard and limit in relationship, if other friends have moved over the rope and gone too far, ask them how you feel or require them to stop. In friendship, do not only think but tell them what you want. Next, try to avoid hurting and sabotaging friendship. Sometimes, you should stop communication sooner if it seems too hard to talk about things. If two different kinds of people talk about a same topic, it will be easy to have different points of view because of various attitudes and thoughts. Forgiving quickly is also one great factor for keeping friendship in peace. Do not need to punish other people for what they have done because you are also punishing yourself, think carefully about your physical feeling when always putting someone that you hate in your mind, you are feeling pain. When people are dying, they just only want three things not to be alone, not to feel pain, not to forgive everyone and everything. Do not wait to be dying, people should forgive other as fast as possible, the quicker you forgive, the quicker you heal your relationships and yourself (Vicki Bennett, 2001) (10). Totally, friendship can give people many advantages. Payne and Chadwick suggest that people without friends may be risk for later difficulties and delay in social and emotional development (Tony Attwood, 2008) (11). Some people strongly believe that having friends can prevented measure for mood disorders. Another advantage of friendship is improvement in problem solving (Rubin, 2002). Therefore, there is no doubt that friendship is very important. However, friendship should not be the most significant relationship in the world. Because most of friendship is feigning (Tom MacFaul, 2007) (12), it is possible if the friends want to betray you. In addition, family should be the most important because the parents are the only one who never betrays their sons.

Nowadays, many people misunderstand about friendship and popularity. Popularity is just a single relationship. The people who are known as popularity people are being liked and known by the others but even they do not know about the people who admire them. Friendship is a dyadic relationship that means the people in this relationship know and contact together. (Sophia Jowett & David Lavallee, 2007) (13) In conclusion, friends are very important so I suggest everyone to have the good friends and respect them. Friends that grew up with might not always be the best friends because they could fake it or conceal some secrets. So, it is very important for one to recognize all the friends they have because good friends are hard to find. In my opinion, Friendship will last longer when both sides are eager to take on the responsibilities of being true friends.

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