I've often thought about the institutions of what one might call "an ordinary friendship", and I don't quite agree with the one who wrote the above list because I think it's much more intricate than it's made out to be. For instance, I find the "clouded friendship" to be almost lethal to the very idea of friendship, but it's not on the list. Most of these listed negative characteristics would turn me off way before seeing such a relationship as a (potential) friendship.
If you're drowning, symbolically as well as or in the real world, then a helping hand may be what you need, but it's not very friendly to remind you eternally about that kind of help: "Look what I did for you September 3, 1965, at 11.07", may be the right pinpointing of the time, but it's turning the help into something else than what it should be to qualify as a friendly help. Help should be of a nature to be remembered by the one who received it as something non-biased or "fake". The fake helper might blow the trumpets or beat the drums of his/her "help", hoping that it will gain him/her the reputation of also being a good and rightful person in other contexts. Something that may not be the case as the one who helps the son or daughter of a powerful boss, may at the same time be the one who kicks his subordinates.
It may be fun for the one swinging the club and the dentist or doctor of the one on the lawn, but it's not friendly or even something to laugh at. To put somebody in dangerous situations for "the fun of it" is a warning: This individual is not a friend, and not even a good playmate.
Well, that pinpoints one aspect of friendship: One sees somebody as a true friend, although other people don't even recognize this individual as part of one's realities. Both Timmy and his mother feel assured that the one they talk to is real and a friend whom they may trust with their secrets, hopes and whatever they are thinking of. If the invisible friend doesn't deliver what they ask him for, they are prone to find excuses as they may blame someone else for his shortcomings:
As to what I call "the clouded friendship" then it's worse than "fake", it's something that is assailed by the friend's many own masses of (mostly unfulfilled) wishes, wants and claims upon fate. I suppose the main core of it is envy, but there is an aspect that resemble the "hunger of leeches": The so-called "friend" doesn't even allow one the happiness of some kind of everyday fulfillment. For instance, you may have made a pretty dress, and you feel proud of it. That's why you expect the true friend of praising your new outfit, but instead of doing that he/she says something like "the blue one from Walmart was much more becoming". A comment like that assails both one's feeling successful as a dressmaker as well as feeling pretty. The true friend wouldn't say something like that which serves him/her as a way to stab his/her friend in the back in a manner that's set out to be "a piece of good advice for your own sake".
That's what should be remembered, but which is very often forgotten ....
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