If you are successful and established, friendship often means obligation. Money, skill, resources and effort are requested, sometimes politely, sometimes not.
If you are not successful and established, finding someone to engage in this relationship can provide significant advantage.
Some might say "a real friend would not ask such things, what you speak of are fairweather friends."
I would reply, "have you ever found your perfect equal in a friendship?"
If you abandon that which cultivated you for other pastures, you probably have more pressing needs or desires than friendship, and I wish you the best of luck.
I don’t think it’s about being equal. To think about it selfishly, then we would have nothing to gain from it. Friendship, like many relationships, is about the unique equilibrium struck that makes you both feel and be better, more than if you had just been an individual. It’s about strengthening each others weaknesses. Rising tide lifts all boats
I think it is about that. Many of the social behaviors didnt evolve individually, and the social behaviors that end up selected for produced tribes. The group can be more fit than the sum of its parts, and both sides benefit from friendship because two people are about three times as strong working together vs the twice as strong you would expect.
One of my biggest problems is that I'm very good at managing my life on my own, yet my primitive brain keeps screaming "you're alone! this means you might die any moment and nobody will help you!".
> I would reply, "have you ever found your perfect equal in a friendship?"
I guess the point of friendships is to find people with whom the exchange is fair. As in, I have something they want, they have something I want, we exchange this.
Yes but what we exchange is "friendship" and "love". We want to feel loved. I assume that has a biological basis.
The transactional relationship is a different thing, it is a business relationship. You don't have to be a friend with someone you exchange things with.
If you are successful and established, friendship often means obligation. Money, skill, resources and effort are requested, sometimes politely, sometimes not.
If you are not successful and established, finding someone to engage in this relationship can provide significant advantage.
Some might say "a real friend would not ask such things, what you speak of are fairweather friends."
I would reply, "have you ever found your perfect equal in a friendship?"
I haven't.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fair-weather_friend