…between a friend and someone you’ve known for a long time that you don’t dislike?
I guess the real question is: what makes a friend? Is it what someone does for you? Is it the affection you hold for that person? The affection they hold for you?
Or is it an alchemic combination of all of these things and something that can’t be enumerated?
Hmm – friends. Perhaps the biggest thing is the connection. All of the things that you mentioned go into that – but none of them insure it. I have a term for it (tentatively) – intersubjectivity. That is, friends are people you encounter as other subjects, not as objects. This is a very great difference.
Not only do you encounter them as subjects but this encounter persists. Sheer affection can start this process, for example, but both sides have to keep their subjectivity accessible, as it were, or the whole thing collapses.
It all depends on a certain permeability of boundaries, or letting down of defenses, I think, and is very delicate. There is a knife-edge balance to it.