Friendship research is getting an update – and that's key for dealing with the loneliness epidemic

“We choose people for relationships because we want to become like them, after all,” he shared. “It’s a way for us to enrich who we are.”

seemed that there was no difference in the speed of decisions between friends and family in the innermost circle of intimate relationships, suggesting that very close friends matter as much to us as very close family.

What we are at heart looking for in friendship is not necessarily someone we can touch and see in front of us, but a person who shares, and can help us develop, our sensibility and values, someone to whom we can turn and look for a sign that they too feel what we have felt, that they are attracted, amused and repulsed by similar things.

People differ in their networks and maintain either (1) relatively few long-term, emotionally close friends, (2) larger networks with close friends and also loose acquaintances, or (3) even social networks without friends and only family ties.