Best friends - what makes one and do you have one?

Diplomat

Good friends are such a blessing. It is a two way thing and it is so important to keep in touch. As we get older it's so comforting if we have friends we can share a history and memories with. I am blessed with some good friends and remember a wonderful friend we lost too soon.

I totally agree with the shared history.
A close friend moved to the US many years ago and although she has friends there . She says it’s not the same as friends from school/ college and way back

I will be your friend ..i live in glasgow but could correspond with you..xx

My "best Friends" have become my "special friends" over the years. To me a best friend is someone who you can ring at four in the morning and they will be there for you and they won't judge you, but they will be honest with you. However, as the years go by we have become much older and have health issues so being there in the middle of the night probably wouldn't apply now, but there is still the feeling that they are special.

P.S. and I am still in touch with my special friends .

I would class my best friend as my dear husband. He totally knows me and gets me. My female close friend I met whilst we worked together many years ago. She lost her husband a few years into our friendship and we stuck together. I loved the way she was strong and got on with things and I admire her totally. I’ve just met her for coffee this morning and had seen her since sept due to ill health. An absolute tonic. Best friend ever.

Tenko ^Incidentally Those of you who say your DH is your best friend, do you tell him everything?
Because I don’t tell my DH everything. If I’m told something in confidence, I keep my promise. Something that’s said on a girls weekend or night out , stays there .^

No Tenko, I don't tell my DH everything in the same way as I would respect a confidence with any friend. However, he does know more than anyone else simply because he is so good at talking things through.

My Best Friend was someone I’d known for 61 years but she succumbed to cancer in 2022. I miss her so very very much. She was like a sister more than a friend. We shared the good times and the bad (with ex-boyfriends). She was very brave and my only regret was in the last month I had covid and I wasn’t allowed to see her.

We were a group of: best friends then one died after being very ill with cancer and heart failure . Now another of us is very ill . I will be very sad if she dies too as she is definitely my best friend . Another very good friend who I have known for many years is on this site and I have am so lucky she has been a good friend for so long . Then another long term friend calls me her bbf ( what does that mean) she has a few of those !

The topic of “best friends” came up recently with one of my dgs who was having issues with his bestie( aged 8). The situation distressed him greatly. A range of good friends is far preferable to “best” friends at whatever age . I dislike the concept of exclusivity in friendship. But an 8 year old does not see things this way.

Amongst my friends, made across the decades, there have been friends for a reason, for a season and for life, all “good” but none exclusive. Despite changes in geography, time and lifestyles, good friends care for and help and support each other in anyway they can, in good times and bad.

I lost my BF, my DH a number of years ago and, unfortunately with the non receipt of Christmas cards 2023, it would appear the number of friends has diminished yet again - at 89 years I am outliving many of them.

My friends from my school days, the 2 I considered my BF are still my friends. However it's much different at this age then it was then. Over the years we grow, marry, raise children and take different roads in life. My 2nd husband is my best friend and some people are shocked by the next two. My grown son has become my best friend...we talk about everything. Then my best girlfriend is my son's stepmother. As couples my son's father, stepmother, myself and my husband vacation once a year together. The sharing of grandchildren has brought all four of us so close to each other.

My OH is my best friend but then, as we met at uni. when we were 19 , he always had been. My best female friend lives next door. We worked together as teachers and love a good goss and bitch .

Bitch !

I've had a lot of changes in my life. From the small-town local girl to almost internationally known, from a mediocre job to one of much higher status, and I think it made previous friends a bit uncomfortable with me. I made lots of new friends when I had children - and am still in touch with many, though not regarded as close friends. Rather I am "admired" and "respected" and it is assumed that I'm not too bothered about friends. About 40 years ago I met a new neighbour and although we were very different people we got on like a house on fire. We shared family holidays, saw each other through several problems in our lives, helped each other out. Both my children and hers got on well - and still do. We shared such a lot together. Yet in retirement it seemed to change. She was happy to stay at home and watch daytime TV while I joined clubs and took up new activities - and responsibilities with local organisations. We never fell out, just didn't seem to have the same needs in later life. While I tried to keep reasonably fit she put on tons of weight and suffered ill health as a result. I tried to encourage her to do things but it never happened. I still, though, regarded her as my best friend. She was always there to listen, to support emotionally.

She sadly died early last year. I was abroad and couldn't attend her funeral, but my daughters went. I was hurt to find a photo of her and another joint "friend" on her funeral card with the caption "A on holiday with her best friend B".

Otherwise, I have made new friends in retirement, but none will ever be as close as she.

I recently became closer with a friend I met 40 years ago. We had a lot of mutual respect for each other. She spent the past 3 years battling cancer and I was so envious of the army of close friends she had ready to help her out - from gardening and housework to taking her to hospital appointments. I have absolutely no-one who would do that for me. And yet most of my "contacts" tell me they regard me as someone they would call on if they needed help - and often have.

One problem I have is that I have a "phone phobia" and of course for our generation the phone is a major way of staying in touch. I am fine with "face to face" communication, and with emails (as you can tell!!!) but it doesn't work for people who don't live near me or are not email people.

I wish I could get over the phone issue or I could become very lonely.

I have just completed Wordle in one go! I can’t believe it, it’s just pure luck I know. Has anyone else done this?

In early March 2020 I met up with an old school friend I hadn’t seen for thirty five years. We got on like a house on fire. Whatever it was that made us best friends when we were seven has certainly stood the test of time and separation

I am surprised at the number of people saying their DH is their best friend, somehow it seems to diminish the role of one's partner in life.

A close marital relationship is such a bond of physical intimacy, family bonds and everything that comes from living with someone, that to describe them as your 'best friend' seems to me to downgrade the relationship.

My Husband is my best friend.
Apart from him I don’t have any friends.
I have work colleagues, that I talk to - but that’s all.

I have known my best friend almost since birth. We went through primary school together, lived just a few houses apart, spent our teenage years joined at the hip. You never saw one of us without the other.

Got married and had kids at roughly the same time but I moved away. We still stayed in touch though and always met up when I went “home”. I moved back about 16 years later and we met up for coffee etc but she worked full time. I always text her on her birthday which is in a couple of weeks time. But for the last 2 years she has not replied.

She did tell me she had cancer and needed extensive surgery and chemo so I made her a soft hat, sent her some books and posh chocolates. We agreed to meet up when she felt better and I continued texting her at birthday and Xmas so she knew I was thinking of her.

I saw her sister and she said the surgery removed just about everything she had internally and she’d had a rotten time. I said I didn’t want her to feel she had to reply to my texts but just a 👍 would do. Her sister said she had met a group of women in hospital who had all had similar treatment and she had got very involved with them which I completely understand. She also said it was taking up all her energy and she had got quite forgetful so she probably reads my texts then forgets to reply.

I will text her as usual on her birthday as I want her to know I still care about her. We were as close as it was possible to be.

I do have a BF, we met at ante natal class many years ago.We live near each other and are always in contact tho I do have a range of other friends too.She is special and like a sister.🥰

I met the woman who was to become my 'bestie' when we were both expecting our first babies. . We had our second children just a couple of month apart, and then a couple of years later our third child a couple of weeks apart.

Apart from the fact that we had the same birth year and came from the same part of London, we could not have been more different. She was an only child, no cousins, her Mum had died from a brin rumour when she had been in her teens and her early childhood anxiety had turned into full blown hypochondria which lasted her throughout her life

Although I only had one sibling, more than made up for that with many aunts and uncles and thirty plus cousins..

She had never had a single days financial anxiety in her life, and as she had a growing family, her lovely Dad gave her his good size, expensive house, and moved into their flat.

Hubbie and me, on the other hand, always seemed on the point of next month being when we lose the house etc. etc. Never did, but until many many years later financial worries were with me all of the time.

Hubbie and me were six months apart in our ages, her husband very nice man) was 22 years older than her (us).

For the next forty years we were best friends, couple of occasions when we did not speak to each other for a couple of f months, but largely we remained so close. She gave birth to seven of her eight children at home, all big, bouncing babies, all easy births. She would telephone me as she started labour and we chatted until she was virtually pushing baby out. I had five (including twins, but also fostered}and when we had days out together, people could be forgiven to think we were from a childrens home!!!

She was someone, who I did not have to explain anything to as the children grew into horrible teenager, We both idolised our children.

Many days she would telephone me concerned about some medical problem, which usually did niot exist. Not with the children, just with her. She was totally convinced she would get cancer and had some wierd ideas as how to help prevent it.

My brother called her 'My Mad Friend', when we were adults my psychologist daughter told me that she was too reliant on me and I needed to put a stop to it. Strangely, it was that reliance that was so good for me., Events at home ha left me with a shattered self-confidence, and our relationship was definitely two ways.

As we got older, me separate3d and her a widow, the twice daily phone calls (morning and last thing at night) were very comforting. We never had to have any sort of pretence with each other. I can remember when she had a massive row with her eldest and phoned me and I said she was sitting there thinking '|He' ll be sorry when I'm dead....' She asked how I knew as it was exactly what she had been thinking, and I told her coz it was how I would be feeling.....

When she crashed her car into the gate post as she was leaving the local college and ran away, it was me she telephoned (although I was fifty miles away). I stayed on the phone, talking her into going back and reporting the accident appropriately. So many othe similar incidents.

She was mad on fitness - ran a marathon in her mid-sixties, spent money on private health checks and when one finally found pre-cancer cells in one nipple, paid to have both breast removed. I was with her at that private hospital throughout that procedure and she came to me to recover, On her behalf I spoke to doctors as all she could do was to sit there saying 'Am I going to die\/' When she went for her 'final follow-up appointment a year later, she made the doctor ring me when they said they had found more cancerous cells. .

I accompanied her to the hospital as she now reverted to NHS treatment, but her own total conviction that this was destined to come to kill her did so within three years. She died just after I finally retired from work, when we should have been able to do so much more together.

It took me at least three years to not have the urge to telephone her, particularly when something bad or good happened. She is totally irreplaceable for me........no other friendship had such intimate knowledge or our lives. I do keep in touch with most of her children. Twelve years on I still miss her. Had she lived she would be the extremely proud grandmother to 21 grandchildren- she would have loved that!!!!! She started her own dynasty!!!!

My children all remember her and laugh at many of those memories and even her own children, accept that she had her own unique take on things. But on those occasions, when I feel a little lonely I so wish she was still alive and we could phone or even get together for some wonderful reminisces.

some lovely memories there Franbern.

I have good friends but no best friend, other than DH