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17 points·pseudolus··5 comments

Somehow I feel like Gilgamesh and Enkidu were besties, making the phenomenon somewhat older than suggested in the article.

And Alexander and Hephaestion. And Achilles and Patroclus. And countless other pairs of best friends from classical antiquity, both real and mythological.

But not a single mention of any of those in the "article". Just a few pieces of pop psychology sprinkled with some hand-picked historical factoids.

Get this trash off the front page.

For someone who never had a best friend in my life, I find the concept of best friend difficult to understand.

No matter what people will change they will turn against you in a heartbeat. You never know when that will happen and you have to keep cards close to you. At least that’s what I believe.

Instead what I have are friends. I have equally similar relationship with them all, and maintain a relatively good distance.

I expect them to be loyal but at the same time I’m always ready for them to turn their back on me.

It’s hard to define what a friend is, but my definition is someone you can call for help at 3 am and they’ll take your call and help no matter what. There are only a few people in my life that fit that definition, and I consider most of the others acquaintances.

But your definition means that you haven’t yet discovered what real friendship is. To make real friends you have to be a real friend (and also go through a lot of people who don’t feel that way), but it’s been one of the defining experiences of my life and well worth the effort and investment and heartache.

In Polish friend and best friend is a different word, and the default is best friend (friend is barely a slightly closer aquietance - no point using it really). And the word for best friend (przyjaciel) is very old. Also there are examples of that kind of friendship in Illiad.

I call bullshit.

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