The New York Times recently explored “the vexing problem of the ‘medium friend’”: people who aren’t your ride or die, but more than mere acquaintances. How much of each other’s bandwidth should you take up? Is there an imbalance in how you perceive your friendship?
I am less interested in the problem than the expression (and the man in the article who, mind-bogglingly, ranks his friends in a spreadsheet). We are increasingly attuned to the importance of friendships for our wellbeing and becoming more thoughtful about how we make and maintain them. Perhaps it is time to try labelling friends, like plastic jars in tidy people’s pantries on Instagram?
“Medium” feels a bit generic, though: we cherish people in our lives for idiosyncratic reasons. We already know about BFFs, frenemies and work spouses, but my brain twin (the highest tier of friend) and I have hashed out some more.
Play friend: Like toddlers, you enjoy doing an activity together – capoeira, crochet, playing Helldivers – but it goes no further.
Chaos friend: Every encounter with them leaves you reeling – and feeling as though your life is pleasingly together (if boring). You had a fight with who? A what stole your keys? Where are your shoes?
Phone friend: We have powerful, sustaining relationships that exist only in our shiny rectangles. You can care deeply about someone who is just an @ symbol and a picture of a pomeranian.
Common-enemy friend: You bonded over a shared hatred of someone or something. Now, whenever that person or thing annoys you, you think warmly of your comrade in loathing, perhaps sending them a little “thinking of you” message with a vomiting emoji.
Brief-encounter friend: There was something powerful there – you both felt it – but it never became the intense friendship it should have. In different circumstances, other lives …
Resting-bitch friend: They are harsher than you, so you get in touch when you need to be mean-spirited and bitchy. Communing with this friend is cathartic, but can leave you feeling sick and remorseful. Note: if you don’t have one of these, you might be one.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
