I’ve been ruminating quite a bit lately on the idea of friendship. As an INTP, I suspect the way I experience friendship is quite different than it is for many people, so I thought I might share it here, in case anybody should find it educational. Of course, I don’t speak for all INTPs, but I can speak for myself as one. Here is my experience:

When I look on my life, I find I have many acquaintances—but I have very few close friends. As in, I can count them all on one hand, with room to spare: two have become like brothers to me, another has become like a stranger, and one, I’m happy to say, I married.

So how do I make these rare friends? Strictly speaking, I don’t. I’ve never even looked for friends. But every now and then, a person will appear in my life that thoroughly grabs my attention, somebody that I find an instant, deep affinity toward. It’s as though we’ve been friends since the beginning of time and I’m just now recognizing them, like I’m recovering from amnesia. Such friendships, then, are an act of discovery rather than a new creation.

These friends have a remarkable skill: they make me feel alive like nobody else can. You see, I’m a pretty cerebral guy; I don’t “experience” my life so much as I observe it, as if I were looking over my shoulder from behind, always somewhat removed from what’s happening to me. This detachment means that, for the most part, my day to day experience is emotionally muted, even dead. If you were to chart the ups and downs of my emotions over the course of time, with the peak being a joyful contentedness and the bottom being abject despair, you would get a flat line hovering somewhat below the midpoint, punctuated here and there with tiny little bumps toward joy and pain. But my closest friends have this remarkable ability to draw me back into my life, to make me be fully present, and enjoy each moment: they command my full attention. I don’t know how they do it. And it doesn’t take much: even a simple text message or a phone call from these friends can spike me straight to the “joyful contentedness” line, and sustain it for a day or two. This joy, this contentment, is the most precious gift any of them has ever given me, and have continued to give me through the years, and I suspect not a single one has had any suspicion that they’ve ever done so.

In gratitude for the joy and contentment they’ve given me, I find I have an intense loyalty to such friends. And not to my friends only, but to the friendship itself—since these friendships seem timeless to me, they loom as something bigger than ourselves, worthy of honor in their own right. This loyalty is not an act of will, but is drawn out from within, as much a part of me as my gray eyes, as automatic as breathing. And I’ve found that this loyalty is so strong that even when my friendship is spurned, I continue to experience a visceral desire for my friends to know peace and joy, such that I ache when I learn of their sorrows, and rejoice when I learn of their joy—and grow restless when I don’t know how they’re doing!

Unfortunately, this loyalty is a passive loyalty, not an active one. That is, my friends need only to ask me for anything they need, and it is instantly, gladly theirs, to whatever extent I am able. But it would be very rare indeed for me to get out of my head long enough to notice on my own that my friends might need anything—and, by extension, rare that I would spontaneously offer such help. As a result, sadly, this mythic-level loyalty goes largely unrecognized. Ironically, then, I suspect my friendship has a tendency to appear to be quite fickle!

And what about my acquaintances? Are they nobody? Hardly! Actually, much of what I’ve said about my closest friends holds true for them as well, just not to such extremes. I’m happy to help with anything they need, if only they ask, simply because we are acquainted. It’s just that our connection is more transient than it is with my closest friends. Still, my list of acquaintances is very long! Like a kid at a playground who regards everyone else at the playground as new friends, pretty much everybody I’ve ever spoken to that isn’t a self-important buffoon is a-okay in my book!

To summarize: friendship, to me, is an intensely emotional experience that crashes through an otherwise emotionally empty existence, and I therefore cherish it as my most precious treasure—even while I am often slow to actually show it.

So, how about you? I’m really curious to know how you experience friendship! Tell me in the comments below.