Why Transactional Friendships Will Always Fail

Because some friendships have an expiry date, and others don’t.

Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash

There are three kinds of friendships, but there is only one kind that will add value to your life.

I’ve always wondered why some of my friendships seemed to feel like they were never going anywhere, or why I could never derive true joy from a certain relationship that I thought should be making me happy. I’ve also wondered why I felt the need to segregate my “best friends in the entire world” from my “friends from work” and “gym friends”. I’m almost certain all of us have that one person or group of friends in our lives who we don’t particularly feel connected to, yet still choose to remain friends with them for various different reasons.

Aristotle’s theory on friendship states that there is only one form of genuine friendship, and that the two other forms are based on mutual usefulness and pleasure. These two forms will only last as long as there is utility and pleasure involved, and can rarely develop into something meaningful. In his own words,

“In poverty as well as in other misfortunes, people think that friends are their only refuge. Friendship is a help to the young, in saving them from…