Something that is much underrated in our
society. Friendship is actually a form of love (here I'm not talking exclusively about erotic love). It's not a lesser form of love than erotic love, only a different form of love. In fact, the ancient
Greeks had a word, "phileos", more or less equating to fraternal/brotherly love (friendship). Friendship seems to have no observable biological necessity(unlike parental love, necessary for humans to grow, and erotic love, necessary for humans to reproduce), and not much of a marketable appeal (as opposed to the millions/billions of dollars
worth of things sold to people trying to
better their marriages or parenting skills), yet without such a form of love as friendship our societies would be unbearably dull and alienated from
one another.
One can love their friends as well as their "significant other", just not in the same
way (the difference here is quality, not necessarily quantity).
Friendships are not monogamous by necessity. Two people in a friendship
don't need to exclude other people from their relationship. A friendship can best be thought of as two people side by side looking forward toward a common goal. It's an odd form of love in which people develop a relationship without relationship as a goal. Scientific achievements have come out of
tight-knit friendships (Watson and Crick), as have works of literary genius (J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S.
Lewis), as well as victories in wars (due to the
tight camaraderie and mutual trust of soldiers).
