Defining Relationships Friendship & Dating

Friendship can be mistaken for comradeship. Comradeship is the feeling of affinity that draws people together in time of war or when people have a mutual enemy or even a common goal. Former ''New York Times'' war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote:

"We feel in wartime comradeship. We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those, who will insist that the comradeship of war is love &m dash; the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication. As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship – that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime – is within our reach. We can all have comrades."

As a war ends, or a common enemy recedes, comrades return to being strangers, who lack friendship and have little in common.

Labels: Friendship