Thesis Title: Subtitle

Trust and Reciprocity

Part of the work associated with friendship is the creation of trust. For Bird, sharing personal information that not everyone would have access to develops trust. Similarly, Brendon states that his friendships are based on “a mutual sympathy, trust and respect, where you are willing to sacrifice many things to help the other.” Reciprocity and trust are at the core of most definitions of friendship. While Silver (1990) argues that friendship is the “most personal relationship possible”, Simmel (1908) feared that the modern person has too much to hide to sustain true friendship, and further that we were too individualized to sustain full reciprocity. Conversely, Spencer and Pahl (2006) argue that consuming affective friendships are still very much a part of the contemporary repertoire of friendship. Spencer and Pahl’s (2006) argument is positioned in contrast to a multitude of contemporary scholars such as Bellah (1985), Lane (2005) and Bauman (2003) who all share similar concerns that contemporary life has eroded social bonds. However, from participants’ accounts, reciprocity is still central in a late-modern understanding of what friendship is. For Carol (F 23), reciprocity and trust are what sustain friendship.

I think when talking to somebody makes you feel better or happier than before, then they're probably a friend... like the kind of people who are not just good for polite conversation but who can cheer you up on a bad day... and when you trust them enough to tell them things you wouldn't tell everyone... or when you can't wait to tell them something and you really want them to be the first to know…friendship is about being willing to listen, but also being willing to talk.

This rather contradicts Simmel’s fear that modernity would cause us to become secretive and unable to sustain friendships. Similarly, ideas of trust and reciprocity are also central to Paula’s definition of friendship, which also encompasses ideas of sharing, support and affection.

When I enjoy being with them and feel they enjoy being with me, when we seek each other's company, tell each other things we wouldn't post on Facebook (i.e. trust), ask for advice/support, when we can spend long stretches of time together without being bored or uncomfortable.

The reciprocity described by Carol and Paula involves the sharing of private information indicating that perhaps friendship has changed less than Simmel thought it would. This is

also echoed by Sage (F 31), who also believes that the sharing of secrets and reciprocal giving and taking are central to friendship.

So friendship is when you can share secrets and intimacy and personal details you'll share with them or secrets. You have a commitment to them. You will stand up for them and they will stand up for you. There's this mutual giving and taking…the people that give you something more and people that you enjoy being around.

Sage further elaborates that friendships are, in her opinion, the ultimate equal relationship. This again echoes Aristotelian ideas about virtue-friendship as a reciprocal relationship, in which participants share each other’s joys and sorrows, in an intimate, affective relationship (Baltzly and Eliopoulos 2009). Furthermore, Aristotle believed that the best friendships are characterised by equality, and not marred by hierarchal systems like kinship, marriage or patronage (Baltzly and Eliopoulos 2009). This sentiment is strongly shared by Sage; equality is central to her understanding of friendship.

Friendships are the ultimate relationships where you're on – it's equal. There's none of this stuff of you like them more than they like you or there's this jealousy thing or whatever. Friendships, for me, are those things that are formed through an equal relationship. There are many components to that, but the people that I call real friends are those where it's just that equal giving, equal taking. It's a really nice, true flow of energy, I guess.

Reciprocity for participants was inherently connected to trust. While trust and reciprocity do not necessarily co-occur – you can have a reciprocal relationship with someone you don’t trust, provided institutional (legal) arrangements allow for it – for participants they were intertwined concepts. Linking equality and reciprocity to friendship may lead to the assumption that friendship involves regular and frequent communication. But for participants the affective bond they describe was resilient enough to withstand long periods of little or no communication. The type of friendship Sage describes is affectively strong enough to withstand periods of no communication.

You just have that… it's just this connection and it's, again, a mutual understanding that, yeah, we've got that. That's cool. I totally get you. If I don't hear from you for a

couple of weeks, I'm not going to be offended. Totally fine. If we don't see each other for months, it doesn't matter. It's totally cool. It's just relaxed and it's just – yeah.

For Simmel this would be an example of the individualisation and disconnection he feared. Friendship, it seems is a flexible social relationship. By placing more emphasis on affection or ‘connection’, late modern friendships are able to tolerate less communication. This is perhaps linked to the pressures of late modernity touched upon earlier. Busier and more mobile lives mean that many people are not able to communicate with each other face-to-face as much as they might in the early modern period. In addition to co-opting technological advances like the telephone and Facebook to sustain friendship, the definition of, and the expectations associated with, friendship have shifted slightly in order to account for a reduced frequency of contact that is characteristic of some contemporary friendships. Brendon whose close friend lives overseas also echoed this. While they sometimes communicate via Skype, Facebook and IM, Brendon and his friend’s connection was not weakened by distance or lack of communication.

For example my cousin is a good friend of mine, but he lives abroad, and comes back only maybe 2 times a year…still, whenever we meet it is as if he had never left…

Marie (F, 22) also emphasised the importance of friendships that can be sustained in the absence of communication. True friendship then has something of a transcendent quality that is not necessarily tied to frequency of communication or face-to-face interaction.

I can be friends with someone and not talk to them for half a year. That’s kind of – or I know if someone is friends with me if they actually can understand that, because I tend to forget stuff and I just tend to forget – I don’t forget the people, but I tend to forget that I wanted to write them a mail, email them or anything like that…With my best friend, it actually happened that I didn’t talk to her for six months and then suddenly there was a mail and I said oh, nice.