“We suffer from carelessness in many of our undertakings – in none more than in selecting and cultivating our friends.” ¹

These are Cicero’s words, and they’re still true two millennia later. Most of us see the value of good friends but don’t make “friend-making” and “friend-keeping” a particularly large priority. Friendship, even more than romance, seems to belong to a mysterious realm of luck and timing – something for which we’re at the mercy of the universe. As Aristotle puts it, “A wish for friendship arises swiftly, but friendship itself does not.” We all need lasting friendship, so why is it so difficult to find?

There’s a ready list of explanations. Work. Too little time. No good opportunities. A complaint I often hear is that it’s too hard to make friends as an adult – as though playgrounds and school campuses are the only places where kindred spirits exist. We look at friendship like a good to be acquired, a precious metal we can hope to find with the right metal detector. The philosophers of old would find this approach puzzling. For Aristotle, and later the Stoics and their successors, having good friends is less about “finding” and more about being. And being starts with you.

The Deepest Friendships Are Based on Virtue

Aristotle, ever the practical-minded, divides friendship into three categories: utility, pleasure, and virtue. 

The first two are friendships that require some external end, either transactional or emotional. Anyone who’s been to a networking event and talked with someone who, drink in one hand and business card in the other, said, “let’s be friends,” has experienced this. I once made the mistake of saying yes to a date with someone, only to watch as he added my name to a list of contacts longer than a sales agent’s. When I mentioned this he said, “I like to keep people around. I never know when I’ll need them.” We didn’t stay in touch for long.

The problem is not having touch-and-go relationships per se; it’s when we conflate these with deeper friendships or give them priority. Too many people confuse quality with quantity. How many of our 800 Facebook “friends” would show up at our door if we were violently sick and alone? “He [or she] who is loved in each case is not loved for himself but only insofar as he is useful or pleasant,” Aristotle observes. “These sorts of friendships, then, are easily dissolved when the people involved do not remain the same as they were. For if they are no longer pleasant or useful, those who love them will cease to do so.” ² Most of us know this, sometimes from painful experience.

So what is the unifying ingredient for the most satisfying and lasting of friendships? “Virtue,” Aristotle tells us:

“Complete friendship is the friendship of those who are good and alike in point of virtue. For such people wish in similar fashion for the good things for each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves. But those who wish for the good things for their friends, for their friends’ sake, are friends most of all, since they are disposed in this way in themselves and not incidentally.” [Ibid.]

When two people share the same values and want the best for each other, long-lasting friendship is possible. This phenomenon is as rare as it is obvious. “Friendship can only exist between good men,” says Cicero, making no bones about it. “The first law of friendship is that we should ask from friends, and do for friends, only what is good.” Friendship depends on “complete harmony of interests, purpose, and aims, without exception.” ³

Like those “north star” diagrams you may have seen in classrooms, the closer we are to a shared central goal, the closer we are to each other. The secret to making and keeping true, old friends is having a purpose that unites the two of you. Commitment to values and principles is a key part of this. A person who struggles to understand what she values and loves and is willing to commit will also struggle to find lasting friendship with a like-minded person.

Does every virtue-based friendship need to be as exact as Cicero seems to imply? I know of no pair of friends who have all opinions, priorities, and beliefs in common, nor am I convinced that’s even preferable, but I don’t think that’s what Cicero means. Novelist C.S. Lewis offers this perspective that sheds beautiful light on the matter:

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one’….

In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? – Or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’ The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer. ⁴

The last sentence is key: Good friends need not agree with you in every matter; they just need to care about the same important truth. Both of you must have virtue as your north star.

The Importance of Loyalty

If virtue is the catalyst for forming the deepest of friendships, loyalty is the engine that keeps it alive. 

In the words of Cicero:

“Now, what is the quality to look out for as a warrant for the stability and permanence of friendship? It is loyalty. Nothing that lacks this can be stable. We should also in making our selection look out for simplicity, a social disposition, and a sympathetic nature, moved by what moves us. These all contribute to loyalty. You can never trust a character which is intricate and tortuous.” ⁵

We usually hear loyalty touted when it comes to romantic relationships, but why not friendship? The person who has practiced being loyal to like-minded friends is much more prepared for a successful marriage (or partnership) than one who only maintains friendships of utility or pleasure. Cicero raises an objection that detractors like to bring up: aren’t loyal friendships the cause of anxiety and mental pain? If your friend experiences problems – let’s say, a worrisome medical diagnosis – it causes stress and concern for you, too. Isn’t life better if you avoid this kind of situation?

How many people visit their friend in the cancer ward as readily as they do their friend in the maternity ward?

We’ve all known people who are “drama-magnets” and bring trouble wherever they go, thanks to their questionable life choices, but that’s not the question Cicero is addressing. Life is capricious. Caring about anyone, including a good friend, means you will have to shoulder unexpected emotional burdens, with no way of knowing where they will begin or end.

Cicero answers that a life of virtue by necessity means that we will feel anxiety and mental anguish from time to time. Caring about anything important will do that to you. Few people would disagree with this, but typical human behavior suggests otherwise. How many people visit their friend in the cancer ward as readily as they do their friend in the maternity ward? How many of us, after giving our loyalty to a spouse or parent, leave gas in the tank for a friend in distress?

Loyal friendships based on virtue are not easy to forge. They demand time and effort from us. Cicero understands how realistic the obstacle can be. “The most difficult thing in the world,” he notes, “[is] for a friendship to remain unimpaired to the end of life. So many things might intervene: conflicting interests, differences of opinion in politics; frequent changes in character, owing sometimes to misfortunes, sometimes to advancing years.” ⁶

Yet that’s no reason to discard or neglect our friendships at the first sign of struggle. Like-minded people who see the same truth we do, who care about virtue and not just money or pleasure, are hard to find. Not every friendship will last, but no one is replaceable. As loneliness in the modern world accelerates, Aristotle’s and Cicero’s advice on friendship remains timeless as well as timely. 

“You might just as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life,” Cicero declares, “for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.” I couldn’t agree more.

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Read Next: “The Five People You Spend the Most Time With”: a Dilemma for Choosing Friends” →

1. From his essay On Friendship
2. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
3. From On Friendship
4. From The Four Loves.
5. From On Friendship.
6. Ibid.