Lately, he had been wondering if codependence was such a bad thing. He took pleasure in his friendships, and it didn’t hurt anyone, so who cared if it was codependent or not? And anyway, how was a friendship any more codependent than a relationship? Why was it admirable when you were twenty-seven but creepy when you were thirty-seven? Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honoured by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return. .Hanya Yanagihara
About This Quote
In the beginning of this quote, you can see that he is trying to justify his relationship with a female friend. He is calling the relationship a friendship and trying to justify it by comparing it to a relationship. A friendship is a bond between two people who have a connection in one way or another. They might be close in age, they might share similar interests, or they may even have a lot in common in their lives.
A friendship is different from a normal relationship because it is not built on romance, sex, money or children. It simply consists of the two friends knowing each other well enough to know what they are going through and vice versa. In this case, he is justifying his friendship with the female friend by comparing it to a relationship that has all of those elements in it.
While relationships do have most of those characteristics, there are others that don’t have them at all.
Source: A Little Life
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