As I studied philia I realized how little of it I have had in my life. My wife and I are definitely close friends and I would say our love has an element of philia as well as storge and eros. We have the common interest of marriage, household and our children. It is other guy friends that seem to be in short supply. They seem to come and go; ebb and flow.

Surveying my past, relationships that I would describe as friendship have centered around many different interests…

• School friends: These are friends I played with and had sleep-overs with as a boy. In the normal fashion, our interests were toys and play. We were young, innocent and rightfully did not share deep matters of the heart.
• Drug friends: In my teens and early twenties I had friends who shared my interest at the time in getting high. After coming to Christ and leaving drugs behind, I discovered that friends of this sort were not really friends at all. These were self-serving relationships; using each other when we had drugs. After I moved on, nearly all of these relationships fell by the wayside.
• Work friends: I have had coworkers that I have considered friends. However, outside of work we didn’t share our lives. Our common interests center upon our common jobs and no further.
• Church friends: Fellow Christians have a deeper common interest: the Lord. I have shared deeply of myself with other Christians; deeper than with my parents or sister growing up to be sure. Unfortunately at times, these relationships seem to not extend to the true heart and center around spiritual matters. While sharing spiritual interests is wonderful, there are other facets of our lives that sometimes seem unimportant to church friends.
• Recovery friends: Other men in recovery from porn/sex addiction have shared bared their souls to me over the years and mine with them. These have been in many ways the deepest relationships I have experienced. Recovery requires that I invite others into the dark places that I would rather keep secret. This kind of vunlerability creates a bond, particularly when the sharing is mutual.

In nearly all of the frienships in these different categories there is a phenomenon I have never been able to figure out. Many, if not most of these friendships do not seem to be reciprocal. It becomes wearying when I perceive if I were to stop initiating contact with a friend I would never hear from them again.

Regardless of how deep the fellowship has been, lack of reciprocation brings doubt regarding the depth of the friendship. Even worse, this occurrence can trigger feelings of shame; that something is wrong with me and that is why my phone never rings.

Lewis likens losing a friend characterized by philia as losing a limb; it is something that always leaves an obvious void. This description more than anything brings the depth of many of my friendships into question. How many of them would I describe in this way? What practical ways can I develop my frienships and experience the uncommon love that is philia?

This kind of love bothers me because I know it exists and I experience very little of it…