According to Aristotle, he classifies friendship into three different types:Friendships of utility.Friendships of pleasure.Friendships of the good.-------------------------------------------------------------------The 7 Types of Friends, and Which Is Most Essential for Our HappinessLess-intimate friendships may matter more than you thought.KEY POINTSThere are seven basic types of friendships and they all have value.Feeling that you are part of a larger community can positively affect life satisfaction and longevity.Making the effort to connect and communicate with those who "people your life" can change your own life for the better.There’s no doubt that social connections are important to our happiness. When you think of important friendships, which of your relationships spring to mind first? Your best friend from childhood whom you haven’t seen in years, but when you hear their name, it conjures up vivid memories of your shared exploits and a case of the warm fuzzies? Or your current “band of brothers” or “girl squad” who have your back, no matter what? Maybe it’s your super tight network of co-workers with whom you spend more than half your waking hours, five or six days a week? Or the neighbors that you hang with as you watch the kids play, the dogs romp, the coffee perk, or the grass grow? Maybe your BFF is also your forever partner, for better or worse?All of these friendships are important. Data from a recent survey exploring friendship networks revealed that most of us, regardless of age, have cultivated a wide variety of social relationships. Here’s an overview of the specific friendship types that were explored:Lifelong FriendsBest FriendsClose FriendsSocial Group Friends (friends you socialize with but with whom you are not particularly close)Activity Friends (friends with whom you engage in specific activities, such as “gym buddies,” members of your book club or dinner club, church circles, and so on)Friends of Convenience (the folks with whom you might share carpooling duties, youth sports team parents, neighborhood groups, and so on)Acquaintance Friends (people at work, people you see each day when you’re walking your dog, folks you know to speak to, but not about anything of consequence or especially personal)Do You Need One of Each?To thrive in an increasingly isolating world, it’s helpful to have connections with others that reflect varying degrees of closeness. In fact, regardless of age, having friends of all types was positively related to life satisfaction. Life satisfaction is a global measure of subjective well-being often used to assess happiness and quality of life. The connection between social engagement and longevity, psychological and physical health, and overall contentment has been the subject of much research. Not only are these variables important to happiness, but research also indicates that novelty affects life satisfaction, as well (Buchanan & Bardi, 2010). This finding underscores the value of having a variety of social interactions in the course of your week: This will invite opportunities to engage in different ways with different people, which brings novelty into your life. Regardless of where you are in your life, age-wise, stage-wise, or location-wise, it’s important to cultivate a multi-faceted network of friendships. This also invites diverse people into your life who can help you grow beyond your comfort zone and encourage you to learn about other perspectives and ways of looking at and living life.How Many Friends Do You Need?The number of friends we tend to have among the different types isn’t really determined by our age, our relationship status, or whether or not we live alone. You’re never too old to create the friendships you need to help support your mental health and social well-being. About half of the people in the study felt that they had too few close friends, the other half felt they had plenty. And a couple felt they had too many.Another finding is that each of us has