Friendship
The customary approach to friendship is to treat it as an end product. By this I mean that each of its participants relates to the other as if friendship is an entity already existing in space, external to the other, having met certain criteria in order to have been created. They belong Together. In this sense, belonging is determined by notions of Together Together, in turn, becomes defined by preconceived criteria such as reliability, support, sympathy, commonality of purpose, interests, and sentiment. Hence, belonging is a false unity, in that its participants have (often unwittingly) abstracted elements of similarity until friendship is seen as that which is common to each, a unity in multiplicity. A friend is thus a construction. What participants are or Why they are the way they are is foreground. Friendship is a noun.
Another way of seeing friendship is in the context of Belonging together. In this sense, together is defined by Belonging—i.e., the dynamic of relating, itself. Friendship in this sense is a process in creation in which each individual perpetually comes into being with the other. The participants share a bond of belonging. When we Belong together, relating changes our understanding of each other as we ourselves change. How participants are is foreground. This is multiplicity in unity that allows for difference. Friendship is a verb.
The former is bound by time and space, is a product contingent on causes external to itself, though deduced as a unity by its participants. The latter is a whole–timeless and placeless—and emerges out of a necessity that is intrinsic and experienced.