This short test is by UK-based author and journalist Mark Vernon* (www.markvernon.com) and designed according to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s insights. It indicates what your friendship type might be.
Answer each question and then add up your score.
1. How many close friends would you say you have?
(a) 1-3 (score: 3)
(b) 4-8 (score: 2)
(c) more than 8? (score: 1)
2. Which of these qualities would you say is most detrimental to friendship:
(a) favouritism (score: 2)
(b) selfishness (score: 1)
(c) dishonesty (score: 3)
3. Do you think the best test of a close friend is:
(a) always being there to have fun with (score: 1)
(b) always being ready to do a favour for you (score: 2)
(c) always ready to pick up where you left of from before (score: 3)
4. Where would you place friendship in relation to two other important things in life, career and self-esteem:
(a) more important than career and self-esteem (score: 3)
(b) more important than career but less important than self-esteem (score: 1)
(c) important, but less important than both career and self-esteem (score: 2)
5. Do you currently have someone you could call a soulmate?
(a) I think so (score: 3)
(b) oh, for sure! (score: 1)
(c) No (score: 2)
6. When a friend at work gets a new job, leaves, and - if you're honest - you don't really miss them, do you:
(a) think, that's just life (score: 2)
(b) think, I'll keep them in my address book (score: 1)
(c) feel guilty (score: 3)
7. Which do you think is the most important quality to have in a friendship?
(a) loyalty (score: 1)
(b) goodwill (score: 2)
(c) trust (score: 3)
8. Which do you think is the most important quality you need to have to be a good friend:
(a) self-awareness (score: 3)
(b) individual contentedness (score: 2)
(c) copious conviviality (score: 1)
Now add up your score...
The circle friendship type - Score: 12 or less
You have or want a wide circle of friends. You seek to know people in many walks of life with different dispositions and characters; it's the very diversity that appeals to you. You tend to view life as something to enjoy with others. You like nothing more than being with them all, and they say that you're the life and soul, though you may also worry that different friends of yours won't get on, and you secretly wonder what that says about you. It says that you have many parts in your character, and different friends appeal to different parts. The risk of your friendship type is that you don't actually get to know any one of your friends very well. They are drawn by your charisma, though that same spirit can act as a barrier. Paradoxically, then, friendship might disappoint you, for all that you value it.
The ladder friendship type - Score: 13-18
This means that you tend to view life as a journey of change, evolution and progress - like climbing a ladder. You therefore value friends who are ascending too, who share your journey. It's not so much that you are scheming in friendship. Rather, you like to encourage and help your friends, and value it when they encourage and help you. The value of such friendship is that you experience the great thrills of achieving things with others, be that at work, in your creative or recreational life. The risk is that people can mistake your desire to be useful to them, and they to you, as a desire simply to use them. Some will feel you've left them behind, though they will acknowledge that you are an exciting person to be with, someone who challenges and excites them in equal measure.
The point friendship type - Score: 19-24
This means that you value a small number of very close friends, perhaps just one, and tend to regard the other people you know in your life as acquaintances. The great benefit of point friendship is the chance of plummeting the depths of knowing someone really well, and allowing them to know you. Soulmateship is of great value to you, probably second only to life itself. The risk you face is of disappointment with friends since such close friendship is relatively rare: it demands testing personal qualities like trust, as well as the sheer luck to meet someone to befriend so profoundly. Others may worry that you can be lonely. In fact, you may well have had a close friend in the past, and now feel you don't. Though you value friendship so much, precisely because you know the treasure it offers.
* Titles by Mark Vernon include The Meaning of Friendship (Palgrave Macmillan), The Good Life (Hodder) and Wellbeing (Acumen), part of the Art of Living series he edits. He writes regularly for The Guardian and New Statesmen in the UK, amongst other publications, and is on the faculty at The School of Life in London. He is also an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He has degrees in physics and theology, and a PhD in philosophy.
