So many wonderful answers on here already!

To me, the most important thing about being a friend, is to accept each other as you are, with all your faults, unconditionally. This creates an atmosphere of trust, where you will both feel free to be your authentic self. This does not mean that it is okay to behave in a way that affects the other person in a negative way. You can be honest and say how you feel, but that is about their behaviour, not an attack on who they are. If you do it with love, they will know. Your friend is someone you can count on to be there and support you without making judgments, whatever you are going through. In an ideal relationship of any sort, you further and support each other's spiritual growth in an atmosphere of love and trust.

Unfortunately I have had a couple of bad experiences lately with so-called friends who chose to pass judgment on me as a person, and it seems that these were people who did not have a very high opinion of humankind in the first place. None of us is perfect, and that is exactly why we would do well not to be so judgmental.

If more people chose to focus on what is good about the world and others, we might have fewer wars.

EVEN WHIRLED PEAS!!!!!!!       {:-)

Jenny