Cherishment

By Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Faith Bethelard
Friends

It's the essence of friendship. It falls somewhere between love, consideration, and reliance. And it's what everybody in the world wants.

 
A few years ago, as good friends and practicing therapists, we found ourselves thinking about the curative power of friendship—that vital relationship Aristotle once called the mutual love of people who wish each other well.

Cherishment is what people want from their friends, and this warm, embracing feeling harks back to childhood, because it is rooted in the loving care a baby expects from the moment of birth. And it is an expectation to be loved in a particular way: cherished—spontaneously, generously, playfully. Each person in an adult relationship brings to it early experiences of amae satisfied and amae frustrated.

Friendship is about reciprocal cherishing. It may come as a surprise that to be a good friend you might need to be able to receive loving care as well as give it. But this is the essence of friendship.