I too married my best friend!
I have very few acquaintances worthy of the title 'friend', so few that perhaps I can count them on the fingers of two hands. That may sound snobby, but I do expect the same treatment from others too. Their paucity helps me to analyse what makes a friend for me.
I don't share some of your views on friendship. For instance, 'attachment' is something that I feel for my wife, but not for a friend. Excluding my best friend, I could indeed live without the few people who have become my friends. That is not a callous statement, for I esteem them highly. If anything, it is simply a little Zen.
I wouldn't expect the 'bullet' sacrifice from my friends. Neither them of me. That is unless we had made a commitment to each other to do so. It would never be assumed otherwise.
Love? Yes it is love. Because in my world love is not something I feel, it is something I do - we do, for it is not one-sided and the love in a friendship means action on both sides.
As for your dictionary: I know a lot of people well! Very few are friends.
So what do I consider as a friend? The symptoms are that I enjoy being around them and I miss them when they're gone - sure. But WHY is that? It's because we share something. Somewhere we share a common view of life and we respect and encourage that in each other. The more we share, the closer is the friendship. We don't necessarily need to share common goals, but we approach the achievement of those goals with similar attitudes born of our common view. And when we start to share common goals too, then the friendship can be very close indeed.
Cannot opposites attract, one might ask? I don't think that's the recipe for friendship. Sometimes it works for temporary or lustful relationships, but I've never seen it work for
successful long-term friendships, even marriages. There are traits in some of my friends that are indeed opposite to some of mine, but without the important things in common the friendship would not have taken root. In a friendship, I find those traits unimportant, and at most a fascination.
But I'll mention another symptom of friendship, something that is akin to your 'bullet' statement. I'm not contradicting myself here, because this is an effect of friendship, a symptom - not something that defines it, but something that may give you a clue as to the strength of the relationship. And that is the 'verbal bullet'. I will not believe anything derogatory a third party may tell me about a friend without checking with that friend first. Moreover I will stand up for the integrity of that friend in their absence until I know otherwise. And if someone is putting a malicious 'spin' on some which I know to be true about them, I'll throw it right back with a positive spin. For people who are not friends, I admit I tend not to bother.
Whoops... that was a long post!
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