Back<<

What do you want most in a friend- someone who is intelligent, or someone who has a sense of humor, or someone who is reliable? which one fo these characteristics is the most important to you? Use reasons and specific examples to explain your choice.
22/F/Japan>>> TOEFL CBT 223 (5.0)
I have various types of friends. Each friend has each character that entertains, encourages, or sometimes makes me angry. All of them are precious treasure for me, but I think that the first list on my list is being honest, since I can trust honest people and trust is key to keep friendly relationship with others.

If someone always tells serious lie, I learn to doubt all the things what he/she says. Even if the person was kind, clever and humorous, I cannot be real friends with him/her. It is becuase I'm forced to fear that "the friend" speak ill of me behind me. In short, without trustful relationship, I cannot regard the person as my friend.

Honest people point out my weak point both in my character and in my ability, which is very helpful to improve myself. Although some advice or warning from honest people might be hard to accept and irritates me, their advice is based on objective point of view much more than my own analysis of myself. Therefore, I can notice my bad points that cannot be recognized by myself. When I notice friend's weak point, on the other hand, I will say what I think about the people caring about the way of saying. It might cause tense between I and the friend, we gradually understand with each other and manage to keep frinedly relationship.

Honest people can be the best adviser. When I want to seek some advice to deal with my trouble, I can tell even serious and private problems to them, because of their honest character. As I said at the beginning, honest people can be trustful. Therefore, they never leak my secret to others and consider the way of solution with me very hard.

Honesty is the most important character to keep intimate relationship with others. Some people might guess frequency of quarrel between I and honest people. Maybe, yes. My best friend is very honest and I sometimes argue her because we say what we think about each other directly. However, she has been my friend since we were primary school. I am sure the secret key to duration of our duration is trusting with each other.