How many hours do you have to spend with someone before you can call them your ‘best friend’?

As with everything in life, many things come and go. Year after year, you experience different phases and encounter different people on everyone's life path.

Very nice of course. This is mainly because you yourself are always changing and developing. As a child, you are very different than as a student, and as a student, you are again very different than as a working woman and as a working woman, you are again very different than as a mother. So you can have so much fun partying with a friend around your twenties, only to grow apart automatically after a while when you start settling down. That's a shame, but it's just growing older. It inevitably belongs to life. Yet some friendships do last, of course. If you know several girls from the past, when your father used to take you to preschool and you still see each other weekly with a lot of fun, then that's a real party. A special party, because besides your family, you hardly know anyone as long as that handful of eternal friends. That's why they are also a bit like family.

And your best friends. Because you are considered a best friend according to researchers if you have spent more than 200 hours with someone. If you know each other for less than 50 hours, you call each other an acquaintance. If you are around 90 hours of cozy one-on-one contact, then you are real buddies. But more than 200 hours and still not tired of each other, then you can speak of true besties. Real friendship. And that's so beautiful.

Throughout your life, you have an average of about 396 friends, but usually only 1 in 12 friendships really stick. So take a moment to count and cherish all those dear ones around you.

FACTS

• When you gain a new friendship, it comes at the expense of about two other friendships – you simply don't have unlimited time.
• The majority of all adults have two real friends.
• At least 68% of people would give up a friendship at work in exchange for a promotion.