Your friendships influence the fulfillment in your life more than most other fac

tors. One key thing that can help you build friendships effectively is to unders
tand right how long this takes.
It is common for people to wonder: how long does it take to form a friendship? W
e want to understand the dynamics of friendships so we can build them successful
ly, enhance our social lives and know when to cut our losses.
The Ingredients of Friendship
In order to answer the question above, we first need to understand what makes a
friendship. From a psychological perspective, a friendship is not defined by rul
es or norms, it is defined by emotions.
In other words, you can call a person friend when there are certain positive emo
tions between you. Among these emotions, some of the most important are comfort
and trust. Let s take a look at how these two emotions develop between two people.
Comfort is an emotion that results from the fact two people know each other and
they discover commonalities. Generally, when we ve just met a new person and they re
almost a stranger, we lack comfort and we feel somewhat apprehensive.
This is because we barely know anything about that person and they barely know a
nything about us. As we get to know each other, as we discover simple commonalit
ies between us, we start to feel more at ease.
Trust is an element that emerges when we know we can count on a person to be aut
hentic and to help us in need. Trust is formed when two people have integrity, m
eaning that they align their thoughts with their words and their words with thei
r deeds.
It is also formed when two people show the willingness and ability to support ea
ch other. When one person has a problem and the other provides some thoughtful a
dvice, when one person needs a helping hand and the other offers it, trust surfa
ces.
Back To the Question and the Answer
Now, with a good understanding of the emotional makeup of a friendship, it s a lot
easier to figure out how long it takes to form a friendship.
As a rule, we could say that it takes for a friendship to form the amount of tim
e required for a decent amount of comfort and trust to develop between two peopl
e. This doesn t say a lot, as there is plenty of variation from on case to another
, but it does allow us to set some general guidelines.
In general, comfort can be built relatively easy. If two people are open and tal
kative, they can get to know each other in just a couple of hours of conversatio
n and develop a sense of rapport. These hours of conversation typically happen i
n just a week or two.
Trust requires a bit more time to develop. The first level of trust appears when
two individuals are willing to be authentic and put themselves out there as the
y are. Provided they re relatively comfortable in their own skin, this can happen
quite quickly.
The second level of trust requires more time, as the friendship needs to be test
ed. You often only discover that somebody is your true friend when you request o
f them something important a couple of times, and this can happen over a couple
of months.

Overall, it takes a month or two for true trust to develop, and that s the amount
of time it also takes a friendship to form as well. So there you have it: most o
f the time, it takes one or two months to form a friendship.
Keep in mind though that this interval can vary quite a lot depending on the per
sons and the social dynamics. If two persons are really sociable, have good conv
ersation skills, share meaningful commonalities and they interact often, a true
friendship can emerge in just a couple of weeks.