How do you determine if a friendship is meaningful?

I am not a great person and that reflects in my interactions. What are my friends getting out of keeping me around?

I try my best to listen and be interesting but I'm not sure I succeed.

For me it is companionship and fuzzy feelings.

I keep people around because they have things or abilities I find useful. For example, one of my fair-weather friends has a car and an awesome family. Hearing about hers makes me a bit more human and sometimes there is some wisdom to learn from people who have parents. Another friend is nice to me and makes me feel nice.

1) Is this how you evaluate whether or not you keep someone around? In other words, value them?

2) Is "I care about you and keep you around because I like you" implausible and BS? If I found it implausible, I'd have to decide whether to be suspicious or somehow just stupidly try to believe the implausibility, in order to forge "trust".

3) What is it like for to you to interact with someone you like, who does not have much to offer materially? What do you get from it?

4) If you like someone does interacting w/ them automatically give you positive results?

[MickeyCheeky]

If you like having that person around, and you trust that person and you feel like you're gaining a lot when you're around them, and that person feels the same things about you, then I'd say it's a good friendship.

[pappydaddy]

Some of the terminology you used, or more precisely, the concepts you were alluding to, remind me of the way I used to think. That was many years ago but I can sense a separation from the actual feelings. In other words it appears as if you are looking at everything from the outside.

Don't be afraid to embrace the feelings. They may seem like something from another planet right now but if you let them in eventually you will honestly feel them yourself.

Trying to feel the world vicariously is what I've been doing my whole life. It sucks.