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I am looking for a single word to describe a one-sided friendship.

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What makes the friendship one sided? – Matt Эллен Jan 17 at 12:53
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I think more details should be provided here. One-sided friendships could be had by mooches, stalkers, con men, or someone who is hugely insecure. I might use four different words, or the O.P. might be wanting a hypernym. Whichever it is, methinks some elaboration is in order. – J.R. Jan 17 at 23:18
Do you mean that one 'friend' does all the work to sustain the 'friendship'? i.e., is always the person to call, arrange meetings, always the one to visit, always the one to put themselves out for the other party...? – Kyudos Jan 18 at 4:00

5 Answers

up vote 12 down vote

If a friendship is one-sided, it could be described as unrequited.

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up vote 9 down vote

By one-sided friendship do you mean that a person wants to become a friend of another person's but is rejected as they do not hold mutual affection? If yes, then that is not a friendship at all.

Friendship is a relationship between two or more people who hold mutual affection for each other.

You can say that the person has admiration (or respect) for the other but they are not friends. Or the person trusts the other and is friendly to him/her but there is no mutual affection between them.

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What about one-sided love? Does that exist? :P – Mohit Jan 17 at 13:10
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@Mohit Well, theoretically one-sided love exists because love is an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment, unlike an interpersonal relationship such as friendship. – user19341 Jan 17 at 14:56
up vote 7 down vote

A one-sided affection is said to be unreciprocated.

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As to undefenestrate is really just to fenestrate, might not something that was unreciprocated simply be procated? :) – tchrist Jan 17 at 15:18
up vote 5 down vote

Not sure if this fits in well, but I thought you could consider unilateral, too.

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up vote 0 down vote

A forced or forceful friendship.

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