[hackeraccount]

The parent wasn't talking about strangers, they were talking about people you have to have a measure of intimacy with. Friends in this comparison are relatively easy because whatever happens later at the start you at least get to pick them.

No one gives you a choice about your parents or siblings. That's the great thing about them in some ways. Except by chance of birth I would never have been friends with my parents and probably not my siblings.

That said these are all people I love who I would never be friends with so they can't be treated like friends. Family has to be treated like family.