I Am Really and Truly Friends With You, and You Admire and Value My Character

Only virtuous people can really be friends, because they are the only ones who have admirable and valuable characters. This sort of friendship is grounded not in something incidental to the friend, like their usefulness or shared pleasures,. Inequality, for aristotle, is inimical to friendship. And he comments rather unpleasantly, that this is why men can't be friends with women, even with their wives. It also explains, as he says in a striking passage, why we cannot be friends with god.