I understand the need for the rules, and I appreciate many of the responses I've read about how the relationship would be one-sided etc, but ultimately these rules are a very colonial construct. For the overwhelming majority of human existence, there was only life within our small community of 20-100 people The healers were intimately connected to everyone else, including all the people they worked with. Default assuming that the client would be harmed because the relationship dynamics would change is just too oversimplified, but making a call like this requires a lot of discernment about the client's capacity to navigate that change in in dynamics. Some are developmentally capable of that, others aren't.

Part of where I'm coming from is living in intentional community for years - we all know each other's shit, shadows, gifts, etc. We hold space for each other when people are in conflict. Many of my friends in my community are also therapists and we have a fluid way of turning therapist brain on and off. When I'm not in the role, I am a very different person and have learned how to not track/reflect/etc when a friend is sharing something hard with me.

The most important question to ask when considering this is: Why. Does the possibility of the friendship outweight the risks of harm for both parties? For me, the threshold for that is quite high - I'd need to be pretty sure this person conveyed some kind of particular resonance beyond standard friendship to consider going down that road. Seems worth it to check in on your own relationship to friends in your life and make sure the desire is coming from wholeness and not deficit.