A study was conducted to investigate the practical management of interactions sustaining close friendships. Ten pairs of close friends were interviewed individually on two occasions and together on a third occasion. An interpretive analysis of subjects' remarks identified a dialectical principle governing the communicative organization of friendship. The dialectic of the freedom to be independent/freedom to be dependent conceptualizes the patterns of availability and mutual support in a close friendship. Basically, while each person is free to pursue individual interests apart from the other and without the friend's interference or help, each retains the liberty to rely on the other for help. In granting each other a combination of these two freedoms, the individuals cocreate a basis for patterns of interaction in their relationship that may curtail their individual liberties. This being so, the appropriate enactment of either type of communicative behavior within a relationship must be continually, though not always explicitly, renegotiated. (RL)