From a conversation*

As a matter of fact, no relationship should ever be broken by a love affair. Because love might well be just that: an affair, something that has a limited lifetime, something that doesn't last the test of time, of distance, of difference. But friendship is seldom just an affair, for it is not by any means bound by time, distance of differences. Time might pass and the friendship remains. Friends can be friends being half the world away from each other. And what frequentely kills a love affair - the individual self of the pair, and the differences between them - are of little, if any, consequence to a true friendship. And we must not forget that, in time, or so people say, the most intense love tends to give way to the purest form of friendship, when two people share a lifetime together until the end of their days.

This doesn't mean that friendship is better than love, or more useful. The truth is, we do need both. For different reasons. It merely means that one shall never overcome the other. If that happens, then something is amiss. In friendship or love.

*of couse, this was edited and expanded, but you've said yourself: I'm always expanding myself.