When the going gets tough, will your friend or partner (whether romantic or professional) leave? Will that person branch at adversity? Or will he or she stay rooted with you? That's a big question, because leaves in your life are a dime a dozen, branches are common, but roots are a lot rarer and should be cherished.

You'll find a number of posts or even some tree-tises on social media and other parts of the Internet using this parts-of-a-tree metaphor to describe the different types of people you'll encounter in your life. A friend shared an Instagram post relaying this concept with me recently. The post essentially divided people into the following three categories:

How do you tell whether someone is a leaf, branch, or........

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