10 How I Met Your Mother Moments That Prove Barney Is REALLY Ted's Best Friend

How I Met Your Mother is supposed to be the story of how Ted met the mother of his children. In reality it’s an account of Ted’s escapades and those of his friends from their twenties to mid 30s.

It is one of the longest running jokes on How I Met Your Mother. Barney considers himself Ted’s best friend but Ted believes the position rightfully belongs to Marshall. Barney ignores this and demands that Ted admit that he (Barney) is his best friend. Ted goes along with this, either out of cowardice, a concern for Barney’s feelings, or maybe both. We laugh at this and life goes on until this charade is repeated again.

While portrayed as a self-centred, childish, and carefree womanizer, Barney Stinson happens to be quite a sentimental man beneath his carefully constructed exterior. He does things for his friends that no casual viewer might have considered possible.

Ted meets Barney in the urinal at McLarens. Barney makes up a story about bringing his deaf brother out which Ted believes without question. This surprises Barney, who had just made up the entire thing on the spot.

He finds Ted in his booth and introduces himself as Barney. He tells Ted that he’s going to teach him how to live. Which in Barneyspeak basically means teaching him the tricks to sleep with dozens of women. Barney is true to his word and takes Ted as his wingman for the following years.

It’s a pretty productive relationship for Ted. When Barney meets him he’s a socially inept dude trying too hard to be cool and still failing miserably. He even has a douchey goatee. Barney doesn’t succeed in changing Ted much but he improves his dating skills and convinces him to lose the goatee.