What do you call the receiver of friendship?

I came here from a question on ELL: a person who is willing to give up their life for others.

A friend is

Someone who is not an enemy and who you can trust -Cambridge dictionary

At that question, @Void commented:

‘Friends’ are often selfish, aren’t they?

Which is quite true, although this is often seen as a bug, not a feature, of friends.

Cambridge’s definition does not exclude selfish people; you would hardly trust someone who is reliably selfish, but a spot of egomania here and there is often accepted. As Honore de Balzac is supposed to have said, "Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other."

Anyhow, while friendship is often seen as reciprocal, and certainly should be a two-way street, it may sometimes be one-sided. Take this example of Dirk Willems, who helped someone who was definitely not his friend:

Willems was held in a residential palace turned into a prison, from which he escaped using a rope made out of knotted rags. Using this, he was able to climb out of the prison onto the frozen moat. A guard noticed his escape and gave chase. Willems was able to traverse the thin ice of a frozen pond, the Hondegat, because of his lighter weight after subsisting on prison rations. However, the pursuing guard broke through the ice and yelled for help as he struggled in the icy water.[1] Willems turned back to save the life of his pursuer, thus being recaptured and held until he was burned at the stake near his hometown on 16 May 1569. (Wikipedia)

In this story, it can be said that Willems was a "friend in need" to his pursuing guard. So if Willems was the guard’s friend,

What was the guard in relation to Willems?

A giver gives a gift to a reciever.

An employer employs an employee.

A speaker talks to a listener.

And a friend loves a _________.

A noun or noun phrase is preferred.

Related:

• The opposite of "gift"
• What do we call the receiver of a distribution