The topic of friendship is one that I circle back to often. It’s a subject matter that I take special interest in and enjoy delving into. Specifically, and almost solely, my interest is in close friendships. The kind that involves sharing the ins and outs of your life together, staying close in touch, showing up on the regular (in person and/or electronically), and being intentionally and mutually invested in developing trust, deep care, and intimacy.
Here are a few of my beliefs & views when it comes to the nature of friendships:
- Establishing friendships as an adult is hard
- Friendships do not maintain themselves; they require effort
- Common barriers to developing close friendships that I see: low self-esteem; over-booked schedules; vast misunderstanding about the power of their potential
It’s relatively easy to find people to forge surface friendships with. Acquaintances with whom to talk shop with or chat about the weather. People who are fine for a short period of time. People with whom you share a special interest or hobby with. In other words, people you enjoy well enough but could, when it comes down to it, take or leave. I’m not at all saying these kind of friendships do not have value. They absolutely do. And, of course, all close friendships need to start somewhere. Sometimes what starts out as a surface involvement turns into a lifelong pairing.
Close friendships, on the other hand, are special and, unfortunately, rather rare. But I think they’re only rare because we so thoroughly misunderstand them. My sense is that many of us never consciously learned how to develop and maintain friendships. As children, our friends were basically whoever was closest at hand. Maybe our friends were the kids of our parents’ adult friends or the neighbor kids next door or who sat next to us in homeroom. As we got older we became more selective, but our friendships were still largely based on proximity. Most of us simply never learned the necessary skills to cultivate and maintain adult friendships.
And for whatever terrible reason, to add insult to injury, what we did learn was that friendships as an adult should take a perpetual backseat to other “more important” relationships (ie spouse; kids; parents), always. When we entered adulthood, many of us stopped regarding friendships as a worthwhile investment of time and energy and started relating to them as being more akin to pizza. Nice to have, but not essential.
Okay, so, here’s my passionate pitch: close friendships are essential. Just most of us don’t know it, and/or don’t know how to go about doing what it takes to create & maintain them. Here are some things I see a lot that I think might be good to bring out into the light of awareness. Warning: strong opinionated feelings alert.
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