What Makes a Solid Friendship?

What’s the greatest gift of friendship?

I don’t think it’s what you receive from another person. I think it’s what you learn about yourself through connection with people. I think it’s understanding that your loyalty to a person shouldn’t trump your values or what brings you joy. I think it's realizing that a friendship is a relationship you shouldn’t settle for.

Whether or not a friendship lasts, it’s successful if you learn something from it. I’ve learned to prioritize mental health, however that looks. I’ve learned to do what makes me happy, without guilt. I’ve learned to follow my heart and learn from mistakes, without shame. I’ve learned to be less judgemental and more approachable. I’ve learned to be intentional about who I spend my time with. I’ve learned to pay attention to the effect a person’s presence has on my life. I continue to learn humility by making wrong decisions based on good intentions.

A mature friendship is not a game of players you manipulate, eliminate and grant extra lives to when the storyline takes unexpected turns. There’s no need to dramatize why people withdraw from each other. We grow apart and disconnect from people. Should I say I’m better than the people I’ve separated ways from? It’s best to say that I’ve stuck with people better for me, just as anyone who took a separate way from me stuck with people better for them. Any relationship’s end has taught me to evolve with those involved or allow the relationship to respectfully dissolve.

I often reflect on my experiences in relationships. I think about expectations around loyalty—I reflect on what I believed these expectations to be, and what I believe them to be now.

People maintain ‘standby’ friendships that hold little to no value to them. People decide when this friendship type benefits them, and when to engage in it. People befriend and reject by association. There’s nothing wrong with this if everyone involved is aligned. Maybe for some, ‘loyalty’ equates to being a follower. Maybe it’s for social media. Maybe it’s to belong to a group experience. Whatever the reason, the glue that holds together a friendship like this is only as strong as what each person gains from it.

Friendship is not dropping all of your needs for another person. It’s a mutual appreciation that you and the people you care about are on a journey and everyone is doing their best. It’s understanding that we share feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, setting goals, seeking fulfillment and not knowing what the hell we’re doing about any of it. It’s the need to know we have support from another person. It’s releasing worry that that person will question our occasional disconnect. It’s acknowledging that we’re all figuring out life and embracing the different ways we handle it.

We’re all raw, emotional, sensitive beings. We need to be compassionate. We need to be empathetic. We need to ask questions. We need to make fewer assumptions about each other. We need to avoid making up scenarios about lives that are not the ones we live.

Communicate. Ask questions. Ask for clarification. Ask, or you won’t know what’s real.

What I’ve learned is to seek information to understand, not to weaponize. We’re so quick to spit out an opinion about another person’s experience or a situation that doesn’t involve us. Not everyone shares the same perspective as you, so try to expand your mind.

We’ve all learned to express our thoughts and feelings in different ways. Individual life experiences take some credit for this. We can also thank exposure from our family where feelings were deprived of or embraced through reward or discipline received. We’re supposed to want to share with our friends, but we don’t all know how to be transparent, especially if this didn’t work out for us in the past.

Be kind. Be understanding. Be open-minded.

Judgement enters our minds when we hear something about another person. I continue to retrain my mind. I allow myself an internal thought reaction. I ask myself if I know everything, and I empathize. We all deserve to be understood, even if our perspective is not aligned with another.

As humans, all we want is to be loved and understood, and we rarely ask for it. We’d rather push people away, show anger, expect the worst, and self-sabotage before ever showing vulnerability and asking for what we need.

Sometimes we make positive life-changing decisions, other times we make heartbreaking, well-intentioned decisions. Sometimes we make decisions that hurt other people without ever wanting to.

Consider the positive and poor decisions you’ve made in your life. Think about regrets you may have. Think about past experiences that still make you cringe. Think about the times you made decisions that go against your values. Think about how you can’t take back or change any of them.

Now, think about how all of those decisions were made based on the knowledge you had at the time. Trust that in those moments, the decisions you made felt to be the best ones. Do you believe your character is defined by your past indiscretions? The maturing, evolving mindset would tell you to reflect, accept, forgive and do better. Your happiness should not be sacrificed for any of this, and we need to be compassionate with ourselves and others on their journeys.

A question I’ve stewed with recently is:

How often do we hold onto a friendship just because we’ve known someone for years? Friendship isn’t meaningful if it’s only secured by the length of time it’s existed. Does friendship make you feel safe? Does friendship invite new conversations about life? Does friendship encourage you to share deep fears, insecurities, awful mistakes? Does friendship encourage personal growth? If you fear judgement because you want to share a hard feeling or truth, what does that say about the relationship? 

What makes a solid friendship? Here are a few traits that hold value to me:

Honesty, approachability, trust, non-judgement, compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. Keep in mind that we all hold bias and judgement and it’s important to observe them when we feel them.

Friendship should be a mutual choice, not an obligation. Don’t be afraid to let someone go.