As we grow older, friendships seem to just get harder. As we grow into our own person and start to model ourselves into the human beings we want to be, finding solid friendships can be a struggle. Looking back on my own experiences, throughout my entire high school career, I settled in regard to most of my friendships out of convenience rather than forming deep connections with people. I only keep in touch with a couple of people from my past, and now that I’m in college, I have learned there is a lot of importance in the way you choose your friends. It is important to surround yourself with people who bring you joy and make you feel supported.
Looking back, I wasn’t fully committed to a lot of my friendships. I found that because of my people-pleasing tendencies, I often sacrificed my own opinions and morals just to make others happy with me. This kind of behavior makes it difficult to form genuine bonds with the people around you. Anxiety had driven my fear of people disliking me, which was ironically the only thing that stood in the way of me being liked for who I truly am. Due to my old tendencies, my friendships used to be faulty. In the end, a friend to all is a friend to none.
As I realized the implications this behavior has had on my relationships, I’ve stepped away from people pleasing, and finally see the personality I’ve been hiding all this time. More importantly, I have learned how to make balanced and healthy friendships that will make it past a couple of years. Instead of needing everyone to like me, I instead choose my friends by making careful decisions about who I want to spend my time with, and I think everyone should do the same. It’s important for your friends to truly know you and like you for you. While this seems like an obvious statement, it’s easy to fall stray to conforming to other people’s personalities and behaviors. Ultimately, doing so can draw you into a toxic friendship.
While I am no expert on socialization and relationships, I have come a long way from where I was before. I find it much easier to dictate whether a friendship will positively or negatively affect me and I’m happy to share the ways I choose to do this.
One component of building positive friendships is to surround yourself with a social circle that is truly aware of the importance of support systems. Since every person is different, finding out the best way to support a friend, especially during tough times is important and can teach you about each other. Some of the closest bonds are created by someone offering support in a time of need. In my opinion, the best way to know how to offer this support to someone is to just ask, and dedicate a conversation to knowing what a friend needs.
In addition to discovering methods of support, it is also important to find people who have similar interests or values. This might seem like a crystal clear observation to some people, but I believe that people often overlook this important aspect of building friendships. As I said before, in the past, I used to make my friendships based on convenience so that I wouldn’t have to eat lunch alone or struggle to find partners in group work. I decided to be comfortably uncomfortable and stayed in a friend group where I felt like I didn’t belong, just so I wouldn’t be lonely. However, friendships are solely for kinship, so you should be able to bond with your friends, not just use them to make your daily life easier. Putting aside your values and interests for friends who don’t agree with them is a direct hit to your morality. You should be able to think for yourself. Therefore, waiting a little longer for friends who care about your interests and values is extremely important.
Lastly, working on being a good communicator is one of the final pieces of the puzzle that makes a good friendship. It’s also important to communicate with honesty and integrity. You should be able to have open discussions with friends about a plethora of topics without the fear of being judged. To be a good communicator, you must actually be willing to initiate conversation with your friends without conforming to their ideas or thoughts, even in terms of tough topics.
When making friendships as adults, there is no room for people pleasing, gossiping and forming fake bonds. It’s time we all embrace our true personalities, and communicate with our peers unapologetically. This mindset allows us to find people who share our values, interests and lifestyles more authentically. I believe that, in turn, this leads to better and more fulfilling relationships for all people involved.
