How to recognize a true friendship?

October 28, 2005

A friend is above all an ally

A friend is first of all someone who welcomes Truly of your happiness and success.

He is also someone who will do what he can, when he can, to help your success or your happiness. Not always, not under any conditions, but according to his constraints and the rhythm of his life. A friend or a friend, it’s just someone who has envy to help you be happybecause seeing you fulfilled is part of its very balance.

Be careful, though. Be wary of people who help you own yourself, or just to return the favor : friendship is not a shop where affection or services are sold.

This too must be kept in mind, to learn to give without necessarily expecting a return. Without burdening your friends with any “debt” towards you. Above all, do not do things to get something yourself: This is not friendship, this is bargaining.

True friendship is helping others “for free”just because his happiness is a bit like your happiness.

Friendship is not necessarily found easily

For fear of emptiness and loneliness, out of fear of not being “normal,” we tend to want to surround ourselves at all costs, even if that means only having toxic people as friends.

We must be wary of this reflex. On the one hand because it could very well be that you let yourself be weakened, eaten by these false friends. On the other hand, because by surrounding yourself with a crowd of people whose values ​​you don’t really share and who aren’t really your allies, you end up not having enough space and time to approach his world of people who are really worth it.

However, truly precious people, who give you energy, who inspire you, support you, complete you, are rarer than you think. And finding them takes time and patience.

We must therefore accept being more “selective” in our friendshipseven if it means having fewer friends. This work may seem difficult and time-consuming, but it pays off in the end. Because over time, you will only have people around you that you can trust, “caring” people who are happy that you are thriving.

You could really compare his life to a garden. We don’t let anyone into our garden do anything there. We do not allow anyone to destroy our plantations, throw garbage everywhere, etc. It seems logical. However, in life, we do not always apply this principle, and we easily let ourselves be invaded by people we believe to be our friends…

While the others remain at the gate.

There is no room for possessiveness in friendship

The big mistake we all make sooner or later, is believing that a friendship can be exclusive. We therefore expect a friend to be everything. That we are alike in every way, that we have the same tastes, that we do everything together. That there is never a clash, never a misunderstanding and… that our friend can be everything to us.

This vision of friendship is both illusory and very dangerous. Because by expecting everything from the other and considering him as a mirror of ourselves, we end up suffocating the relationship. A bit like in a couple, when we are too exclusive, we deny each other the right to have other activities, other friendships, other influences.

Result: either we end up suffocating and have nothing more to say to each other, or one of us suffers from being the other’s thing.

Tell yourselfYou don’t have to share everything with someone to build a lasting friendship. We can have big points of divergence, big differences, but still be complementary. Also, it is not necessary to do everything together for a friendship to be strong and durable.

On the contrary, when everyone sees other friends, they carry out their own activities, let’s get even richer. We learn from each other’s experiences and their differences… In short, we create friendship and nurture it. It’s quite reassuring, isn’t it?

Finally, in friendship as elsewhere, do not expect too much from yourself or others. Come on and see what comes out of it. And don’t be discouraged if you sometimes give yourself to people who don’t deserve you: after all, that’s the game.

Photo credits: Marcus Aurelius and Kampus Production (Pexels)