To become a good friend, you have to work at opening up your life to be available. This means that you will have to place some limits on self-protection. Looking out for yourself, in this sense, means not only looking out for yourself. There is probably not enough time to do all that you want to do. Yet to make a good friend, you will likely have to cut back on all the things that you want to do. There are so many things to do that people who want to be good friends have to make some conscious decisions to not do some of the activities available to them. This also applies to being private. Close friends are internally available to one another. By this I mean that their thoughts and feelings are available. You cannot be much of a good friend if you play it too careful with what you think and how you feel. Especially important is the ability to tell your friend how you think and how you feel about him or her.
True friends help each other. Spend time thinking about your friend. What is going on in his or her life? What might she or he think about that? How might she or he feel about it?
But before you can be of much help to your friend, you must understand your friend. No matter how much you see you and your friend as being alike, you are infinitely different, at least in the specific particulars of life. Understanding your friend is empathy. The best way to be able to accurately empathize with your friend is to dialogue. Dialogue is one of the only ways that you will ever get to know your friend.
Dialogue is that kind of communication designed just for getting to know and understand another. Dialogue uses the inquisitive question, "Why?" for the purpose of finding out how a friend thinks and feels. In dialogue, you try to keep asking "why?" until you get down to the heart of the matter and the "insides" of your friend. You are wanting to understand, so that you can be of help. When life gives your friend troubles, you want your help and advice to be tailored to your friend. That will mean saying things a bit different than you would talk to yourself, just because you are different.
Friends are like chests of buried treasure filled with jewels. Dialogue helps you find all those fascinating things about your friend. Every thing you learn can be exciting with the right attitude. You do not have to agree or want the same things or see things the same way to be in wonder at your friends likes, dislikes, choices, etc. Since "being" together is much more important to close friends than "doing" together, what you learn about one another is the prize! People want to be known and accepted.
Friendship requires acceptance. Acceptance does not always mean "approval". But it does mean loving tolerance for a few shortcomings. Acceptance means that you appreciate many things about your friend, especially those things that are different from yourself and your way of thinking and feeling. Friends who are just like you might seem "wonderful", but they will have little to offer you in the way of different ways of seeing things or different experiences to enjoy. Photocopy friends are in some ways dangerous. They seem safe because they so easily understand you. But when the chips are down, they will misunderstand things just as you do. When you need a fresh perspective to get out of a jam, they will be of limited help compared to a close friend who is much different than you.
True friendship looks out for what is best for the friend. And sometimes this means saying something that is honest, but will not be welcomed at first. If your friend takes what you have said as hurtful, quietly and patiently help your friend to know that you did not mean to hurt – only to help. This is an important skill in friendship – to hang in there to reassure rather than to withdraw for your own safety.
Some friends will be guarded and not open up readily. This is most likely due to it being dangerous during childhood to speak and tell how they really felt and what they really thought. These friends need your patient help to see that it is safe to speak from inside of themselves. They will need you to model open honesty, thus showing them that it is truly safe.
It is probably a good principle to always assume that you do not understand what another person has said. This will prompt you to ask questions. Asking questions shows that you are interested in truly understanding what another has said. It is very flattering to your friend for you to ask questions. And don’t often preface your questions with the statement, "I don’t understand." Just ask the questions. For example, your friend says that she likes ice cream. Don’t say, "I’m with you. I like ice cream too." Ask what kind of ice cream, and when she tells you she likes rocky road, don’t even then think you understand much. Ask why she likes rocky road and find out if it is the texture, a childhood memory, or something else. Of course, if the subject is something more important than ice cream, and they all should be, it is even more important to ask questions and assume you do not yet understand.
All friendships take work. Relationships that are "easy" are shallow. All of us make mistakes and have some bad, even hurtful, habits. The cycle of hurt feelings, understanding and forgiveness is often needed in friendships.
When a friend is acting "yucky", it probably means that he or she is going through something difficult and needs understanding from you. Instead of running away from the undesirable behavior, you need to ask what is wrong. Then see if you can offer helpful comments of empathy and then advice.
When a friend hurts you, try to hold your assumptions in question. Although you feel hurt, it is probably unlikely that a close friend wanted to hurt you. In fact, there might very well be another explanation. You could have heard something different than what was intended. You could have interpreted the action incorrectly. Or you might not understand the situation your friend was in, and how it was so very difficult for your friend.
When you feel hurt by your friend, don’t assume that you were hurt – only that you feel hurt. First ask your friend if he or she meant to hurt you. Once your friend has said no hurt was intended, ask your friend why he or she said what he or she said or did what he or she did. Hold off making judgments and keep asking "why?" until you fully understand why your friend does not think that he or she meant to hurt you.
Remember that your friend cannot do better and better at being your friend unless you tell what you need from the friendship. And try to get beyond "companion thinking" where you just think of the things that you want to do with your friend. That’s okay, but if it does not go further, you will only have a companion and miss having a close friend. Close friends take some of their personal needs into the relationship. And that is not bad – unless one of you has so many needs as to be overwhelming. But the needs for encouragement, reciprocity, truthful feedback, and many other personal things are very important. Anything without them is not a true, close friendship.
Remember that words make up only 10-20% of the message. Body language, tone of voice, timing, and other factors make up the whole message. Keep in mind that you may be sending out nonverbal messages that might be misunderstood. For example, if you are a person who is pretty much inside of yourself, you might not show any excitement when you meet your friend at a restaurant. Eventually your friend might value another friendship more because he or she knows for sure that he or she is someone another person looks forward to seeing.
Whenever you talk to someone, remember to whom you are talking. With a close friend, where you know a lot about one another, you will know pretty much to whom you are talking. You will know how he or she sees things differently than you do. Therefore, you will phrase things in a way she or he can best understand rather than the easiest way for you to say things.
NOTE: If you lose friends frequently, it is a good idea for you to find out why and what you need to change. This would be a legitimate reason to seek professional counseling. You want to find out what you do in friendships that is dysfunctional. It is smart – very smart – to get over this problem. By doing so, you will change the whole course of your life!
