Friendship Dynamics - Conclusion I

When I started writing this series, I said wanted to find answers to questions I have about the dynamics of friendships. To mine and your disappointment, I do not think I found many answers, just complex threads of information I think you and I can gain some sort of understanding from. Enjoy your read and let me know what you think after xx

WHAT TYPE OF A FRIEND DO YOU "THINK" YOU ARE?

This first question was definitely a trap and only one of the respondents caught me out. 

"have someone thinking if they are what they really think they are"

One respondent even admitted that she does not think that she should be the one to judge what type of a friend she is. This response had me asking myself: "Is it conceited to describe your own style of friendship?" I think not, I later concluded. 

Friendships are often likened to tables and we are constantly being told that if a friend is not bringing something that is valuable to yours you should remove them, but have you ever thought about what YOU bring to the table?  

I always encourage the people around me to be confident about the quality of friendship they bring to the table, but when I asked this question it seemed like people began doubting themselves. Many of them obviously described themselves as true, genuine and honest friends. Positivity wasn't lacking in any of those descriptions with some respondents even going as far as admitting to bending themselves for the sake of their friends and that's totally great, we need more people like these in the world. There is obviously a fine line between being humbly-confident and arrogantly-confident and it is very difficult to keep serving yourself a piece of humble pie daily.

Out of all those responses, one was lacking;

Where are all the so called "toxic" friends in this world?

Is it possible that we can we be toxic friends but think better of ourselves? Or can one person's trash friend be another's priceless gold? I don't know, you tell me. 

The reality is that some people may be living their lives thinking they are humbly-confident and sweet angels of friends when they are not. If I had it my way, I would speak to the friends of all the respondents that answered this question. My aim would be to try and minimize the gap between what type of friends they think they are and how they really are towards their actual friends, but that would be going too far deep into other people's personal lives. I'm not a detective, I'm just a blogger. 

With this question I also wanted to understand if people's personal opinions towards a person's style of friendship can remain just that? 

"What if a close friend of yours opposed the description you just gave me? How would that make you feel?" 

From most of the responses that came back, I got the idea that people had developed tough skins and did not get affected by other people's opinions. I commend those people for having great confidence in the quality of friendship they bring to the table, as long as it's positive. One respondent even went as far as saying that:

"everyone is entitled to their own experience of me, whether it is positive or negative, I am only responsible for what I put out, not your interpretation of it." 

However, for those of us who have softer skins, the people pleasers, it is easy for us to fall into an abyss of validation seeking and tweaking of self to gain the perfect description of what society thinks a good friend should be like. 

We should aim to strike a balance between having a tough and a soft skin. While having a tough skin may save you from constant and unnecessary change of self, if you unknowingly find yourself on the toxic side of friendship and further tighten your tough skin in the name of thinking that you are a good friend, society is doomed. On the other hand, soft skinned people are the gold pieces of society because they take their time to, I quote: "self reflect and work towards the friend I think I am. Or well, I'd like to be." However, please be careful and protect yourself from "chameleoning" and losing your true personality because of a society that can never be fully satisfied. Tough and soft skinned people, check yourselves.

Please don't get annoyed, I didn't start writing this series just to catch people out and break them, I was genuinely interested in their level of self-confidence in the quality of friendship they offer and that was the reason why I asked this first question. 

Image courtesy of Twitter

WHAT TYPES OF PEOPLE DO YOU NOT WANT AS FRIENDS?

This question was meant to reveal what people do not want in friends, but ended up becoming a conversation about what they actually want from their friends. 

"Toxic af, unreasonable af, inconsiderate, jealous bitches" 

My apologies for the profanity, I had to give it to you exactly how I received it. Bear in mind that the response above was aimed at girls only. This response had me searching even deeper for these unwanted "toxic" people. I was confused because no one described themselves as toxic, jealous or inconsiderate in my first question, so where exactly do I find these people and how do I convince them to have the fluffy qualities I received in the responses above? 

In this question I also started to understand how people would like to be treated in friendships. The one thing that stood out here was the need to be CHOSEN. We all want to be valued and cherished, even though we do not always express it. Subscribe and point me to a person who does not want to be CHOSEN, I would like to have a casual chat with them. I think friendships in the past perfectly exhibited this. The absence of instant messaging and calling services left people having to write letters that would take days to deliver to their friends. I definitely would not take my time to write a WHOLE letter, walk to a WHOLE dangerous post office and wait an average of about 10 days just to communicate with someone I didn't consider a true friend. If I did that, it means that I have chosen to cherish your presence in my life. That's the kind of effort people are looking for nowadays in friendships, but it has sadly become rare. 

Principles also became a focal point in these questions. The saying that "opposites attract" was quickly abandoned with most people pointing out that they definitely could not stomach being with people who did not share the same values as them. Not so long ago, Twitter was in shambles after people admitting that they did not want to engage with certain people because they didn't "align with their brand." Although this quickly became an unhealthy popularity contest, the essence of that statement was very true. Why would you hang around someone who is blatantly dishonest when that doesn't align with your brand, unless that person is two-faced and only showing you the side that is good.

"Lol, I don't know, I'd say guys aren't that bad at friendships .."

Something that really grabbed my attention was that society sees girls as unpleasant people to befriend as opposed to guys. There also seems to be a lot more tension between females. Males are the preferred choice of friends (unless they start making romantic advances), but we'll get into that discussion in the analysis of the next question. 

Fake, insincere, self-centered and judge judies are also not popular people when choosing friends. I would like to think that a fake friend is also a validation seeker. Hear me out, a validation seeker (different to the people pleaser described above), will abandon their "true" friendship with you just to maintain a certain image with people other than you. They would say things that could discredit you to other people, just to get the validation they seek which to me, could easily be described as a fake friend. Some fake friends feel like they can be pardoned because they just use you as a stepping stone to where they would really like to be in life. "It's not personal" they would say. However, the Bible also tells us that:

 "Everyone tries to gain the favour of important people; everyone claims the friendship of those who give out favours." Proverbs 19:6

My question then becomes:

"Is it worth breaking someone's trust and perpetuating this vicious cycle of coldness society has towards friendships just to get where you want to be?"

Don't answer that, I fear you might find out you're a phony. 

Judge judies just make it terribly difficult for you to be comfortable in your own skin.

Let's not be those people that "feel that their personalities and beliefs are benchmarks of life" and avoid "judging people for being [them] you." There's literally nothing worse than having to live life covering your true personality up because of other people's selfish personalities. 

Have a look at a blog post I wrote titled "Internal Judgements." The content in that blog will give you a little bit of insight to why judge judies are the way they are. Obviously there are more reasons as to why they behave the way they do, e.g. simply being envious and seeing themselves as less than, meanwhile being friends with a person that is more than, so they try by all means to keep their friend locked in insecurity and never grow more than they do.

We could talk all day about what we do NOT want, but let's move on. 

Image courtesy of Pinterest