How To Know True Friends
“Friends are the sure refuge,” quoted Aristotle. Significantly, friends play a critical role in making our lives meaningful. They boost our confidence by helping us realize our potential, strengths, and weaknesses. They make our lives lively since they support us socially by being involved in our happy and sad experiences. Notably, their involvement in our lives enables us to live healthily mental-wise because they help us cope with stress. They have a greater place in our lives than our family since we choose them while we do not have the leisure of choosing family. A study led by William Chopik, an assistant psychology professor at Michigan State University, revealed that people feel free to share anything with friends, unlike when sharing with family, whom they feel they must share about serious things. This revelation means that we are happier with friends. However, not all friends can impact us positively. We must be careful to choose true friends who will help us live healthily, mentally and emotionally. Surprisingly, the technological era we live in has not been supportive in helping us identify true friends. The best way of knowing if our friends are true is when they tell us our flaws, show up in need and merry, and are not jealous of us.
A true friend should tell us about our flaws without sugar-coating anything. In her article, psychologist Belinda Mallasasime explains that true friendship results in a strong bond that allows people to share anything freely. She explains that a person who fears telling his friends about his weakness is more of an acquittance than a true and reliable friend. An acquittance will probably not tell the truth about your faults because he avoids hurting you while, in a real sense, he limits your chances of becoming a notable person in society. We spend more time with our friends; thus, they understand our strengths and weaknesses. Their role as our friends is to ensure that we become better people. Thus, they must help us realize our weaknesses and work on them to improve. Notably, true friends should know how to tell us about our flaws without causing unnecessary tension. The friendship is cemented on the respect that must play on your interactions. The correction should not sound like intimidation. Instead, it should appear like a lesson, and the result should boost the respect level between us. For instance, we are likely not to be contented if our friend corrects us in public using a demeaning tone. We are more likely to feel respected if he calls us aside to tell us about our flaws and help us with ways to correct them and become a better person. A true friend will help us “shade off” your flaws because he wants the best out of us. This aspect brings me to my second point, jealousy.
Jealousy is a factor that kills all types of interpersonal relationships. In his article, “8 Tips to Help You Identify Your Friends,” Scott Zhou explains that a true best friend is never jealous of our achievement. True friends are supposed to be genuinely happy for our success even when they do not succeed on their side. They are bound to support us by helping us achieve more success. I interviewed Sarah Madson, a relationship coach and psychologist, and she had similar views as Zhou. She gave an example of how she had succeeded in her career, thanks to her friends, who had failed in a similar business path as hers. She recounted how they would come to her office to help her with clients while they had none. According to her, the lack of jealousy in friendships enables friends to support each other genuinely, enabling them to scale higher than other people. She explained that jealousy blocks reliability because friends do not like their colleagues to excel more than them. The sad reality is that most people do not even realize that they are in jealous friendships. Madson explained that the best way of realizing jealousy in a friendship is when we are reluctant to tell our friends about our achievement. We could be afraid that they would be unhappy or feel intimidated. In a true friendship, we feel that your friends are happy for our success and are even dedicated to helping us scale higher. Apart from friends telling us about our flaws and not being jealous, a true friend should also show up in times of need and happiness.
The saying “A friend in need is a friend indeed” applies to true friendship. Indeed, we need friends to laugh and celebrate with in our happy times. Chopik’s study, which revealed that people are more likely to invite their friends to parties than family because they can have fun freely, confirms this aspect. This energy is required during sad times. We need friends to support us during the hard times to ensure that our sorrow does not worsen. We need them to help us find the solutions to the problem and make us laugh again. In the interview, Madson explained that friends who avoid us in our times of need are fake. She argued that human are socially dependent beings who require a community to thrive through situations, and that is why we mainly make friends. We need friends to assure us that we are not alone, whether in happy or sad situations. In this regard, as Zhou argues, true friends keep the friendship a top priority. They will show up in all situations without excuses. The friends will not feel burdened by showing up when their colleagues need them because they genuinely believe it is their duty to support. Notably, a true friendship should not make us feel alone. It should accord us with “a sense of community” ready to support us in our happy and sad times.
Arguably, true friendship requires much work because it requires friends to tell each other flaws, support each other without feeling jealous and showing up at each other’s times of need and happiness. They help fill a void which family cannot. We are free with them because they are mostly our peers who understand our weaknesses, unlike our families whom we show our perfect side. Notably, fake friends can harm us easily by causing us not to live to our full potential. Therefore, we must select true friends to ensure that our circles are safe for our physical, mental and emotional growth. They help us become moral people when they tell us our flaws. They help us achieve higher scales when they support us without feeling jealous of us. It is worth noting that we must reciprocate these attributes to them to lay a strong and true friendship foundation.
Interview with Sarah Madson, a Relationship Coach and Psychologist, on True Friendship
Sarah Madson is a relationship coach and psychologist with a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Northcentral University. She has been counseling families and people in relationships for over ten years. She is also a lecturer of psychology at Vernon College. I sat with her to discuss “True Friendship” and its importance. The following is her contribution.
Interviewer: Thank you so much Dr. Madson for agreeing to sit with me. Let me go straight into the discussion. Why do you think friendships are important to us?
Madson: Thank you for having me. It is our nature as human beings to be social. We are dependent on others to help us not to feel lonely. We need validation from others to feel worthy and safe. You ever heard of the saying, “Man is not an Island?”
Interviewer: Right. But we have families?
Madson: Our families are not enough. We do not choose our families; thus, it is very difficult for us to be free with them. Moreover, our families can make us feel pressured because they expect us to be perfect.
Interviewer: I understand you. Why do you think we less true friendships?
Madson: I think the internet has encouraged us to be fake even to ourselves. You will find someone living a fake life online just to impress people. How do we expect to be true to others if we cannot be true to ourselves?
Interviewer: Right. So, what do you advice we should do? \
Madson: back to the roots. Let’s keep away the gadgets and promote more physical interactions. This point brings me to my definition of a true friend. A true friend should be there for you regardless. No excuse. They should be there in your good and bad times. More importantly, they help you become a greater person without being jealous of you.
Interviewer: But I understand that it is hard not have jealous people in your circle
Madson: Those are fake friends. Let me give an example of my friends. When I started practicing, they had all opened their offices. They did not have many clients as I did. Thus, they would close their offices and come to mine to help me out. Today, we are more than sisters. We celebrate and cry together. What I am saying is, a friendship will thrive when non you is jealousy of each other. You will support each other genuinely and be you will happy for each other.
Interviewer: Oh! This conversation is too deep and we do not have much time. I believe I will need you for a longer session.
Madson: Sure, no problem.
Interviewer: Thanks again for your time.
Madson: You are welcomed.
Works Cited
Macmillan, Amanda. “Why Friends May Be Important than Family?” Essence. (2020, October 6). Retrieved https://www.essence.com/lifestyle/friends-friendship-health-family/. Accessed February 22, 2022.
Madson, Sara. Personal Interview. February 21, 2022.
Mallasasime, Belinda. “How to Identify True Friends.” Illumination. (2020, August 18). Retrieved https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-identify-your-true-friends-b12451e2bf9b. Accessed February 22, 2022.
Zhou, Scott. “8 Tips to Help You Identify Your True Friends.” Ponwell. (2020, May 26). Retrieved https://www.ponwell.com/identify-your-true-friends/. Accessed February 22, 2022.
