Four Keys to Healthy Friendships

To cure loneliness we need to take the intiative and develop deep friendships.  What are the skills needed?  What if we have never seen deep friendships modeled or experienced one ourselves? Here are the four keys to healthy friendships.  

Key #1 Vulnerability 

 Vulnerabilth is the willingness to be hurt, to open yourself up to another person to the point your heart is defenseless.

Lack of vulnerability can happen for a number of reasons: 

A. Past trust violations, 

B. Relational hurts, 

C. Lack of exposure to authentic connections.”

This is important because without mutual vulnerability, one person becomes the counselor and the other the counselee.

Key #2 Time 

Best friendships require time to grow and produce the great relationships we need. There simply is no substitute for time. We need both quality and quantity.

The three stages of time in friendships are:

1. Caught up. 

You spend enough time with each other that you are caught up on the essential events of your lives: family, relationships, job, health, and so forth.

2. Connected. 

Whatever it takes to stay emotionally connected, that is your frequency minimum. Caught up and connected are not the same thing. One is about significant life events, and the other is about intimacy.

3. Caring

Truth is something BFs value and prize with each other. It is feedback and perspective that comes from a rich source of time and experience. It can be trusted. Honesty, however, takes time—probably more time than catching up and connection—and can be difficult to say and to hear

Key #3 Honesty 

1. Be truthful about yourself.

There are two kinds of honesty dynamics in best friendships. The first one is being truthful about yourself. It is when you tell the truth about yourself to your friend, warts and all.

2. Be truthful about the other person.

The second type of relational honesty is harder than the first: being truthful about the other person. It is harder because of the risk involved, but it is also extremely valuable. Close friendships require this type of honesty to help both of you be the best people you can be. Who else is going to tell you that you have spinach in your teeth? Or that the guy you are dating is a creep? Or that sometimes you come across self-absorbed?

Two people who genuinely care about each other can actually give and receive the truth, and still feel close and supportive of each other. It will take a little work, practice, and courage, but it is worth it.  Best friends are completely honest with each other and push each other to grow.  One of the most meaningful things you can do with a best friend is to see the potential in her and be part of helping her reach it. You may notice a blind spot that is hampering her life. Or you may see that she doesn’t see something awesome that she is capable of. Get in the mix and help her be a new person!

Key #4 Values

Values are simply representations of what is most important to us—the things that matter most. Those things of lesser importance might be opinions or preferences, but they aren’t values.. It is impossible for you to become "best friends" without shared values.  You can only go so deep, so far.  

What are the benefits of a healthy friendship?

1. “good to great,” business guru Jim Collins calls it Good to great refers to those capacities and potentials you have that aren’t yet realized. An ability, a dream, a passion, or a possibility that has stayed at the “OK” level, but could go to the “fantastic” level.

2.  “broken to good,” referring to the healing process. We not only have unrealized potentials, we also have baggage, issues, hurts, and wounds. These can be emotional or relational scars from the past, where harmful experiences changed how we looked at life.”

How do I increase the intimacy in my friendships?

“First, become the one who models honesty about yourself, so that you both know that the truth can come out without anyone getting hurt. Bring up your own realities. 

Secondly create a culture of acceptance

Having deeply accepting friends helps us beyond the fact of being accepted by others, and then by ourselves. When our deepest relationships know us and accept us anyway, we are now free to deal with our weaknesses as a problem, rather than a condemnation. We can stop the darkness when we aren’t ducking from the stings of the judge. When we aren’t accepted, we are more likely to simply avoid the judgment than dig into the issue.

Third, you are not a victim

Take responsibility for yourself and your relational world.

*I have taken my love for reading and for workers and created a blog.  I read books and write what I have learned concerning thriving in cross cultural living.  The book for this article is "How to be a best friend forever" by Dr John Townsend. It is available on Amazon and IBooks.