Identifying the Potential for Great Friendships

After my first post, a friend commented to me: “I’d be very interested to hear your process of developing those friendships, from how you identify the potential for a great friendship to how you build it”.  For this post, I’ll focus on the second thing she mentioned – identifying the potential for a great friendship.

While it’s certainly not formulaic, I do believe I’ve seen patterns in my life of the kinds of ways I have initially connected with those who became close friends, and the ‘ingredients’ that needed to exist before becoming close friends was a possibility.  Before I move on I should probably mention that I’m aware that what I view as a close/successful friendship is highly colored by how I perceive love from others.  If you haven’t ever checked out the book “The Five Love Languages” – I’d recommend it.  In short, the author has identified what he believes to be 5 primary ways we communicate and receive love: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.  “Quality Time” definitely ranks as my highest, so my observations on friendships are going to heavily reflect that.  However, any of those ‘love languages’ require time interacting, so hopefully anything I have to offer will be helpful no matter what language you speak.

Respect
Respect covers a lot of ground.  A great example of respect in the small things:  You’re in a conversation with your friend, and you get interrupted (could be for any reason).  After the interruption, your friend turns back to you and says “So, you were saying something about <insert last topic discussed>…”  That says that they were listening and want to hear more.  I consider that type of respect foundational to any real friendship.  My wife and I had some friends to whom we would have loved to have been closer, but consistently we would get into deep discussion and their kids would (as kids tend to do) interrupt us just as one of us was really pouring our hearts out.  After the interruption passed, there was never a “So you were saying …?” moment – in fact, they usually took the opportunity to change the subject to something as trivial as the weather or some new item they’d just purchased.  As friendships grow – especially with men – respect also grows to include knowing when to & when not to confront.  It includes not using humor to ‘slam’ or belittle your friends in any way (especially to be funny in front of others).  It means doing everything you can to keep your word and commitments – and being willing to own it honestly when you don’t.  But when it comes to indentifying those relationships that have the potential for great friendship, if the person shows the simple respect of listening, and asking you to pick up where you left off, then there’s definitely potential.

Fluidity
One of the definitions of fluidity is “the ability of a substance to flow”.  I often use this term to describe the ability of friends to move seamlessly back and forth between humor and serious, heartfelt conversation.  I’m a passionate person with intense opinions, but I love to laugh.  If someone can never relax and simply laugh, you run the risk of becoming burned out.  If they always run to humor whenever serious conversation looms, I often see that as either 1.) they’re not interested in really talking or 2.) they’re not secure in having deep conversation.  However, when friends feel comfortable enough to let conversation simply wind its way through humor and intense thought, and all the stages in between, that – to me – is the most rewarding kind of interaction.  You might laugh, you might cry, but you always come away the better for it.  You feel warmly received and embraced, and you enjoy having given the same to someone else.

Depth
This dove-tails into the above point.  As I am indentifying the potential for close friendship, I definitely look for someone who is not afraid to discuss serious issues.  “Serious issues” is a large umbrella – it could be parenting, when does life begin, work, marriage, politics, faith – you name it.  It also includes discussing subjects on which you may disagree.  Overall, it means being willing to have honest discussion outside “safe” subjects like the weather, sports, traffic and TV.

Empathy
Empathy is defined as “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another”.  I almost called this point “Common Interests”, but I think that fails to describe it.  It’s not that I look for people who are necessarily interested in the same things I am.  Instead, I am looking for people who are simply interested in me and my life, since I am looking to be interested in them and their life.  Shared interests are definitely a great place to connect and start a friendship.  I can easily strike up conversations with fellow musicians, programmers, political pundits, ‘worldviewers’ and canoe-campers.  But “single interest” friendships are like a match and not the candle.  Empathy, on the other hand, means you’re interested in the other person because you want to relate and understand their experiences, even if it’s nothing like your life.  We all grow and change so much through the course of our lives, that it’s no wonder that life-long friendships require a firm basis in genuine empathy, rather than depend on interests that change and fade over time

Humility
This is perhaps the glue that holds everything else together.  All of us, no matter how well-intentioned and no matter how hard we try, will eventually let someone down.  After all, it’s unrealistic to expect ourselves (or anyone else) to exhibit all these traits perfectly all the time!  Humility means you not only own your mistakes, but you seek your friends out to set things right.  Humility means you are teachable.  Close friends always have something to teach you – about their life, or their perspective on a situation, or a skill they possess.  If I sense that someone isn’t teachable, or if they are more interested in elevating themselves, then I definitely do not see potential for great friendship there.  You cannot give trust to someone who is conceited, self-absorbed, or who has an issue admitting that they don’t know something.

These qualities are only a handful of traits that readily lend themselves to deep and lasting friendships.  What do you think?  Have you run across traits you would add to this list in your own experience?