Friends can be some of the finest balms for the struggles of life, the pain of disappointed or rejected love, the chaos and stress that sometimes accompanies our work lives and the dysfunction of our families. There is no recipe for the perfect friend, but if you are looking to deepen your relationships, here are 10 practical ways to do so.
1. Listen More
We all love for people to listen to us and for them to be spellbound as we regal them with humorous stories. We love for them to hold us as we recount how the world is simply falling to pieces or maybe just as we describe our day. Our closest friends have the same desires: A deep longing for someone to take the time to listen and understand.
Sometimes, even when we think that we're listening, we are simply thinking about what we want to say next and not catching the subtleties behind what the person is saying, and we can miss opportunities to encourage, to show love and support or simply to demonstrate how much our friends' trust and vulnerability is valued.
2. Be willing to be honest and say what needs to be said.
The best friends are those who can call you out on your insecurities, your pride, your fear or anything else they think is holding you back from living life to the fullest. It's not out of a spiteful or conceited place, but out of love for you and a desire to see you foster your growth, maturity and happiness. It's a place that often requires tough love, as no one wants to hear the about the places that are broken or dark within them.
3. Ditch the technology.
This is something that goes along with listening. When you are with your friends, be all there, not consumed in social media or texting. A good friend will give you all of their attention when you are together and make sure you know that you are being listened to and being made a priority.
4. Give grace.
Grace is something that we often struggle with. We fail to give ourselves grace and choose instead to keep a mental list of all the places and ways that we have failed. Grace in relationships is equally as challenging. Our friends can (and most likely will) hurt us at some point, but a deep-rooted friendship can take that failure and use it as opportunity to demonstrate forgiveness and grace. Giving a friend grace shows them that you can weather the storms.
Do be careful when you do this. Grace and forgiveness are not remedies for a deeper heart issue, and it is important to make sure that the relationship is healthy.
5. Be willing to admit it when you are wrong.
I find this one the hardest, personally. We all love to be right, whether it's about that relationship that we totally knew would crash and burn or a decision that our closest friends begged us not to make and we did it anyway. Great friendships often require us to sacrifice a bit of our pride, and be willing to admit that we don't always have all the answers. It says in Proverbs 19:20, "Take good counsel and accept correction; that's the way to live wisely and well." Our friends want to see us grow and succeed, and that requires quite a bit of humility and willingness to listen.
6. Have reasonable expectations.
It's pretty hard to keep your expectations at a reasonable level with any relationship. You want to be around your friends; you want to know everything and anything about their lives, and it can be complicated when your friends have other demands on their time such as family and other friends. Don't always expect your friends to drop everything to hangout with you when you ask. Be willing to compromise; be flexible and understanding of their time and obligations.
7. Don't put your friends on pedestals.
In case you didn't know, your friends are human. They have broken places within them, scars, pain, fears and failures. They will inevitably be inconvenient, annoying or simply hard to deal with. They will infuriate, disappoint and fail you at some point, and that will be very much the rubber meets the road for friendship. Can you handle their dark sides? Can you love the brokenness in them as much as you love their brightness? The best way not to be surprised when these unavoidable moments come is to remember that they are as imperfect as you and in a desperate need of love and forgiveness as you. See them for all they are and defy the instinct to jump ship.
8. Be vulnerable.
Out of all the suggestions, this is the most difficult. It's hard to come to people with our brokenness, with the cracked and desert places with in us, the places we don't want anyone to see, the secret struggles we think no one will understand or the terrible mistakes that we hide, thinking no one could forgive or love us for them. Sharing these shadowed places within us is the very thing that liberates us from shame and fear; it allows us to move on, to heal and to no longer be held prisoner to the past.
Our friends are some of the best people to lean on, and being vulnerable with them about our struggles and failures deepens the friendship because you are free to not be okay, and you can come to a safe haven with people who see all of you, even your greatest mistakes and flaws and love as imperfect as you are. When we drop our masks, we show a great exercise of trust and show the friend that we are in this for the long haul, through good and bad, and that they can also be vulnerable in return.
9. Be committed.
Now this is something that I have to be careful about saying; I'm not talking about marriage here. Good, intimate friendships have a deep level of commitment. It's in the sense that I am whole-heartedly committed to your best interest, your success and your growth, and I know that you are committed to mine. It a place that allows us to be vulnerable and allows for us to go far beyond a superficial relationship of "just hanging out.” This commitment to another allows for failure, allows for grace and allows for those 1:00 a.m. phone calls, reminding us of God's truth and the truth of who we are, even when the world seems to crash in around us, and we are lost, broken, sick, afraid or hopelessly discouraged by the weight of the world.
10. Be encouraging.
Magnify and foster your friends' growth and strengths. You can never over-encourage someone. You can be real with your friends about the struggles and sorrows of life, and there is a time and place to weep and mourn the brokenness. A great friend will root himself or herself in joy and in peace and be abiding in hope even in the ever present difficulties of life. A great friend will remind others of his or her value, of potential and of the truth that they will never stand alone.
At the end of the day, becoming a better friend and fostering deeper relationships simply isn't about us. It's learning to sacrifice for the other person. By choosing them, we foster humility, love, patience and grace. Ironically, this process that isn't us-centric shapes us into something better than we were before and crazy enough happier.
