What we need in a friendship

ilustrasi (njfamily.com)

Choosing people to be friends with can be tricky. Of course we should not close ourselves from any kinds of relationships. It’s good to be kind to everybody, but more importantly, we need to make sure that our friendships are built upon reliability.

I think having reliable friends is important because of at least two reasons. Firstly, having reliable friends means friendships that are based on openness so I can count on my friends no matter what. They will not hide any information that will make their partners feel left behind.

They will always try to support their friends in many ways because they know that there won’t be any useful to hide anything unless it’s really confidential. In this matter, I can trust these kinds of friends and I believe that they will not let me down no matter what.

For example, if there’s an exam coming up, friends need to be supportive to each other by exchanging information while studying for the test. An open friend will let us know what we don’t know. They want no body fail.

Secondly, and most importantly, reliable friends will build friendships based upon honesty. In this case, an honest friend will tell us anything either it’s bad or good. This thing is really necessary because it is no use of only telling positive things on the one hand, and keeping the negatives on the other hand.

For example, when there’s a friend that got a bad mark on his exam, it’s important to warn him to study more and let him know that he was not at his best during the test if necessary. It’s not okay to say that bad mark is okay and it’s not gonna do anything to his academic records. No. yet of course they need to say it appropriately.

There are other things we need in friendships. We probably think we need humorous and intelligent friends. But to me, those characteristics won’t benefit us at all if there is no reliability. You can be good at cracking jokes and you’re smart, but if you cheat, it will only destroy the friendships.

Finally, friendship is not a one-way relationship. When we ask reliability from our counterparts, we ourselves of course have to be reliable as well. Otherwise, it just will not work! (*)

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