No matter who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you…are breathing, there’s a part of you that seeks friendship. (See what I did there? Yeah, I’m not very proud of it either.) I believe we all have some part of us that seeks companionship, whether its romantic or platonic, we desire to have other people around. Yeah, you have family, but they’re not always around and they may not be readily nearby, but friends are people we can talk to when dates go bad, when we need to discuss the sudden down turn in the stock market, or when your team suffers a stifling defeat from some long time rival. Whatever it is, having just ourselves to talk to just doesn’t work. We need more than our own inner monologue to keep us company, and I think that’s more than enough to emphasize that we need friends.
I think the hardest part of having and keeping a friend is the communication. Like a romantic relationship, platonic ones need just about the same kind of nourishment. Though calls, text, Facebook, e-mails, etc, we really need to put out that effort to try and keep those relationships we have. And I SUCK at it. Yes, I find that I’m probably the worst friend to have. I mean, I’ll give you the shirt off my back, I’ll help you move, hell I’ll even give you a kidney, but I have the hardest time keeping in contact with my friends. Sure I talk to them via Facebook, and Twitter, and on occasion through text, but I’m lazy when it comes to keeping constant communication.
Now I’m not saying you have to be bugging your friends 24/7, but if you let a month go by without saying something, sending them a message or communicating with them in one form or another, you may not keep those friends very long.
While I was roaming the internet, I stumbled upon this little article on the Huffington Post where I guess someone wrote in, asked for help in keeping and maintaining friends, and the person who responded gave eleven reasons as to why people have a hard time making those really meaningful friendships. Me, I’m a sucker, and think every friendship I make has some kind of meaning, and some purpose. I believe everything happens for a reason, but that still doesn’t mean that I suck at maintaining friends.
I’m socially awkward and over polite. I feel like I bug people enough as it is, no need for my asinine comments and wants to hang out. I just really enjoy people’s company, even more so when they initiate it. On this list the’re mention of temperment and lack of time management, and the like. If you’re interested in seeing the full list, please click the link below. But I think with technology nowadays, it’s actually really easy to maintain friends.
There’s Facebook, which seems the most obvious choice, and there’s e-mail, which is less popular, then there’s chat and Skype, which coupled with a webcam, brings people together. So I think it takes a lot of effort to not keep in touch and not keep your friends. With social networking and just making it so easy to stalk each other online, I believe the problem of making and keeping friends becomes less and less.
Now of course, the quality of friends, and the quality of the people you are befriending may be suspect when using a social network as your main means of communicating, but that’s okay. Just don’t forget that life still happens outside the internet, and please don’t keep those friendships in code and HTML. Go out, if only for coffee or lunch and keep those friends close. Because the moment you neglect that in person touch, is the moment you forget they’re human beings and you just think of them as text on a screen.
via – Huffington Post: Having Trouble Making New Friends Stick?
