Healthy Friends

We grow up wanting friends. The more, the better we believe. When we are young, friends are people who we play with, go to school with, or just hang out with after school. Really, everyone is considered a friend. Sometimes, even people we have just met could be considered a friend. The concept of an acquaintance is unknown when we are in elementary school. My daughters have always been the type of people who could talk to anyone at any time, so the stranger in the Subway while we are waiting for our sandwich becomes a friend.

This idea starts to change when we reach middle school. Our friend selection methods become more refined, and we start to develop a smaller, multi-tiered group of friends. The inner circle of one or two "best" friends, then the group of friends who we like enough to hang out with in school, and then the outer circle of people who would best be classified as acquaintances. It is at this time that we start to think about what we want in a friend and make choices about who we want to include in that inner circle.

Friendship has been a topic of conversation lately in our family, especially in reference to what makes a healthy friend. Face it, some people do not make healthy friends. We may like that person and enjoy spending some time with them, but if we spend too much time around them we start to feel bad. Or even worse, that person does hurtful things to us and we end up dreading spending time with them. 

How do we handle this type of situation? It seems easy to say that we should stay away from that person, but we may want to avoid the conflict that breaking a friendship involves. Or we have to see that person daily at school or work and cannot avoid contact. The advice I gave to one of my daughters was to be friendly and polite when she has to deal with a person that makes her feel bad, but to avoid agreeing to spend social time with that person. The process of reducing context may have to happen gradually and I told my daughter that she may have to endure some difficult times with the person, but in the long run she will benefit. 

Friends are often a wonderful part of a rich, happy life. They will be by your side during the good times and hopefully the bad times in your life. But no one has time in their life for an unhealthy relationship.