In a week of catching up with some of my friends, one friend asked me a very wise question:
How do we make our friendships truly authentic?
One of the concepts that Jud and Mike talked about in a book that they wrote is ‘Character Creep’. You probably don’t remember, but I wrote about one of my challenges with character creep that occurred on my way home from a holiday in Cornwall two years ago.
We talked a little about this. I don’t know about you, but I’ve watched many friends and relatives slip down a slippery slope. The worst is when you find that your friend or relative is at the bottom of the slope and you didn’t even realise that he/she was slipping.
Like your friend being sectioned, and it’s only then you find out she’s been self harming and suffering from bulimia for months and attempted suicide a couple of times. How did I not see something was wrong?
Or maybe your relative is taken to court accused of fraud, and you begin to realise things that you brushed off as you being ‘ridiculous’ suddenly make a whole lot of sense. If I’d challenged them on it, would they have told me the truth?
Perhaps your friend has been having an inappropriate relationship with a person, and it’s just something you couldn’t have imagined them ever getting involved in. Why didn’t I realise?
The thing is, we all have our secrets and the stuff we get tempted by that causes us to thank our stars that nobody on this planet can read our minds. We know right and wrong, but sometimes we struggle to make the right choice. And occasionally circumstances make it way too easy to take the path we know is not going to do us any good in the long run.
How then, do we build the kind of friendships where someone might pull us back off the dodgy track?
As I thought about it (out loud, as us extraverts tend to do) I realised the question was not ‘How do we build friendships where we can ask the challenging questions‘ but ‘How do we build the friendships where someone feels they can confess to us‘.
I’m not sure I have the answers to that question, and I’m almost definite that there is no formula that can be followed to create that kind of friendships.
I do know that I have had that kind of friendship. One was my best friend in high school – the only one I told that I was pregnant because I was too ashamed to admit it to anyone else. And I had a whole bunch of those friends at my church in Aberdeen. They earned the right to challenge me, but the also proved themselves trustworthy of confessing to because of their supportive and non-judgmental attitude (for which I’m very grateful).
Do you have that kind of friendship with someone, and what helped you get to that level of transparency in your relationship with them?
My friend Nicole and I are completely real with one another. We got there only because we trust eachother. I trust that she loves me even when she calls me to the carpet. The only way you can trust someone that much is by showing it through example, where they can see you’d do the same.
The TL;DR – Open, honesty friendships take time and honesty.
This is something that I have thought about before, why do the more open friendships happen and why do some just stick with shared interests.
Building the relationship where someone can call us out on dodgy behaviour I think comes from giving people the opportunity to do so, and one of those people actually doing it. I think we all, regardless of how obvious to ourselves or others, know when we are doing something wrong, and if we are open about that feeling of tension between what feels right and what we know is wrong then someone will notice.
Of course that might not become a friendship but it might be enough to stop you falling off the edge. The friendships seem to come from the people that either know how to help with your particular situation or how to help with you.
The friends that I have the most transparent relationships with are the ones where they have some experience with my own particular “sin and struggle profile” and know that sometimes I really just need a massive kick in the rear.
After that it is a case of remembering that time and honesty help; that what may feel like a one way street now may very well be a two way street, or maybe you just pay it forward.
Two interesting question there. Sometimes we can only really test the level of a friendship by the very act of challenging/confiding. My experience has been that it sorts the wheat from the chaff – sometimes with good results that deepen friendships, but sometimes with sad results that appear to halt or dissolve them. Even in the bad cases though I think it is still important to seek that deeper level of authenticity and you never know how God will work through that in the longer term.
Good stuff. I do have a small number of those friends (beginning with my wife
) with whom I feel free to share openly. And, I think it is as it should be that the number is small. Those folks earned that place through years of doing life together, shared experiences, and genuine investment in one another.
I completely agree with what Scott said. He wrote down exactly what I was thinking.
I think it also comes down to treating people the way you’d like to be treated. I had this type of friendship last year when one of friends (who admittedly been a little distant with others and I). It wasn’t until she turned up on my doorstep with an over night bag saying “I really need somewhere to crash, cry and be angry for the night. I’m sorry” It wasn’t until then that she told me about how her Dad had an affair, taken off with his mistress leaving her mum and them a note saying “he couldn’t help it an for that he couldn’t be accountable”
I felt so guilty how I hadn’t picked up on the signs or taken more effort to see how she was. When I told why she hadn’t told me sooner she said “because your doing so well, you’ve just started your nursing and your doing what you want. I didn’t want to burden you” and it’s then I realised that we ALL need to stop being so self absorbed and open our eyes.
I now make a concious effort to talk to my friends in happy and sad times. That way when they start to feel like they’re going down the slippery slope they will be able to open up before they reach the bottom.