How to Be a Good Friend?
- Mouniirah DEME
- Apr 10
- 13 min read
Updated: Apr 14
A friend of mine (Hi Hasler!) shared a Snapchat streak with a fortune cookie saying: “If you want to make friends, start by being one.” He was making a joke of it because, as he said the messages in the cookies before were more impactful. They were predicting when you would meet your soulmate, where you will get married etc. and now, it's just a simple quote. But for me, it was exactly the quote I needed for my introduction. In The «Top 5 Regrets of the Dying», Regret Number 4 is: “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” This emphasizes the importance of interpersonal relationships in someone's life. So I decided to dive deeper into the question of friendship, not from a perspective of 'how can I attract and keep good friends' but from 'how can I be a good friend myself'. I thank you for joining me on this journey. Enjoy.
What is friendship: The Dunbar Number.
friend: ˈfrend: one attached to another by affection or esteem; one that is not hostile; a favored companion; a person included in a list of one's designated connections.
friendship: friend·ship: ˈfren(d)-ˌship; the state of being friends.
A friend is someone whom we help and who help us paddle the boat we call life. For our sake, we'd better not call everybody our 'friends'. It's important as we grow to learn to distinguish between close friends, friends, comrades, colleagues and acquaintances. We may sure try our best to love or at least not hate anybody, but we can't be friends with everybody, firstly because it is humanly not possible and secondly because almost always there will be conflict of interest.
“A friend to all is a friend to none.” —Aristotle.
Thirty years ago, Robin Dunbar, a British biological anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and specialist in primate behavior, theorized that humans can maintain a friendship group of 150 people, with five intimate friendships. Despite many attempts to challenge the theory, and the emergence of social media, Dunbar’s Number has stood the test of time. Dunbar’s model is straightforward – it tells us the number of people in each layer of our social circle, excluding our family. The innermost layer usually only includes 5 people. As you move out from the center, it quickly opens up. We have roughly 15 good friends, 50 friends, and 150 meaningful contacts, each a new layer in our social circle.
— The first layer is our support clique: it includes our closest relationships and friendships. These are the people you trust, contact with the most, and can rely on in times of need.
— The second layer is our sympathy group. Although these additional relationships are not as emotionally close as our initial 5, they still play a critical role in our health and wellbeing.
— The third layer is our affinity group. At this point, our relationships become less about emotional support and closeness and more about providing useful connections and information. These are the contacts you can ask for help but can’t always rely on emotionally and mentally.
— Finally, we make it to Dunbar 150, or our full active network. Outside of this final layer is our total network, or everyone we may vaguely know.
Different friendship serve different purpose.
“Your story is not for everybody. There are some things you are allowed to keep sacred, that you are allowed to keep small. It's not denying yourself, it is protecting yourself. It is reminding yourself that in a world where it has become normal to broadcast every details of your existence, it is okay to practice discernment. It is okay to be intentional about who holds your most vulnerable pieces.” | Brianna Wiest.
Not that we've learned to label our relationships differently, the next step is to realize that different friendships serve different purposes. They can be friends with whom we work, travel, hang out, or discuss love and spirituality. But lending each and every parts of us to whoever we call friends is not healthy and can cost us a lot. We have to normalize having different types of friends in our life: best friends, social friends, low-dose friends, group friends, situational friends, work friends, life-long friends, life-stage friends. As well, we want to avoid the 5 following types: one-sided friends, ambivalent friends, codependent friends, toxic friends and fake friends. See the details, here.
7 qualities of a good friend.
— Self-confident:
self confidence (noun) : self-con·fi·dence: confidence in oneself and in one's powers and abilities.
Self-confidence is one of the top qualities of a good friend. Why? Because when we are self-confident we don't envy, we don’t feel threatened by our friends, actually we don't feel threaten at all. That's why to be a good friend, we need to work on ourselves.
— Trustworthy:
trustworthy (adjective): trust·wor·thy: worthy of confidence: dependable.
dependable (adjective): de·pend·able: capable of being trusted or depended on: reliable.
To be a good friend, we have to be someone our friends can trust with the less and more significant things in their life. If our friends can't put their confidence in us whether it is because we can't keep our tongue, because we're too judgmental, because we are going to put one over them then there is a real problem.
— Honest:
honest (noun): hon·est:ˈä-nəst: free from fraud or deception; marked by integrity; marked by free, forthright, and sincere expression.
To be good friends, we need to be honest and sincere. We need not to be afraid to say what we really feel or think about the decision our friend make. We have to be able to speak our minds while being compassionate enough to put some efforts in the choice of our words, the tone of our voices. By the same way, as good friend we have to know when our point of view isn't necessary and keep it for ourselves.
“There is a distinction between telling the truth and attacking people, between saying what you think and giving unsolicited opinions about how they should live or look or act. Speak the truth as you see it, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, but with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy. The truth hurts enough by itself. You don't have to try to be hurtful.” — Ryan Holiday, «Right Thing, Right Now.»
— Loyal:
loyal (adjective): loy·al: faithful to a private person to whom faithfulness is due.
Life is hard, loyalty is complicated but a good friend does his/her best to be and stay loyal in times of good but also in times of bad.
“Loyalty does not mean protecting people from the consequences o they actions. Still, the person who is in the middle of watching their life fall apart is a person we should be sympathetic to—that we should, if not clothe and feed, at least send a nice note to. When everyone else is turning away, we lean in. When everyone is starting thinking of themselves, we can refuse to break our commitment. We can love them as a person, even if we hate what they did.” —Ryan Holiday, «Right Thing, Right Now.»
🫖 Tea time:
In case some people don't know it, dating or getting too close to your friend's ex is something that can happen, but it is something which we generally don’t consider ‘right. Your friend might be able to have some discernment and be happy for you being happy (what a good friend!) but it won't go further. I know that life doesn't just stop after a breakup, thanks God! You never know who you might need your help or who you can help you in the future. But they have to be some boundaries. If something happen between a 'friend' and your partner while you're still together, the two of them are to blame. But if something happen after, the only one to blame is your 'supposed' friend. If you chose to date your friend's ex, you have consciously or not made the choice of ending the 'friendship'. So, don't be surprise or blame your friend (how dare you?) if things are no longer the same after that. And if it's still not clear to you, just put yourself in their shoes. Periodt.
— Dependable:
dependable (adjective): de·pend·able: di-ˈpen-də-bəl: capable of being trusted or depended on: reliable.
To be good friends, we need to be dependable. We need to be the kind of people that our friend can count on. We won't be always available, but we can do our best to make room for a friend in need.
— Empathetic:
empathic (adjective): em·path·ic: involving, characterized by, or based on empathy.
empathy (noun): em·pa·thy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.
A good friend is an empathetic friend. However, it's important to distinguish between wet empathy and dry empathy, a concept mentioned by Raphaëlle Giordano in her book «Your second life begins when you realize you only have one». Wet empathy is toxic empathy, the kind that turns us into a sponge and lets us be contaminated by the misfortunes and negative thoughts of others. Dry empathy, on the other hand, is the appropriate emotional distance we adopt, without allowing ourselves to be invaded, while remaining positive, even towards negative people or situations.
— Safe place:
safe place (noun): a place (as on a college campus) intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations.
A good friend is a safe place, in other words, a good friend is nonjudgmental. S/he is the kind of person avoiding judgments based on one's personal and especially moral standards. S/he understand that each of us has grow in different reality, have had different experience and different story. Therefore, s/he promotes open-mindedness and acceptance, allowing for honest communication without fear of being judged. A non-judgmental friend is someone who respect our boundaries and support us even if they don’t agree with all the decisions we make.
“Having friends who don’t judge you is truly a blessing. They allow you to be yourself and accept you for who you are.”
💡 5 more qualities of a good friend.
— Supportive:
support (verb): sup·port: sə-ˈpȯrt: to promote the interests or cause of; to keep from fainting, yielding, or losing courage; to keep (something) going.
“Surround yourself with people who support you in your bad times but who can also rejoice for you in your good times.”
Being a friend that is always there when things goes wrong for your friend is good. But not enough. Sometimes, behind all the care, there can a little Schadenfreude. If we are not able to rejoice for our friend when things turn good for them, even if we're supporting them in bad times, it doesn't make us good friends. It's often said that the people that rejoice for us are usually the one that are not close to us. I see this assumption through two different lenses. On one side, sometimes is not that our friend are not happy for us, it's just that they are also worried as they sincerely want the best for us. One the other side, some people can't rejoice not because they care too much, but just because they don't like seeing us happy. It's important to learn to make the difference between the two, as the first category is the one we want to keep.
schadenfreude (noun): scha·den·freu·de: ˈshä-dᵊn-ˌfrȯi-də: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.
— Authentic:
authentic (adjective): au·then·tic: not false or imitation; true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.
“Authenticity is everything! You have to wake up every day and look in the mirror, and you want to be proud of the person who's looking back at you. And you can only do that if you're being honest with yourself and being a person of high character. You have an opportunity every single day to write that story of your life.” — Aaron Rodgers.
To be a good friend, we have to be authentic. We need to know ourselves and stay true to our personality and to who we are. As Brene Brown said: “It's hard to practice compassion when we're struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.”
— Respect boundaries:
respect (verb): re·spect: ri-ˈspekt: to refrain from interfering with.
boundary (noun): bound·ary: ˈbau̇n-d(ə-)rē: something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent.
Unless it's a life/death question, a good friend never, NEVER interferes in his/her friend's family or romantic relationships. We are not good friends for randomly involving ourselves in our friend personal life and personal relationships, especially those which have nothing to do with us. Sometimes we might mean well, but don't we say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? As good friends we need to care without not intervening where they are not supposed to. As good friends, we need to learn not only about common sense boundaries, but also about our friend personal boundaries and try our best to respect them.
— Reciprocity:
reciprocity (noun): rec·i·proc·i·ty: the quality or state of being reciprocal : mutual dependence, action, or influence.
In good friendships, they are the principle of reciprocity. The one that said, we should do to others want we won't want to be done to us. Good friendships are not one-sided. Both friends have to equally free feel, to give and to receive, to express themselves, be actively listened to and considered.
— Secret-keeper:
secret (noun): se·cret: ˈsē-krət: something kept from the knowledge of others or shared only confidentially with a few.
keeper (noun): keep·er: ˈkē-pər: one that keeps: such as (a) protector.
A good friend knows how to keep secrets. A lot of people consider themselves 'good friends' when their aren't able to keep their tongue. As soon as they have the opportunity to open their mouth: Yapa Yapa Yapa! Watch closely how your 'friend' talks about his/her other 'supposed friends'. How much details you know that you're not supposed to know about them. Don't wrongly think that it is because you are the favorite. Also, a good friend don't share some details with their other friends or their partner because s/he knows that his/her are not their partner's friends. Finally, we can't control what people do with what we say, but we can control the amount of information we release. For your own sake, don't let people know too much about you. Because a listening ear can also be a running mouth.
The after-friendship.
“Make as many friends as you can, but don't build your life on them alone. For it is an unstable foundation.” — Sean Covey.
Despite all the efforts, some relationships won't simply work; maybe because you two are too different, maybe because one of you is not emotionally mature enough or maybe because it's not supposed to work; that's how life is sometimes. It is possible and even inevitable that you do everything good but still, the friendship end. What should we do in that case? First, be true to ourselves and acknowledge our wrong if we were wrong and apologize. Secondly, let go. Not everybody is meant to stay in our life forever. And just as we shouldn't stay with a toxic partner, we shouldn't keep toxic friendships either. Because besides the betrayal, the hurt and the pain, toxic relationships changes you deeply. In the best case, it can give you or worsen your trust issues, make you more reserved or solitary. In the worst, it can turn you into the type of friend or partner that people should cut off. Do yourself a favor: don't reach that stage.
“And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.
The everlasting debate.
Since we are talking about friendship: Do cross sex friendships exist? I will say : yes... To some extent. Myself I have more than one cross-sex healthy friendship but I acknowledge that it exists within establish and healthy boundaries. It's not rare to see a male-female relationships turning either on a situation-ships or in the best cases, relationships or a marriages. All these possibilities do not prevent a guy and a girl to be—just friends. I talked earlier about boundaries, I will also add emotional honesty. Honesty about want each others feel. But besides being challenging, male-female friendship is no more challenging that same sex friendship and has a lot of advantages. Cross-sex friendships allow individuals to view the world through the lens of the opposite gender. This can be particularly valuable in understanding relationship dynamics, gender-specific struggles, and cultural norms. These friendships provide a unique form of emotional support, offering different ways of coping with stress, navigating personal struggles, and gaining insight into one’s emotional needs. By fostering genuine, non-romantic relationships between men and women, cross-sex friendships can help challenge societal expectations and gender stereotypes, promoting greater equality and understanding between genders.
💡A little advice, may I?
The theory that said : 'I shall rather have of part of the person or none' is a lure. Be true, be honest about where you stand. And never ask for a friendship when all you secretly desire is a romantic relationship. In some case, your friend might share the same feeling as you and it might be the beginning of a wonderful love story, but in other case, you friend might not share the same feeling as you and you might forever stay in the friendzone or the 'if only I could have someone like you-zone'. It doesn't mean rushing love and romance, but stand while learning to know each others. If you're stuck in the friendzone, the only way out is to tell the person you like that you want a relationship or nothing. It's hard, I agree. If you are someone who can shut them down, that's okay, but as long as you have feelings for your friend you are living in a lie and hurting yourself unnecessarily, trust me.
Dear reader beware of the wolves in sheep clothes. Know that not every smile is sincere and that not everybody you call your 'friend' really is. Some people will make friends with you just because they hate you, yet in most cases it's just about ignorance. In the Law 2 of The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene, said that we should put little trust in our friends because they will betray us more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. Voltaire went even further by asking the Lord, to protect himself not from his enemies as he can take care of them, but from his friends. All of it is not to frighten you, but to help you see life as it is. I am not the 'perfect friend' but I am striving to be a good one. I did, and I will surely make some mistakes along the way and despite all of the bad we can hear about friendships, despite the hurt and the disappointment, we have to acknowledge the good ones too are there are often more of them. I deeply encourage you to never stop believing that they are good people out there and if you can't find one, be one yourself. Thank you for reading. May God bless you, take care.
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