Friendship Pain
I see a lot of people in therapy who are feeling upset about their friendships. Healthy friendships have certain rules, just like healthy romantic relationships have certain rules. Where do these rules come from? They come from the emotional brain. The emotional brain is looking for specific things in different kinds of relationships. If we give the emotional brain what it wants, it will reward us with happy juice. If we don’t, it will punish us with misery sauce.
What is the emotional brain looking for from a friend? It is looking for someone who shows an interest in connection and who is respectful of feelings. Connection and respect – that’s it. Here are some of the nuances of these two factors:
CONNECTION
o A friendship relationship exists because two people have decided they want to connect as friends. That means it is up to each of them to regularly send the message “I want to connect with you”. Otherwise the brain starts wondering whether a friendship relationship exists. When it starts to wonder, hurt and anger tend to follow. Both friends need to share the responsibility of sending “I want to connect” messages.
o There are different types of connection. There is deep connection and light connection. Both are useful. Light connection tends to be more about companionship. Going bowling and talking about light topics is about companionship. Going for coffee and talking about heartfelt topics is deeper connection. Some friends are about deep connection, some are about light, and some do both. It is useful to understand what you want from a friendship so you don’t get frustrated trying to do deep connection with someone who just wants it light.
o Regardless of the connection depth, it is still important to offer connection when your friend is going through something significant, either by saying “wow congratulations” for something positive, or “gee, I heard about your loss. I’m thinking about you” for something negative. A common source of pain for people is not hearing from friends often enough when they are going through something hard. It only takes “I’m thinking of you – let me know if you want to get together” to prevent that hurt.
o Here’s one place people get confused. If my friend says “hey, let’s go bowling this weekend” and I think to myself “I hate bowling” and say “no thanks”, my friend will not be able to tell whether my “no” is a rejection of her connection request or a rejection of bowling. We need to be clear when responding to connection requests. A clear response is “I would love to hang out with you but bowling isn’t my thing. Would you be okay if we just went for a walk?”
o People have different connection needs and that’s okay. I have low connection needs, partly because I’m by nature an introvert and partly because of the family culture I grew up in. Some people have higher connection needs, and that’s okay. There are no “shoulds” as in “I should have 10 light friendships and 5 deep friendships”.
RESPECT
o Respect means assertive communication and that means no games, no drama, and no pressuring. Unfortunately, we all have a child part of our brains that tries to get its needs met by games, drama, and pressuring. We need to manage that child brain in order to have healthy adult friendships.
o Respect means keeping commitments. It’s okay for us to break commitments sometimes, but respectful interactions require this to be infrequent OR agreed to ahead of time. In other words, it is okay for me to agree with my friend that our plans are tentative and so breaking the commitment is okay with everyone involved.
o Respect means being reluctant to give advice. Friends usually mean well when they give advice but giving advice when it isn’t asked for can send these messages to the other person: “I’m smarter than you”, “You are incompetent”, or “I don’t have faith in you”. A good rule of thumb is to only offer advice if it is asked for or to ask your friend about the amount of advice you want from each other.
o You are allowed to express a concern or a worry about your friend’s choices, but only once. If you are truly concerned about your friend, you are allowed to say “I care about you and wanted you to know that I’m worried about <x>. I’m here for you if you need me to listen or need my help.” And that’s it. If you go on and on about the issue, then that is you trying to feel better by loading your worry on your friend. That’s not okay. All adults need to manage their own worries and not foist them onto others. If the situation changes and becomes worse, you are allowed to express your worry again, because the severity changed. So you can say “Just so you know, I’m still worried and actually more worried because of <x>. Again, I’m here for you.”
o Respect means being fair. For example, if we spend an hour together talking, I make sure that we each have roughly equal time. I do not monopolize. Yes there will be times when one of us needs more air time because of a crisis going on. That’s okay so long as it is occasional. Fairness also means I go your way about half the time and you go mine.
o Respect means I use the relationship how it is intended, as a friendship. Friendships include emotional support but aren’t usually set up to have a constant focus on this; it tends to erode the relationship. Emotional support in a friendship means I am available to provide my friend with regular short bursts of compassion and the occasional longer compassionate support in times of crisis.
o Truth is important, but only “gentle truth” is respectful. “Gentle truth” is truth shared in a way that makes it very clear that the speaker is taking steps to be kind.
o Respect means checking in with each other: “Does this work for you?”
You may disagree with some of these rules of friendship, and that’s okay so long as both people in the friendship feel the rules work for them. This can be a starting point for a discussion with your friend.
