What quality do you value most in a friend?
I’ve used this image before, and I’m using it again because it illustrates what friendship means to me. They were all different and all had each other’s backs no matter what.
Despite arguments, fights, misunderstandings, life struggles, they stuck together. Accepted those differences and loved each other anyway. The actors continued to be friends long after the show ended, as evidenced by their joint reaction after the sad loss of Matthew Perry.
Acceptance
The most important quality in any relationship is acceptance of your shared humanity. This is as important in a romantic relationship, or in the relationship between parents and children.
How many of us have understood our parents when we’ve had the chance to walk a mile in their shoes? I have.
I am blessed to have several friendships with people who accept me as I am, and I wouldn’t change them for the world.
No we don’t always agree, yes we will call each other out if the other person is hurting themselves, bottling things up, putting themselves second (or last), and so on. That’s friendship.
When your friend is spiralling down or struggling with life, your role is to catch them, hold them, and lift them, otherwise you’re not much of a friend.
None of us are perfect and yet we still feel blessed to have each other in our lives. As they are. Warts and all, faults and all. That’s acceptance.
If you want to change someone you do not love or like them. If you want someone else to be perfect then you shouldn’t be having relationships, because you’re not. The idea that you have the right to ask for that is proof of your fallibility.
Presence
Yes I’m playing fast and loose with the singular ‘quality’, but there is another quality you need to have a true relationship. That is presence.
There are many people great at being a good friend, a laugh, listening to you, understanding you, allowing you to be yourself. However, there is a saying that when you’re in real trouble you find out who your true friends are.
I lost so-called friends when both my parents died. They didn’t know what to do or say so they went away. No matter how nice people are many of them panic when a friend is in real trouble, especially with life events like passings, illness, relationship break ups.
That’s why presence is important. The friends who turn up anyway, walk in and say “I have no idea what to say or what I can do, but I’m here.” That’s a real friend.
The ones who don’t take sides in relationship break ups, just help the couple to get through it, are real friends. Most of my friends took sides, the problem was he was a gaslighter so he lied and they took his side.
My true friends warned me that he would turn everyone against me, family as well as friends, and they stuck fast. It was only four people but they were enough because they were my friends and worth 10 of everyone else.
One friend stayed friends with him too, and I didn’t mind that at all. There was never a suggestion of betrayal, nor was there any talking about the other person. When we were together it was just us.
That’s because as well as having the two qualities mentioned above, that friend was loyal. I couldn’t ask him to be loyal to me and not the person he’d known longer. Loyalty cannot be one way and true friends don’t make others choose.
You can’t ask that loyalty and love only applies to you.
Romantic friendship
Most long-term married or partnered couples will tell you that the ‘romance’ part can be short lived but the love is forever. Yet there is something more important underlying a true love, that they’re your best friend.
Odd as it may sound, it’s so important that you really like each other, not just fancy each other, in fact those are the relationships that tend not to last.
If we’re lucky we’re all going to get wrinkles and grey hair, but a genuine relationship doesn’t mind all that. You do those things together.
Yes losing your youthful firmness and smooth looks is a bit sad, but what comes with that is the knowledge that you’re with someone who not only accepts you as you are, they don’t mind how you look as long as you’re there.
That’s acceptance, that’s presence no matter what and for years, that’s loyalty, and that’s true romance. Always loving the person who walked into a room and stole your heart before you had time to say hello.
Oddly, many of my friends did that to me. The connection was instant. It’s a different kind of love but an equally wonderful one.
You can even inherit a daughter and find that you’re as protective and besotted as if you gave birth to her, and find yourself an instant grandmother to children with no biological connection to you, that are somehow a part of you and always will be. Their dad is a beautiful bonus too.
Love is endlessly variable, and wonderful in every iteration. Treat it kindly.
Best love
Deb xx
Deb Hawken - Amorah 