The 12 Essential Steps to Growing a Strong Friendship

Friendships rarely develop overnight – they grow slowly, usually developing from casual acquaintances to good friends.

As we grow up and go out into the world, finding those special people can oftentimes be difficult. If you are looking to develop more close and personal friendships, consider these 12 steps:

1. People Equal Friends

There is a certain chemistry with friends just as in a love relationship. Therefore, contact with other people is the first building block to grow a friend. Friends can’t grow in a vacuum. Best friends take time.

2. Talking Is Essential Among Friends

Talking between friends requires reciprocity. In a mutually satisfying friendship, both friends talk and both friends listen. Friends talk appropriately to each other.

3. Friends Acknowledge Friends

Friends acknowledge each other when talking. Many conflicts in your personal relationships can be avoided if you will take the time to acknowledge other’s feelings and points of view.

4. Friends Listen to Friends

Listening to friends in an important step in building a closer friendship. We often take listening for granted, never realizing what it means to really listen to a friend.

5. Friends Attend to Friends

Friends focus during conversations. Friends pay attention in conversations. It means that your ears, your eyes, your body and your feelings are all focused on that person at the time.

6. Friends Show Empathy With Friends

Empathy is identifying with your friend’s feelings and seeing life through your friend’s eyes. Confidences are freely given when they are received with empathy among friends.

7. Friends Touch Friends

Touching is a warm form of communication between friends. When you see best friends communicating, you will notice friends “listen with their eyes,” stand close together, and touch comfortably.

8. Friends Praise Friends

Affirmation is a powerful tool for growing a friend. Genuine praise can affect your friends’ lives. Be liberal with praise for all of your friends, including your casual ones.

9. Friends Are Loyal and Trustworthy

Trust and loyalty go hand-in-hand for friends. Friends can trust you with their secrets, both large and small, because good friends never break a confidence. Good friends are forever loyal!

10. Friends are Equal

Friends are on a seesaw. In a healthy relationship, friends are equals. Not 50/50 every time, of course, but with a true, lasting friendship it always evens out in the end.

11. Friends Reveal Their Feelings

We feel closest to our friends when we are suffering together, when we feel like our friend needs us, or when we feel a friend has shared something of great importance with us.

12. Friends Do Not Mind Read

The person who thinks, “If you really liked me, you could read my mind” can not have an adult friendship. No friend can read your mind. And you can not read your friend’s mind.

Recommended Reading:

The Friendship Factor: How to Get Closer to the People You Care For

by Alan Loy McGinnis

We all know people who have countless friends. What is their secret? The author writes that at the heart of each relationship is the friendship factor and that factor is the essential ingredient of warmth and caring. The author gives you five ways to deepen all of your relationships, five guidelines for cultivating intimacy, and two ways to handle negative emotions without destroying the relationship. Best of all McGinnis tells you how to forgive and salvage a faltering friendship or other love relationship.

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