Nurturing my relationships has always been a struggle. I’ve either let people walk all over me, or I don’t make an effort to connect with them. Now, it’s more of the latter.
Whenever I was a little girl, I never wanted to hurt anybody’s feelings. So I always kept things to myself and tried to keep the peace in my friendships. More often than not, it would cause me to get hurt and would hurt my friendship with the other person as well because I kept my feelings to myself.
Finally, something in me decided that I wasn’t going to put up with that and that I would say how I felt and if they couldn’t handle that, then they couldn’t handle me. This tremendously affected my happiness in friendships and strengthened them by making them more genuine.
After this, I stopped paying attention to truly connecting with my friends and bonding with them. From this, I had inconsistent friendships because I just let them come and go without making that much of an effort.
First of all, letting people walk all over you is not healthy. At all. Period. Secondly, not making an effort to bond with your friends and nurture those relationships, is ALSO unhealthy. It’s a balance. Be considerate of them, but also speak up when you need to. Even if it may be risky.
If you have friends that want to confide in you, but you can’t confide in them, set boundaries. There’s no use in confiding in someone who you cannot trust or who will not care. But if you expect others to be trustworthy, then you need to be trustworthy.
You need to refrain from gossiping about what they’ve confidentially shared with you.
Be the friend that you want to have. If you want an honest, God-seeking, supportive friend, be that person for others.
It’s not as easy as it looks!
1) How do I put this into action?
I realized not too long ago that I don’t check on people very much. I don’t ask them about their day, or how they truly are. Maybe the typical, southern “how are you?”, but not the genuine how have you been?, where they actually say how they’ve been. Lately, I’ve made it a point to ask people about their day, or how they have actually been even if I don’t care. If I’m being completely honest, at first I really didn’t care. But once you start, you learn to care. Then you genuinely care.
2) How do I speak the truth to my friends when it may hurt their feelings?
I only struggled with this when I was very young. Although recently I haven’t really struggled with this at all. Naturally, I am a very honest person. But I do worry about if people will hate me if I say something that they don’t want to hear. The way I see it, if they ask you for your opinion and it is coming from the bottom of your heart, by all means say it! Your intentions need to be purely authentic and you do not need to be manipulative/passive.
3) How do I know when to keep my mouth shut?
This on the other hand, is something that I do struggle with. If it is something that is superficial and won’t affect them or you if they don’t know it, don’t share. For example, if it’s something negative about someone they’re close with but you heard it from some other person that mayyyyybee you trust, keep it to yourself. This is because if it’s not true, it will hurt your relationship with them. If it is true, they will find out eventually, but it doesn’t need to be from you if you don’t know 100% without a doubt that it is true. If it’s something mean, and I mean just purely mean, just don’t say it. The closer you get to God, the more thoughtful you become, and the easier this is.
4) How do I know when it’s just toxic?
There’s a difference in an unstable friendship, and a toxic friendship. An unstable friend might be someone that you can’t rely on, although you can still be there for THEM. As Christians, we are called to nurture our relationships and be there for people even when they haven’t been for us. A toxic friend is someone who makes you constantly feel insecure to make THEM feel better, a toxic friend brings out the darkest side of yourself. There’s a difference. Make sure you define that before cutting someone off.