What's The Value of Friendships?

Many years agao, I  asked someone the question, can you live a fullfilled life without friendships?  the answer was yes, but you need to be very clear about what you are giving up and be at peace with that.  I don’t agree totally with this answer because I believe friendships are important and provide a venue, aside from our nuclear and extended families for us to come together to share, connect, laugh, grow, cry, and learn.  And these are just a few benefits, there are many other great benefits of friendships.  For instance, one of my friends is a great listener, trustworthy, and honest.  She knows me very well.  Whenever I need an honest, objective opinon, she is the person I turn to.  Another friend is great to hang out with.  She is down to earth, funny, smart and posses a very realistic perspective about life.  These friendship doesn’t require a lot of my attention, because we have developed a strong bond.  However, there are some friendships that require a lot more of our time and energy and these friendships may leave us feeling overwhelmed at times.  Nevertheless, we still value them.  

I believe that friendship is an act of giving and sharing between two or more people.  There are times in our friendship when we will need to give more, and that’s okay because we are placed here to help each other.  We should give generously of our time and resources.  But the red flag should go up when we are the only ones doing all of the giving.   My red flag went up when I did an assessment of my friendships some time ago.  The result yeiled that in a particular frienship, I was giving so much more than I was receiving.  That didn’t bother me, but it became explicitly clear that this person wasn’t an equal nor positive contributor to the friendship, needless to say, our relationship ended. 

My thought about the question is that I don’t believe anyone can live a very fullfilled life without good friendships.  But, I do believe you can live rather well without “unhealthy friendships”–those that constantly deplete your energy, time, resources and don’t help to replenish them.  The fact is there are some friendships that hinder our personal growth.  And it is up to us to figure out whether it is time to relinquish, or redefine them.