When writing about friends, as I did in the past two days, there are a whole lot of different situations, questions and feelings that come in my mind which were either shared with me by friends or by people who came for counselling sessions. There have been several people who told me: ‘I do have friends but I don’t have anyone of whom I could say he is my childhood friend!’ or ‘I don’t know, I have friends, but we don’t go shopping together or out for coffee!’ and similar sentences. People have the feeling that their friendships are somehow not right. My response is often another question: Is that your own feeling or what you are being made to feel from outside?
It may not be quite obvious to everyone because people normally get quite used to living our lives without any deeper reflection on why we are doing what we are doing and why we are feeling what we are feeling. The reality is however that a lot of our actions, thoughts and emotions are heavily influenced by what we hear and see in the media, by the talk of others around us and what we see when we compare ourselves to others. Obviously, you all know it is not right to compare yourselves to your surroundings, you know that you should not listen to what others say and you are aware of the fact that media generally wants you to buy something. Nevertheless that input is difficult to avoid and so is its effect.
There are a whole lot of ‘this is what it SHOULD be like’ messages in TV-shows, movies, advertisements, magazines and books. When it comes to friends, most heroes have a huge friend circle and know the whole world, are popular with all of them except for the evil guys who obviously have to hate them. If they don’t have that, they have a few selected, very close friends in whom they can confide and with whom they can share literally everything – from their office stories to their sex problems. Everything. Women go out nearly every day, shop together, have coffee, dinner and lunch together all the time, go to have spa days and hang out with each other all the time. This is what your friendship should look like.
It is not only that though, if you look in your surrounding, you might get the same impression. So much used to seeing the messages of the media and that image of how it should be, many people really act in this way, too, pretending and maybe even having that illusion that their real life is just like the life of those fictional characters. When talking to them, you hear practically the same thing as what you see on TV, even if this is not the reality.
The result is that you feel you don’t have this kind of friendships. Your friendships look different. You don’t meet as often, you don’t talk on phone every day. You may not have a friend with whom you could talk about your sex life – and maybe you don’t even want to have such a friend because you don’t want to share this intimate things with anybody else than your partner! Maybe you actually feel perfectly fine with meeting every once in a while! Maybe you are fully satisfied with not having girls or guys evenings every other weekend! Maybe it is just not what you want or need!
Let me tell you something: you are you and if you feel alright with the friends that you have, it is perfectly fine. Focus on what you have and practice making the difference in between a wish from your heart and a wish from the mind which was created by input from outside. You don’t need to have dozens of friends if you feel good with just one or two. They don’t need to be friends of your childhood if you just didn’t have any great and lasting connection with anybody you met back then. You don’t need to do anything with your friends that you don’t feel good with.
Be yourself. Find out what you need and what you only think you need. And be happy.
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