Simply put, life is better with true friends!
Friends are weird, aren’t they? They are not connected to us by blood. They are just random people, we happen to connect with and then, we start doing stuff with them. Before we even realize it, they become an essential part of us.
I will begin this article by expressing gratitude for the friends I have in my life. The last two years were hard and the people around me were one of the few things I was still grateful for.
Friendships have been rewarding for me, they have brought along warmth and understanding but a part of me also used to get puzzled by the concept.
During my younger years, I had an underlying uneasiness while sailing through the different friend groups. Even when I had stable friendships at all stages of my life, I searched for some deeper connection in random conversations. I had myself peeking into other people’s friendships to see if they were any different. It is frustrating that I don’t have an explanation for my feeling that way. Maybe, I will never know.
Now when I look back at the type of attachments I then had with my friends, it uncovers something. I feel like I had this ‘need’ to have a person close to me. The world around me seemed so foreign and intimidating, I felt like I could do only if I held onto a person. I had learned that a co-dependent partner is a way to kill a romantic relationship, but I didn’t know that the rule applies to friendships too.
Just when I had myself thinking that my style of attachment was the only one, life took a 180-degree turn. When I moved to a new place, I was warmly welcomed by a handful of young women. I made friends with them really easily.
I realized that friendships in groups are so much different from one-to-one friendships. A person can stay in touch with another person and eventually the whole group stays connected. Instead of depending entirely on a person, you now have different people for even times of the day. While your career interests align with a person, you can get better relationship advice from another and have intellectual discussions with yet another one from the group. Different viewpoints are not just easily accommodated, but also understood and validated.
This taught me something valuable. There is no being who can complete us. Unlike what popular movies tell us, we are self-sufficient ourselves, but it is in the company of our friends and family that we feel secure and safe to be who we really are. This is really what deep, meaningful connections offer to us.