How To Make A Friend

Nature intended us to love and to be loved. Love is not just what we do but who we are, a part of our existence. As a social species, love is the bond that holds us together.

Sometimes we find ourselves without friends, without a lover, without loving family. Such times define the term "starting over" more than beginning a new job or moving to a new hometown.

Sometimes being without someone close destroys for us experiences that we should find pleasant or exhilarating. Without someone to share them with, nothing much seems enjoyable. We can have thrills, but they substitute poorly for someone who cares.

How to find a friend? How to make a new friend?

In a sense, the friendship kind of love is like a business arrangement. Give and take on both sides. Each party must have something to gain from the relationship. We can't pick a new friend as we would choose an entré from a restaurant menu. We have to have something to offer the other person, something of value which the other is prepared to exchange for what they can offer of value.

In a true business arrangement--the best possible kind--each party receives as much back as they give, a 50-50 exchange. In business we might be prepared to extend ourselves to giving 60 percent to receiving back 40 percent, but nothing past that is acceptable.

In a friendship, family or love arrangement we must resort to the 80-20 rule to understand it best. (Example: of everything we own, we tend to use 20 percent regularly and ignore the other 80 percent most of the time.) In a friendship/family/love relationship, we must feel that we are giving 80 percent while only receiving back 20 percent. And we must accept that this is fair and reasonable or the relationship will falter.

Why such a discrepancy? In human relationships we tend to ignore or miss a large part of what the other party gives to us. Usually it's the little things we seldom notice, but sometimes it's something we don't recognize that we need and are receiving from the other without realizing it.

The best example of a need that someone may satisfy while we may not appreciate it is touch. Touch is a basic human need, as important to us as food and shelter. The most romantic part of a love relationship tends to be in the first three to eight months, when the lovers touch each other most often, from loving sex to walking hand in hand through a park or shopping mall.

Friends seldom realize how often they touch each other. They may shake hands or hug when they meet and depart and come in contact with each other many times in between. Even macho men like those on sports teams huddle, hug when one of them scores, cheer together as one and, in the case of football players, pat each other on the bum or arm.

Touching is such an important component of life that chronic care hospitals invite visitors to bring their animals in for petting, they have activities for those who can move to bring them in touch with each other, and some nurses go out of their way to find ways to touch the hands or arms of bed-bound patients so they can feel human contact.

Now we know some of the components of a friendship, how do we choose a friend? The first step is to put ourselves into positions where we come in contact with the kind of people we might like to have as friends. This may mean joining a club, religious group or a place where people workout, exercise.

At that point it's more a matter of making ourselves friend-worthy than choosing a friend ourselves. That is, we must do something to make ourselves interesting as a potential friend. This almost always involves smiles and friendly chatter about small matters of mutual interest to begin the contact. After that, doing a favour or offering to assist the other person in some way provides the opportunity for the other person to look favourably on us.

Building a friendship takes time. Rushing it frightens people off. Take it little by little. Small steps are easier to manage for both parties.

People like others who do favours for them because few do without some form of payment. People also like others who listen to them. Sometimes the quietest people have the most to say, but they can't find a willing audience to listen. The shyest people often want new friendships but don't know how to develop them. They are the most willing to accept overtures of friendship and usually appreciate a friend greatly because they have seldom had enough friends in their lives.

Keep in mind the 80-20 rule. So long as the other person gives back what we believe to be at least 20 percent of the effort to cement a friendship, the relationship is likely developing, providing that we contribute what we believe to be the 80 percent. Remember, some people who may become good friends may not know how to make friends with you. They may not give back much for a while because they don't know what to do.

There will always be the "takers," those who will be friends so long as we are doing favours for them, spending money on them or offering them something they want. The takers, however, seldom if ever give anything back. They may want us to believe that they are giving something of value to us, but if we don't see what they give as valuable then they are best avoided or abandoned. Often it's just their companionship, not friendship.

We don't have to be the best in the world at anything to be attractive as a friend. But we need to be valuable to the person we want to befriend. That value should never be money because that never leads to friendships, only broken hearts.

We shouldn't necessarily look for people who are like ourselves as friends. Friends who have interests as alike as twins may wear out their friendship as their interests change. Having a friend with different interests from our own gives us some reasons for exchanging ideas, experiences and even comfortably sharing periods of silence.

Trying to befriend someone who already has several friends could be self defeating. That person may not have the time or care to make another friend. A better possibility might be someone who has few or no friends. Unless such a person has some repulsive habit, he or she might just be someone else looking for a friend but not knowing how to make one.

Finally, men and women can be friends. It's hard because of our natural instinct to mate with those of the opposite sex. Enter into an opposite-sex friendship with caution, especially when already in a committed relationship. It's only for the strong of will as well as the strong of heart.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so they can experience and enjoy the benefits of healthy friendship and love as they grow.
Learn more at http://billallin.com