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Four Ways to Maintain a Friendship

Interpersonal Communication

Four Ways to Maintain a Friendship- Blog

            As constant changing individuals, we may struggle to maintain friendships and relationships. This requires effort and advice.

Ways to maintain a friendship using our interpersonal communication skills.

Communication

Mutuality in Respect

Being Supportive and a Listener

Don’t Dodge the Problem

Communication- What are your needs from this friendship

As the saying goes, communication is key. It is essential to communicate your needs and wants in your friendship. This can be initiated verbally and as well as nonverbally. It is important that you be able to understand the needs and wants of your friend and vice versa. The ability to be transparent about your physical needs from a friendship is prime. The physical needs include needs that keep our bodies and minds functioning. Communication, which we most often associate with our brain, mouth, eyes, and ears, has many more connections to and effects on our physical body and well-being (Goodman, L. 2013, Ch.1.2 & 1.4).  For example, being able to depend on a friend for a car ride somewhere. This requires trust and builds a bond, because now dependability is a part of the friendship. Another great example is requiring an immense amount of alone time in a friendship. This happens if a person is avoidant or their personality trait requires a lot of time alone. This may mean two friends checking in on each other once every two weeks or more.

Individualism and Nonverbal Communication – Mutuality in Respect

Respecting friendship is respecting the person’s (friend) individualism. This is done through a nonjudgemental perception. A friendship built in trust, through communication should be able to express their passions and ideas within their own belief, with agreement or disagreement. Put simply, you can think of an individualistic culture as a culture where members make choices based on personal preference. They can pursue their own wants and needs without concerns about meeting social expectations. (Goodman, L. 2013, Ch. 2.4) Body posture is everything as well as eye contact. Additionally, two friends are discussing a passion and dream of pursuing an occupation in marketing and media. However, one of the friends is giving off signs of disengagement and judgement. Expressed verbally and non-verbally, through ways with comments such as “I wouldn’t pursue that job because it is competitive, and you wouldn’t get it.” Or through gestures such as being on their phone, lacking eye contact (oculesics, which comes from the Latin word oculus, meaning “eye.” The face and eyes are the main points of focus during communication, and along with our ears, our eyes take in most of the communicative information around us), and body posture is turned away from the other. This is considered disrespectful and could come across as a non-supportive friend. (Goodman, L. 2013, Ch. 4.2).

Being Supportive and a Good Listener

 A friend is someone you can talk to; someone you can depend on for help and emotional support. Another good attribute of maintaining a friendship is being a good listener. Listening is the process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages (Goodman, L. 2013, Ch. 6.2) Listening allows the friendship to thrive and achieve a healthy relationship and stabilize interpersonal communication skills. Help understand each other better and to empathize on a consistent basis. This is why we listen to our friends and people. For instance, a friend asking for open-mindedness while explaining an intricate situation that could revolve around conflict. So that the other friend may keep in mind not to immediately respond and become reactive to respond.

Don’t Dodge the Problem

Don’t dodge the problem, meaning neglecting issues within a friendship. Aways communicate the problem and don’t let it simmer in time. This will surely bring an end to the relationship. The communication climate (the mood in context of a conflict in a relationship, more specifically a friendship (Goodman, L. 2013, Ch.7.2)). Such as, two girl friends are set for a road trip this coming up weekend. This trip has been in the works for a month now. However, the day before the trip, one of the friend’s boyfriend decides he wants more time with his girlfriend and begs her not to go on the planned trip with said friend. This causes a major issue between the two friends, because this was not the first-time this specific issue has occurred. A situation such as this should be discussed immediately, because it brings negative emotions and a negative outlook on friendship. This requires empathy, mindfulness, and collaboration on working together to solve the issue. If the relationship is important to both parties, then avoidance should be the last contribution to the friendship. Avoidance, the avoiding style of conflict management often indicates a low concern for self and a low concern for others, and no direct communication about the conflict takes place. (Goodman, L. 2013, Ch.7.3)