Can We Trust Our Friends to Support Our Personal Growth

By | March 15, 2015

During our lives, we will meet several people. Some of these folks we will know a lifetime. Some folks will be around for a good time and then dash when the first sign of trouble presents itself.

I have had several acquaintances and very few true friends.

True friends can save your life or at least make it bearable. I have laughed often with true friends. Cried with true friends about being misunderstood, lonely or scared.

At my recent wedding, I was able to bask in the love and support of many people.

I was able to identify the ones who were there for a good time, to see the house or simply to see two men get married and kiss.

Whatever the reason people decided to attend the event, it was quite an event.

Currently, I am examining all of the relationships in my life and asking myself some serious questions.

Am I at my best in this relationship ? Is this person bringing me their best and demanding that I do the same?

Often times we find ourselves ourselves in relationships of convenience. Relationships that suck the life out of us and are welcome distractions that move us into more nothingness and wasted time and life energy.

I have had many of these and most of them have been in the context of intimate interactions.

My recent obsession with true relationships and true love (which is one in the same to me) came to a head when I married.

Want to ferret out real love : drastically change the dynamic of a well defined relationship and watch the fur fly. People feign love for another and yet no vital and powerful test of their relationship has ever occurred.

It is easy to declare love when you are never challenged.

Because we are human beings, we have shit that is most unattractive and will emerge when given the correct environment to flourish.

Try to get emotionally close to someone and everyone’s abandonment and “not enoughness” will appear in some interesting guises and in people you thought you knew.

Share your darkest hour and prepare for upset, anger, dismissal and in some rare and troubling instances, outright meanness and thoughtlessness.

This is the most frightening and exciting thing about interaction with other humans.

As an individual who is always pushing towards his own and the world’s evolution, it is embarrassing to admit that there have been times when my envy and jealousy allowed me to go “on the attack”.

While this was not my finest hour, I have learned that no one is above attacking another if change, abandonment or scarcity is afoot.

We all fear change.

We construct relationships on predictability. Things get real wacky when people get healthy, change the game or simply change the game’s rules.

Many of us are assigned labels and characteristics at birth.

Several of us carry these ridiculous and arbitrarily assigned ways of being into the world and our adult lives. As a person committed to protean and relentless growth, I am often moving from one thing to another.

I look for the next opportunity to fail and or win big.

It takes a powerful warrior friend to walk with you as you explore all that life has to offer or allow your curiosity to lead you to the scary and unpredictable. Some folks only like it when you are fucked up, confused and emotionally stuck.

Having fought my way back from homelessness, joblessness, financial disaster and abusive relationships with cute sociopaths, I have witnessed the investment people (sometimes)make in the misery of “friends”.

People that I thought were friends have said awful things with the underlying tone of “stay in your place ass wipe”.

These are not friends or at the very least a confused friend who would rather not have things change. We must realize that we all have the capacity to fear and fight like the dickens to prevent change. We must realize that change is inevitable and is not the problem.

How we negotiate and respond to change is the most powerful and positive response when things and people begin shifting identities.

We must learn to welcome the new and not offer punishments to anyone who has the balls to dig deep and demand more from themselves and the world. Applauding and supporting the efforts of those we claim to love is the highest honor, a true and bold testament to what we think and want for the ones we hold close.

It (true friendship) demands that we honor all commitments and not simply flap our gums about what our friendships mean to us.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *