Whether financial bottlenecks, professional difficulties or health problems – it is often our relationships that help us through the low phases of life. It’s not just a matter of luck whether we have friends we can rely on: you can read about the characteristics and behavior that contribute significantly here.
Humans are social creatures and generally meet the basic requirements for having relationships, supporting each other and living together. With our languages we have a highly developed means of communicating. We use our facial expressions to tell other people how we are feeling before we are even aware of it, and most people are able to interpret the signals correctly. Our organism reacts to closeness and loneliness and makes us feel how much connection and contact we need in our lives. But even though we are true relationship geniuses in theory, in practice it is not that easy for most individuals to build and maintain reliable, stable, long-term relationships. Almost everyone experiences the feeling of being taken advantage of at some point. Hardly anyone can say that no one has ever betrayed their trust, disappointed them or let them down. Although we are social creatures, it is not a given that we are integrated into a healthy, harmonious social environment. In part, we rely on luck and chance to bring us together with people who suit us. And partly it’s up to us, our behavior and approach and the characteristics we show in a relationship. The following qualities are typically good prerequisites for building friendships that we can count on.
5 characteristics of people who can rely on their friendships
loyalty
Whether we like it or not, how other people treat us will almost always affect how we behave towards them. By opening up to us and sharing their weaknesses with us, they make it easier for us to be vulnerable to them. If they stand up for us, it will lead us to stand up for them in the same way. Conversely, the same principle applies: If we set and live certain values in a relationship through our actions, we have a good chance that the other person will follow along and mirror our behavior. For this reason, it is usually the people who are reliable and loyal who can count on their friends. With their own reliability, they express what the friendship means to them and what they expect from the relationship. And if the other person is interested in maintaining the relationship, they can and will adapt to it to the extent that it is within their power.
consequence
In order to be loyal and reliable even in a friendship and thus create a basis for a reliable relationship, you need knowledge and its consistent consideration and transfer into action: the realization that friendship is important and means something. Those who are only there and available when the mood happens to be right can usually not expect other people to treat them differently. However, if you consistently prioritize your friend when it matters, over time you will certainly find people who see, appreciate and reciprocate this consequence.
That being said, consistency can set us on the path to reliable friendships in a second way: when it causes us to let go of people who disappoint us time and time again and focus our energy on those who not only take from us, but give back to us .
Realistic expectations
What applies in many areas of life definitely applies to our relationships: Anyone who has ideas and demands that cannot be realized will sooner or later be disappointed. People who realistically assess what their friends can achieve are more likely to feel and experience that they can rely on them. On the one hand, because their ideas correspond more often and better with reality than those of people who believe that their friends should feel how they are doing without seeing or speaking to them. On the other hand, because they are less likely to demand something that their friends cannot fulfill and are therefore less likely to provoke rejection and disappointment.
Empathy and understanding
A prerequisite for making realistic demands on a friendship is the ability to empathize with other people and understand that they lead a life that can challenge them, cost them energy and limit their freedom and scope of action just as much as ours does . Friendships in particular are often long-term relationships that can extend across different phases of life. In some of these phases, contact can be closer, a person can be present, strong and always there for their friends. In other periods it can be difficult to achieve. Anyone who expects the same consistency and reliability from a friendship as they do from a mobile phone provider, because he:she forgets that in this type of relationship two people are equally at the center and not everything revolves around them, will probably rarely experience that they:he can rely on someone. However, a person who has enough understanding and patience to give others the chance to be a real friend has a realistic chance of doing so.
Open-mindedness and tolerance
A peculiarity of friendships is that we can have as many as we feel comfortable with. And they can be completely different and address different needs and sides of our personality. People who can rely on their friendships have usually internalized this. They don’t fixate on one person who they want to be like their ideal friend in as many ways as possible, but rather maintain a diverse, dynamic circle of friends in which they value the special characteristics of each person and the individuality and diversity of Experience friendship. They enjoy getting to know and being around different people, show interest and encourage those around them to be themselves.
Sources used: psychologytoday.com, verywellmind.com, hackspirit.com