HV friendships?

smm1892 · 2021-01-11T19:44:28+00:00

Something I’ve noticed a lot lately is whether they bring energy to the relationship and whether I come away from spending time with them energized/uplifted or exhausted! There are some people that I can spend hours and hours with doing activities or just relaxing with tea (and these are often my closest friends). There are also some people, however, that just make me feel more tired and these have become more casual friendships as of late.

I think the #1 important thing is just evaluating these friendships so you can keep yourself feeling happy and fulfilled and not burdened! 🥰

ProfessionalPee · 2021-01-11T20:44:54+00:00

I think while it's good to have standards for friendships obviously, you also need to evaluate how they make you feel. Some people just don't vibe together well, some do. The biggest sign is if you assigned a time to split for the night and you're both like "awww that sucks, bye!" Because you actually enjoyed the time a lot. If you catch yourself eyeing the clock for the time you can politely leave you really aren't friends unless there's some circumstance that influences you needing to leave like that.

hugship · 2021-01-11T21:16:59+00:00

I'm lucky to have multiple very good friends who do the following:

- Relationship and life advice is always available, but must be solicited. (Except in extraordinary/dangerous circumstances.) We don't spend our time together bossing each other around about what we think the other should/shouldn't be doing, within reason.

- When plans are made, every reasonable effort is made to stick to them. We all have pets and demanding jobs, so we are definitely understanding when things come up that throw a wrench in plans. The key here is that everyone also polices themself so that nobody is constantly canceling/rescheduling more than the others.

- We respect each other's significant others and make every reasonable effort to include them in plans when appropriate. Are we gonna be best friends with everyone's boyfriends/husbands? Maybe not. But we all do our best to make them feel welcome and comfortable when spending time together.

- Our significant others respect our friendships. This means that we don't get guilted for wanting to spend girl time with our friends, nor do they try to tag along or otherwise mess with girl time.

- We help each other out without expecting anything in return or holding over each other's head down the line. If anything, we remember all of the times our friends help us with dog sitting, picking us up in the middle of the night, etc, and we fall over ourselves to be good friends to them and help them out when they need it.

Example-Opposite · 2021-01-11T21:32:05+00:00

Curious, what do you consider LibFem views?

Some of my green flags:

flexibility and open mindedness. I don’t mind someone being different than me so long as they don’t belittle my lifestyle. I don’t mind someone challenging me because they have different views, and I don’t try to change theirs, I don’t mind getting into a healthy debate about topics, who knows, maybe we’re both coming from flawed perspectives and are both willing to change our views.
empathy and kindness. Must be open and understanding of people. Having preferences is fine, but hating someone for absolutely no reason is unacceptable. I don’t take people at face value and want to understand them at a deeper level before making judgements, and expect the same from friends
must have a goal in life other than relationships/family. This one is a bit controversial, but I was raised to be independent and function in a mans world (I work in tech), and think it’s important to get more female representation in the workforce. Of course if you’re staying home to take care of kids/elderly/disabled people, I understand because it’s more of a responsibility than a goal. But I will not tolerate someone telling me to stop working and to stay at home just because they want to (I literally had to block a friend for this recently, she’s a house wife and cooks all day but doesn’t have any long term goals that I know of. I didn’t mind it at first because she likes her life, but she crossed me by telling me I should stop working and going to school when I told her about the stress I was dealing with)
does not try to psychoanalyze me. You’ll likely get me wrong. If you have a question, ask, don’t assume. I know some people try to hide their truths, but I don’t, I try to be as clear as possible, if I don’t answer your question, I may have interpreted it wrong, so just say so.
doesn’t pretend to understand my culture and background. Asking questions is fine, but making assumptions (not out of curiosity) is crossing my boundaries. Example: I’m black and had a friend (she’s Muslim) tell me how I have to take care of myself and assumed I was having a difficult time dealing with the BLM protests and claimed it was a revolution. I actually was busy with work deadlines hadn’t heard of protests until later that month so I was so confused when she started texting me about it, and her reaction scared me more than the event itself. She doesn’t realize that I hear about police shootings of unarmed black men several times a year, and she assumed I was struggling. I blocked her because she projected her own insecurities onto me without trying to understand my perspective on the issue.
understanding of schedules. I actually am the person who may accidentally keep someone waiting for an hour because I didn’t schedule my school/work responsibilities correctly or got assignments dropped on me last minute (I try my best not to be and give ample warning when this does happen, but sometimes life happens, can’t control every variable). I personally don’t mind if this happens because there’s plenty for me to do while waiting (read a book or get on reddit lol!), and I like having the time to decompress. If I do have to go, I usually am very polite and just reschedule. I would like my friends to be the same way if they are able to.
must be supportive. I know a lot of people who like to just give advice without actually showing up. It pisses me off. If I know a friend is in pain from a breakup, I will make time to be there for her, even if it’s only for a few hours, or call her/video chat with her and check in on her if we’re physically too far away. I hate it when a friend says “I love you and support you!” But doesn’t but the effort behind it. I’m sorry but if you really did love me, you’d be watching movies with me in my pjs instead of ignoring your phone and “forgetting” to reply!

I probably have more signs but can’t think of them off the top of my head right now.

Altowhovian93 · 2021-01-11T22:49:48+00:00

-respects and remembers your interests -able to be there in emergencies (and you vice versa - fun and not exhausting to be around

maracat1989 · 2021-01-12T00:27:23+00:00

I have recently been battling with whether I want to continue spending time with a friend. I'm leaning towards not seeing her again because of the way she criticized my boundaries and standards. It felt really invalidating and belittling. This is the third time I've come away from hanging out with her feeling like this. What's a nice way of ending a friendship? I want to ghost her because that's easy, yet she doesn't deserve that.

MulticoloredCatMug · 2021-01-12T05:06:08+00:00

The way your "friends" treat other people is the way they will eventually treat you.

Does your friend have other friends? Long-term friendships?

Are they possessive of their friends? If your friend wont introduce you to her other friends, or acts jealous if you all hang out together that's a huge red flag.

Does your friend talk shit about other people? She's probably talking shit about you.

Women will also tell you who they are. Does your friend say she's manipulative? Does she tell you about her bad qualities in a joking tine? She's boundary testing.

Personally I have a lot of great friendships, I'm not looking for more friends. I'm super happy to have new friends if we connect, but anyone who's exhausting to be around or requires uncomfortable effort to be friends with is not for me.

wrice05 · 2021-01-12T19:43:26+00:00

Here's an important aspect for me: reciprocal vulnerability, a shared level of confidence. When you're feeling your way into a friendship, you're not going to spill your deepest traumas the first time you have coffee (or you shouldn't, anyway). But as your friendship grows and deepens, there should be parity in the depth of what you share with one another. I found out I need to ascertain this intentionally when a friend invited/demanded confidence of me and then I later found out she was hiding a relationship from me and lying to me about it FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. It was the imbalance that bothered me. She was under no obligation to share with me that she was seeing this man and it was getting serious, but then she had no right to get me to spill my relationship heartbreaks and struggles. It felt like she preyed on my vulnerability while relishing her own secrecy, and I felt incredibly betrayed. I dumped someone in our circle last week, and lo and behold, I suddenly got a text and a phone call from her. What do you want to bet she was going to pump me for details? No thank you, block and delete.

Title	HV friendships?
Author	GreatAndGrouchy
Upvotes	70
Comments	21
Date	January 11, 2021 6:27 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/kv8mko/hv_friendships/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/hv-friendships.748353 https://theredarchive.com/post/748353

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