How to Have a Stronger Bond With Your Friend
Born from mutual care and respect for each other, friendships are formed with those with whom you interact and share parts of your life with. University of North Carolina, Greensboro sociology professor, Rebecca G. Adam, has discovered that psychologically, friendships have more influence on your welfare than do your relationships with your family. The importance of creating stronger bonds of friendship is emphasized in the findings of the Mayo Clinic that good friends are important for your health. Strengthening a friendship can prove worthwhile to you and your friend if you both are willing to put in the effort.
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Instructions
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Accept your friend for who she is. Recognize that no one is perfect and that your friend, like you, will have faults. Let your friend know that you accept the person she is and that you are glad she is in your life.
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Make an effort to contact each other regularly. Call, text or email your friend if you have not heard from him in a few days. Let him know that you were thinking of him and that you just wanted to say, "Hi."
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Show your friend that you want to deepen your relationship by remembering little things that she shares with you. Ask about how the meeting with the new clients went or if she was able to start repainting the house over the weekend. Find out if her daughter finally lost her tooth or how her son did on the SATs.
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Remember that friendships are strengthened when time is spent together. Make an effort to spend time one on one. Go to a baseball game with your friend or invite him for an afternoon at the park. Plan a Happy Hour afternoon once a month or a day trip to your favorite amusement park.
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Learn something together. Register for a karate or salsa class and go together to the lessons. Reserve a weekend where you will teach yourselves some of the recipes from the gourmet cooking book that has been sitting on your shelf for the last two years. As you learn together, your friendship will strengthen.
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Move beyond the surface and share something intimate about yourself. Tell your friend about your favorite teacher in elementary school or what your childhood dreams were. Share the story of your first heartbreak or first kiss. Allow yourself to be a little vulnerable so that your friendship can deepen and strengthen.
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Be there through the good and the bad. Nothing strengthens a friendship like a friend who is willing to listen to you cry about your ex-girlfriend at 2 am. Listen when things are going wrong in your friend's life and celebrate his joys with him.
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Tips & Warnings
Leave any friend who is abusive physically or emotionally.
References
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