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With all the swiping, tapping and texting - finding a dick-date or being entertained with the endless 'send me pics' and when they get bored, they move onto the next person. However, I think as a society, we're super lonely for friends. People who will hang out with you and chill-out over a pint and a parmi on an idle Sunday afternoon. Friendships are UNDERRATED!
Friendship is the foundation of a romantic relationship.
The biggest sign of a loveless marriage is two people are not even friends. They only talk about logistics, e.g., when to pick up the kids from school and when to call the plumber. Apart from that, these two individuals do not really communicate because they are not even friends.
Please let me reiterate: That is the biggest sign of a loveless marriage.
Friendship in a romantic relationship provides the following:
1) Shared experiences that lead to a strong emotional connection;
2) Shared values that lead to a compelling blueprint;
3) Mutual respect, kindness, generosity and authenticity.
Without these fundamental elements, a romantic relationship is very, very vulnerable!
The importance of friendship:
When it comes to friendship in general, I would argue that friendship is actually more meaningful than many other relationships.
Firstly, a friendship is completely built on the same value system because you are not in it for other reasons. In contrast, a romantic relationship will fall apart when s*x is non-existent because the prerequisite of a romantic relationship is a sexual relationship.
Secondly, your friends are the family that you choose to have. In other words, you choose these people as your friends and there must be a reason why they are selected by you – you actually, genuinely like them; they bring you joy. (Never underestimate the power of joy.) By contrast, you can’t choose your family – you spend time with your family because you are related to each other, not necessarily because you 100% like each other.
Thirdly, in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware writes, “One of the top regrets is ‘I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends’.” Among the top five regrets of the dying, friendship is the only interpersonal relationship that is included on the list. Bronnie Ware did extensive research and that’s a key finding.
It is time for us to build real friendships so that we won’t have that regret on our last night on earth.
We live in a very social context nowadays because social media platforms are very popular these days. But sadly, a recent study shows that modern people actually feel lonelier because most of us don’t really have many friends in real life, although we are looking at social media on the Internet every single day.
