Friendships

You may be asking yourself what this article has to do with my Foodie Blog. It has been proved that humans need friends. Friends can help extend our life expectancy and reduce the risk of heart disease, according to Dr Lauren Brent.

It’s simple. Friends are the ones we mainly go out and socialise with, pour a glass of wine and sit and chat, catch-up, bond, or talk through problems and it’s these friendships and bonds that create a sense of completeness and ensure a sense of wellbeing and nurture. Who doesn’t love that camaraderie of having a drink and a really good laugh with a mate?

The sun comes out and generally the majority of the UK rushes out to grab a load of food for the BBQ to invite your friends over for a gathering. It’s these social gatherings that ground and fulfil us.

Friendships come in many forms. Most of these begin as a seedling. When we meet someone, we study the “package” for a brief while and decide if this type of “flower” will suit our current selection and either begin to nurture the plant, or not.

Those friendships when we meet a person and form an instant connection, are often the ones that fade the quickest. Like a firecracker; all excitement, bluster, whizzing and banging and then it seems to fade, disappointingly quickly. These can be the most confusing, because they seem to skip the stages of friendship and land smack bang in the middle of thinking we know this person, how they feel, what they might like or dislike, which is encouraging at first. However, this comes unstuck at the first hurdle of a disagreement or difference of opinion.

Unlike other friendships, these “firecrackers”, much like weeds, haven’t taken the time to form roots, or get to know us and misconceptions and misunderstandings early on, can quite easily and quickly erase everything in a matter of minutes. This can be baffling and we are left confused and a little bereft. It is only when we realise that, even though this looked like a beautiful flowering shrub, that this was, in fact, just a weed, that we are able to shrug and move on. Sometimes releasing them and letting them go without a need to hang on in there because we felt so close to them so quickly, is very hard to do and the weed may come back a few times and cause quite a lot of trouble, before we are actually ready to kill it completely (so to speak).

Hopefully, these weeds in life don’t cause too much damage along the way, but they serve to teach us a lesson; that next time perhaps we will approach with more caution and take our time to get to know someone, instead of jumping into the middle stage and expecting the friendship to be solid and sturdy.

It is when these things happen that we then re-evaluate who we do have in our lives and appreciate the time we took to get to know the real friends we are lucky enough to have around us.

There are many lovely and friendly people in this world, but we cannot be friends with everyone. We form friendships with all different types and personalities and sometimes when we look at their different attributes, we might wonder how on earth we are friends with such different people. Variety is the spice of life and we take, need or give back something different from each of these people in our lives.

The same principles, pretty much apply for romantic relationships. The more natural, gentle and organic a relationship begins, the stronger and more reliable it tends to grow.

My Conclusion:

The lesson I have learned from forming friendships and relationships alike, over these last fifty years on this plane, is don’t run before you walk. Don’t miss out on the early stages. Take it slow. Learn, take your time, talk lots, discover and nurture. And remember… we can’t be friends with everyone, so let the weeds go and nurture the rest with all your might.

This article is very interesting. “Why We Need Friends – According to a Scientist“.