Are we really friends? If you want to avoid committing the faux pas of describing a colleague or an acquaintance as a friend, here are some rules for when it’s fair game to use the term: 1. You’ve actually met in person. From the caption of a famous New Yorker cartoon: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” If you’ve only connected with someone by email or phone, even if they are a real person, there’s no substitute for the trust that can be developed from meeting face-to-face. 2. You know embarrassing things about each other that don’t show up in a Google search. Studies consistently show that self-disclosure—opening up and making yourself vulnerable—is one of the strongest drivers of close relationships. My friends know that I have questionable taste in music, and so they refrain from dissing Bryan Adams. They accept the fact that I read the first Twilight book, cover to cover (my wife made me do it)—and the rest of them (that was my doing). 3. You can call each other without scheduling a conversation. Unless the person in question is a head of state, if you have to get an appointment on someone’s calendar to talk, you haven’t cleared their friendship bar. 4. You never discuss the weather. When you ask a friend “How are you doing?” you don’t have to follow up with “No, really, how are you doing?” Friends don’t bother with small talk. They can go months without talking, and pick up as if they’ve never skipped a beat. They dive right into deep conversations about love, life, and that exasperating conclusion of Lost where nothing was actually resolved. 5. You help each other without keeping score. In professional relationships, I find that most people follow the norm of reciprocity: When we do someone a favor, we expect a comparable one in return. In friendships, the norm shifts from reciprocity to generosity. We focus on what our friends need, not what we can get back from them. Instead of keeping tallies of credits and debts, friends give whenever they can. As Jack Handey says, “If you wear a toupee, why not let your friends try it on for a while? Come on, we’re not going to hurt it.” 6. You’ve had meaningful experiences together. Men and women alike expect friendships to involve mutual activities and shared memories. If you’ve never gone to a movie or been shopping together; never played a sport or game together; never attended a party together; or never decorated someone’s car with shaving cream together, you’re probably not friends. 7. You give the critical feedback that we don’t want to hear, but need to hear. Friendships have what the organizational scholars Jane Dutton and Emily Heaphy call tensility carrying capacity to withstand criticism and bounce back from strain. “We wouldn’t want to assume that compassion is always gentle,” George Saunders observes be compassionate…[I]f a friend is wearing something ridiculous, you can say, ‘You look like an idiot,’ and maybe that will save him.” - Psychology Today
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 01:39:00 +0000
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