Is maintaining friendships hard?

As an individual like everyone, we must admit that just like any other relationships, we have to make effort to maintain them. If you want to do well in your career, you need effort. If you want to have a blissful marriage, you need to effort. If you want to excel in your studies, you need effort. If you want to have an interesting blog, you need effort. Same goes to friendship! You can’t sustain a friendship if you don’t make any effort! Here are my thoughts about friendship.

I am not a clingy friend. This means that I do not like texting a person 24/7. I love to hang out with friends but do get tired after awhile and I would require some “own time”. You must find your own balance. Are you an extrovert who likes to surround yourself with friends? Or are you someone who loves to stay at home and hang out with friends once in awhile? Everyone is different and to me, it is perfectly normal. The problem is when everyone becomes busy with their own things. How do you maintain friendships even while you are not seeing each other everyday? Here are my go to tips on how to maintain friendships.

1. Take Initiative: You want to be proactive. Once in awhile, you want to initiate for meetups like having dinner or organize some activities that you guys like to do so that you can catch up with your friend to find out how they are doing. Schedule the date and do your best not to cancel it.
2. Be understanding: Do your best to understand what your friend is doing and what are the challenges they are facing. Sometimes, they don’t share the problems they are facing. You have to observe and find out from them. I do realize that even though they claim that they don’t feel like sharing, sometimes they really want to find someone to talk about their problems. So, be that friend! They will appreciate a friend who can listen to their problems. Be someone who makes an effort to get them to share their problems. Listen and provide them support!
3. Be loyal & honest: You want to be respected by your friends and so do they. I like my friends who are loyal and give me honest feedback when I need. After all, we should be there for each other when in need.

Here are my views about friendship. I would like to re-emphasize that friendships like any other relationships requires effort. Do leave a comment what are your views about friendship!