While attracting a partner is very important to most people, one of the barriers to love is to believe we can love only one person at a time, and that person has to be romantically involved with us. Learn about different kinds of love, including the love you share with friends and why friendships are as important as romantic partners.
“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” - Woodrow T. Wilson
Think of the best times of your life when you celebrated personal victories and also times when you were at a very low point in your life. Think about who was there for you besides your family. Maybe an ex was there temporarily, but exes come and go. The people who stick by us in life and experience the highs and lows of being alive are good friends. These are the people we luck into meeting and who we simply cannot do without. One of the relationship mistakes we can make, however, is to assume friendships are not as important as strangers who we date on and off, and nothing could be farther from the truth.
It is our friends who share most things in life with us, and who we can thank for holding us together when we don’t know how we are still standing. Some of us are fortunate enough to be friends with people from the time we are kids until death separates us and others are lucky to meet people who will become great friends later in life. What’s the difference in love and in love, and what are some facts about relationships that are easy to forget? What are barriers to friendships we can avoid and how do we attract the love of friends? Read on to find out.
Love vs In Love
“A friend loveth at all times.” - Proverbs 17:17
Being in love with someone is not the same thing as love in general. Being in love but not in love can be a love you feel for family, pets, and friends, but being “in love” with somebody usually denotes romantic love. Some people say they are closer to their best friends than they are a romantic partner or even a spouse, and some people need time away from their partner and household with friends or they don’t feel complete. While there are some who flat out don’t want to be around anybody but their significant other, some people find that to be isolating and restrictive.
Our romantic relationships can be with people we were friends with previously and some people even say they marry their best friends, but even marriage to our best friend doesn’t take away the fact we love and would miss our friends if we stopped spending time with them just because we are not single anymore. Friends trips and vacations are just as important as vacations with a significant other. Having the love of friends in all parts of our life, even after we aren’t single anymore, is very important for a lot of people.
Was there ever a time you just had your friends, and you realized those times you spent with them were some of the very best times of your life? Some of us are lucky enough to have friends who understand us in some ways better than we even understand ourselves and who can get through to us in difficult times when we emotionally shut down in ways nobody we ever dated before could do. Friends are with us not because they have to be like some family members are, but because they want to be, and some friends can’t imagine life without us.
If you are lucky, some of your friends will have been with you since you were kids, and you have grown, and changed together. You will have supported one another through your teenage years and early adulthood. You may have gone to college together too, and watched how you both went from early independence to being bill paying adults with careers. You may have then raised families and supported one another through the ups and downs of parenthood and if you reach retirement together, you will be very fortunate indeed to have time together, remembering all the years and good and bad times you experienced together.
Building a life with friends who we want to is something that not everybody has and the people who isolate themselves with their spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend only may never be lucky enough to experience the powerful love of friends. Friends will be there with you when you are not your best self, and may even yell at you to get you back to your better self, or they will hold your hand as you try to build yourself up again. Some people say that without the love of friends they would never have gotten through their darkest of times and it is their friends, not their romantic partners, who give them the strength to get up and move forward with their lives every day. Read about spiritual love here: What is the Spiritual Meaning of Love?
Facts About Love and Relationships
“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” – Thomas Aquinas
There are some truths about having friends that we don’t always think about. There are times when we are single, even if we are “in between partners” and being single is just temporary. Who is there to spend life with us but our friends during these lonesome times? Even if you are in a great romance, your partner is just one person on earth, and another truth is we need our peers to feel more like ourselves.
Sometimes We Are Single
In recent years, the amount of married people worldwide dropped and the amount of people who are staying single for life continues to climb. It was reported in 2019 that about thirteen percent of people living alone have doubled since the 1950’s. Not everybody who is single feels lonely with a lot of people saying they value alone time they can’t have when they are not single, and it has been scientifically proven that in general, unmarried women live longer than married women do. You can read more about that here: The rise of living alone: how one-person households are becoming increasingly common around the world - Our World in Data
There are various reasons people share for being single. Some people reported being single by choice because they had not met anybody who they felt was a good match for them and others said they were single because they needed time after a breakup to assess where they were in life and what they wanted in future romances. Some people flat out reported they were single because they did not want their choices in life to be limited and others said they were satisfied with their current lives and did not want things to change. You can read more here: The Growing Power of Single People, in 10 Important Trends | Psychology Today
Unless you have a tight knit family who you see often or you just don’t want to be around people very much in general, during times when you are single, time spent with friends is most welcome. Day trips, gatherings, going to festivals and events together, and even doing things like taking dance classes for fun are all things people love to do with friends. For some people, life is about experiences and having these amazing experiences with people we love makes the experiences even better.
Romance Partners Aren’t Everything
Say you are romantically involved with someone new, and things are going so well you say, “He talks about me to his friends and family and he will introduce us all soon!” Your new relationship could be on the way to being a long term one. Say you are happily married to somebody who you feel is your soulmate. Even then, as of the writing of this article, there are over eight billion people alive. Imagine limiting your social circle to one other human being who you are romantically involved with when there are so many other wonderful people alive to share life with!
Believe it or not, a lot of people do just that and they center their whole lives around one other person. That can result in boredom, isolation and even something called codependency. Codependency between people who isolate and refuse their partner relationships with other people can result in unhealthy controlling behaviors and compromise the personal boundaries of people in the codependent relationship. Some people don’t particularly like to be around large groups of people, and that’s okay, but if you are in a relationship with someone who does not want you around anybody but them, that’s unhealthy.
There is a whole world out there and billions of wonderful people who you can meet and experience life with. Limiting yourself to the company of one person only because you are romantically involved with them is not a way to grow closer, it is a way to make them feel they are trapped. In happy romances, it is normal to want a lot of time together, just don’t fall into the trap of believing that one person is the only thing on earth that you need. There are friends waiting to share life with you!
We Need Peers
Besides just romance partners, we need people who are like us to experience things with. Say you love watercolor painting, and your partner doesn’t. You can always paint alone, but joining an arts community will bring you into the company of others who paint and you can share your art together. Those who love sports love to play in teams together and even people who love to cook or garden love to spend time sharing these things with other people who do them as well. People who share interests with you can expose us to how other people enjoy what you do. They may have new ideas and inspire you to grow. A romantic partner can’t necessarily do that.
Barriers to Love
“Never forget your friends when you’re in a relationship.”- mydearvalentine.com
Nobody is perfect, and in our relationships, we sometimes make mistakes and don’t even realize we are doing it. We may ignore the fact that love comes in many forms, and we may overfocus on romance. We can also catch ourselves shutting our friends out.
Ignoring that Love Comes in All Forms
Above, the fact some forget about other types of love was referenced and we will go more in depth here. Some of the first people who we love are our parents when we are born, and then we are fortunate enough to have the love of siblings. We love some of our favorite teachers when we are in school, and then there are some very special people who we also love- our friends. They are with us for times when our families aren’t always, and they are the ones who understand us because we are like them. Read about saying I love you: When Should I Tell Him I Love Him?
Over Focus on Romance
One way we can create barriers to love for ourselves is to over focus on romance, believing that nothing else matters. While it is normal to want somebody as a mate, it is not healthy to believe that’s all we need in life. Believing that romance is all that matters can lead us to obsess over prospective lovers and may even make us behave in ways some people perceive as desperate, which a lot of people find to be a turn off. Over Focusing on romance when we are single can make us jealous and bitter when we are single, and it can make us self-isolate with partners who take advantage of us or mistreat us. We may even choose to stay in abusive relationships because we just don’t want to be single when we focus too much on romance.
Shutting Friends Out
Shutting out our friends is another barrier to love. Maybe we are going through a difficult time, and we just don’t want to share our feelings, but we could still keep contact with friends and let them know what is going on and that we need space. Maybe when times are tough, friends point out we have created a situation we can easily fix ourselves, and we don’t like being told the truth, so we shut friends out. Maybe we push friends away when we start dating someone new or we stop communicating with them because they have a new baby and we don’t want to be around other people for a time. New parents sometimes immerse themselves in parenthood so much they don’t spend time with friends as well. Whatever it is that is going on, make sure not to shut your friends out. They will be with you as things change and if you are having struggles, they will help you find solutions or at least give you a shoulder to lean on.
Attracting Love
“If you go looking for a friend you are going to find they’re very scarce. If you go looking to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” Anonymous
Seeing all the benefits of good friends might have you wondering just what to do in order to find all these amazing people to be friends with and the answer may surprise you. While opening yourself to friendship and using meditations to find friends are things some people swear by, others have special ways they initiate contact with new friends.
Be Open
Opening yourself to the possibility of relationships with new people is the first step to attracting friends. If you have felt betrayed by friends, this might be frightening, but keep in mind that just because somebody hurt you doesn’t mean that everyone will. Giving new people the chance to get to know you and spend time with you is a wonderful thing. Of course, you can always “play it safe” and take a long time getting to know people instead of spending a lot of time with them immediately, that is. You never know who you are going to meet or where your relationship with them will take you. Being open to new people and new friendships can result in lifelong relationships you one day can’t imagine being without. Read about manifesting love: How to Manifest Love
Meditation for Attracting Love
A simple meditation to attract friends is this: Find a quiet, comfortable place to relax, and close your eyes and think of what it is that draws people together. Most specifically, think of what draws you to other people. Are you drawn by a similar sense of humor, or an interest in hiking? Are you drawn to people who do volunteer work or are you drawn to people who do a lot of reading? Then, after you think of what draws you to people, say to yourself in meditation, “ I open myself to the people who like me, (insert what you do) and who want more people to spend time doing that with.” Do that meditative affirmation anytime you feel the desire to, and look for signs. When you see someone who fits the description, there is one thing to do- speak up!
How to Initiate Contact
Sometimes, it’s nerve-racking to meet new people, but there is a simple truth to remember- most people feel nervous about meeting new people. You can make it easy for them, and introduce yourself. On occasion someone won’t like the fact a stranger has approached them, but that means one thing if they react to you that way: it means they are not meant to be your friend, and you can thank them for indicating that truth. The right people who we are meant to share life with won’t be repelled by you introducing yourself, and they will recognize a kinship when you approach to say hello for the first time. Introducing yourself to them will give them the chance to be your friend.
The Road to Happiness
“Friends are the flowers in the garden of life. They fill your life with happiness.” – snapchamp
Walking the road to a happy life with friends is perhaps the most important road you will ever travel, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind while you welcome new friends into your life. Know how to identify when people truly care about you and learn to recognize whether they are compatible with you or not.
How to Identify Love
Not everybody who says they are our friends truly are. Some people walk into our lives because they want us to do things for them. Some people want to take advantage of our kindness to get us to do things for them that they really need to be doing for themselves, but they pretend to be friends, so we feel responsible for them. Some people come just because they think we are fun, but they really don’t care about us at all and it might take some time to figure that out. Some people come into our lives because they feel like they don’t have anything better to do, and they spend time with us when there are not other people to do things with, but once somebody else who they like better comes along, they drop us.
People who truly care about us don’t come around for things they can gain advantage from. They don’t come so we can give them money or do favors for them. They come around to spend time with us and they don’t care about anything else. While it is true that friends help one another, make sure you are not being used by someone who only promises you their companionship in exchange for things you do for them. If somebody is not gaining anything materially from you and they have other things they can do and other people they can see, but they choose to spend time with you, that’s a good sign you have made a true friend.
Recognize Compatibility
Love and relationship compatibility is easy to recognize once you know what to look for. We tend to be drawn to people who are like us in personality or values and who enjoy some of the same things we do. We also tend to gravitate towards individuals who we feel we can count on, and then the people who share life goals with us tend to be people we are drawn to friendships with.
Like minded individuals will often share similar life goals with us. They may have similar lifestyles, and they may have similar backgrounds as well although that is not entirely necessary. Personality traits too, matter in friendships. On some cases, opposites attract, and a more outspoken person will balance well with someone who keeps their opinions to themselves better, and for others “birds of a feather flock together” hold true, and you and your friends might be a quiet group of introverts who understand each other on a soul level.
Harmonizing with other people’s personalities is crucial for long term satisfaction in relationships, and while we are not all exactly alike, we can balance with those who are different and compliment one another even if we have differences. Your shy friends may rely on you to speak up and your emotionally “chill” friends may help you steer out of a nervous incident when they explain that everything is alright. Some people just “click” and automatically become comfortable with one another, and then before you know it, many good years of friendship have gone by, and you don’t know what you would have done without them.
We Don’t Have to Walk Alone
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. “ – Helen Keller
There is a time to celebrate romance and a time to celebrate the love of friends. After all, who else will pull you out of the funk of a broken heart and put you back together after your breakup or go for a midnight run for great snacks when you’re dealing with career drama? Who is the first one to call to celebrate good times and who defends you in your absence when they run into your ex? There may be romance, but there is someone else who will always have your back when you are single and teach you how to feel love again. That’s a good friend.
Love comes in many forms, and great friends will love everything about you. It’s true love with friends who stick by you when you are in your darkest of times and they will celebrate your greatest triumphs with you. Some friendships are lifelong and you will make great memories together, still being closer than family through breakups and into old age. There may be times you are single, childless, or have minimal time with family, but with friends, you will never be alone. May your friends be many, your loneliness be rare, and may your friendships last a lifetime. So Be It.
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About the Author: Lady Saoirse has studied magic and lore for most of her life but started walking her own Magical Path after being spiritually reborn in the desert. Today she is a High Priestess for The Temple of the Goddess, she is a psychic advisor and spiritual counselor, she shares her gifts as a Psychic and Content Writer for SpiritualBlossom, Mysticsense, and she writes for The Green Egg and PaganPages.Org emag.
