With a fresh calendar in front of you and a heart full of hope and motivation to accomplish all of your goals this year, I would encourage you to contemplate this question: Who do you want to spend your time with in 2025?
Whether you are an introvert or extrovert, whether you are a busy parent with little time to spare or a child-free professional embracing your freedom–we all need friends. We all need a community. It’s not always easy to meet people or maintain friendships and it can be easy to put that part of your life on the back-burner, but I would argue that a strong community is just as important as discipline in achieving any of your personal goals.
In fact, I often encourage individuals with the goal of improving their dating or marital relationship to use the safety and clarity they experience in friendships as a reference point. When someone responds that they don’t have any, I know this is a part of the problem and that it’s likely not their fault.
In my clinical experience, many adults recognize friendships are important, but they don’t think of them as necessary for their mental health and general wellbeing. Yet, sadly, many of the retired men I’ve worked with end up going back to work purely for the socialization of it. Many moms that might otherwise enjoy being at home with their kids, end up going back to work to be around other adults. I say it’s sad not because going back to work is sad–work provides many benefits including purpose and structure. But I think it’s sad that our society is so work-focused that we have a hard time building relationships outside of our careers.
Without intention, friendships are the only relationship largely formed out of desire (or maybe even convenience) rather than necessity. People that want to get married know they have to start with dating. People that want to build a business know they have to build a professional network. People that want to build a platform know they have to build a following. People that want to reach a fitness goal know they’re more likely to stick with it if they have someone keeping them accountable. So in that sense–all of these relationships have a specific function and goal in mind. It doesn’t mean they’re not genuine, it just means we have a focused reason for pursuing them.
Maybe it’s time to reprioritize friendships as a necessary part of our lives.
A quick Google search will show you countless articles on the health benefits of having friendships–stress reduction, improved mood, and even cognitive improvement. One example I found so interesting is in Arthur Brooks new book Build the Life You Want The Art and Science of Getting Happier. In it, he describes newer research showing the importance of engaging in anything that has the capacity to become addictive (drinking, shopping, gambling, etc.) with another person.The reason being that if you are engaging in these activities with another person you tend to associate the pleasure with being social and that a drive to be social tends to lead us in a better direction than if we associate pleasure purely with a substance or an activity (alcohol).
Important to note is that social isolation is not exactly the same as loneliness. Isolation means physically not having access to people. Loneliness means having relationships, but not feeling connected in them. Living in an unhappy marriage can drastically increase the likelihood of experiencing both.
If you are experiencing loneliness in your marriage, it is important to get help so your marital issues do not become individual mental health issues and vice versa.
Therapy is a great place to explore and hopefully overcome any barriers to creating more fulfilling relationships. In couples therapy, it’s a place to practice and create change in the here-and-now with your partner. In individual therapy, your therapist almost acts as a proxy–someone with whom you can build a relationship that serves as a launching point for more secure-functioning relationships. My goal as a relationship-oriented therapist is always to help launch people into healthier and more fulfilling relationships (not to keep people in therapy forever!).
I recognize the task of building (or re-building) and prioritizing friendships can be daunting and for some people it may seem far-fetched. If that’s you, I’d encourage you to consider the type of friend(s) you’re picturing. You do not need a ton of friends to start feeling more supported and fulfilled. It’s more likely that you need the right kind. Recognizing safety and intimacy in friendships can be challenging if you are more accustomed to transactional relationships or friendships that have been disappointing.
Here are some images of friends that come to mind for me when I imagine manifesting better friends for the clients I work with:
- The friend that cries with you and prays with you.
- The friend that shares their struggles honestly and vulnerably so you never feel alone.
- The friend that responds with warmth no matter how “weird” you just acted. Someone that’s not afraid of intimacy and doesn’t react strongly to insecurity.
- The friend that gives you deep belly laughs.
- The friend with no pretenses.
- The friend you can call when you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed.
- The friend that will tell you the truth, but with compassionate love.
- The friend that cheers you on in your successes and stays by your side when you’re feeling low.
I recently did a spirituality and religious trauma training with a therapist that said something along the lines of, “Our first attachment is with God, and in that connection we experience completeness, wholeness, and total safety. There’s a peaceful “hum” and rhythm to that relationship. Then we spend the rest of our life trying to find anyone and anything that can recreate that feeling/experience.”
I believe we all have access to a relationship with the Lord and that it can be a rock solid starting point for a healthy relationship with others. I also believe that when you make the decision to follow Christ you truly have the Holy Spirit living in you and that the spirit attracts the spirit in other people. The closer you walk with Jesus, the more aware you become of when you’ve separated from Him and the people that pull you in the wrong direction. This doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with people that don’t believe in Jesus (we are called to be Jesus to everyone, after all), but it does mean you can trust that guiding force for better discernment.
For non-believers–the same concept applies if you are practicing regular meditation and connection with yourself. The more embodied and grounded you are, the more you recognize the people that yank you out of that state.
This is one way to start recognizing when you are spending time with the right people and when you’re not. When you’re surrounded by people that help you to feel more like yourself, your personality blooms and you naturally feel at ease. When you’re not, you may end up feeling more in your head and confused or lonely despite spending plenty of time socializing.
Sometimes it helps to unpack ruptures in previous relationships in therapy so that you can recognize when you might be projecting or if it is a case of being around the wrong people.
Finding your people is so much easier said than done, but it also makes a world of difference in your mental health.
If you would like some help getting started, please feel free to reach out to me via email at info@alexbarnettecounseling.com. Happy New Year, and I’m wishing you a year filled with people that bring out the best in you in 2025!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfzpfqrPUDo
