Bad Habits and Friendship

We all get irritated when we're in a relationship and the person does something we don't like - maybe your boyfriend forgets to put the toilet seat down or he leaves his dirty dishes in the sink.  Maybe you're the one who leaves the towels on the bathroom floor.  It can be challenging to learn how to accept the good and the bad when it comes to our romantic relationships, but we try our best!  People are not perfect and we all have our idiosyncrasies; some more than others!

What about our friends?  Are we allowed to be more picky when it comes to their bad habits?  Maybe your friend always forgets to call you back or is always late to events.  Or worse, she has poor manners and when you're out with her, she is rude to total strangers.  Would you continue to stay friends with someone who has bad habits?

Personally, it would depend on the bad habit and how much it impacts me.  If it's something so egregious, then I'd either try to talk to this friend, or I'd have to examine how much I want this friend in my life.  Bad habits don't get better, they usually get worse; unless this friend can see what she's doing and how it's affecting others, she may not understand and not view it as a big deal.

Do any of your friends have bad habits?  If so, what are they?  Have you had to end a friendship over a bad habit?

The Nest Article

I'm excited to share an article I contributed to:

5 Tricks to Ditching a Bad Friend by Sasha Emmons

It can be quite difficult to end a friendship - okay, like REALLY difficult!  There's no easy way to do it, but as long as you know for sure that the friendship is over and you've tried without success to make it work, then it may be time to say good-bye.

Thus, I gave my two cents regarding how to keep your mouth closed when it comes to the urge to spill to your mutual friends about how evil this woman is - yes, it's challenging, but you wouldn't want her gossiping about you to your friends behind your back, now would you?!  I didn't think so.

What's been your experience with ending a friendship?  Did you use any of the above tricks?

Friendship Quote of the Week

"A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely."
~Pam Brown 

Roles in Relationships

We all have different roles in our friendships.  Some of us are the ones who our friends come to for advice, whereas, there are those who go to their friends for advice.  There are those friends who our are talking buddies or walking buddies or those friends we are assured we'll have a good time with because they are social butterflies.

 

I often look at my own role; in some friendships, I tend to be more serious, whereas in others, I can be more silly and laid back.  A consistent role that I find is I tend to be the one who initiates the phone calls, get togethers, emails, etc.  I sometimes wonder what would happen if I stopped initiating: would the friend contact me or think something was off?  Or would the friendship fizzle out due to lack of contact?  I don't want to "test" my friendships, but sometimes I wonder what would happen if I stopped being the one to reach out, especially with those who rarely reach out to me.

 

What intrigues me is the roles we have, and how it can be so easy to stay in these roles once the friendship has been established. 

Think about it for a second: what role do you tend to have in your closest friendships?  Is there a common theme?  Have you ever switched roles?