On Friendship

Some really short raw notes for now - a lot more to collect / process / document.

The Obvious

• be nice
• be respectful

The Harder

• be upfront
• resolve conflicts promptly. preferably in an upfront and respectful manner (try to limit/minimize/eliminate passive-aggressive crap).
• trust friends to say what they mean. if you feel something is wrong with a friend, and approach them and ask to check, and if they say no, nothing is wrong, then trust their word. either they're telling the truth, there is no problem, or they are not comfortable dealing with it at the moment, in which case you've made it clear you care about dealing with it and have firmly placed the ball in their court. in either case you've done the right thing. let it go.

The Even Harder

• know your limitations. know just how much you can be a friend to someone, and what ways of helping people out are beyond your means, whether fiscally, physically, or emotionally. one way to know you have gone beyond these limitations is when you end up regretting the help you gave, start to feel taken advantage of, are annoyed at obligations, feel like someone is treating your kindness as an entitlement etc. those feelings will only end up hurting the friendship, so confront those feelings first in yourself, and accept and understand your limitations. it's ok to have limitations. we are only human and thus all have limitations of varying degrees in different areas.
• explicitly set limits. when you discover new limitations on how you can be a friend to someone, especially those limitations which you are or may be crossing with a particular friend, after being upfront with yourself about your limitations, be upfront with them. set limits/boundaries accordingly. doing so in an upfront manner shows respect and trusts your friend to understand. explicitly setting such limitations helps preserve the friendship you have, rather than having it deteriorate due to the negative feelings previously mentioned.
• respect explicitly set limits. of course this only works if such limitations are respected. so when a friend expresses their limitations to you, respect those limitations. don't whine/bitch or otherwise complain or guilt trip them (friends should not be exhibiting those behaviors anyway, assuming a certain baseline level of emotional maturity).

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