“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you’ve become, and still, gently allow you to grow.”

                                                                ~William Shakespeare~

Everyone needs friends. Friendship, no doubt is one of the hardest things in the world to understand. Healthy friendships tend to make one happy and healthy. There are many ways to identify a healthy relationship from a negative one. Following are some of the ways through which we can learn to be good friends:

Be Honest

Nothing is more powerful in any relationship than honesty. To maintain a healthy relationship, always be honest in giving your opinion while being considerate of your friend’s feelings.

Power to Say “No”

To be successful in your friendship, always find the strength to say “no” when you disagree. Good friends always agree to disagree.

Be Yourself

Do not change yourself to fit in a friendship unless the change is good. But don’t pretend in relationships as it leads to issues and negative impact on self and others.

Respect Boundaries

Good friends give space. They are not intrusive and clingy.

Be Friendly to everyone

Being friends to only a few people is good as quality matters more than quantity but that does not mean that you have to be unfriendly and hostile towards others; be friendly towards everyone as it gives you more opportunities to learn and grow. A good friend always encourages other friendships and lacks jealousy.

Nurture

Good friends always help you to grow into a better person, if that’s not the case with you and your friends, you should rethink about your friendship. Always avoid backing up your friend for bad behavior.

Trust

Trust is the most important ingredient for a healthy friendship. Good friends trust each other and stand by each other through thick and thin.

Friends Change –‘Nothing is permanent but change’,

always remember that people change. To maintain a healthy relationship, you must let your friend grow and become the person he/she wants to be rather than impose unrealistic expectations over them and suffocate them.

Avoid Labels

Labeling friends as ‘best friend’ or ‘best friend forever’ etc sometimes leads to expectations that a person cannot possibly fulfill and results in unbalanced friendship. Good friends are hard to find and even harder to retain, so never take friends for granted. A healthy friendship has qualities like support, encouragement, cooperation, excellent communication, compromise, consideration and the heart to apologize when guilty.