Steps to Friendship

Tips on Friendship for
Growing a Friendship that Will Last

There are many steps to friendship and tips on friendship that will help form a truly rewarding and lasting bond with another person.

Growing a friendship from the initial attraction takes skill and an investment of time and emotion. It comes down to following a few pieces of advice about friendship that will cultivate intimacy and deepen your relationship. Your friendship will grow because of the choices you both make, and the trust you build together.

Communication is the first step to friendship:

• Talking: Conversation opens a window of knowledge between two people. Deep, revealing conversation opens a door to intimate friendship. Bonds are formed as we risk sharing ourselves and trust that our confidences are safe with another.



• Listening: My need to be known to one I seek as a friend is equaled by his or her desire to be known to me. Willingness to be silent while another speaks is one of the first, and finest, gifts of friendship.



• Attention: A step beyond listening is paying attention to the words shared and the non-verbal cues that are transmitted. It means that your ears, your eyes, your body and your feelings are all focused on that person.



• Acceptance: Friendships that have a chance to prosper never include trying to change the other person. They are strengthened by accentuating the positive things that drew us to each other. Both people in a healthy friendship will change as each learns from the other.

• Empathy: The ability to let your friend know that "I feel what you feel" is priceless. Seeing life through your friend's eyes can expand your horizons.
  
  Confidences are more readily shared when they are received with empathy by a friend. We feel closest to our friends when we are suffering together, when we feel like our friend needs us, or when we feel a friend has shared something of great importance with us.



• Affirmation: Genuine praise is powerful and can encourage and affect your friend's life. Be liberal with sincere praise and affirmation for your friend.



• Touch: An arm around a shoulder, a hug, the touch of a hand are all forms of warm regard between friends. Intimate friends "listen with their eyes," stand close together, and touch comfortably.

While not really "friendship steps," there are a few more essential tips to friendship that have the potential to develop a relatiosnip that will last.

"There was a definite process by which one made people onto friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them, for hours at a time." ~ Rebecca West


Attract And Maintain Fruitful Friendships That Will Last A Life-Time