Human beings are made for love, and I find that many of my clients
forget that. They scramble to shore up their self-image with
various techniques, without giving sufficient attention to the
source from which they will get help most readily--good
friendships. They make all sorts of protests--that they're
too busy, that they've learned to live without needing anyone,
that they can't trust people, that they are really loners and
prefer solitude. But it is all a smoke screen, and
underneath lies a powerful aching to love and be loved.
Many people make the mistake of supposing that they will be happy
only when they find the right man or the right woman to marry,
neglecting the essential arena of friendship. Few of us are
ready for a sexual relationship until we have learned to sustain a
friendship. We do not have to marry to be happy, but we do
have to have some love, and that can be found in the right type of
friendships. The irony is that the persons who begin to
relax in some solid friendships with people of the same sex--and
stop worrying so much about meeting the man or woman of their
dreams--begin to be much more attractive to the opposite
sex. Friendship appears to be the best springboard to
romance.
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There is another reason to put more emphasis on friendship and
less on romance: with the realities of divorce and death,
most of us will have to spend at least some of our adult lives
unmarried, so it is a poor strategy to put all our eggs in one
basket. We could find ourselves entirely bereft of love when
something happens to our mate.
When a man says
to me, "I don't need any other friends--my wife is my best
friend," I do not applaud. He is putting too much
pressure on his marriage, for there is no way any one person can
meet all your emotional needs. To expect your mate to do so
is to ask an impossible thing. Moreover, I fear for the man
when, God forbid, he finds himself without his wife. Your
mate should be your best friend, but not your only friend.
How does one go about building a circle of sustaining
relationships? Most of my clients think the problem is in
finding a place to meet new people. But the basic answer is
not in meeting more people, it is in deepening the relationships
we presently have. Many of us have acquaintances who could
be promoted to friends, some friend who could be promoted to a
good friend. It may seem easier to begin with someone new,
but the best source of love is probably in your present circle of
family and acquaintances. . . .
When we encircle ourselves with a few intimate friendships, we
build for ourselves a pipeline that supplies a stream of
sustaining reassurances that we exist, that we have worth.
It does not happen without a great deal of effort, but it is worth
every ounce of energy we expend.
I know of no single step one can take to enhance self-confidence
that is as important as building a network of accepting, loving
relationships. Sometimes the people who come for counseling
are in such bad shape emotionally because they do not have enough
love in their lives, and they are almost screaming, "Somebody
please love me!" Progress comes when they are able to
relax, stop begging for love, and begin loving. They look
for someone for whom they can do a favor, someone to whom they can
send a word of encouragement, someone whose shoulders they can put
an arm around, and perhaps even begin to love. When we are
"networking" merely for what we can get out of it, it
usually backfires. But when we start finding others who need
love and take the initiative in giving it to them, love seems to
begin flowing back to us.
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