What do you want most in a friend?

Choose one thing. What will it be?

When I reset my life after a very public meltdown eight years ago, an important component I chose for my new identity was friends.

I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t paid enough attention to making friends growing up, and a lack of them was a major culprit for the depressive episodes I’d battled throughout my university years.

I hadn’t put in enough effort, and the friends I made despite myself, I didn’t value enough.

For the past eight years, I’ve been doing my best to right this wrong. You will find no one more dedicated to friend-making, more deliberate about which friendships to pursue—asking myself after every first coffee meet I enjoyed: “Do I want to be friends with this person?”

Sometimes the answer comes easy. But not always.

Do I want to be friends with you?

Since moving to Ho Chi Minh City two years ago, I’ve been lucky to meet a fair number of people with whom friendships just materialised, as if by magic.

But there have been occasions where I had to really deliberate, where the answer to the question “Do I want to be friends with you?” has been elusive.

Sometimes it’s a person I care about, but with whom I don’t enjoy spending time. Sometimes it’s someone I love hanging out with, but some of whose values I find suspect. Sometimes it’s someone with whom scheduling a meet-up is far more difficult than it should be.

In each of these cases, I’ve had to ask the difficult questions. Is the effort the friendship requires to blossom worth it? Do I genuinely want to be this person’s friend, or are we too incompatible? Is my desire to pursue the friendship reciprocated, or are they simply not interested?

And every time, I’ve tended towards “Yes, it’s worth it, let’s keep at it.” Not because it’s the right answer, but because I don’t like feeling rejected. I want to be everyone’s friend—or rather, I want everyone to want to be my friend. So I end up pouring myself into every failing friendship, including ones that shouldn’t be saved.

This is not healthy. I’ve gone from paying scant attention to friend-making to letting it consume me. I’ve swung too far to the other side.

What I want most in a friend

If the question of whether I want to be friends with someone no longer serves because of my aversion to rejection, then I need a better question—a more selective question to counter my bias towards quantity over quality.

So I’ve begun asking myself: “What do I want most in a friend?”

Instead of letting my desire to be everyone’s friend cloud my judgement, I’ve started focusing instead on whether the person can give me what I truly want from a friendship, so that I might end up with higher-quality ones.

I’ve asked myself this over and over, and each time come up with the same answer.

What I want most from a friend is genuine interest in my life. It may sound strange, and I’m surprised to hear myself say it. But it’s what I truly seek.

Of course, I want all the other things we normally expect from friends: the laughs and hugs, a shoulder to cry on, honesty, support, and so on. But those things don’t make or break friendships for me. They’re important, but not essential.

The only must-have I seek from my friends is that they’re genuinely interested in my life, that they find what I do, who I am interesting. That when they ask “What have you been up to?” they actually want to hear my answer.

That’s it.

I can armchair-psychologise this all day. I can say this desire stems from a deep-rooted self-perception that I’m uninteresting, from not being asked questions about myself or what I think or how I feel often enough, from growing up in a culture that actively works to repress individual identities.

Whatever the explanation may be, this is what I want most from a friend. And if I can’t get it from someone, then I should simply walk away.

What do you think?

All I ask of my friends is genuine interest in me. You may think that’s a low bar, but it has helped me defriend quite a few people who simply don’t care.

What do you want most in a friend?

What’s your one must-have? Do you get it from all your friends? Is a touch of defriending in order? Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this with a friend who gives you exactly what you need.

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

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Photo by Bewakoof.com Official on Unsplash