Friendships don’t come with DIY projects or customized manuals on how to be a good friend.
Half the time, you use your instincts and examples you get from friendships all around you to understand what to do and what not to do on your quest to understand how to be a good friend.
It is pretty typical to want to enjoy the thrill, excitement, and fun of having good friends.
Still, if you wish your friendships to last beyond all that, then you might want to invest your time learning how to make them work.
Friendship requires more effort to keep running, but few people know why most friends never last. Making your friendship work requires intentions, dedication, and many other essential virtues.
Hence, if you find out that you have many failed friendships, you need to learn how to be a good friend. Yes! It is time you stop, unlearn, and relearn how to be a good friend.
Here are 15 different ways to give you a fresh perspective on how to be a good friend.
1. Become A Better Listener
You must have heard the phrase: “Listen more, speak less.” It might sound like a cliché, but if you’re going to know how to be a good friend, you must learn how to listen.
Treat whatever your friends have to say with importance, even when they aren’t saying anything meaningful.
You don’t want to have long conversations where you both say everything and hear everything from each other but miss the undertones and unsaid things.
Most people love it when someone commits to listening to them. You’re going to make a good friend when you can easily give your friends what anyone would love: your listening ear.
Listen closely, aptly, as though every word coming from your friends’ lips is gold. With time, you’d be able to tell how they feel from their speech intonations and body language.
2. Be Honest And Truthful
No one, literally no one, likes to hold court with liars. And no good friend tells lies to their friends, for whatever reason.
Of course, some would argue that lies are sometimes necessary to keep friendly relationships going.
Unfortunately, this ideology is probably one of the reasons we live in a society as imbalanced as ours. Falsehoods weaken the bonds of any relationship. Be it necessary or not.
Lies have one aim: to mislead. And if you’re looking for how to be a good friend, this isn’t one of them. Being a good friend entails telling your friends easy and hard, unfortunate truths.
Honesty is a building block for trust. When your friend knows you are sincere, you can be sure of one thing: you have their trust entirely.
3. Be Open-minded And Less Judgmental
Making hasty judgments, premature conclusions, unlearned criticisms must be far away from your mindset if you’re going to be a good friend.
The closer you get to your friends, the more you know. With this knowledge comes the need to make informed criticisms and decisions on the exhibited characters.
Some people turn out to be astonishingly obnoxious, and you can’t help but make hasty conclusions. Unfortunately, it is a normal part of being human.
However, if you’re going to know how to be a good friend, you’re going to learn to extend your mind’s tolerance for certain things.
You might encounter ideas and theories that are at loggerheads with your beliefs, and this is where keeping an open mind is completely necessary.
Learn to put yourself in a dozen different shoes. You don’t always have to see things from your perspective.
There are a hundred different angles to a story, and you must keep your mind open enough to accept every possibility.
4. Be Compassionate And Kind
You would appreciate it if you had someone that could relate to all your ups and downs and empathize with you when you’re down—and sincerely doing the same is how to be a good friend.
Compassion is not in words but in the strength of character that helps another through trying times.
You become more than just a good friend; you become a gift to your friends if you can show compassion to them; and if you can show kindness on an even grander scale.
A compassionate and kind person is often called a good person. When you adopt that same characteristic towards your friends, you become a good friend, too.
5. Encourage And Support Them
It is effortless to give in to baser instincts and play the ‘focusing on myself’ card. It is also profoundly easy to show up as a friend only on successful days. But that is hardly what a good friend would do.
Your friend’s first line of defense is you. This means you will alternate between helping them with encouragement and emotional support when needed, achieving the best version of themselves, and defending them against the onslaughts of the outside world.
Realize it’s you and your friends against the world. Give your support as often as you can and your encouragement when your consent is not enough.
6. Keep Their Secrets
Secrets shared among a circle of friends or between you and a friend should never leave your lips.
So resist the urge to acquire a loose tongue when you hear outrageous pieces of truth from your friends.
A person’s secret is their Achilles heel. Their weak point. Protect your friend’s secrets completely. Secrets are also proof of trust – understand that the secret you carry is more than a secret. It is a bond of trust.
7. Respect Their Boundaries And Personal Space
The above statement is simply saying: regardless of how close you are to your friend(s), you still have boundaries.
Avoid crossing boundaries. Know how far you can go and how much they can tolerate to avoid pushing their buttons.
Respect boundaries. Avoid character devaluation, regardless of how familiar you are with each other. Your friends probably have days they’d rather be alone. Respect that.
Intruding on their personal space based on the assumption that you’re very close to them is the wrong mindset to have.
8. Show Them How Valuable They Are To You
People at different points in life make the mistake of underestimating other people’s affections. Unfortunately, people also make the mistake of hoarding affections till death comes knocking.
However, with your friend, you do not want to wait till death comes knocking before you let them understand how valuable they are to you.
The above principle is a must-do if you’re looking for ways to be a good friend. Show your friends you value them, either through word of mouth or how you act towards them.
Ditch your digital devices when you’re with each other – drop your phones and PCs for use later. Give your full attention to your friend(s).
And despite how you might cringe at the thought, tell your friend(s) in plain words how much you value them.
9. Forgive Them When They Hurt You
Letting go when your friends hurt you and learning to forgive them can be difficult, but it is a sign of growth.
When your friends hurt you, it shows they are human too.
Forgiving your friends when they hurt you is an excellent example of being a good friend at school.
Letting go proves you want your friendships to continue and are mature enough to put aside hurts and focus on what truly matters: helping yourselves through the vagaries of existence.
10. Tolerate Their Excesses
Your friends would always have character flaws. These flaws would grate on your nerves and leave you steaming all day. But, it does not have to be that way.
Character flaws can hardly be changed like a leopard can not change its skin. Nevertheless, they are part of the package you signed up for when you became friends.
Accepting your friends, tolerating and correcting them when their flaws surface is how to be a good friend.
When you accept your friends without judgment or hate, your friends become loyal to you ultimately because you don’t hold them to their imperfections. Instead, you focus on their good sides.
11. Hang Out Often
Do you want to be a good friend? Start by being excellent company for your friends! Call them often, and offer to hang out to fix ‘dates,’ picnics, or pay a visit. Spend time with your friends.
You become part of their lives, and they plan their lives around you, too. Spend quality time with your friends. Don’t be biased toward them. Instead, create time to get together and chill with your friends.
12. Reach Out To Them
Since your friends may be stable mentally and physically, reach out to them as much as you can. You don’t have to talk about anything.
Send text messages or make calls to ascertain the well-being of your friend. Every time you reach out to your friends, you’re making clear you care about them.
Your friends feel the love from how much you reach out to them to know their state of mind or health.
13. Know As Much As You Need To Know About Them
Spend time getting to know your friends, their likes and loves, medical histories, and as well as their plans for the future.
Ask questions. Get to know their parents and siblings and visit their houses. Ask about their passions the things they wish they could do.
Find out their fears and the things that keep them up late at night. Know as much as you can about them. Knowledge is wealth and power.
It would come in handy someday, and you’d be grateful you took your time to get to know your friends. On the plus side, too, you become aware of what your friends are capable of.
You can easily defend your friends when you know their moral and ethical dispositions.
14. Avoid Gossip Or Saying Mean Things About Them
One of the ways to be a good friend is to avoid saying mean things even when your friends are wrong. Avoid gossip circles that cast character judgments on your friends for previous wrongdoing.
If you’re aggrieved at something your friends may have done, the best thing to do is to take it up with them and assuage your anger.
Small, petty talks behind their backs belittle your maturity. It makes you worse than a bad friend. The urge to say mean things when hurt or angry is understandable.
But you’re learning how to be a good friend, so you must do what a good friend would do – walk away and revisit the issue when you’re in a better state of mind.
15. Apologize When You’re Wrong
You’re not a shiny knight without a single spot or blemish. You are human, and you’re prone to making terrible mistakes. Come to terms with this, learn quickly to offer apologies when necessary.
Your apology averts uncomfortable situations where you both find it hard to relate. All of these might seem like a lot and may also sound like something that would take years, most likely.
And it is because being a good friend is not a day’s job. It’d take years. Yes, it would take you years of consistently being there for your friends and every other thing.
How A Man Can Be A Good Friend To A Woman
Most of the tips provided above majorly apply to same-gender friendships. However, platonic relationships with the opposite gender might turn out to be extremely tricky.
Sometimes, it may end disastrously due to an overstep, an oversight, or something not entirely problematic for friendships but could profoundly damage platonic relationships with the opposite gender.
Wondering how to be a good friend to a woman? Here are five suggestions that could help you be a good friend to your female friends:
1. Know Your Place
In relationships with the opposite gender, it is easy to overstep your boundaries. You’re dealing with a woman this time, and chances are you might barely know what to do or how to do it.
It is also profoundly easy to mistake affectionate actions from your female friends as romantic signs or ‘green lights.’
Most guys find it profoundly difficult to think of themselves as just a friend to a woman.
There’s always the self-imposed pressure to be more than a friend. That pressure, more often than not, becomes a stumbling block in your friendships between members of the opposite sex.
If you’re going to learn how to be a good friend, condition your mind to the requirements of preserving your relationship. Know your place. Know that you are a friend and nothing else.
That is as important as any other relationship in the world and deserves to be cherished.
2. Understand Her Behavior And Character
Study her personality. Learn to observe her behavioral patterns. It would also be wise to pay attention to what she does and why she does certain things, including her likes and dislikes.
Every person has characters peculiar to them alone. This character is key to relating with a person, reacting to certain things they do or say, when to push conversations and when to back away.
You’re aiming to be a good friend, so you have to be observant. Observant enough to pinpoint the peculiarities of her character and act on that information accordingly.
3. Listen When She Speaks
Listening is unarguably one of the best and easiest ways to be a good friend. A listening ear is one of the most appreciated forms of care.
This is because giving a listening ear operates on mutual comfort, as you become too valuable to let go. When she talks to you, she involuntarily gauges your attention span to see how well you listen to her.
And in platonic relationships, a listening ear is much like a precious stone – it is hard to find. So doing the above makes you an asset, a treasured friend.
Listen intently and remember minor details about what she talks about during the conversation.
4. Reach Out Moderately
Constant communication with no clear boundaries is one of the reasons people in platonic relationships turn out with complications.
You don’t want to carry around feelings that would end your friendships with your female friends or complicate things.
Learn to reach out at most four times a week. Flooding her call logs with your calls can cause her to misconstrue your intentions – especially if she’s sensitive or suspicious by nature.
If she misunderstands your choices, she might classify you – mentally – with the group of guys trying so hard to get laid.
Your goal is to be a friend. It would help if you acted like a friend, void of the pretensions commonly found in relationships that border on romance.
Reach out moderately. She’d understand you’re merely trying to be a good friend to her when your call frequency is fractured, but every time you call, you’re always concerned about her well-being.
The relationship always becomes pleasant when she realizes you have pure motives.
5. Be Comfortable Around Her
In the presence of a gorgeous girl, it is understandable to forget how to talk and express yourself temporarily. But this girl is your friend.
If you’re going to be a good friend, you must loosen up and make no distinctions between her and your male friends. Act like you do when you’re with your male friends.
Please learn to litter your conversations with an even amount of funny statements, vibes, jokes and, of course, profound moments.
Be yourself. Don’t hold in a burp because you’re with a girl. Let it out. Speak in broken lingua with her.
How A Woman Can Be A Good Friend To A Man
On the other hand, it hardly ever works vice versa. So, in this case, what’s good for the gender is not exactly good enough for the goose.
To make this a two-way thing, here are tips on how to be a good friend to a guy.
1. Be A Friend To Him
The first step to being a good friend to a guy is to be an actual friend. Understand that he’s not a means to an end. He’s not a cog in the wheel or a variable in your grand plan of existence.
He’s human, and more, he’s your friend. So, be an actual friend and start caring genuinely about him, the way a friend should.
2. Don’t Give Him Ideas
He is your friend. So, it would be best to avoid complications as much as possible.
Please resist the urge to flirt with him. Resist the urge to give him ‘green lights’ just for the fun of it or to see how he reacts.
Instead, make that a boundary in your friendship, a line you don’t cross. You don’t want a situation where he gets the wrong idea and steps up to you, only to realize you were merely fun at his expense. It might turn out to be messy.
3. Quit Idealizing Him
A principle like the above works both ways. Your friend is more than the idea of him you have in your head, the character you see in your mind’s eye when you think of him.
Realize that there’s more to him than being ‘that guy in your head. There’s an entire and misunderstood interior beneath the front he presents to the world.
How to be a good friend to a guy is by understanding his interior and learning to relate with him on a much deeper level that’d make him value you as a friend.
4. Be There For Him
Guys find it difficult to share their hurts. So instead, they’d go through it alone because society screams, ‘be a man! Man up!’ and they listen.
You could be a good friend when you reach out to him with the understanding that he’s under enough pressure from life and society to be.
Reaching out makes you a friend he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. There are tons of tips on how to be a good friend, being a good friend, and most times, it seems like an uphill task. Bear in mind, though; the results would be worth it.
Conclusion
Here is one bonus tip that I didn’t add to the others. One of the ways to become a good friend is to work on your own life. You can only support your friends to the extent of your capacity.
There is a higher chance of your friends becoming successful if you are. Nevertheless, choose to be the better person by being a better friend!
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