A few weeks ago I received a phone call from a friend I went to college with. I had not seen or heard from her in a couple of years, so it was a total surprise to get a call from someone I once considered the little sister I never had. Two years had gone by without hearing from her and if my memory serves me correctly, the reason why I severed ties was because she failed to return my messages on numerous occasions. That was very upsetting to me not because I treated her like any brother would, but the fact that she ignored me when I needed her the most. To me, we were like family, but to her, I was just a guy that was always willing to help write/edit college papers and lend a shoulder to cry on when the going got rough. I don’t regret having had her as a friend, because in the end I was able to learn a vital lesson: never put a friend’s priority above your own.

Most of you could related with me about how it felt to end a friendship with someone you developed a close connection with. A connection that made you felt comfortable sharing the most joyous and painful periods of you life. But when the going got rough on your end, and everything was no longer fine and dandy. The friend that you once bend over backwards for was nowhere to be found; not once or twice, but on countless occasions. Like you, I felt betrayed when I discovered that the person I thought would always be there broke the friendship bond between us. So having lived through the disappointment of loosing a friend prematurely, the question of: How do I prevent this from happening again? – comes to mind. Well, since we all have unique ways of choosing a friend; I will not attempt to answer such a rhetorical question and expect it to be as good as gold. But my experiences over the years have lead me to become more mindful of the following signs when choosing a friend.

They are as followed:

An Abundance of Personal Problems: A friend will always be there during good times and bad. True. However, a friend that is worth keeping also realizes that the world doesn’t revolve around them and their problems. The fact that you have pressing problems of your own is reason enough to prevent your friend’s problems from becoming your burden.

Constant Negative Feedback: It took you four long hours to get your hair, makeup and outfit together for a party, but the minute you enter the club – your friend greets you with the following question: Didn’t you have anything better to wear?

Blood Sucking Leech: They frequently ask you to do them a favor, but are always too busy to reciprocate.

Riding for Free: They always have suggestions on things to do when your car is in working condition, but are nowhere to be found when it is out of commission.

Forgetfulness: They always forget to buy you Christmas and birthday gifts, but gets extremely upset if you ONLY buy them a postcard.

How do you go about choosing a friend?

Tags: bbf, best friends, breakup, Friends, friendship, Love and Relationships

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 11:41 pm and is filed under O.M.G, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.