Competing Friendship

The competing demands of friendship are very nicely described in chapter 10 by Wood.  Friendship exists within larger social systems that affect how they function. Friendship can overlap with our romantic relationship or other relations like family, relatives, and so on.  We may not have enough time or energy left to maintain friendships even those that matter to us because of our work pressure or hectic schedules.  Friends might feel neglected if we are stuck up by the family tensions between parents at home.  Friends might feel that we ignore them when it comes to spending time with romantic partners.  Thus friendship can clash with other relations or demanding workload.  In such a case if the friend feels ignored, we need to talk to him and communicate the problems that we are facing recently.  By not meeting the friend, or not spending enough time does not mean that he or she is not special, but it just means that life is demanding in this particular phase where we are caught up in some other things.  However, we will spend time with the friend whenever there is a little relief from the present day stress.

Close Friendship

My close friend lives back home in India.  Our friendship developed during our College days.  During the first year of College as freshmen we were excited as young, naïve, and confused students.  Our first class was filled with new faces, boys, and girls from all over the place.  In India we did not have to leave the classroom for different classes but different teachers come to give lecture and leave.  So we were pretty much with the same students everyday.  Mini was the girl who sat next to me for first 4 days.  We started speaking to each other and found out that our likes and dislikes were similar.  Slowly we started sharing our secrets, told each other about our families and before we realized we became close to each other.  We supported each other when we had problems; we helped each other and did things based on understanding each other’s feelings.  No matter what and how, Mini is my best friend and will be forever because I have accepted Mini the way she is.  We enjoyed our time all throughout our College and after till I moved abroad after marriage.  I am still in touch with her and when there is something that I need to share with someone special, I run to Mini and vice versa.

  The dynamics of our friendship are same as mentioned in the book because our friendship was also nurtured on trust, acceptance, support, closeness through dialogue and willingness to invest in each other.  

Challenges in Friendship

What should you do when you have romantic feelings for your friends?  Was one of the challenge in friendship I found over the advice forum of friendship.com.au website.  To handle this challenge I referred to the section that elaborates on Sexual Attraction in the book.  Romantic feelings and sexual attraction can create problems in friendly relationships.  Any type of friendship such as between man and woman or gay and lesbians might face this kind of challenge.  To overcome this problem friends should have an explicit talk to decide if they are going to remain platonic friends or become romantically involved.  It is important in such a case to open up and express the feelings with I language in order to establish a transparent communication and understand the friend’s perspective on those feelings.  If the feelings are mutual nothing like it, but if not then it is good to clear the air.

Respond constructively to criticism

There is a proverb in Hindi which says “A critic should be living next to your house” because that way we get a chance to fine tune our short falls and emerge successfully.

The book suggests three steps to respond constructively to criticism.

1.     The first suggestion says that if we get defensive about a sharp judgment passed by others then we deprive our self from understanding what others think about us to reevaluate our actions.  A constructive way of responding to criticism is by asking the accuser reasons for saying so.

2.     The second suggestion is asking the question constructively if the criticism is valid.  If yes then think of ways to improvise.  If no then offering a logical explanation to the accuser of what according to him is bad is appropriate according to you.

3.     The final suggestion is to thank the person who offered criticism because criticism is a gift, which can make us look at our self with a different perspective and give a chance to mature on things that we might have overlooked. 

Defensive Communication

I do not remember of an example as fresh as this to illustrate levels of confirmation and disconfirmation.  While I was working on this assignment on Sunday night, the family that lives just above our house had guests.  It was 9.00 pm in the night and their children were playing and running at the top of their spirits.  Since our houses are wooden, if someone runs or dances upstairs, the ceiling actually shakes and the sound effect is double downstairs.  My children were not able to sleep because the sound upstairs was really disturbing.  I started getting a headache, so I called the lady to keep it low as it was too late for such noise.  Forget about acknowledging that they were being noisy, this lady told me to adjust as she had guests.  I don’t think she knows the word endorsement because she refused to recognize, and acknowledge in the first place.  I got in defensive mode because instead of accepting and saying sorry, she started preaching me about her kids and the guests.  I was not in a mood to hear her justification, so I told her to keep it low with a thank you and put the phone down.  They are instances when they have created nuisance before, but this time it was too much to take it quietly.