Good friends help make life more meaningful. While everyone would always love to have a bunch of good friends around, we often find that good friendships are difficult to maintain over the years.
While we meet a lot of new people and make friends with most of them, due to busy schedules or other reasons we lose touch with them, and a good friendship is lost as a result. You can follow these tips when it comes to finding a good friendship, and do your best to make friends for a lifetime.
“The quality and quantity of your friendships may be the biggest predictors of mental and physical health”, said Professor Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford and author of the book ‘Friends’, according to Good Housekeeping.
Prioritizing regular communication and making time for friends can help slow the rate of friendship decay, he said.
From his research, Professor Dunbar has found that the optimal number of close friendships is five. “Even less than that, it can start to bite. More than five can also have a negative effect because you’re spreading your social load too low, so the quality of friendships declines”.
He also said that continuity is key to sustaining any kind of long-term relationship, and the modern world scenario has made that task even more challenging for us.
We’ve started to move more often for various reasons, and it doesn’t give us the time to invest in the friendships that have weakened our networks over the years.
Shasta Nelson, friendship expert and author of ‘The’ Business Of Friendship’ agrees with Professor Dunbar’s views and states that practicing mutual vulnerability can allow both friends to get to know the other person better and create more solid, meaningful bonds. She also advises us to manage our expectations in friendship and be patient with our friends.
With the right intentions and steps, we can maintain a friendship for a lifetime.
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