A real friend is there for all seasons; being someone whom you feel you can put your mortgage (whatever it’s worth) on. However, if a real friend is so valuable to us, why do we seem to have so few compared to the bulk of ‘friends’ who make up numbers on Facebook? There are a few valid reasons for real friends being few and far between.
Sincerity
It is difficult to find real friends because ‘real’ people are few and far between. A real friend looks out for your interest and is sincere in their actions. How many people are sincere enough to be a true friend? Sincerity is a virtue that is not as abundant as foreclosures.
Friends for a reason or season
We’d like to believe that friendship is for a lifetime. The reality is that even a real friend could lose touch at some point. Furthermore, some friends exist for a period in time or for a specific reason (it could be a good reason like helping you get back on your feet).
Quality time
It takes time- quality time- to build and nurture relationships to the point where you discover that your friend and friendship are real. The fact is that persons can only manage a limited number of true friends. We don’t have the energy and time to build and maintain too many ‘real’ friendships. With the supposed ‘pace’ of modern day living, we take things for granted. The emphasis seems to be on having more contacts than ‘real’ friends.
Probability
There are several folks out there who would be ‘real’ friends to us. Unluckily for us, we don’t meet nearly enough of them. The relatively small number of people that we know makes it even less likely that we would find a large number of real friends. The probability that we’d find people with whom we’re compatible is already limited- reinforcing the difficulty of finding friends in a small pool of people.
Dependence on communication technologies to build friendships
While how we communicate has changed a lot over recent years, the fundamentals remain the same. Very good friendships can be developed over the web in a few cases, but at some point, face-to-face contact helps to reinforce the friendship bond a lot more. Using the Web exclusively can hinder the development of ‘real’ friends- creating a league of good acquaintances and online buddies.
While there are good reasons for folks to have few ‘real’ friends, it should not be viewed as a limitation. The mechanism of friendship dictates that one would typically have fewer real friends than general contacts or casual friends. Instead of focusing on how many so-called friends you can seem to have on Facebook and the like, cherish the few ‘real’ friends that you have
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