On Friendships
Making happy friendships
Make yourself look happy with your friends and your friends will reflect. That is the secret of happy friendship. Our emotions are reflected in our body language. The reverse is equally true. Does this help us? It does. It can change our state of mind by changing our physical state. For example, if you are feeling bored, try to look cheerful and you will start becoming cheerful. It is strange, but it works. If you are feeling sad, try to look happy. You will find the sadness going away. Isn’t it great?
How do we talk with friends?
Happiness also depends on what do we talk with our friends. Are we always talking of our own life or do we also listen to them. Listening is the best way to make friends happy. Listen and do it carefully. No pretensions. Your friends will be happy that someone heard them out without interruption. You will also be making your friendship stronger. Listening is very good.
By listening, we make the other person feel important. we also make him/her feel happy and relieved. By talking things out, one feels relieved. Isn’t it?
Give and you shall receive- the third law of Newton. Apply this law in your life and make happy friends. You can make them happy right now by telling them about how much you appreciate their friendship. Listening to your friends, keeping a happy state of mind in their company and appreciating the friendship will make happy friends. Make your life happier and your
relationships stronger with happy friends.
On the subject of friendship, the women taking part in the study
had a great deal to say and a great readiness to explore the subject
with another woman. This eagerness to discuss their experiences
with friendship was shared equally by the women who had close
friends and those who did not. One of the latter said, “Yes, I have
dozens of acquaintances,” and added quickly, “but not one real
friend. I don’t have someone I can go to and sit down with and
say, ‘I feel terrible. I’ve got to talk about it.’ I used to go and
plunk my feet up on my sister’s kitchen table and talk, but she’s
moved away. I have my husband and I’d say we’ve become each
other’s best friend, but I miss having a woman as a close
friend. . . . I don’t know why. I’d like to understand that bet
ter.”
Like this woman, a number of the respondents took the oppor
tunity provided by the interview to examine ways they had con
ducted their friendships and to assess the quality of their relation
ships with friends during their adult years. Being forced to part
with their female friends was a common and upsetting feature of
this experience. Virtually all the women had been through disrup
tions in the continuity of the relationships with friends in the course
of a series of changes of residence by themselves or their friends.
Their husbands’ and their own professional and management ca
reers had involved both social and geographical mobility, and these
moves had periodically unsettled the composition of their personal
network of friends. Separation from old friends had precipitated a
search for new friends. The outcome of a woman’s efforts to make
friends in a new setting and to replace those who moved away
was problematic. Sometimes it worked out well; other times it
was less satisfactory. The history of the friendships of these women
bore the distinctive stamp of the mobile social and occupational
class to which they belonged.
In sharp contrast to the middle class, members of the working
class are far less mobile, and kin are predominant in their personal
relationships. Their lives are embedded in extended family rela
tionships that provide continuous and stable sets of support and
companionship. Unlike the middle class, working-class families
usually live near and associate principally with family members
and old friends throughout their lives. They prefer it that way.
When asked to state where they would choose to live once they
are married, working-class women indicate that they want to stay
close enough to “family” to allow for easy visiting back and forth.
This does not mean that they would necessarily select a house
across the street from their parents or in the same block with other
relatives. Living that close to relatives invites the possibility of too
much interference in their lives by the older generation. But they
do manage to settle in locations that enable them to drop in often
and spend spare time with one another.
Female relatives in the working class often become closest friends
and confidantes. Of course not every pair of female relatives in
the working class is necessarily compatible. Selections of preferred
companions are made among available relatives. “I like my sister-
in-law the most,” one woman says. “She’s kind of gabby and
puts me at ease. I’m kind of quiet–but around her it seems like I
talk more and enjoy myself.” Another woman likes to “pal around”
with her favorite aunt and an old girlfriend. A third explains, “I
like my mother most. She’s always ready to pick up and go shop
ping with me. . . . We go out nearly every morning, then she
comes home for lunch with me”. However, whatever the choice, wives and sisters
of blue-collar workers spent the better part of their free time with
female relatives whom they regarded as friends; mothers or sisters
were the usual confidantes .
The sheer availability of relatives and neighborhood friends of
longstanding permits the sharing of everyday lives. Affection and
services flow easily among them. As parents age, the younger
generation helps them out financially and in doing chores, such as
household repairs and shopping, while parents in turn assist with
babysitting and other services that they can supply personally
( Adams 1970). Over the years the composition of their prima1ry
attachment systems remains virtually intact. Easy access, familiar
ity, and continuity are the hallmarks of the American kin-centered
working-class sociability.
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