Be Your Own Friend, First

Sidenote: I wrote and published this back in September? October? of last year, but I wanted to publish this on my website. (And I also feel like the message deserves to be shared again. Enjoy ☺️)

Something that people notice about me is that it is very easy for me to enjoy my own company. I don’t feel like I always have to talk and engage with everyone. I’ve had people call me distant, standoffish and they’ve even told me that I don’t look interested when I am around people. Well, my apologies for the withdrawn first impression, but the truth is that I’ve learned how to be my own friend, first.

What I mean by being my own friend before I can commit to friendships with people, I mean that to be my own friend first, I had to seek companionship from within by enjoying my own company, setting boundaries between people and life, and having mutual affection and love for who I am. You can’t be a good friend if these things don’t exist inside of you first and as a result, many people don’t know how to be good friends because they don’t understand the concept of being their own friend, first.

I tend to be neutral when I first meet people (hence people calling me standoffish) because I observe them and detect their vibes and mannerisms so that I can decide in what capacity they can fit into my life. Friendships are nothing that I take lightly these days and the way that I decide if I would like to invest in a friendship with individuals is heavily based on how I desire to invest in myself, hence the commitments that I must make to myself, first.

Friendships are hard, and they’re not always perfect, and when problems come about, they’re not always the fault of the other person. After making several commitments to myself, what I have realized is that sometimes these problems can be directly mirrored in yourself because the relationship with yourself is not always perfect and the problems you might have with yourself aren’t always your fault because they can stem from trauma. This is where the inner work of being your own friend is the most relevant–can you do the inner work for the problems you have with yourself and not allow them to affect your relationships with your friends?

These days, I am very careful about who I consider as a friend and a non-friend, and although this may seem obvious to most, I struggled with this immensely because as someone who is used to attracting so many people, there was a point in time where it was difficult for me to distinguish between a friend and a non-friend because either they wore the same disguises or I just lacked boundaries, which comes full circle to the point of being your own friend, first.

In order to fully commit to being a friend to someone else, you have to do some inner-self work in order to decide what type of friend you would like to have in your life, and whether are you willing to be the same type of friend to someone else. Do you even have the capacity to be a proper friend? Do you make commitments to yourself and most importantly, do you keep them? If you can’t maintain the commitments to yourself, how could you ever maintain them in regard to having a friendship with someone else?

With most things in life, the work starts from within.

What type of relationship do you have with yourself?

Is your relationship with yourself enough to start another one with someone else in the capacity that they feel they deserve?