Becoming Friend Worthy: Not Everyone Is Going To Be Your Friend

Proverbs 18:24 The man of many friends (a friend of all the world) will prove himself a bad friend, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother

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A friend that sticks closer than a brother, that is the sort of friend you want to be and those are the sort of friends you want to have.

Yesterday I mentioned that in order to create authentic friendships we needed to drop the desire to appear perfect and be the imperfect self we truly are.

Today I want to talk about another making friends trap. That trap is what I call shapeshifting.

I know by definition that shapeshifting is mythical ability of a human to take on a animal form and that is of course not what I am referring to. In friendship making I see shapshifting as “trying” to change your personality, to match up with the new friend you have made.

It is tough to get relationships past “hey how are you” “fine, just fine” and so when we do, I think we have this feeling that we need to keep those relationships going no matter what. One way to keep them going is to fake common interests and faking anything in a friendship is going to backfire.

When you are making friends in a new town, remember every potential friend is just that a “potential friend” chances are a great percentage of the new relationships you start will fizzle out quickly when you both discover you don’t have enough deep connection points in life to keep the friendship going.

When this happens don’t try to save a connection by shifting into an unauthentic you. I am not saying you have to snub the person and never talk to them again, just don’t change who you are to try to keep the relationship going because it will soon lead to an inauthentic relationship.

This point is not an excuse to never talk to people who you think are not your type thinking it would somehow lead you to becoming inauthentic. You are not going to find out if a person has enough mutual interests to create a friendship bound unless you start to get to know them.

If your fear is things are going to get nasty if you don’t continue the friendship, realize this is probably not what is going to happen. Trust me more often than not the other person you are building a relationship with is going to come to the same conclusion as you, that there is either great compatibility or little compatibility and if they should find little chances are they will just naturally drift away.

This post is part of the New Town to Hometown series. Use the links below to dig into the series.

Introduction: My Story

Part One: Becoming Friend Worthy