Several years ago I was doing some research on women and their friendships and I ran across a blog about “Friendships”. The blog is: The World of Psychology and the title of the blog was: 10 Types of Female Friends and the post may be found here by Therese J. Borchard:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/12/01/the-10-types-of-female-friends/
To just briefly state the ten types of female friends:
1. The Leader
2. The Doormat
3. The Sacrificer
4. The Misery Lover
5. The User
6. The Frenemy
7. The Trophy Friend
8. The Mirroring Friend
9. The Sharer
10. The Authentic Friend
To give credit where credit is due this blog is siting Susan Shaprio Barash in her book entitled: Antidote for Women Stuck in Complicated Friendships.
Every single one of us knows each of these 10 women in our lives. Isn’t that amazing? Life and Relationship male and female are very complicated and intertwined and we cannot live without friendships. We were made for “relating” to other human beings. When you haven’t seen a friend in some time you have a hole, a feeling of something is missing, even if it is the “user” or the ‘misery lover”.
Let’s put our questions to the test here, shall we?
Write out each of the ten friends on the list. If you have more than one (wow! you’re heavy laden!), list them too.
Now next to each name run the questions:
What do I believe about_______________________________ ?
Where did I get that belief about her?
How do I know that this is true?
Do I really want to keep this belief or this person in my life?
What do I want to do right now?
Each of us lets fear well up inside of us until we are paralyzed. If are afraid to change anything so we avoid and then we have no plan of action because we are trapped in our own belief that we really do not want to hold.
I know people who have “life long friends”! What is that? As you may know, I spent my entire life from age 8 to the present day moving all over the world. “life long friends” – I wouldn’t know what that is. I do have a great college friend who is probably the only long term friend I have ever had.
What about you? Do friendships come in and out of your life as you mature? You have a high school friend and then you went to college and that gradually ended. Then a college friend and you graduated and moved to take a job or get married and that had a natural ending. Then you moved and had children and your former neighbors who were friends, gradually faded away, your friends became your friends because they were the moms of your children’s friends. Then you children left home and then who was still there? You see we evolve and so do our friends.
When our “family relationships” are just our friends, such as in our early 20’s and 30’s for the ceiling breakers our lives revolve around these 10. As we move through life these 10 change. We also gain a maturity that will no long tolerate some of them because they drain our lives.
What do you think about the relationships of friends?
