keepupwithchris’s Reviews > Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict > Status Update

resourcefully leaned on imaginary friends to endure the loneliness and drudgery of her life until this point. I, too, had an imaginary friend at primary school, although my friend was formless and had no name
- it was more of a reassuring, understanding presence to whom I would sometimes address my innermost thoughts.

When a friendship falls by the wayside, it does not necessarily mean it has failed or is not in some way 'good'.
It simply means it no longer fits. Or it means that you have both been taught what you needed to know, and can move on with love. Or that friendship wasn't one that was important enough for either of you to make the effort to preserve it. The end of a friendship does not automatically make you a bad friend

it required 200 hours of investment in the space of a few months to make a stranger into a good friend… falling in love will cost you two friendships.
When we fall in love, we understandably put a lot of time and effort and attention into our romantic partner- and that means space has to be made in one's innermost circle

empathy wasn't always about guessing exactly what someone else was going through; it was about being brave enough to hold space for the not knowing and the impossibility of resolution. This, I think, is the key to ensuring friendships survive and thrive through different life phases. You do not have to travel the same path at the same time. But you can leave a room for their pain in the home of your own imagination.

relational health. What is the status of our relation-ships? are they draining our energy and making us anxious? How do we want to feel when were in the company of friends? What measures can we put in place to make that so? If a friendship ends, how can we reassure ourselves that this does not automatically equate to failure or shame? And how much are we willing to stretch in order to prevent this from happening?

I guess I should be more accepting of people as they are, but I struggle with that with my closest friends when I feel like they have years - if not a lifetime - of self-defeating behaviours that they're unwilling to confront and certainly not willing to change. And that's where my judgey part comes in.

I do think that the most worthwhile friendships allow enough safety for challenge. If we never feel safe enough to say, 'I don't agree with you', the chances are that friendship is flawed.

we can all cope far better than we think; what appears immensely threatening may be highly survivable. What is true of storms in the North Sea may be no less true of the turmoils in our lives.
The storms will die down, we will be battered, a few things will be ripped, but we will eventually - as the sun rises over the spires of Alkmaar - return to safer shores.

But choose instead to feel empathy for your ignorance. I choose instead to leave that arrowhead there, where you have pierced my ribcage, and I will grow around it and this growth will be a deeper human experience than you could ever imagine.

They would look at me, these parents, with self-conscious concern on their brows and a baby clamped to their breast, and I could see the smugness in their eyes. They didn't mean to be smug, but they were… I discovered there was a difference between empathy and pity, between kind consideration and patronising sentiment. 251