Mini-Love-Lesson # 204
One of over 300 FREE mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries -worldwide!
Synopsis: Discover Core, Critical, and Cardinal
types of behavior which make friendship happen at all levels from mild
to profound. Then explore the extremely important and highly useful
research revealed 12 major subcategories of friendship actions. A
recommendation for usage and furthering your friendship life, plus a few
resources for learning more are also given.
Without Action Nothing Happens
Friendships, like love, require actions backed by emotions and
thought. Without certain kinds of behavior occurring, friendships
cannot be started, grown, maintained, re-established or repaired.
Thanks mostly to research in social psychology and what is starting to
be known as loveology “
Is There Really A New Field Called Loveology?”,
we know a fair amount about what those behaviors are. Interestingly,
they turn out to be rather similar to the behaviors associated with the
getting and giving of healthy, real love. What follows is a
summarization of the behaviors that make friendship happen stemming from
some of that growing body of research.
Understanding Friendship at Three Levels
Friendship can be seen to occur at different levels. Some
researchers use the three categories scale starting with mild or light
or just beginning friendship, then go to medium but significant
friendship, and then on to deep and/or profound friendship love “
Understanding Friendship, From Mild Geniality to Profound Love”.
It is suggested that the behaviors that bring about each level are
best viewed and understood in ways that are rather different in each of
the three levels. Keeping this in mind helps to understand friendship
and friendship actions more fully, accurately and more than
superficially. Like love, friendship does not turn out to be simple.
However, with a little concentrated work, clarity, usefulness and ways
to make abundant friendship improvements can become easily evident. So,
to gain the valuable benefits of Friendship and Friendship Love and
reap those rewards, we suggest you may want to apply yourself to what
follows.
The Three Major Groups of Friendship Behavior
Friendship behaviors have been classified in three major groups. Here they are called
Group I,
The Core Behaviors of Friendship
Group II, T
he Crucial Behaviors of Friendship
Group III, T
he Cardinal Behaviors of Friendship
All three groups contain four more exact and highly important
subcategories. These subcategories are quite similar to a research
approach used for categorizing the many behaviors that have been seen to
convey and result in healthy real, love and improved love
relationships.
I. CORE BEHAVIORS OF FRIENDSHIP
These are the behaviors best focused on for starting friendships,
maintaining mild or light friendships and for generally being friendly
and available for forming new friendships. These behaviors continue to
be important in categories II and III and in the subcategories of more
comprehensive and advanced friendship behaviors.
1. Expressional Friendliness Includes: Facial
Expression (smiles, looks of interest, caring attentiveness, etc.),
Voice Expression (tone, speed, upbeat, volume, positiveness, etc.),
Gestural Expression (open arms, waving, thumbs up, etc.), Postural and
Stance Expression (moving toward, standing beside, leaning toward,
etc.). Note that all forms of expression by motion, (face, body, etc.)
have been found to manifest about 55% of the communication value in
informal, personal conversations. Voice expression carries about 35% of
the communication value (words only 7%).
2. Tactile (Touch) Friendliness Includes tap
touches (especially good in beginning friendships), pats, buddy hugs,
hand holding, upper body hugs and later full body hugs, etc.). Such
touches are best begun mildly, lightly, quickly, non-invasively,
non-romantically and non-sexually and have been known to frequently and
rapidly accelerate the development of friendship.
3. Verbal Friendliness Includes using friendly,
positive words like “good, fine, okay, yes”, polite words like “thank
you, you’re welcome, first names”, asking friendly questions, assistive
statements like “can I help, can I assist you with that”, supportive
words like “I agree”, I am so glad you told me that, I see it that way
too” etc. Note: Do not be phony but do go out of your way to look for
sincere reasons to say such things. Words, by the way, have been found
to be only about 7% of the communication value in typical, informal,
personal interactions.
4. Gifting Friendliness Giving both
object gifts and
experience gifts
can be quite helpful in friendship development so long as the gifting
is not overdone, overly expensive, overly frequent or, at first, overly
personal. Giving someone a book is an object gift and taking someone to
a movie they want to see is an experience gift. Experience gifts and
symbolic object gifts usually are more impactful than practical gifts.
II. CRUCIAL BEHAVIORS OF FRIENDSHIP
Here you find the behaviors to focus on for having deeper and more
significant friendships. These behaviors are seen as crucial for
growing a friendship from mild to significant and with lasting
meaningfulness.
1. Affirmational Friendship Included here are
honest praises, compliments, statements of personal appreciation,
approval, respect and validation along with actions like sharing
emotional experiences together, taking a friend’s side in a dispute,
coming to a friend’s aid, just being there ready to help, celebrating a
friend’s victories and special occasions, etc. and any other action
which affirms the worth and importance of an individual to you
personally.
2. Self-Disclosure Friendship Included here is
revealing, by both word and action, your personal and more private
idiosyncrasies, foibles, preferences, personal problems, failures,
victories, peculiarities, embarrassments, enjoyments, items of pride and
joy, and anything else that lets yourself be both more intimately known
and vulnerable. Also included is the willingness to empathetically and
nonjudgmentally hear the same kind of disclosures from another. It is
by this process that friendship becomes intimate and usually more
powerfully bonded.
3. Tolerational Friendship As friendships continue
and grow, friends run into each other’s less than pleasant aspects.
That is where friendships encounter the challenge of toleration.
However, some things are not to be tolerated or tolerated only
temporarily. For many, anything which is demonstrably harmful or
destructive to anyone’s life, health or well-being fits in this
category.
Notwithstanding that caution, issues of fairness, freedom,
truth, compassion, altruism and love also are to be considered here.
Lesser issues of intolerance especially for minor irritations,
aggravations and annoyances suggest the possibility of a kind of mental
self torturing occurring that correlates with secret or subconscious low
self love on the part of the one who feels intolerance for these
things.
4. Receptional Friendship It is a gift of
friendship, and possibly of love, to receive well the actions of
friendship and love which come from others. It is receptionally loving
to sincerely focus on those actions and who they come from, to
purposefully appreciate them and then, more than perfunctorily, show
that appreciation. It is important to spend time truly appreciating the
friendly and positive treatment you get from others, and not fake it.
When you fake it or pass it off too quickly, you do not really receive
it or let it do you good. That, in turn, reduces real friendship
connecting.
III. CARDINAL BEHAVIORS OF FRIENDSHIP
For growing deep, profound and lasting friendship love, the
following subcategories are best focused on because they are seen to be
of Cardinal Importance in this more profound process. They encompass
and are supported by the two groups and eight subcategories of behavior
already described, plus they go deeper, broader and higher in their
focus. Thus, they yield a substantially deeper, broader and higher
experience, more comprehension and sensing of friendship and the actions
involved in creating profound friendship.
1. Nurturing Friendship Included here are all the
behaviors that help people grow and become more than they were.
Nurturing friendship actions are supportive, encouraging, challenging,
comforting, difficult truth telling, rewarding, understanding, valuing,
sharing, honoring, appreciating, affirming and everything else which
helps a person become more of the good things they can become. Also
included are the actions which help someone find and develop their own
potentials, better meet their own challenges and better fulfill their
own aspirations.
Nurturing means to assist in ways that strengthen, assists in making
more effective, more complete, more accurately self honoring and more
healthfully self loving. It also means to do nurturing in ways that are
in accord with another’s nature and ways of being their own unique
self. Some examples might be helping someone fulfill a lifelong dream,
discover and actualize a hidden talent, improve general life skills and
coping abilities, win at love or find ways to enjoy life more fully.
2. Protectional Friendship Real friends and true
comrades are protective of each other’s safety and well-being and that
protection often extends to their friends, family and important others.
Such friends stand together in facing adversity, are allies against
enemies and in overcoming destructive occurrences. They are often on
the alert to warn of approaching damage, hurt and harm and are sensitive
to and on guard about not being overprotective. The phrase “I’ve got
your back” typifies this aspect of friendship and the behaviors it
brings forth.
3. Healing Friendship The research shows that
friendships are very helpful in healing many maladies and injuries. If
someone you are close to in friendship is injured or ill you tend to act
in whatever ways you can to help them get better. In doing that, your
assistive healing influence is practical and obvious. But just being
there with them or even close by, has been discovered to often have a
surprising and mysterious healing and healthful effect.
This is true
among the physically sick, injured and debilitated and even those
undergoing various normal medical procedures like pregnancy and birth.
This is even more true among those psychologically in need of healing.
Just going through a difficulty knowing someone who cares is there for
you has a more than is completely understood, healthful effect on many.
In the area of relationship healing, such friendship has been known to
save lives, children’s mental health and whole family’s existence.
4. Metaphysical Friendship Praying for a friend
is the most common metaphysical behavior of friendship but around the
world there are many others done in various cultures and societies.
Lighting a candle at an altar, flying a prayer flag, creating a
blessing-type sand painting, doing liturgical dancing for spiritually
honoring of a loved one or deep friend, the reverential reading of
sacred texts, spiritual chanting, singing spirituals, envisioning white
and gold light exercises, ritual washing and baptizing and a host of
greatly varying religious and spiritual rituals, all constitute
metaphysical behaviors that are sometimes done by friends on behalf of
friends.
It is hard to prove scientifically but there are well conducted
studies showing surprisingly positive and supporting results for doing
all of these kinds of metaphysical behaviors. For certain, they often
are beneficial to those who do the behaviors and for the target people
who are aware of the behaviors being done on their behalf. But what
about those in deep unconscious states, those unaware that such actions
are being conducted and aimed at them, those geographically far away and
especially what about the loved dogs, horses, cows and other animals
for which such metaphysical actions seem to benefit. One of the things
we do know is that metaphysical, or spiritual if you will, behaviors are
enacted often with intense emotional energy, great sincerity and
profound love by and for friends. They, therefore, constitute this
separate category of Cardinal Friendship behavior.
Recommendation: To improve your life’s friendship
situation, give special attention to the 12 subcategories above and
choose which ones you want to make improvements in. Then set to work on
doing so, as you also work to do so from deep inside your
heart self.
For further friendship understanding link to mini-love-lessons
“Friendship and Its Extraordinary Importance”,
“Friendship ‘Like’ to Friendship ‘Love’”, and
“Understanding Friendship, From Mild Geniality to Profound Love”.
Some books you might want to read:
Love and Friendship by Allan Bloom,
Friends As Family by Karen Lindsey,
Friendship: How to Give It, How to Get It by Dr. Joel D. Block,
The Friendship Factor by Alan Loy McGinnis,
Friendship by Martin E. Marty,
The Meaning of Friendship by Dr. & Sufi Master Nurbakhsh and
How to Make Friends As an Introvert by Nate Nicholson.
As always – Go and Grow with love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly
PS: Help spread love knowledge. Tell somebody about this site – okay?
♥ Love Success Question:
Are you going to evaluate your own friendship actions using the 12
kinds of behavior described above? (By the way, with just a few
adaptations you also can use the same 12 behaviors for evaluating your
love behaviors in each type of love relationship – parent, mate, self,
etc.).
