Healthy friendships are in the middle

The Xs clustered inside the center circle are your healthy friendships.

Towards the left are relationships in which you play some sort of mentor role: you are the older, wiser, or in some other way the consistent role model.

To the right are relationships in which you are the one looking up to someone else: perhaps a pastor; or that senior person you get along with at work, but who influences your promotion, etc.

Now, some of the relationships at the two ends can be friendships. But these should be rarer. For example, towards my left, I have good relationships with students. But very few of them are, or have become, friends. I think that's normal. I know a case of a young professor who treated students just like friends; he's no longer teaching.

Neither should all of the Xs towards the right end be friends. In fact for a former mentor who does become a friend, something should have happened such that the hierarchical nature of the relationship has significantly decreased -- in exchange for the parity of mutual respect as co-travelers in grace.

For example, I have a friend who was a former student years ago. These days I have to remind myself: hey ... he was a student of mine once. I never think of him that way now because, well, because he's friend.

Which brings up the Xs in the middle, what I simply call healthy friendships. These relationships ...

1. ... are energized by mutual respect, such that encouragement and critique can equally be shared and received in trust.

2. ... have no agenda in which one party benefits from the other in an on-going uni-directional manner.

3. ... share common interests that are mutually furthered by the relationship.

4. ... are such that the lives of all involved continue to be encouraged, enlarged, and enriched by being together, AND

5. ... have a trustful and standing willingness to allow the other to grow and bloom, and if it comes to it, to move on ...

How many Xs do you have in this middle cluster? If many, it's an indicator of social healthiness.

But if all your relationships are towards the two ends, and the center is empty, you probably have some social issues.

Because you don't really have friends; you just think you do.

Probably even the relationships you have at the two ends are not as healthy as you think they are.

Logos2Go

Proverbs 27.9 Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one's friend springs from his earnest counsel.