10 Tips to Help You Keep More Good Friends

Here are 3 things to teach kids about choosing friends.

1. Choose Friends Who Exhibit Good Character. Choose your friends based on their values, not their status in society.
2. Choose Friends Who Are Dependable. Choose friends who will stand by and guide you when you need it.
3. Choose Friends Who Give Wise Counsel.

1. A confidant (or, if female, sometimes confidante) is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a trusted friend you can talk to about personal and private things”. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/260722/word-for-someone-who-is-more-than-a-friend/261065#261065.

1. Make time to connect.
2. Set and respect boundaries.
3. Communicate mindfully.
4. Be open to feedback.
5. Keep them accountable.
6. Get to know them personally.
7. Give them space.
8. Build trust.

The lack of structure that friendships are based on means there’s not always pressure to see friends often or prioritize them like we do with our immediate families. As a result, maintaining our friendships can be hard and we often find that many people end up floating out of our lives as easily as they came in.

The theory of Dunbar’s number holds that we can only really maintain about 150 connections at once.

There’s a difference. So if friendships feel harder when we’re older it’s more often than not because we aren’t putting in consistent time with a prioritized few people. It’s why we are more likely to become friends with people at work that otherwise we’d probably never hang out with again if we just met them.

People who have difficulty maintaining relationships may have underlying mental health conditions, such as Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Anxiety or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).