👩🏽🤝👩🏾 Why friendship matters to your love life (+ 5 steps to make friends)
Dating & romantic relationships are part of an ecosystem of human connection. Just like a natural ecosystem, we can’t address a part of it without addressing the whole. In other words, I’m applying systems thinking to dating.
Thus, I often support my dating coaching clients with improving their friendships, as a catalyst to creating a more vibrant, rich, and deeply meaningful love life. Why?
Friendliness is the glue of any loving connection. Cultivating authentic, heartfelt friendships deepens our capacity for emotional intimacy and trust, which is the basis of a healthy intimate partnerships.
Abundant and meaningful friendships help us build a more resilient life and nervous system. Loving friends keep us in a state of connection and sharing, rather than isolation—which is the foundation of a healthy body and spirit.
Close friends give us the strength to embrace and grow through the challenges of dating and romance, instead of giving into self-sabotaging patterns.
Expanding our friendship networks often leads to new intimate connections with like-minded folks who share our interests!
Having a rich social life makes us less desperate, more magnetic, and more interesting to our love interests. It’s a win-win!
Now, HOW do we create meaningful, soul-nourishing friendships?
I’ll skip over the technical stuff like where to meet new people, how to approach them, etc. (definitely talk to me when you’re ready to brainstorm and create a specific plan!) and go straight into the HEART of the matter.
Here’s my personal “recipe” for making a friend. I have seen this work in my own life, and in the lives of countless clients. I’d even go as far as to say it’s impossible for it not to work. I encourage you to use it, share it, and let me know how this evolves for you :)
Know and love yourself as much as you can—become friends with yourself! Don’t wait until this is perfect before you connect with another, though.
Pick a person and become insatiably curious about them—ask them about their inner world, observe them, learn about what they care about!
Put yourself in their shoes—practice empathy & compassion, especially when you are triggered by something they said or did. Assume their best intentions.
Be generous with your heart. Kindness is not a limited resource: the more you give, the more you get! Give them all the love you can muster.
Be receptive to who they are, and release expectations that they should change. This doesn’t mean you can’t have healthy boundaries & standards (you should definitely have those). But at the emotional level, you must make peace with where they’re at.
IN SUM: Invest, invest, invest. Don’t take them for granted. Keep being curious. Keep growing. Keep sharing. Keep loving.
Let’s cultivate gardens of friendship!
Warm wishes,
Marie
