Friendship is a beautiful thing. Whether you’re still best friends with the first person you met at preschool who gave you a matching bracelet during lunch and shared their chocolate chip cookies with you or you’ve only recently found friends that you feel extremely close to, we all need some great platonic relationships in our lives.
Everyone deserves someone they can trust and call when they’re sobbing on the kitchen floor or who will go out on the town and celebrate with them after receiving a promotion at work. We should feel safe laughing, crying, being silly or even being embarrassing with our friends, and we should be fiercely protective and supportive of them as well.
To gain more insight on this topic and find out how this conversation started in the first place, we reached out to Jacy, who is a Licensed Professional Counselor and was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda.
“Before 2023 came to an end, I reconciled friendships with some of my closest friends. I salvaged the relationships that were worth saving,” Jacy shared. “Being that my theme for this year is intentionality, it prompted me to assess friendships I’ve had the opportunity to experience throughout my life.”
“Sometimes people don’t know that the people they love and support, the people they recognize as friends, are either just using them or don’t see them as such,” the expert added. “People don’t deserve to be blindly taken advantage of. I just allowed my reflective thoughts on this to flow, and the thread was born.”
As far as why it’s so common for people to stay friends with individuals who don’t treat them well, Jacy says, “People perceive people and situations based off of their own personal lived experiences, culture and their foundation (which is their familial structure).”
“Sometimes these behaviors may seem normal, depending on how a person was raised and treated throughout their lives. Sometimes people genuinely don't know what a healthy relationship looks like,” she explained.
But sometimes friends exhibit these behaviors for other reasons, such as struggles in their personal lives, so Jacy says assertive communication between friends is key. “Bring these behaviors to the forefront and communicate how the behavior is affecting you and how you would prefer to be treated instead,” the expert says. “A lot of people are still on their journey towards self-awareness and don't have a thought that they may be mistreating someone they love.”
Jacy also shared some advice for anyone who’s in a friendship where they’re not being treated as well as they should be. “First, I think they should be honest with themselves. It’s hard to recognize your system of support is unbalanced,” she told Bored Panda. “Don’t internalize other’s actions. People were possibly not mistreating you on purpose, and if they were, see it as a learning opportunity. Now you know what it looks like when people don’t have your best interest at heart.”
“Secondly, don’t allow this to keep you from making new bonds and trusting new people,” Jacy continued. “Leave your trust issues with the friends that were described in the thread. Good friends exist, but you won’t find them if you never allow yourself to take a risk again.”
