How to Get Real Friends

How many real friends do you have? Honestly, many people we call friends would probably better qualify as pals or buddies. The first step to getting real friends is to recognize how we are all made to be gifts of love. God is love and we were made in his image. We were also made for community, because God is a community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Living out this love and community as God does requires availability and vulnerability.

By availability we mean “care-free timelessness”, as Catholic evangelist Matthew Kelly calls it.

By vulnerability we mean taking off the mask. This is the really hard part. As a missionary Fr. Mike knows once said, vulnerability is not just transparency. Transparency is letting someone look into the fish bowl. Vulnerability is inviting them into the fishbowl and letting them move things around.

How can we all learn to grow in love, community, availability, and vulnerability so we can become real friends to others and live as the image of God in the world?

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[earthmom]

Our daughter is desperate for friends. She is a wonderful, sweet 17 year old and it is so difficult for her to find good girls who aren’t all about partying and social media scores. Please pray that K will find 1-2 great friends. Thank you 💕

[robertdaoustdaoust]

Father, could you pray for me if you have time. I am very lonely, and I have no friends or family. I just want a few Christian friends. Thank you.

[jennt.]

I started losing friends when I started becoming closer to God, I guess that was a sign from God Himself that they were not real friends. But I have the best friends one could ever ask for - Jesus, Mary and the Saints. 💕

[GinnyandEric]

Availability and vulnerability. Oof. Needed this reminder.

[StephenBell-ky]

My friends in the past were let downs. I stopped trying! My fiance is my best friend and that's all I need.

[Marontyne]

This is how to BE a real friend, not how to GET them.

I can tell you that I've created many one-sided relationships that way.

[gabrielalopez]

I'm so grateful God gave me friends that strive to be holy🙏🏼 They each have virtues I wish to obtain some day and they only encourage me to get closer to God.

[j]

I’m praying for true friends for me and my husband 🙏🏻

[Nsiiti]

Being lonely is so paining. How I wish everyone has a gold heart ❤️. But what happened to humans for real. I can't stop shading tears 😢😢😢

[raquelgarcia]

I think another important thing about friendship and community, is having common interests and values. You can be the nicest and kind hearted person to anyone you meet, but I think true authentic friendship is going to stem from enjoying similar interests and activities— likes what you like. It’s sometimes hard to continue through conversation when ultimately you don’t enjoy similar things or your personalities just don’t click.

[conorspyridon]

Social media is toxic to find friends . True friends will be the ones who hold god closest to them 😇 those who pray and here his word ... The few little flock .

[CatholicWhisper]

Good friends are hard to come by.
The Imitation of Christ Book leads me to believe we shouldn’t desire too many anyway. I have a few good friends but I’ve learned to be friends with myself...

[LoveeveryoneRomans]

The Lord Jesus is my best friend Alleilua

[flobrighton]

I was really bummed this morning because I don’t have any real friends and then this came up in my feed. God has a great sense of humor 😂🤣😂

[annagabrielah]

This is the second time in a row you cover the issue exactly when it starts to bother me! God's timing is great

[blukatzen]

I have, within this past year, become a widow. I have found out that most folks don't want to keep up with you after the funeral or right after the hospitalizartion, having visited the dying person. I have been left alone. My late husband and I had a circle of friends, and they had slowly passed on in the last 10 years or so, and their spouses, had relocated to different states, where he had kept up on Facebook. (I did not care to join FB.) They had gotten on with their lives. I called them up, and they all told me to get involved with grief support group. I did for a bit, having gotten recommendations from the hospice services. I did go, but Covid cut that experience short ( group meetings were dissolved.) Everything was closed for awhile, just reopening up not too long ago, for instance, Senior services in our community.
But in my business, of which I am the manager, I had a close knit group of friends of various ages, we all worked together. Only one talks to me, and even that is very sporadic. I text them, but many times they do not text me back. I just give up. I wonder why people are so scared of talking to widows and widowers? It's like WE were the ones who died. It's extremely hurtful, especially since one might have been sought out and needed. Now, you only hear the crickets chirp. We had no children/grandchildren, all of our elders are gone for years, so I am very much alone.
I had, 2 weeks after my husband died (right before Christmas) a mini stroke, which felled my going out, as I was wobbly and unsteady walking. I just stayed put. I was able to go out by February, and went to 2 meetings. It was nice to be around folks but they were all strangers. In March, I got Covid and was sick for a month. I did not need to be in a hospital, but it was no cakewalk, that is for sure. When it was time for work this past May, I found out my boss did not want me back since I had the Covid, was healed, but we did not know if I could infect anyone..like everyone else that had Covid and recovered. But he drank "the Koolaid" and asked me not to return. Just one day's notice. I worked so hard to recover, so I could work.
Right now, I am cleaning out my home so I can sell it. I am doing this by myself, as there is no one to help. I should be done in about 2 or 3 months. I am moving to another part of the Country, and hope to find a new set of friends. I just wanted to relate my story and hope that if there is a Senior in your life, that we need friends too. We need to rely on those who are still here, and we have not passed on alongside our spouses. We are getting up to rebuild our lives. What is left to us, we wish to live in the Graces of God and His Mother. Prayer is welcomed as I talk with God, Jesus, Our Lady all the time. They should be anyone's "best friends". But we, as Father has said above, were not created to be alone.

[AuroraB-]

I'm introvert and don't like being around most people but would love at least one close friend that I can rely on

[carlospacheco]

52 years old here, have had a lot of disappointments through life with friends, I finally gave up and realize that true (human) friends do not exist, I do have three friends that would give their lives for me, I did not find them at a bar or at church, I found them at the shelter. "The more I know people, the more I love my dog -Diogenes-".

[ED-jnfg]

I don’t have any friends (unless you count family members as “friends”). I don’t mind friendships but I desperately don’t long for it neither. I honestly don’t mind being friendless most of the time, and I don’t like how society make it seem like there is something “wrong with you” because you have no friends. Some of us love solitude and peaceful living, and people or “friends” often time bring nothing but anxiety and stress on our lives.

[christine]

Please pray that someday I will be surrounded by people that understand me and accept me for who I am. Just one friend not loads just one true friend :)