When I grew up, I left home wearing rose-coloured glasses, naively believing that people wanted to make the world a better place, and therefore that everyone worked hard at friendships and relationships.
Boy! Was I in for a shock when I found out the truth about the world! While I hate to say it, I think my parents did me a great disservice by not preparing me properly.
It took me several years and much heart-ache before I finally figured out:
not every friend is trustworthy;
not every friend is worthy of our deeper friendship or love;
friends will sometimes let us down;
good friends don’t criticise unless it’s really warranted or if we’ve done something wrong or if we need to correct a behaviour;
true friends will stick by us no matter what;
good friends will make the effort to work at our relationship; and
I sometimes don’t act as a good friend should.
That last one was particularly hard to accept, because I always thought I was a good person and a good friend, but there was at least one incident when I acted poorly in response to bad behaviour from someone that I had trusted as a friend.
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