Friendship In a New Age - Friendship Relies on Unburdening

A friend is someone who freely and honestly unburdens onto you. They have faith in the integrity of the bond of friendship that you share, and trust that you won't be put off by what they tell you.

In today's society, people, especially men, tend to keep to themselves when it comes to the wide array of problems and emotional distress we experience daily. All our lives, we were told to "man up" or "be a man" and were taught that showing or sharing our emotions with others was a sign of weakness. And so the mainstream mentality was that we became afraid to talk to others about how we feel at any given moment, and we closed ourselves off from everyone else and kept all our problems to ourselves. We were so focused on building and maintaining this facade of strength and masculinity that left us strangers in a strange land of non-navigated emotions and deeply repressed feelings. But because friendship relies on authenticity, we cannot have any real friends if we don't let those people into our life and unburden onto them.

One of the cornerstones of this great relationship we refer to as friendship is vulnerability. When you call someone your friend, you should be willing to be vulnerable with them, and part of that vulnerability is a regular unburdening onto your friend. In our generation, it is in our nature, having grown up in the society that we did, to think of that action as being a literal burden on our friend.

However, if that person is truly our friend, not only will they not mind that we are unraveling and unburdening with them; they will actually appreciate it, and and our friendship with them will grow stronger. This is because they will understand that we have elevated them to a status in our life where they are an important enough person to us, that we feel comfortable allowing them a peek into the inner twists and turns of our mind. Your friend, if they are a true friend to you, will always be there to love and support you for who you are, with all your inner demons and emotional baggage.

Friendship is a bond that relies on companionship. Part of that companionship is the process of unburdening between two individuals who consider the other to be their friend. If you call someone your friend, then that person should be someone whom you have no problem talking to about your doubts and fears, your disappointments, and generally any other problems you might be facing.

If we are to build real relationships with the people we call our friends, we have to let them in. We have to take down our walls and unburden onto them. If your friend doesn't know who you really are because you're too scared to show them your true self, then what's the point of calling them your friend? Are they not, then, just like everyone else in this vast world who hasn't the slightest clue who you really are as a person? If we call them our friend, then we have to trust that they will have our back when we become vulnerable with them.

Friendship, without trust, is nothing. Yes, to unburden onto our friend and tell them everything that makes us sad or upset is to give them power over us. It's giving them a knife with which they could stab at our heart any time they wanted to. Why wouldn't they, when everyone in the past has done just that, right? But we have to trust that that's not who they are. The real beauty about friendship is that you are risking it all by allowing another human being into your life, but the rewards of doing so are much greater than the risk that you take.

By leaping headfirst into this wonderful bond of true friendship with someone, you are reminding yourself and your friend that neither of you are alone in this world. You and your friend are serving as reminders to each other that you both have someone who, over the course of your frequent association with each other, has grown to truly love you in this huge world of over 7,000,000,000 people, who was once a complete stranger to you.

But none of that can happen unless you're both willing to unburden on the other frequently. When you do, that Friendship in a New Age is a beautiful thing.