Find The Keepers: How To Choose Which Friendships To Invest In

There are billions of people in the world, but sometimes it can still feel hard to connect with people on a deeply personal level. Studies have shown that the average person has about three to five close friends in their lives that they fully know and trust. However, most people have many more friends than that who could simply be considered acquaintances.

If you find yourself evaluating your friendships, how are you able to tell which ones are worth keeping and investing a lot of your time in? Here are five surefire signs that your friend is a keeper.

1. Are they good to you and those around you?

If you plan on investing time and energy into a friendship, it’s important to know how they treat you and those around you. Friendships can be complicated, but shouldn’t cause you heavy emotional pain.

 It’s normal for friends to get on each other’s nerves, however, it’s not normal to allow a friend to mistreat you. Analyze how your friends behave around you in private and public. Watch how they treat those you love, strangers, and their peers. You’ll learn a lot about them and can determine whether or not they’re worth investing in. 

2. Are they trustworthy 

Trust is another incredibly important piece to factor in when deciding which friends are worth your time. When you’re able to place your trust in someone, they’ll make you feel safe and secure, emotionally and physically. 

They should also receive that same sense of trust from you. Sharing that mutual sense of trust is crucial to growth and security within a friendship. If you feel insecure, uncomfortable, or as though you cannot trust one of your friends, they may not be the friend for you. 

3. Will they be there for you?

Even our friends cannot always be there for us at a moment’s notice. We all lead pretty busy lives, and it’s not always possible to drop everything for others. With that said, the friendships you should invest in are the ones where you can see the effort they put in. 

A good friend. Will try to be there for you and support you as best as they can through happy times and difficult times. They may not always make it to every event or show up at your doorstep when you’re having a bad day. If they try to be, or at least put in the effort to reach out and support you, that’s a sign of a wonderful friend. 

4. Will they respect your boundaries?

You deserve to feel safe and secure around the people you care about. Just because they’re close to, doesn’t mean they’re allowed to overstep boundaries. If you were looking for a green flag in a friendship, take notice of how well a person respects and abides by your boundaries. Respect should always go hand-in-hand with any friendship or close bond. 

If someone oversteps your boundaries and doesn’t correct themselves even after you remind them, odds are this behavior will continue to happen. Invest in the people who will try their best to respect you and your wishes. 

5. Can you be yourself around them?

We all want to feel loved and accepted by those around us. Especially if they’re someone we respect and care for. The ability to be your truest and most comfortable self around another person is a gift. We all deserve friends that make us feel safe being ourselves. 

A healthy friendship will be free of judgment, make you feel content, and shouldn’t make you feel unwanted, or that you have to hide who you are. If you are hiding your true self, that could be a sign that the friendship is a surface-level one and may not be worthy of a large time investment.