Reasons for Ending a Good Friendship
Human beings are social beings, and thus we find it necessary to associate with people at a deeper level. We all have people we regard as close, who are not family members and who we share a bond. Therefore friendship is a platonic relationship between two people who care for each other. Ideally, friendships are supposed to be built on mutual respect and mutual care. Whatever we do to those we view as friends should be a reflection of what we would want them to do to us. But many times we find that the bond and the care is not mutual. There are those who view friendships and relationships as disposable, and every relationship they create, they always ask; "what do I stand to gain." But it should be remembered that great friendships have a foundation on Love, empathy, acceptance, honesty, mutual care, and respect, among others. When all or some of these traits miss, friendships break, hence this paper is going to show some of the reasons which can cause me to end a good friendship (Ptacek and Jennifer).
Lack of Respect for My Family
If I seem to be in a good relationship with someone, it means that between the two of us most things seems to be working, but there are some things that the other person does that puts the friendship into jeopardy and may lead to termination. One of the reasons is that if my good is respectful to my close family member of my family, it will jeopadise our friendship. There are those friends who only care about me and not those close to me, and thus they may be careless in the way they treat my family. Since my family is important and disrespecting them may be tantamount to disrespecting me, I may be forced to end the friendship.
Breach of Trust
I share a lot of secrets with my friends because of the assurance that they will keep the secrets. It takes time to build trust and trust is fragile. Secrets are of different significance to the extent that there is harmless and meaningless gossip and there are most personal and private secrets. Revealing those private and personal things about myself is b breaking this trust, and I may be forced to terminate the friendship since my secrets are no longer secure, and revealing them has the potential of causing embarrassment. When mutual trust is broken, it is sometimes hard to bring build it again (Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 424).
Lack of Autonomy and Pressure to Change
Human beings are about autonomy, and a great friendship is about accepting the uniqueness of the other person. However, in life, we meet people who want to change us to be who or what we don't want to be. This leads to them pressuring us to change for them to fit what they deem fashionable. They always do this irrespective of my physical or Psychological well being. For instance, I had a good friend who insisted that I should be taking alcohol like him. Every time I would go out with him, he would try to insist I take a sip so that I would become a man. Since he would not respect my autonomy, I was forced to end the relationship (Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 425).
Keeping Score on Favors
Friends who keep score on favors are the ones that I never keep. There are people I meet and become friends with who take every opportunity to remind me of the nice things they have done to me. This ends up in making me feel bad about myself since there is this constant need to make it up for them, making me feel manipulated. It this regard I may have no choice but to end the friendship (Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 426).
Conclusion
The discussion about the best kind of friendship is a lengthy one. But my belief is always that friendship should be mutual, based on trust, care, and respect. Never should anyone in the relationship feel entitled and more deserving because we help each other based on what we can and can do. If this is missing in any friendship, then it will not survive.
Work Cited
Ptacek, Jennifer. "I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends: A Qualitative Study of Nurse Close Work Friendship and Social Support." (2014).
Afifi, W. A., W. L. Falato, and J. L. Weiner. "10 INTIMACY AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION." Interpersonal Communication 7: 424.
(Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 424)
