Friendship is the state of forming a bond with another person to get to know them better and to enjoy spending time with them. The Greek word for the love between friends is philia. Friendship often neglected and placed behind sexual and romantic relationships. Despite the age of social media where people can have hundreds of friends, most people do not know how to be a good friend. Society also emphasizes that people should pursue sexual and romantic relationships; despite that once they end, the people in those relationships go there different ways because it did not last and lose contact with each other. Friendship, if done well, should last since the goal is to build and continually improve the human connection with another person who you want to know more by spending time with that person. Here are five steps to be a better friend.
1) Loyalty
Friendship is about making time to support your friends when they are going through a hard time or they just want to get together over coffee or drinks to talk. This also means that you are willing to hear your friends concerns and always be honest with your friends. This is especially true when disagreements arise between friends. Loyalty means that you make time for your friends out of your busy life to stay connected, or to reconnect with old friends.
2) Accept Your Friend Unconditionally
To unconditionally accept anyone is difficult. It requires that you accept your friends for their problems and all. This also means that you are willing to accept them when they expose their vulnerabilities and expose some of their hidden problems or secrets that you were not aware of until having a real conversation with your friend.
3) Stay Friends Regardless of Your Friend’s Choices
People can make their own choices and to decide how they want to live their life. Regardless if you agree with your friend’s choices, stick by your friend. This means that even when you disagree with the choices your friend is deciding to make, or made, that you will not leave them just because you don’t support their choice. It is easy to leave, bail on a friend, and to lose a friendship. It is hard to stay friends and to stand by your friend’s choices. Do the hard choice and stay friends regardless of your friend’s decisions.
4) Work to Improve Their Life
As a friend, you should genuinely want to help and want to improve your friend’s life. This requires that your friendship is a vehicle to benefit them in the different areas of their life. Listen to them. Talk to them. Help them as needed. Be there when they are having a difficult time in life. As a friend, you want to see their life improve and watch them become a better person.
5) Show Up
Take time out of your busy life and show up when your friend wants to do something. This reveals to your friend that you care enough about them by taking time out of your day to meet up with them. Showing up proves to your friend that you actually care and that you are a loyal friend.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
Online Dating Horror Stories
When you’re single, you definitely know how to mingle. Going on dates is a fun thing – we get to meet other singles who also love to socialize. More than ever, in our current time, people are meeting online or through phone apps set up to help you meet and date someone from across the web. In fact, the online dating site eHarmony reports that there are 40 million Americans using online dating websites, where 27% are young adults, which is up 10% from 2013.
Online dating can be a fun experience and is a nice way to meet people. Now that online dating is becoming more common, people don’t have that stigma. However, just like any dating situation, there are a handful of horror stories from meeting people online.
Here are the top 5 online dating horror stories as pulled from BuzzFeed.com:
*All submissions below belong to BuzzFeed.com Secure Single is referencing and crediting all content submissions 1-5 below to Buzzfeed.com.
- Submitted by kiah4c
I went for a drink with a guy I had been chatting with online. He seemed pretty normal (good job, intelligent, funny). His first question on sitting down with our drinks was whether I was up for anal. I bypassed and watched him drink his body weight in shots before he started crying about his ex-girlfriend and then threw up down my shoulder when I was trying to walk him home. This was around 18 months ago, and he still messages me from time to time with a “hey,” or my favorite, “I miss you.”
- Submitted by KattieQ
I was once talking to this guy online and after a few hours of nice, PG conversation, he did a complete 180. He asked where I worked because I looked familiar… He said I looked like a girl from an amateur porn video. I knew that was not possible. He then asked if he could jerk off while we continued our normal conversation. After he tricked me into continuing the conversion for a few more minutes, I told him good-bye. Then he barraged me with dozens of lengthy messages asking to help him orgasm by telling him what he was doing was normal. Apparently, he had issues with disapproval and couldn’t finish without me telling him the simple letters “OK.” I never responded.
- Submitted by katet4dbf41478
I had been chatting with a guy on Yahoo Singles for a while, and we got along fairly well. When he asked me out to dinner I figured, sure, why not? It was singularly the most awkward and uncomfortable evening I have ever spent on a date. We spent our time attempting to make disjointed conversation… At the end of the evening we just simply said good night, and I figured that was the end of it. Approximately six months later, I received a message from his Yahoo account that roughly said the following: “Hi! This is X’s brother. This is going to sound really odd, but X is in prison for a few months (a big misunderstanding!) and I know he’d really like to hear from you. His address is through the ABC Correctional facility. Please write him!
- Submitted by estees2
I was speaking to this guy on Tinder, and after only a few minutes he asked me if I would marry him for $10,000. No joke. Apparently, he was a foreigner and wanted to become an American citizen. He couldn’t comprehend why I declined. He said, “Other people would do it for half the money!” I was like, “Not me, hun!”
- Submitted by Kris Woods (Facebook)
eHarmony matched me with my ex-husband…after we were divorced.
The online dating world is still early in development and should be taken with caution. If you are curious and want to learn more about people who meet their online date in person, check out episodes of Catfish.
If you do jump online and peruse the dating marketplace, just be safe and let your friends know what you’re up to. You could either have the next horror story from a first date, or you may meet the love of your life. According to www.pewresearch.org, 5% of committed married couples met online. Be safe either way and have fun with it. If you’ve got a profile online for a dating website, be authentic and ask friends to help you polish your profile to present you in the best and most original way. Have morals when you are online and know when someone on the other side crosses the line. Don’t be afraid to stop a conversation.
If you do have a hilarious or seriously horror-ish dating story, we would love to hear about it. Submit your comments below. Happy dating Secure Singles!
For more stats on online dating, check out StatisticBrain.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
I recently attended a speed dating event this last weekend to attend a speed dating event to experience a way to people to meet potential dates. For those who do not know what speed dating is or how it works; Merriam Webster defines it as “an event at which each participant converses individually with all the prospective partners for a few minutes in order to select those with whom dates are desired.” For singles who are prospectively interested in seeking a romantic relationship, speed dating may be a reasonable option since there are now various types to better narrow down and meet someone who shares your values and life goals. I was there to help out my friend and was not particularly interested in meeting up with or dating someone after the event. Speed dating comes down to competition and being able to make the right first impression to potential suitors in seven minutes or less. The core lesson that I learned from this event by viewing it from a singleton’s perspective is dating is ultimately about competing for a mate.
There is a stereotype for the people who speed date that they are more socially awkward; therefore, they are unable to meet people in regular areas such as bars, restaurants, or meeting new people at social events. This is probably a half truth and is probably more accurate for the men who attend speed dating events compared to the women at an event. Speed dating essentially consists of only small talk and maybe time for one important question for prospects who are seeking to find a date after the event.
Dating is often viewed as a competition since men and women are fighting to attract and date the person who they found the most attractive and felt that they related the best to during the event. Men and women compete differently while dating, especially during speed dating events. For men, they compete by attempting to come across as having an established career, financially responsible, vast array of interests, and well-groomed and clean. However, as a woman commented to me during the speed dating experience who came to the event with friends, women often compete among themselves— whether friends or not – in order to get the attention of the main person who they are interested in at a dating event. Women being more competitive and choosy when they find prospective dates is consistent with evolution as summarized in the University of Los Angeles paper “Evolution and Close Relationships” explains:
The sex difference in minimal obligatory parental investment leads female mammals to be more choosy when picking mates, and it leads males to compete with one another to demonstrate their relative viability and superiority as mates.
Dating and romantic relationships are merely a competition to find a mate to continue a family name, experience intimacy, and to continue the human race.
This competition has become popularized with shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette by society and popular culture. The lesson that I learned while helping my friend run her speed dating event is that dating is the ultimate competitive sport; whether it is for a one night stand, a short term relationship, or a long term relationship. In short, dating is a tournament to find a mate.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
Romance is heralded by poets, musicians, and in film and television as truly heavenly because you are able to spend the rest of your life with the one person whom you love. The problem with how love is portrayed in media and society is that is depicted as each person saving the other. It is also further depicted as the emotional and physical act of erotic love is all that is essential in life. However, if love is merely emotional and enjoying sex and everyone eventually is going to die alone, is love useful? Romantic love is useless because you only are able to enjoy the presence of the other without any truly beneficial outcomes in life.
What are the benefits of being in a romantic relationship with a significant other? When you go out now, you now have to pay for two people. You are now pay two times more than you would normally pay by living and going out by yourself as a single person. When couples also cook for two people they will also spend more money at the grocery store since they must buy more groceries compared to single people. If you go out with friends as a single person, you will normally split the check or pay for what you ordered. How about preparing for the future? Couples now have to plan for the future of a minimum of two people (if they wish to have children or not). A single person only has to save, invest, and plan for the future for oneself. Romantic love only deals with the needs of each other without practical benefits. Love is useless because it is an ideal.
From only examining those two examples above briefly, are they any advantages of being in a serious relationship rather than being staying single? It appears that there really is no real advantage. Romantic love, essentially, only provides someone whom you know intimately in many ways without providing any real benefits for life of the moment. Romantic love is useless because it unattainable and is not concerned with practical matters.
Ultimately, love is useless for many reason. Popular culture and society continue to place romantic love and marriage on a pedestal for the detriment of singles. Romantic love is useless because it does not provide any utility for the people in a relationship.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
June 9 is National Sex Day because of 6/9. You can figure out the rest from there. For singles who hook up or meet someone on this day or on any other day of the year, below is a short list of songs that you can it on to. Enjoy the songs and the company on National Sex Day, or 69 position day, with this playlist.
Sensual and Sultry
Justin Timberlake “Future Sex/ Love Sounds”
John Mayer “Your Body Is A Wonderland”
Maria Carey “Touch My Body”
In This Moment “Sexual Hallucination”
Kinky
Justin Timberlake “Sexyback”
Motionless In White “Hatefuck”
Marilyn Manson “Slutgarden”
Nine Inch Nails “Closer”
Straight to the Point
Korn “A.D.I.D.A.S.”
Tech N9ne “Fuck Food”
Marilyn Manson “Para-noir”
Marilyn Manson “User Friendly”