In a world that emphasizes couples and married people have forgotten about the other types of love. The emphasis on romance and erotic love in the search for The One has influenced people to focus on eros when it comes to relationships. Other types of love are lost at the expense of erotic love. The continual search for the mythical One comes at the expense of your friends. Friendships are treated as less important are devalued at the expense to find erotic love. Singles should focus on having a couple of close friends and developing phileo love instead of neglecting their friends in the never-ending search for erotic love.
Why Singles Need To Focus On Phileo Love
It is important for singles to have friends. It is vital to have one or two close friends who you can call a best friend. It can be difficult to find good quality friends, but that should not stop you. In fact, a good friend may be harder to find than finding someone to marry. For that reason, singles should take friendships seriously and should not take their friends for granted.
Singles should cultivate friendships with a few people to sow seeds of friendship with people that they connect with well. Reap the handful of friendships that seem to be going towards being more than causal acquaintances and develop your relationships with those few people. Nurture the friendship with those few people to determine what common interests, values, and goals that you both share and see how committed they are to follow up with things that they say that they will do. Realistically, these few friends will become your good friends while the one or two who you hang out with and connect the best with will become your close friends or best friends.
After you have determined your close friends from your best friends, you can better focus on developing relationships with the one or two people with who you best connect and who share your values. Those one or two people will really be your best friends. Personally, I only have one person who gets the best friend status and a couple of people who get the ranking of close friends in my social circle. Given human nature, time, and the complexity of relationships it will likely be the case for you as well. Focus your most time and energy on your relationship with your best friend and secondarily focus on your relationships with your close friends. Those two groups will be the most important for you to maintain a community and to being able to go out to places that you both enjoy wherever you may live. My close friends, and best friend, share the same interests in trying new restaurants and cocktail lounges for example. Your interests may be different, but most likely the friends with who you are closer share your same interests.
Concentrate on your relationships with your close friends and best friends, your less important friendships will naturally begin to take less of your time. This is healthy and natural. Those friends you spend less time with and most likely don’t share common interests or values. You may still see them from time to time, but they are acquaintances as opposed to good close friends. Those relationships, while important, are less valuable to you in the long term compared to those who you would call your close or best friends. Life happens. It is natural for friends to drift away and for friendships to end. If you have one or two best friends and small number of good friends. You should count yourself lucky in life. Focus on nurturing and developing your relationships with your close and best friends instead of pursuing romance and dating relationships.
Summary
Society places dating and marriage relationships on a pedestal in the name of erotic love, it is important for singles to remember the other types of love that are just as important. Singles should build on and mature their relationships with their close and best friends. Friendships lead to a fuller and healthy life. Friendships also benefit singles in building social skills. Singles should put their energy towards fostering phileo love instead of erotic love.
