Hello, lovelies. One of my goals for this year was to be more intentional about my friendships. This was definitely my most vague goal and it sort of came out of nowhere. I was filling out the prep work for my goal planner and were told to choose three life categories out of ten to focus on this year because we can’t “do it all and do it well.”
“Friends” was one of the categories, and after some forethought, I circled it.
When I originally decided to do this, my goal was to “put more of an effort,” for lack of a better term, towards my friendships. I wanted to do things like make handmade birthday cards, call them more often, make plans to meet up…things like that.
This goal wasn’t about making more friends. It was about appreciating the friends I already have. Even so, it was hard to think of practical ways to do this goal. After a year of actively being intentional about my friendships, here are six ideas to help you be intentional with yours.
//Decide To Do It
This certainly made the biggest impact. If I hadn’t written it down and decided to be intentional about my friendships, I would’ve just forgotten about it. It would’ve been one of those random ideas that fade away after a few days. By deciding to call my friends more often, I did just that. I would call them. Same goes for everything else I did this year.
//Text, Call, and Videochat Them Individually And Ask Them How They’re Doing
I think calling and video chatting is much better than texting. You can get so much more across by actually talking to each other. For example, my trip to Canada probably wouldn’t have happened if my friend Deya and I had just been texting. Because we had been talking on the phone for an hour, making the decision to go was easier.
And conversations are so much deeper on video chat than texting. That’s because you’re paying more attention to the conversation by looking at their face instead of doing something else in between. You put more focus on the person in front of you.
Despite this, I know that some of my friends prefer texting, which is why I would randomly text them every few weeks to ask them how they’re doing. It would’ve been easier to just let time go by between meeting up and just doing school work, but I reminded myself that I want to keep in touch with people and typing out a text or giving them a call would make me and them happy.
I also made sure to contact my friends individually once in a while instead of just messaging in the group chat.
//Meet With Them Regularly
I don’t think I did as well as I wanted to on this goal, but I do know that I met with my friends more often than I would have without it. This year was crazy. I super busy with work and school, and so were all my friends, so it was really hard to meet up regularly.
Even so, I did meet up with my friends many times individually. I started going to my friend Stellah’s apartment every other week to sit down and talk for a few hours. It was nice to belly laugh with her regularly.
My friend Shounima and I also had a few study dates. If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, then you know that I don’t think studying in groups is effective. I study way more productively when I’m alone because my friends and I end up talking whenever studying in groups.
The thing is, Shounima and I were super busy and I only went back to Atlanta on weekends, so we had a very limited time frame to hang out. A few weeks ago, I went to her house and we sat in her dining room for five straight hours working on our own projects, even though we could’ve finished them faster if we were alone. Her mom came in and said long time no see because Shouni and I basically lived at each other’s houses from the ages of 11 to 14, and asked us what we were doing. Shounima said that we were doing homework, and her mom basically said, “I’ve never heard of that. I never met up with my friends to do homework when I was a kid.” (rough translation in Bangla).
We laughed because we knew that studying was the only way we could justify spending time together.
My point is to make time to meet up, no matter what the circumstances because time together is what makes friendships grow stronger. This is more of an example for friends that don’t go to the same college as you or don’t live in the same dorm because I’ve noticed that it’s much easier to maintain friendships when you live together.
Because my schedule and the schedules of my close friends growing up don’t overlap anymore, we have to text and make plans to spend time together.
//Make Handmade Birthday Cards
Another goal that I didn’t do that great on. I think I made handmade birthday cards for only half of the birthdays I went to this year. When I was younger, I would make very elaborate birthday cards with really long letters in them and I know that the people I gave them to appreciated them.
Now that I’m older, it’s easier to just buy a gift and write “from Triasha” on the tag. I definitely want to start doing this again, but I think I’ll put more focus on writing the letter rather than crafting a pretty card.
//Learn Their Love Language
This is probably the most unexpected tip. If you don’t know of this already, humans have five main love languages: physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and gift giving. These are ways that we give and receive love.
My primary love language is physical touch and my secondary love language is words of affirmation. This means that I feel more loved when someone gives me a hug than I do when someone gives me a gift. We all receive love from both acts, it’s just that we feel more strongly towards one type of language.
This concept is mostly geared towards married people and relationships, but earlier this year, I read The Five Love Languages Singles Edition: The Secret That Will Revolutionalize Your Relationships (affiliate link) by Gary Chapman (The psychologist who coined the concept). It talked about cultivating relationships with parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, etc. It explained how we experience love with the people we aren’t romantically involved with.
I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but this book was very interesting. Here are few ideas to love your friends based on their love languages (without spending too much money because let’s get real, we’re college students)
Physical Touch – Give them a hug.
Words Of Affirmation – Follow up on conversations to show them that you listen to what they say.
Quality Time – Meet up at each other’s apartments so that you don’t have to spend money at a restaurant.
Gift Giving – Buy them a cup of coffee.
Acts Of Service – Offer to run an errand for them or do it together.
//Celebrate Together
Celebrate holidays and milestones with your friends. Plan a surprise party or do a Friendsgiving. Big moments like that are great memories to look back on. In October, I threw a Harry Potter themed Halloween Party with my closest friends and I decorated the downstairs living room using a Harry Potter theme like putting spiders on the door (“follow the spiders”) or turning M&Ms into house points. It was so much fun and I’m so glad I planned it last minute. My friends and I had thought we wouldn’t have time to meet up at all in October because of midterms, so I’m glad we were able to celebrate Halloween together.
//Prioritize Them
I think this is one of the most important things you can do. There are small ways you can prioritize your friends like not using your phone when spending time with them, but there are bigger ways as well.
The weekend in between my final exams, my friend Kat asked if I was free to meet up. I hadn’t seen her since August when we went to a Taylor Swift concert and she lives almost two hours away now, so it’s very rare for us to be in Atlanta at the same time.
I had the choice between studying for my last final and meeting up with her and I decided that I could spare two hours to go out to lunch. I looked at my priorities and saw that most of my finals were done and I would have a lot of time to study later on, so I decided that going out with my friend was something worth doing.
There are so many excuses you can make to avoid any type of goal. You just have to sort out your priorities and decide what’s worth doing.
That’s it for now. I hope this post gave you ideas on how to be more intentional about your friendships next year. These are all practical tips but the best way to be intentional about friendships is to listen to them and make time to see them. All the other stuff is icing on the cake.
I’d Appreciate Your Support Of This Blog By Following Me On:
How do you cultivate your relationships with your friends?