Friendship Lessons You Learned as a Child

Are you practicing all of these friendship principles? Knowing about them is different to actually using them.

When you were a small child and just starting to learn how to make friends, the chances are excellent that your parents, babysitter, teacher or some other adult gave you advice about how to be a good friend. Although you are now a grown man, the same lessons on friendship still apply with only minor variations. Here’s a reminder of what you were probably taught as a youngster and how it relates to your friendships as a man.

“Be a good sport.”
If you played sports as a kid, you might have been told to “be a good sport” if a game didn’t go your way. Even if you were simply playing games with your friends, your parents or another adult might have taught you how important it was to show good sportsmanship if you lost. That lesson is equally important to you as an adult.

Every alpha male likes a bit of competition. Whether it’s about who has the best job, who makes the most money, who has the sexiest girlfriend or who wins at a sport, competing to be the best is ingrained in most men. However there’s a potential downside to competition that causes some men to behave badly toward their friends. While healthy competition can be good, you have to also avoid being a poor loser or being the ‘friend’ who doesn’t like to see his buddies becoming too successful in fear of them leaving him behind.

If one of your mates gets a raise, becomes involved in a great relationship or buys a hot new car, you should not only be happy for him but you should use his success as motivation for you to go out and seek your own accomplishments. Part of being a great friend is being able to make your friend feel good about himself or herself.

“Don’t dob on others.”
Remember the kids who used to “tell on you”? Some kids try to seek an adult’s favor by dobbing/tattling/ratting on a friend or family member. “I didn’t write on the wall, Mom, Jimmy did!” or “Teacher, Billy asked to copy my homework.” That type of behavior doesn’t hold well for a child and it certainly would not serve you as an adult.

While you and your best friends may share personal secrets with each other, there is never a time that you should betray the secrets you’ve learned from a friend. You shouldn’t do it ‘for his own good,’ for your personal benefit or for any other reason. To be a good friend, loyalty is essential.

“Play nice.”
When you were a child, being told to “Play nice!” usually meant that you shouldn’t fight with your friends. As an adult that same guidance holds true. We all know that if we have disagreements with friends, they should be settled with words and not fists. However, even a war of words needs to be done in the proper manner.

As a youngster you likely heard the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me.” Unfortunately that’s not entirely true. The wrong words can inflict a lot more instant and lasting damage to a friendship than a fist. You may eventually heal from a black eye, but when you and a friend exchange harmful words with each other, the memory of what was said likely will stay with the other person forever. People tend to remember the bad things you’ve said to them a lot more than the good.

Often it’s better to walk away from a heated conflict and have a proper discussion when you’ve both cooled off and can speak in a more rational, easy-going manner. When you are occasionally unable to come to an agreement on certain topics with a friend, it’s usually best to just decide to ‘agree to disagree’ and move on to other topics instead of getting into a heated argument. When things get heated and angry, it’s easy to resort to blaming and name-calling, which doesn’t do the friendship any good.

“You have to share.”
When you were a kid and you were being told you had to “learn to share,” chances are that it referenced sharing your toys or other childhood possessions. As it turns out, sharing is an important part of adult friendships as well.

Sharing as an adult can be something as simple as occasionally inviting people over to your home for drinks, some food or some social gathering rather than freeloading and always expecting your friends to supply the social space, snacks and beverages without you ever reciprocating.

Another important type of sharing is sharing your feelings. There’s simply nothing better for the development of a true friendship than really connecting and being honest with each other.

If your friend achieves something great, you should share your feelings on the situation to show him or her that you care. Instead of simply saying, “Oh, good on you…well done” tell him or her how you feel by saying, “Good on you…I really admire how much effort you put into achieving this. You’re an inspiration and I’m really happy for you.”

Can you feel the difference? No doubt. The fact is people will remember how you made them feel, more than what you said.

A lot of guys feel awkward about the idea of ‘sharing their feelings’ with their friends and think it’s just a woman’s thing. I admit, it sounds a little girly to say ‘share your feelings,’ but if you actually listen to even the manliest of men talk to each other, you’ll hear them talk about their feelings. They may grumble about their job, complain about their love life, gloat over their success or worry about their future. All of that involves expressing feelings and sharing them with a friend through conversation. BTW: When you talk to women, you need to take a different approach.

“Don’t be a flatleaver!”
A flatleaver is someone who leaves their friend(s), often without warning, because they found new friends they’d now rather hang out with.

Let’s say you’re out with a friend(s) and another group of people invites you – and only you – to come over and join them for the rest of the night, but exclude your friends. Not only is leaving your friends behind like that not cool, you should also be cautious of anyone who would encourage you to exclude your friend(s) from their group. People like that will often backstab you and betray you at the worst possible times.

The only acceptable time to briefly leave a friend is if you’re out somewhere and you spot a woman you’d like to speak with. Explain to your friend(s) that you’ll be right back and then go over, have a brief chat and make plans to get together with the woman at another time or invite her (and possibly her friends if she’s with a group) to join you and your mates.

So, if you want to be a good friend as a man, don’t forget the important lessons you learned as a child.