There’s not just one way to be friends: you make the rules.

When our idea of ​​what it means to be a “good friend” This is different from what our friends experience: very often, disappointment and disillusionment lead us to distance ourselves. We feel disenchanted with this person who was once so close and endearing in our lives because they no longer met our expectations. You expected more support from her, you wished she was more loyal and there unconditionally. But it wasn’t and it hurt.

Although it may seem like an obvious code that we all understand implicitly, being a “good friend” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. And our relationships with others are deeply influenced by our life stories. beliefs and assumptions we have about how the world works, elements which, unconsciously, shape the expectations we impose on the people with whom we are intimately connected, experts say.

In fact, they say, the ideal that this friend (probably for a lifetime), who has been in all your stages, who does not fail and who is with you in each of them because she is very loyal and unconditional, is just that, a reinforced ideal for pop culture. A construction that showed us what this dear friend should look like. So, we learned that the opposite is bad friendship. But all is not lost because we can still work on nurturing our relationships within our friendships.

Even if the pain that disappointment involves is very real, idealizing our bonds by loading them with the weight of certain demands takes friendship away from what it really is: a relationship between human beings, with lights and shadows, with similarities and also with differences, with moments of ups and downs, which ultimately, like any relationship, must be worked on if the intention is there, explains Camila Pardo, psychologist and coach specialized in limits, affirmation of oneself and self-confidence (@psicologa.camilapardo ).

Working on the nuances of this relationship involves having difficult conversations and questioning the way we communicate. For feminist psychologist Silvana Rivas (@psychosilvi ), we often operate under patriarchal demands about what it means to “be good.” “This directly influences what is expected of us as women and the emphasis placed on ‘care of others’. We are expected to be good at caring, listening, supporting and being there unconditionally. However, we can break that and create our own codes and ways of establishing intimate relationships,” she says.

Historically, women have been relegated to the role of caring for others, which for many has meant putting their needs aside to satisfy those of others. With the deconstruction of traditional gender roles, Feminism has allowed us to emphasize the importance of taking care of ourselves and being a network of support and care among ourselves, explains specialist Camila Pardo.

“Whether we are friends or not so much, there is this spirit that in another woman I can find empathy and even protection because I can identify with her pain. SO, The banal stereotypes with which we traditionally tried to associate the bond between women, such as rivalry, envy or competition, were left aside and the idea of ​​being a tribe took on importance. accompanying each other and going through difficult stages together, building relationships without judging each other, lowering our own standards and questioning the expectations that others have of us,” explains Pardo.

Likewise, feminism keeps us connected, explains psychologist Silvana Rivas. “It opens our eyes to show us the pitfalls to which we are exposed, it saves us because it shows us how we can build a fabric that remains solid over time. That’s why I think Many women feel that it is their friends who have saved them in many aspects of their lives. They are partly the ones who give them meaning and give them hope that they can belong to a place of dignity, love and respect,” Rivas explains.

Just as women are socialized to care, be helpful and obedient, the patriarchal code also attempts to dissolve our closeness to other women. Above all, it teaches us to compare and evaluate ourselves based on what we are seen, chosen and beautiful, explains the feminist psychologist. “Thus, we learned to accept violence towards others, we learned to speak ill of our own bodies and those of others. There is a contradiction between what we are supposed to do according to the socialization we have had in life as a woman and what we really want to do according to our own desires and feelings and this is, from my point of view, fragmentation that we struggle with because it affects when we form connections and close relationships with other women,” she says.

Although it is increasingly questioned, the hierarchy of our ties often follows traditional patterns which place the couple and the family in a central space and relegate friendships to second place because they are not “so important”. According to psychologist and coach Camila Pardo, “Friendships often fall into a space that is taken more “for granted” because of the weight of history they have in our lives. And this makes them relationships that we sometimes pay less attention to because we have the impression that they flow on their own, when that is not necessarily the case. When this is the scenario and there start to be ruptures or distances due to different circumstances, it often happens that things simply become diluted, leaving a feeling of confusion, emptiness or lack of clarity,” explains -he.

When we give as much space and importance to our friendships as we do to our partner, we don’t lose ourselves or the opportunity to connect with those spaces that only exist when we let others into our world with respect , tenderness and love, adds Rivas. “If there’s anything that happens when women begin to connect with others through visibility and validation, it’s the willingness to support each other. And we stand together and identify the violence to which we are exposed. We are aware that we are facing someone who deserves care because we know the history that precedes us,” he says.

The love that is built in friendship between women can become extremely deep and meaningful in our lives, experts agree. “It’s a warm place of refuge where you can rest in complete safety. There we manage to use tenderness as a valid form of expression of affection and we establish relationships with our friends of intimacy and depth,” explains the feminist psychologist.

With the same seriousness and commitment we have when we are in a stable relationship, those who decide to give their friends a prominent place in their lives should take the time to ask themselves if they are on the same page wave as to what they expect from the other. relationship. “There’s not just one way to be friends. The important thing is that the way we agree between us suits us both. And that when some things start to break down, we will be able to have the opportunity to talk about it, to discuss how we feel about it and to be able to make the decisions that we need to make. explains Camila Pardo.

If we don’t and feel unable to have these difficult conversations, our relationships become more superficial, Pardo adds. “When we fall into relationships that lack these types of conversations, we build spaces that don’t feel completely safe to show our vulnerability and instead take care of ourselves in front of the other. Feeling that I am not myself, that I am not showing myself as I am or that I am not fully known, can lead us to feel more distant from others, or even to feel greater loneliness. she says. By speaking, on the other hand, “I give others the opportunity to know better and more deeply who I am and what is happening to me,” adds the psychologist and coach.

As a strategy for daring and doing it, Rivas recommends, it helps to think of yourself as your own friend and ask yourself: How would you listen to yourself? How would you act if you saw yourself in difficulty? How would you welcome yourself? “The idea of ​​this exercise is to look at how you judge yourself and where the barriers that prevent you from showing yourself come from,” she concludes.