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Initiative in friendships: Some options, including vulnerability

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 27 2017

Initiative in friendships: Some options, including vulnerability

My mother, an expert in friendship, takes initiative to reach out in some form to one or more friends almost every day of her life. Initiative however takes many forms, and we need to think creatively about it.

When I think of taking initiative in friendships, I think first of asking people to do things with me: have a meal at a restaurant or at my home, have coffee and talk, go to a movie, go for a walk. I also think of forms of initiative that involve communication: picking up the phone to make a call, sending an email or a Facebook message, or writing a card.

When I asked Clare, eighteen, what she believed to be the best advice about nurturing friendships, she said, “Stay in close touch. Stay connected.” She talked about all the acts of initiative she engages in with her friends. She tries to send frequent text messages, and she interacts often on Facebook by posting comments about her friends’ photos, links and updates. She views those acts of connection as the foundation for good conversations when she sees her friends face-to-face.

Roberta, in her forties, brought up another form of initiative: “I have trouble talking honestly about what I’m thinking and feeling. I know it has had a significant impact on my ability to make friends. I always appreciate it when others show vulnerability in a conversation, because it helps me get over the hurdle of talking honestly.”

I’ve noticed that if I share some small vulnerability with someone I’d like to get to know better, they often respond by sharing something that matters to them as well. I might talk about something that’s making me sad, something that’s worrying me or something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I save my deep feelings of sadness or worry for my husband or my close friends, who I know I can trust to listen with sensitivity to what I’m feeling. With people who I don’t know as well, I share feelings that are real but not particularly deep.

Part of that sharing is a bit of a test. I watch to see how they will respond. If they are able to enter into what I feel, and perhaps later share feelings of their own, I have some optimism that we might become deeper friends. I also see that sharing as an act of love, giving them the unspoken message that I’d be happy to listen to them talk about what they’re thinking and feeling. They may not want me to listen to their inner concerns in that moment, but my openness extends an invitation for later conversations.

Have you ever thought about vulnerability about your own life as a form of initiative? It would be worth spending some time pondering the patterns of vulnerability in conversations that you have observed in your own life:

  • What kinds of vulnerability in conversations did you see modeled in your childhood by your parents and extended family members?
  • Do you think you tend to be too vulnerable or not vulnerable enough in conversations?

(Next week: a story of a time I took initiative with a friend, and the amazing thing that happened. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column. Illustration by Dave Baab.This post is excerpted from my book Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World.)

Previous posts in this series:

      Initiative in friendships   
      What Mary might have missed   
      Obstacles in taking initiative       
      Overcoming fear         
      Different ways of initiating          

Here's article you might enjoy where I wrote about the ways our own agendas can impede our listening, something that impeded vulnerability:
      Letting go of agendas so we can listen to God and others



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