Building friendship in a relationship is one of the significance way to ensure a healthy relationship. Friendship has a very significant role to play in every relationship or marriage.
Who can be regarded as a friend? Someone you can comfortably share your sad and happy moment with because they are always ready to listen to you at every point.
Someone you’re free with, you can play with them, gist with them, and vibe with them, irrespective of the age differences between you both or your status.
Someone you can share your secret with and they won’t judge you, irrespective of how dark and horrible it is.
Someone willing to support and defend you at every given time.
Someone who understands your weak point and wouldn’t abandon you or judge you for that. This is what friendship is all about, including this to a relationship will be regarded as a full package.
Unfortunately, not every relationship can boast of this. Having a relationship is not a guarantee that friendship will be involved. Some relationship are just mere transactions, just two people with ulterior motives,and once the benefits which was their main purpose of being together stops coming forth, the relationship will dissolve ASAP.
Marriage is not an exception too, after marital vows, a lot of couples start living as flat mates, the only thing that seems to bind them both is intimacy. Aside intimacy, their union is like a mere fulfillment of conjugal right, where both acts like strangers who are just living and doing things together but no bond of any sort.
Significance of friendship in a relationship.
It creates bond and connection.
Does sex create emotional connection ? This is one of the controversial questions young people ask on daily basis, some folks insists that without sex, a relationship can never exist, let alone marriage.
But let’s consider this scenario. A man is sexually aroused, he has no serious partner, but ladies he flirts around with. He calls one of them to help him satisfy his sexual needs, after the act, would you insinuate that an emotional bond or connection had been created, Absolutely not!!!
Another scenario is a relationship between two people, where both neither sit down to engage in a mutual conversation about their personal lives, or at least communicate via phone. But only make out time for intimacy.
In other words, both have little knowledge or no knowledge about their personal traits. Since they haven’t discussed much about themselves or even engage in physical play where teasing of each other could be exhibited, it will be hard to figure out their temperaments,and other hidden flaws.
But when friendship is present, you spend more time discovering vital informations about one another as that will determine your tendency in being with them or not.
This is also applicable in marriage, some married couples are more concerned about achieving orgasm than emotional connection which can be developed by bonds. You can’t tell your partner’s favorite food, their best color, their utmost goals, but you can readily describe the color of their undies.
This is a great error. I’m not ruling out the importance of sexual compatibility in marriage. However, the major goal is to achieve all. (Friendship, emotional connection and sexual compatibilities).
it brings about compatibility.
Friendship in a relationship helps to build compatibility. Which is one of the vital criteria before choosing a life partner. Compatibility paves way for understanding. You can’t establish a healthy relationship with someone you ain’t compatible with. People who ignorantly got married to incompatible partners can’t stop regretting because they always have one issues to deal with, most times, they can’t go a day without having to settle one difference or the other.
Compatibility helps to create not just emotional bond but also sexual compatibility..you wonder why some couple loose sexual attraction few years in their marriage. This is because they rushed into marriage without taking their time to know their compatibility level and probably build friendship. They assume that the euphoria they get from their romantic feeling is just enough, and when this feeling begins to wane off, they will become less attractive to each other.
It helps detect true love.
Friendship in a relationship is necessary as it helps to know wheather the love is genuine or not. These days when people fake love just to accomplish their selfish purpose. Most men are actually infatuated using love as a bait to lure gullible ladies to bed and then jilting them afterwards.
Building friendship will help you know when a man wants to take an advantage of you. When people are genuinely interested to have a future with you, they won’t be in a hurry to sleep with you. Knowing every details about you will be their priority before anything else. But when reverse is the case, intimacy always comes first, and that is how to know they ain’t genuine. Friendship in a relationship plays a vital role in this aspect.
It boosts self confidence.
There’s is this excitement and confidence that occurs when two people are genuinely in love with each other, and are equally free around each other.
Knowing that you’re with someone who appreciates your self worth, and makes you comfortable around them gives a special kind of vibe. It is an energy booster. You don’t have to be scared of being judged by any secret you share with them, their words of affirmation a midst of your flaws and shortcomings brings about stability of the mind. This can only be possible when there’s friendship in the relationship.
it helps to maintain the spark.
It is often said that familiarity breeds contempt, there’s no doubt about this. We’ve often seen cases where a relationship began with mutual love and attraction, but along the line, one or both began to fall out of love.. It happens on regular basis, this is because the couples rushed to have their emotional needs satisfied,till they’ve exhausted every source of attraction. they had nothing else to spice up the relation, causing the feelings to wane off quickly. This does not pertain to only relationships but marriage too.
Here’s a typical scenario. Couple A is celebrating their golden jubilee. While couple B is at the verge of divorce. Now comparing these two couples some people will assume that couple b weren’t in love or had probably fallen out love.
Some people will conclude that couple B never courted before getting married. But these may not be the case, sometimes people separate not because they were never in love, but because they stopped initiating that which previously brought them together. Those are elements of friendship.
So how can couples build this friendship in a relationship?
How to build friendship in a relationship.
start off as friends
This may sound weird, but that’s basically the truth. The best type of relationship is the one which began on the basis of friendship. In such kind of relationship, trust, understanding, transparency, and compatibility will no longer be a challenge, because they’ve been developed through friendship.
I know how excited you’re Finding your spec , someone who seems to share similar emotional connection with you. I know how eager and excited you are to say yes to that man you find attractive and who happens to share similar goals and interest with you, but I”ll advise you to take it one step at a time. If you wish to have your relationship first, tell them you want a friendship first. If they truly love you, they”ll understand and work it out together with you. You need to form that bond first through friendship and every other thing will follow thus.
Don’t rush to intimacy.
Unfortunately, some people can still start up as friends, and end up becoming intimate.
A situation which is often regarded as “Friends with benefits” the essence of avoiding intimacy at the early stage of the relationship is to focus more in enhancing other vital aspects of the relationship, And to be certain there’s mutual feeling.
Like I earlier explained, sometimes it’s difficult to identify true love when intimacy is present. So the absence of it will always make it vivid. To develop friend in a relationship, it’s best to focus on understanding individuals personality than rushing to be intimate.
Give each other space .
Pope get easily bored when they have to keep up with the same routine over and over again, no matter how excited they were initially to start itup, This is nature playing its role and relationship is not an exception to this phenomenon.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder,even in friendship people can still get bored with each other If their space and freedom is constantly restricted.
In the bid to build friendship, you need to avoid being too clingy. Friends are always around each other, but never chokes each other. Spend time like you can’t get enough of each other, but accord them their personal space to focus on their own individual activity when necessary. It makes the friendship more stronger.
Engage in fun activities.
To build friendship in a relationship, engage in other activities like hanging out often, and not just discussion. This is also recommended for married couples, who might have been loosing spark in their marriage. Sometimes, spend time outside the home. It rekindle the excitement that once existed during the the honeymoon phase in marriage.
communicate regularly.
One of the major significance of friendship is regular communication. Even in long distance Relationship, friends talk to each other on regular basis. Communication offers you the opportunity to bond especially when distance seems to be the barrier, or when you both are overwhelmed with your daily hustles to meet up physically.
