Okay. Let’s talk about friendships.

Sometimes I think friendships are the Little Relationships That Could. They’re the relationships in your life that—if you’re like a lot of people—are the easiest to take for granted. It’s like they don’t get no respect. If you’re in any of the stages of a romantic/partnered relationship, whether you’re just getting started, enjoying the early bonding stages, adjusting to changes, managing crises, or breaking up, everyone assumes that you need lots of space and time to work on this most important relationship in your life. If you’re a parent, an adult child of an aging parent, a co-worker, or a sibling, you can count on most people giving you plenty of room to tend to those relationships. But try getting bereavement leave to attend a friend’s funeral, or family medical leave to help care for a friend who’s ill—ain’t gonna happen. And it’s all too common to move through your life and find out too late that a friendship that was important to you has fallen by the wayside.

Right now, in my own life, I’ve been focusing on my friendships quite a bit. I think one big reason for this is that I don’t have co-workers, at least in my job as a business owner and therapist. (I do consulting and training work, and in that arena I have both a BFF-colleague and a mentor-colleague, and I have a great time!) But most days, it’s just me and my clients. I love working with my clients! But between sessions, I can’t roam the office and shoot the breeze with the receptionist—something I loved to do at Group Health—because, well, I don’t have a receptionist. So I’ve noticed that my friendships have become much more important.

But I wish it didn’t take special circumstances like this for me to focus more closely on my friendships. I’d like to cultivate a lifestyle in which friendships are always a major dimension of my personal life. I have cultivated this lifestyle, to some extent. But I could do it with more intention and consistency.

If you’d like to do this, it might help to stop and think about your vision for friendship. What kind of friend do you want to be? What kind of friends do you want to have? I did this a few weeks ago, and here’s what I came up with:

1. If you’re a close friend of mine, I want us to make our friendship a high priority on a somewhat regular basis. I want a healthy number of phone calls, texts, lunches, and other connections. If it’s not every day, that’s fine, but it should be frequent enough that we feel pretty close to each other, and know that we’re both important to each other.

2. If we have conflict, I want us to take it seriously and work the problem. It might be overkill for us to see a therapist, but hey, why not? At the very least, we will be sure we get together to work through our problems.

3. If we drift apart, I want both of us to notice this and talk about it. Maybe you just had a baby, or maybe I’m in crisis with my family of origin, or maybe the everyday circumstances of life have eclipsed our relationship. Whatever it might be, I want us to wrestle with it, to place our relationship on the short list of high priorities in our lives. There are times when our friendship needs to take a back seat, and that’s okay. But at some point I want us to notice this, connect, and discuss what comes next for us.

4. I want us to have a lot of fun together! I want our friendship to be a wonderful gift in our lives, a reason for being alive.

That’s pretty much it! Some of my friends—many of my friends—don’t meet me on my terms as stated above. And that’s okay. But it’s important for me to have a few people in my life who share this vision. Friends matter to me.

If you’re thinking about counseling, chances are it’s because you’re struggling in a partnered relationship, or a family relationship. But don’t forget your friends: your relationships with them—for good and ill—are probably making a bigger impact on your life than you might think.

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Sometimes, you’re actively focused on a problem and successfully working on the solution. Other times, you know you have a problem, but you’re not feeling ready to act on it. And then there are times when you are suffering, but you haven’t yet brought into your own consciousness the reality of what’s going on. One way to make sense of all this—and lead yourself forward into a healthier place—is to look at the Transtheoretical Model and discern where you might fall.

It works like this. When a person has a problem, let’s say, with alcohol, she is somewhere on the following list of attitudes and behaviors in relationship with alcohol:

1. Precontemplation: she may not be admitting to herself that she has a problem, or if she is, she’s not ready to work on it.
2. Contemplation: she intends to change, and is beginning to come up with some first steps she wants to take.
3. Preparation: she’s much closer to taking action.
4. Action: she’s working the problem!
5. Maintenance: having achieved success, she’s working on preventing relapse.
6. Termination: (for the alcohol example, this does not apply) she has solved her problem and no longer needs maintenance.

This all sounds good, but it gets complicated because, even if you’re already in counseling, you may not be at the action stage. I’ve had many clients who work with me while still in the precontemplation stage. When you’re in that stage, you’re not yet serious about your problem, and perhaps in active denial about it. You may be in counseling because someone recommended it, or because you yourself have a sense that something’s wrong and you should talk to someone. But it can be a frustrating and confusing experience.

As a therapist, I’ve always believed that I need to work with my own therapist to be sure I’m focusing on my own personal issues, if only so they don’t get in the way when I’m working with my clients on theirs. And I’ve often seen myself moving through all six of these stages of change while working with a therapist. After many years of this, I’ve come to realize that it’s never over: if I’m terminating one problem, I’m in precontemplation on another issue. If I’m active and successful in one area, I’m lost in the “contemplation forest” on something else. We are dynamic, ever-changing, living beings. There’s always something coming up.

So if you’re feeling confused or frustrated, it might help to take a look at this model and see where you might fall. That insight can lead you to ask yourself, “Where should I go next?”

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I was working with a couple a few weeks ago, and we were discussing how some of their fights get out of hand. In the course of our discussion, I said something like, “So, when you can tell that the other person is about to bring the crazy, you should…” And one of them interrupted me. Laughing, she said, “Oh, I’m so glad you use the ‘crazy’ word! We had a therapist who never used words like that and thought it was offensive when we did.”

I was glad to make this personal connection with my clients, but I then reflected on why I use the word ‘crazy,’ and other slang words from our long history of marginalizing people with mental illness. Is it really okay for me to use these words? People refer to psychiatric hospitals as “funny farms,” and their words for the patients are worse. Shouldn’t I affirm the dignity of people with mental illness by not using these offensive terms?

I do want to affirm the dignity of all people, especially those who suffer serious mental and emotional problems. But I think the best way to do that is to reclaim these words and use them to describe ordinary, everyday, batsh*t-crazy behaviors that we all do…that I do. There are times (rare, I think, but you’d have to ask him) when I am acting crazy with my partner. I’m sucking my thumb (no, not literally) in a sulk about something I think he did, or I’m bringing my bad mood home, or I’m just generally being unconscious or irrational. I can go bonkers. And so can he. And so can you!

My client is right: it’s okay to use these terms, particularly if we’re trying to work on our crazy behaviors. If everyone is crazy some of the time, then no one need feel ashamed of it. We can get it out in the open and go to work on it. So here’s my question for you: are you staging a Nutty with your partner? If so, come sit by me. I’ve got some ideas about how we can shrink your head!

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As I’ve said before, John Gottman has lots of great ideas for couples who want to be happy and healthy. One of his best recommendations is to practice non-defensive listening. Problem is, non-defensive listening might be the hardest thing you’ll have to do in your relationship.

I think we’re hard-wired to be defensive. I would call it a survival skill, a relic from our evolutionary past. I need to preserve and protect myself if I want to survive long enough to procreate, and that means having strong defenses. I need to protect my resources, my shelter, my offspring…and (as human evolution creates complicated social dynamics) my reputation and self-esteem. If you’re mad at me because you think I slighted you, or was being selfish, or ate your Froot Loops, well, that’s not how I see it! So, naturally, I get defensive.

But we’re not done evolving, we humans. To listen non-defensively is another step in human development. It’s a major element of emotional maturity, and emotional maturity is a highly adaptive quality in a human being. You think I slighted you, and you know what? I can see why you think that. I was certainly not at my best when I came home last night. You think I was being selfish? Well, I think it’s true that I’ve been caught up in my own things lately. Why don’t I hit the store for more Froot Loops and we can talk more about it?

You don’t have to agree with your partner 100% when you’re practicing non-defensive listening. You don’t even have to agree 5% of the time. Your partner may be way, way off, accusing you unjustly of something you didn’t do, or think, or feel. But that’s your partner’s reality right now. It’s really helpful to hear her reality as her reality, and let her know that you understand what she’s saying. You may not agree, but you are open and available. You are listening non-defensively. And that creates an opportunity—and a motive—for your partner to listen to your reality. This is very hard! But it can transform your relationship.

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