To what extent should you listen to friends?

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Learning to be your own person

If you have read the question above what would probably be your answer? Every time?  A little bit? or never!! Majority would choose the ‘a little bit’ answer and realistically speaking, they would be lying to themselves.

So to what extent should your friends’ opinions really matter to you?

Truth be told, we do listen to what our friends tell us a lot because over time we have learnt to trust their judgments and opinions, nothing beyond that really matters. But have you at one time in your life regretted listening to your friend? It might have been an opinion you asked about a dress/tie you liked and they thought it was a ‘tad’ tight fitting or ‘colorful’. What about the club in town that you really liked to go and have a good time at? Too ‘old-fashioned’ they said. So you ended up transforming into this little individual molded by the opinions and suggestions of others.

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Okay okay, so clothes and food weren’t that important to you. Fine, you can live with that .As time passes by, you mature and it reaches a point in your life that you have to find that special someone who will “sort of” replace your close if not best friend. The daily Friday night affair with them is quickly replaced by steamy and irresistible indoor supper/movie nights with your spouse…emphasis on irresistible.

It gets “sweet”, the first few weeks you miss shopping or hanging out with the boys to spend a little time on romance. Little by little, positive observations about your spouse are replaced with snide remarks about how ‘different’ they have made you become.

A point comes when you are forced to choose between your spouse and your friend/s. Who will it be? You have survived the clothes, the food, the clubs, but do you have the strength to let your ‘potential’ go?

He wasn’t good enough for you. She had bad hair…those will be some of the excuses you will give yourself once you give in to such pressure. But I want you to put it on pause for just a little bit.

We all need friends to keep us in check and warn us if we are actually absolutely making big idiots of ourselves. They play a very important part in our daily lives but do you also have a tendency of listening to everything they say? Take for example the spouse issue. Nature dictates that we don’t have the same tastes and preferences; therefore it’s very normal that your friend will at one time not like how your better half looks like physically. Do not let their opinions change how you feel about the person, long noses do actually look sexy, and besides, you saw beyond the nose.

Moreover, you may never know that the sudden negativity on your friends’ side may be spurred on by jealousy. Haven’t you ever had of best friends riding off with the love of your life into the horizon? True story I tell you, and you wonder how that happened, hmmmph!

The key words here should be ‘be firm’, nobody likes an indecisive person. If you like the dress/tie and you doubt the opinion of your friend, ask another person and finally make a conclusive decision. Same thing goes for career choices or life changing situations. It’s wise to seek more than an opinion of one person if you want to be fair to yourself.

Balance is very important though and you may without any ill will, irritate your friends with the continuous dotting of your spouse. Learn to be considerate of both sides’ feelings and be fair in the time distribution to avoid any resentment. After all, you wouldn’t like it if it was you on the receiving end.

If you have been living under the shadow of your friend, try and break away from it. Everybody has a unique personality that they should strive to cultivate and nurture. You do not have to become a photocopy of someone else, be the original.

 

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