Some may be surprised, but communicating with friends also implies following certain rules. The sooner a person masters them, the better his relationships with others will develop.
It is believed that the rules of communication with friends should be clear on an intuitive level, but practice proves the opposite. Very often a person suffers from his own loneliness, sincerely wondering why people avoid him. There can be many reasons. Many people tend not to notice their own shortcomings and ignore other people’s comments, considering them unfounded. But the problem of communication exists, moreover, it is becoming relevant and widespread.
Neither a friend nor an enemy, but just like that
There is a category of people who have absolutely no need for communication. Misanthropes, hermits, introverts - these are just a few of the epithets that are awarded to those who prefer complete solitude to a noisy company. But there are only a few of them, and the majority of the population experiences a certain discomfort due to the lack of live communication. To improve the situation, you need to master the rules of communication with friends. At this stage it is worth asking a number of questions:
1) Am I a good friend?
2) Will I come to the rescue of a loved one if he asks for help?
3) Do I offend people with words or deeds?
4) Am I tactful enough?
5) Can I have a competent, constructive conversation?
6) Am I a sufficiently erudite and comprehensively developed person to be of interest to others?
Honest answers to these simple questions will paint a clear picture.
Cool topics to talk to your friend about
Also, only a true friend can show you, when you are already going off scale, exactly what is wrong with you. And he will do it in a good, kind way, well, at least he will try very hard to do it as delicately as possible.
Because if he continues to screw up further in such serious things. And the people with whom you go through life in the same bundle, whom you understand, are people. And each of us sometimes makes mistakes - that’s normal.
But sometimes it reaches the point of insanity, and in such cases the person needs to be helped to look at himself. It is important to maintain friendship at the same time: do it kindly, and not devalue the person. And a true friend will do this.
For example, in some cases, a person’s socks stink so much that you can simply walk on a bear with them, as in that joke about Vasily Ivanovich and Petka. Vasily Ivanovich once says to Petka: “Listen, boy, if you shoot boomerangs at ducks with my socks again, then I’ll go at a bear with your tie - just know that!”
And if you are no longer sick of his sock cologne, then why not say so. In a good way: “Bro, there is a good product that you can use to wash your socks. It always helps me - try it” - advise like this, give him a bar of soap. And so, you stroke, he will then guide others on the true path in terms of cleanliness and hygiene.
And someone who is indifferent to the fate of his friend will not do this. He will look: he will see the joint and will not tell him about it. This is the last bullshit - it’s very bad to do this. Of course, some things are not important, but to hell with them. And if you see that you can help a person become better, help him.
This is not an easy topic to talk about with a friend, of course. This requires a certain worldly experience and wisdom. And sometimes it doesn’t require it. The main thing is that your intentions are pure. You shouldn't poke a person into his own shit. Show him the place, show him the shit, show him carefully, without pushing him, and then he can really understand that he did something wrong here.
Secrets of Friendship
As a rule, friendship begins in early childhood, and if you are lucky, it lasts throughout your life. Such relationships are not interrupted, even if people move to different cities and start families. This is what we should strive for.
So, there is one wrong position: everyone should perceive me as I am. This is the greatest misconception. A person must strive for the ideal all his life, engage in self-education, listen to criticism and draw conclusions. A personality cannot be at one stage; it either develops or degrades. Of course, everyone wants to see in their circle of friends those people who are trying to become kinder, smarter, more educated. A good example is contagious. If you have the desire, then it’s time to move on to practical advice. The rules for communicating with friends are:
1) Listen. Perhaps this is the main rule. Not every person is able to show sincere interest in the story of the interlocutor.
2) Don't be silent. Of course, it’s not worth interrupting and inserting a similar story, but making relevant and intelligent comments is not only possible, but also necessary.
3) Give advice with caution. Perhaps the interlocutor is waiting for them, but is it worth taking on such responsibility? After all, in the end you can remain guilty.
4) Friends meet to spend time together. The key word is “together.” That’s why you shouldn’t hide in a corner with your phone and look gloomily at your comrades who are distracting you from your favorite toy with conversations.
What to talk about with long-time acquaintances
- If you had a superpower, what would it be?
- You won a large sum, what would you spend it on?
- The most useful mobile apps
- Attitudes towards various conspiracy theories
- Gender equality, feminism
- Body positivity
- Childfree
- If you had a time machine, where would you go together?
- Who dreamed about what in childhood, what does he dream about now?
- Is friendship possible between a man and a woman?
- Is it possible to be friends with exes, the attitude of current partners towards this friendship
If all the obvious topics have already been exhausted, you can look for something original. To do this, download the Avgvst cards application to your phone, where cards with questions on various topics are collected.
Launch the application and start playing. There is a deck about investments (check out our guide for a novice investor to stay up to date), there is one about art, cinema, beauty, and even about the secrets of Moscow. Of course, we couldn’t do without a deck about sex - it’s called “Questions about pleasure, body and love. Each card contains a question that perhaps none of you have directly answered before.
appstore
Basic Etiquette
Every person is familiar with the basic rules of etiquette. But theoretical knowledge and applying it in practice are not the same thing. The rules of communicating with friends are a whole science that every person who is tired of loneliness has to master. Friendly etiquette says that you cannot:
1) Putting a friend in an awkward position. This means that it is strictly forbidden to ask for a loan from someone who is overly frugal or to demand speed from someone who is slow.
2) Make difficult requests. Your friend will feel guilty because he is unable to help.
3) Ask for help too often. Sooner or later, such regularity will begin to get boring, and the person will try to stop communicating, believing that he is being used.
4) Making promises and not keeping them. Such actions make you disappointed in your friend.
When a friend dumps you
A completely different situation, which, of course, is also very painful: your friend or girlfriend breaks up with you. The pain is different and you may feel helpless and abandoned. You wonder why the person did this. You look for flaws in yourself, in him. If you don't understand the reasons for this decision: ask him! Ask him to have an honest conversation so that you both can better cope with the situation and get rid of the heartache faster.
Longing for intimacy is probably one of the most difficult feelings. Of course, first of all we are talking about love, but often breaks occur between friends, relatives, even colleagues. And they are not always easy to move. Unfortunately, this is also part of life. The time after separation is divided into 4 phases, which everyone should go through at least once in their life:
- negation
- rage
- grief
- Adoption
Depending on the type and reason of separation, the duration can be very different. It is important that you allow this to happen and take the time to process the pain of separation. Often it can also help to confide in another person, such as a loved one, mom or dad.
It is important not to delve into yourself too much after a breakup, but to continue meeting with friends to have positive thoughts. Sports, music and reading can also be great distractions. But don't worry too much, even if it may seem like a problem at first.
Every phase ends eventually, and how quickly it ends depends entirely on your attitude. In the end, grievances will be forgotten, only good memories will remain.
Virtual world
The Internet has firmly entered the life of every person and has become an integral part of it. Social networks are replacing face-to-face communication, so it is not surprising that there are rules for online communication with friends.
The first and main commandment is: you must respond to messages sent by friends. Sometimes people online choose to ignore them. Here we need to make a small digression and imagine such a situation. Two friends met:
- Hello.
- Hello.
- How are you doing?
The interlocutor did not answer anything; he silently turned around and left. Silent scene. This is what silence looks like on the Internet.
Also, do not send cheerful and funny pictures to your friend. Never. Perhaps this is very funny and interesting, but suddenly the person is busy or simply not in the mood. He will have to make an effort to respond to this meaningless message.
In the modern world, a fashionable habit that you need to eradicate in yourself is to answer with abbreviations. For example, “thank you” instead of “thank you”, “plz” instead of “please”. The Russian language is beautiful and rich. It is much more pleasant to communicate with a person who speaks it perfectly, rather than having difficulty connecting two words into a sentence and being frighteningly tongue-tied.
The friendliest people in the world
And, of course, friendship is very valuable. Friendship is especially valued in Russia. All those who speak Russian know what it is. And the point is not that we have bitter frosts here. And everyone knows that you cannot survive in severe frost alone. But that's not the point.
Because if you look at the forests, if you look at our trees, they are all very young - most of the forests in our country were planted by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. And people who know say that in Russia we don’t have trees older than 200 years. Just not there.
Although, an oak tree, for example, lives for 1500 years. And the same pines and fir trees - for 500 years they have no problem growing and not withering away. This suggests that about 200 years ago something serious happened on our territory in Russia. And before that there were no such frosts, there were no frosts at all.
The history of the Russians and Slavs is measured in tens of thousands of years: throughout the land of our ancestors they find pyramids and other structures no weaker than the Egyptian ones. That is, it’s probably not a matter of frost after all.
And we are still together, we still do not offend different peoples, people and territories still join us not because of our aggression, no. They themselves are drawn to us because it is safe, profitable and simply comfortable for them to live with us.
We do not have colonies, like, for example, England or France. And the same bourgeois colonial slave-owning world collapsed as a result of our victory in the Great Patriotic War. This all shows that we know how to be friends, we can live peacefully with different nations, with completely different people.
For example, my friend went to China and made friends with a local Chinese there. He helped him, and he helped him: they became friends. What's so-and-so about this? Well, a Chinese person is also a person. And, as Exupery writes: And for you I will become not just any fox, but your special fox. So this Chinese man became his real friend.
Problems with relationships with classmates
The years of study are remembered with warmth and tenderness. Every person sooner or later thinks about the distant time when he was a carefree schoolboy. But nostalgia will come decades later, but in the meantime there may be problems in relationships with peers.
The rules of communication with classmates will help you avoid them. The catchphrase is appropriate here: treat people the way you want them to treat you. This means not giving offensive nicknames, laughing at physical disabilities, or being disrespectful or rude. These banal truths need to be learned; they will help build harmonious relationships with society.
What to talk about with a girl
Women love when people are interested in them. Therefore, turning a conversation into a self-presentation is not the best idea, unless, of course, you are a show business star and the girl is not in seventh heaven with the opportunity to touch your fame. You can talk about anything with girls, but try to unobtrusively find out the topics that are most interesting to her, then the conversation will probably go more cheerfully. Try to ask open-ended questions—those that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” If you just met, you have literally 5-10 minutes to interest a new friend, there may not be a second chance. Therefore, we have sketched out a vector for you to develop the conversation, and then you can improvise yourself. And, by the way, it’s best to start a conversation with a compliment - this will endear your interlocutor to you and she’ll be more willing to continue the conversation.
- Where does he study or work?
- What does he like to do in his free time?
- How much time does study and work take?
- Where was I born and raised?
- Memories from childhood
- Favorite cartoons, movies from childhood
- Are there any brothers or sisters
- Where she likes to vacation, what countries and cities she has visited
- Where does one dream to go?
- When it's her birthday, how does it usually go?
- Do you like active recreation: hiking, cycling, skiing, etc.
- What was your favorite recent movie or TV series?
- The main goal in life at the moment
- What kind of music does he listen to?
- I could give up gadgets for a week
- What language would you like to learn?
- Does she believe in fate or karma
- M+F What to talk about on the first date: a selection of non-trivial questions that you can ask a girl A list of cute and original ways to start a dialogue when meeting a girl for the first time.
Is it possible to lie to friends?
Some people will probably be surprised, but sometimes you can lie to your friends. The rules of correct communication say that you must always remain an honest and sincere person, but no one has canceled the concept of “white lies.”
So in what situations is guile acceptable? A lie is justified when the truth can lead to unpleasant consequences or even tragedy. For example, an unattractive girl asks: “Am I ugly?” Is it possible to answer this question in the affirmative? Truth-lovers, of course, will say that it is always necessary to speak only the truth. But does the person asking such a question want the truth? Also, lying is justified when it comes to saving life, dignity and honor.
How much you need to talk is important to know!
So it turns out that you become not just two goofballs, but a real team that is moving towards its goal. It's tough. This is a very cool thing. Real teams, they went precisely towards their goal and became teams.
The crew on the ship, before the storm, is not a crew. That's when she goes through a storm, when they are mercilessly bludgeoned all together. And when they gain this sense of elbow, they will become one. And the result is a Russian army, a Russian invincible fleet. When you know that your friend has your back. And they will give everything for him, including their lives.
This happens in the course of achieving some very important goals. They are striving for something: they are protecting someone or they want to do something, for example, go on a motorcycle trip. As you remember, bikers opened the Crimean Bridge - this was before Putin drove a KAMAZ there.
First, at night, bikers from both sides rode across this bridge and met. My friend the builder, Uncle Seryozha, he whistles awesome - Nightingale was rocking there, filming how these bikers gathered there on that bridge that he and other specialists built. Cool!
These people are united by a common goal, their moral spirit is lifted. And this is how true friends are born when they achieve something together. And then they always have more than enough to talk about. They don't have such a problem finding a topic. There is no need to force something like that out of yourself. And even they can just sit together without saying anything. They just feel good because they have a friend nearby.
How to become a good friend?
French writer Michel de Montaigne said: “In friendship there is no other calculation than itself.” So why is it sometimes difficult for a kind and open person to communicate with people?
The rules of successful communication will help change the situation for the better. And if the standard norms of dialogue and behavior are known to every person from early childhood, then more subtle nuances can become an amazing discovery. Psychological rules of communication are a panacea for the loneliness that weighs on the soul:
- Sharpening your communication skills will help you overcome a communication barrier.
- Control over your own emotions is something that you need to develop in yourself.
- Observation will allow you to adapt to your interlocutor, this guarantees maximum benefit from communication.
- The ability to select a topic is the key to success. If we look at a simple example, then a person with three higher educations, talking with a simple worker, will not start talking about Barrow’s theorem or about modern research in the field of genetics. Unfamiliar topics will confuse the participant in the dialogue, and he will become embarrassed.
- The sweetest word for any person is his own name. During communication, you should not depersonalize your interlocutor; you should address him by name.
- A friendly smile works wonders.
I don't understand what you're doing
A friend who is unlike you will show you the best simple thing in the world: how not to pester others with your ideas about how to carry out existence - and not to take other people’s ideas. Complete spiritual abstinence. Once you master this, you will easily cope with colleagues, old women in line, Vedic women, drug addicts, long-distance runners, and even maybe your grandmother (although I can’t promise the latter).
Yes, sometimes you will want to scream. That is, your best friend takes a loan from you at dawn, because he has completely run out of money, and you haven’t completely run out of money yet. You sigh. And you give the money. He doesn’t have them at all, but you still have them. Then a friend takes and spends this money on a manicure. For an erotic massage. Buys a bulldog puppy. Or a steamer. Do you really want to shout: “It means I gave up on my plans to heal caries, because it’s not such an urgent expense, unlike an idiotic manicure?” Then you inhale, exhale and say: “Listen, friend, this is... uh...let's go to the park tomorrow for a walk."
This is a very useful exercise for humility. Brilliant. Other people are not you and will never be you, and you cannot control them, although sometimes you fucking dream of getting guardianship over them. Just take them and love them.
Maybe my best friend wants to scream every time I start writing down expenses, but she doesn't say anything. Kindly. If my friend can do it, so can you.
