It’s like the older we get, the more gobsmackingly appreciative we become of the slightest form of human decency we can get. It just has me wondering why the hell that is? Why is it so frigging hard to make genuine friends in your adulthood or maintain sustainable and sincere relationships with other human beings? Whatever happened to making an army of genuine friends at the playground after sharing an imaginary bowl of sand soup with some appetizing stones?
To say I can’t think of a number of reasons why this is so, would be a flat out lie. As a matter of fact, I thought of 6 reasons why starting and maintaining relationships in our adulthood can be so hard and when I say relationships, I mean relationships with friends, a prospective partner and even family. In this article I will be calling everyone out with my full chest. If you feel attacked in the below points, you need to do better sis!
- The Eye Twitching Combo of Critic and Hypocrite:
I don’t know how people manage to pull this one off but this has to be one thing that makes me take off running when I’m trying to make solid friendships. The only thing you’re doing by boasting about values you don’t have, judging people for things you do and criticizing everything that so much as breathes, is giving people strong reasons not to relate with you in case you don’t know.
People in this category are the most unpleasable and exasperating. If this is you, introspection should be something you do every day. Learn how to be more appreciative, practice thinking about your attitude and actions before calling out other people on theirs.
Relating with people that fall under this category can turn you into a perpetual steam engine. African mothers are notoriously known to be too hard to please, on behalf of the very displeased association of daughters and sons, I charge you to do better.
- The Loose Lips That Need Clips Gang:
Would it kill you to keep a secret?
Not being able to keep secrets as an adolescent is an excusable offence, but big aunties and uncles like you running your mouth at any given opportunity, grow tf up.
If this is you, you always happen to find out gist about your friends from other friends because your own close friends no longer trust you as a confidante. Funny how the people that fall in this category are tight lipped with their own secrets, but loose lipped with everybody else’s.
If you understand that your secrets need to be kept safe and not that of the people in your life then I beg you to do better. You don’t want to be that person everyone distrusts and steers clear of and if you already are, you have a lot of making up to do. And the same goes for favors! Doing people favors and broadcasting it everywhere is not cool.
- The Receivers and Rarely Givers:
Some of you are too stingy, to put it plainly.
If you don’t feel uncomfortable with always receiving in your relationships and never or rarely giving then shame on you. Some of you have rare gems for friends that would go out of their way to do something nice for you or give you nice things, but when it’s time for you to give them something, you get them cheap and shameful items.
For instance; Chichi, your close friend got you a nice Tom Ford perfume for your birthday but when her own birthday came around, all you sent her was a ”heartfelt” birthday message. Is that friendship?
It’s one thing not to have, that’s excusable. But if you have and you still pull these stunts, that’s too bad now. These are behaviors that frustrate the kindness out of people. Go out of your way to do something nice for the people in your life, trust me you would feel great about it.
Stop intentionally giving crumbs to people who give you full loaves of bread.
- Our Beloved and Proud Egoists:
Nigerian daddies and boyfriends have broken this table.
In my opinion, it’s mostly men that are in this category. Some of you would rather let your relationship get to shit before you admit you were wrong or say a simple apology and I just can’t understand it!
Your ego is holding you back from having a sincere relationship because you just cant help asserting your superiority over your partner and sooner or later, he or she is going to get fed up of always letting you have your own way and japa. You never think of how your actions make people feel and always see the faults in everybody else but yourself.
You’re going to have to stop seeing yourself as better than everyone, I know it’s hard but you’re hurting everyone around you and yourself. You don’t have to dive into apologizing, if you feel you aren’t there yet, a simple admittance would do. To people who aren’t used to hearing apologies from you, an admittance of a wrong doing from you is as good as an apology. You can work your way up to apologizing from there.
- Spearheads of Unhealthy Competitions:
You people know yourselves. You’re always itching to rub your accomplishments in the faces of those friends you know are not really doing too well. Your mock sympathy is really not doing anybody a favor to be honest.
You purposely withhold tangible help because you can’t stand the thought of your friends getting ahead. We see you crystal clear and shame on you! Nigerian parents are not excluded from this, every time you play your children off against other people’s kids or one another, you do some serious behavioral damage.
Stop turning everything to a 100 meter dash, you may not realize it but you’re pushing the people in your life into destructive situations and states of mind. If you love to compete so much why not look for willing and capable participants? Stop floundering around weak people that you know you can easily assert your dominance over.
- The Perpetual Nay Sayers:
Now we all have a little cynic in us, but some of us have it more than others.
Some people are just gifted in talking fear into any and every plan you can think of, myself included. It’s honestly not our fault, we mean well, it’s just that we’ve been through bad experiences that have shaped our perspective on certain things.
We honestly need to learn how to be more trusting and stop imposing our fears on others. We also need to appreciate the fearless souls in our lives that are not afraid to take risks and occasionally and annoyingly push us out out of our comfort zones.
Damn! I even caught my own sub in here. No one’s perfect but we can always do better.
