Friday 30-07-2021 - 13:31

Let me begin by saying I am not a social butterfly, nor do I have 1000 friends on Facebook. I am not a professional in the making of friends and I certainly wasn’t the popular girl at school. Hah.

What I can offer to you though are some tips on building and maintaining relationships with people (from my own experience). I’m thirty years old so I’ve learnt a thing or two at least!

1. Take initiative

So you got chatting to someone new and they seem kind of ok. Your type of person. They said the other day that they love polaroid pictures and you can completely relate to that as an artsy-type. The ball is officially in nobodies court here so my suggestion is that YOU ask if they are free anytime soon and if they would like to meet up irl. Who knows? If you have a good time then you set something else up afterwards.

2. Ask them questions

Sounds a bit obvious.. right? But I’ll be the first to admit I’ve left a conversation with someone and realised I haven’t learnt a single thing about them. Oh dear. Well the quick solution to this is to ask people questions about themselves and find out what makes them tick. Try and ask open ended questions that allow for something different to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response. For example; What are your plans this summer?

3. Know your limits

Don’t drink! No - this isn’t what I mean. What I mean by ‘know your limits’ is simply about knowing what’s realistic with how much time you can dedicate to meet up with people around other responsibilities you may have. If meeting someone once a week isn’t doable for you then that’s ok. Having some consistency when catching up with friends really does make a difference though!

 

So there we are. I hope the pointers above prove to be valuable in some way to you. Happy International Day of Friendship!

 

Written by Elissa Baxter, Digital, Design and Communications Coordinator

 

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