Relationships: What Do People's Friends Reveal About Them?

When it comes to getting to know someone who has the potential to be a friend or a lover, it is not always easy. During the early interactions, there is the tendency for people to show their best selves. To present themselves in a way that is different to how they normally are or to exaggerate how they would typically behave.

And unless one has a good ability to read people, a sharp intuition or has done lot of work on themselves and therefore generally attracts healthy people; it can be a bit of a mind field.

This means that looking to others sources can lead to insight and to a better perspective on what someone is like. One of these sources is the friends that the person has.

Close Relationships

While this can relate to all of the friends that they have and spend their time with, the most important friends are typically the ones they are closest to or spend the most time with. Casual acquaintances may reveal certain pierces of information, but not as much as their closest friends.

It is these people that will often be able to shed the most light on what is going on for this person. At a level that is beyond the mask that they may wear in the very beginning and even at a level they are not aware of.

Patterns

Life is often made up of patterns and relationships are no different. When it comes to picking up on what someone is like, having the ability to recognise patterns is incredibly important. At first it may appear that there isn’t any, but after a while, they will soon start to stand out.

What then matters is one pays attention to these patterns. And this can often be easier said than done; simply because one can become caught up in the emotions of the experience and temporary lose their ability assess the situation.

This can relate to relationships with the opposite sex or the same sex, depending on one’s sexual preference, but it can also relate to potential friends. It is not just limited to encounters that have a sexual undercurrent.

Examples

So as I said above, this can relate to things that one is consciously trying to hide and even to aspects that they are not consciously aware of themselves. At a deeper level this can relate to the following areas: what they have repressed, have yet to realise and if they have good boundaries or not.

Repression

This is part of life and something everyone does to one degree or another. However, this can lead to all kinds of problems if it has taken place over many years and has involved certain painful emotions to be pushed out of one’s conscious awareness. As one of the ways this repression can show up, is in the kind of people they spend their time with.

The person may appear to not have any of these aspects and this can be the result of them either consciously hiding them in the early stages or having no awareness of them; due to the years of repression that have taken place.

This can then appear in this person having friends who are: critical, rude, self centred, disrespectful, controlling, and abusive and they can be a reflection of their inner voice for instance.

Realisation

We all have aspects of ourselves that lay dormant and have yet to be developed. If one is aware of this, they can see that although they may admire another, it is typically due to what they are projecting onto them and have yet to realise themselves. And when one is unaware of this, it can lead to the idealisation and glorification of others.

So this can appear in the kind of people that this person looks up to and admires. This is not necessarily negative per se, it will all depend on if they are aware of what they are doing. If they are it can show they are embracing who they are. And if they are not, it can be a sign of a lack of awareness and that they are caught up in their own projections.

It also shows how they see themselves on the inside and person they may truly want to be.

Boundaries

Although this has been marked as a separate description, it is also part of the two descriptions above; as when someone lets go of what they have repressed and starts to embrace their hidden gifts, it will usually lead to functional boundaries being formed. But with that aside, boundaries could be described as a by-product of having a strong sense of self.

Without them, one can display controlling behaviour or end up being controlled by others. So someone can either come across as easily lead, not being able to say no for example or have people around them who display these behavioural traits.

This person could alternate between the two styles of behaviour depending on the context or who they are with. Either way, it is a sign that someone has boundary problems.

Awareness

These are just some examples and this doesn’t mean that someone is: unhealthy, dysfunctional or to be avoided if they posses any of them. We are all human and all have our own challenges to work through.

And if one is constantly attracting people that have certain traits that are undesirable, it is a sure sign that they needs to look within. As the people that one attracts into their life will always mirror what is going on for them at a deeper level.

The assistance of a therapist, coach or a healer can enable one to let go of what is causing them to attract people who are not suitable or a good match.

---

If you feel this has been of value, please leave a comment, like or get in touch. And feel free to share this article, as many others have.

Oliver J R Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk/