Being Selective is Good: Friendships You Want To Keep

Alice Lam
5 min readMar 11, 2020
Photo by Max Andrey on Unsplash

Managing relationships can be the trickiest route to navigate because every single one is unique, but there are some absolute characteristics you may want your friends to have.

There are so many different types of friendships to make. Not every friend you make will be the best friend. Sometimes, the greatest aspect of the relationship is that it’s casual.

I use to beat myself over for not landing great friendships with most of the people I’ve met, but realistically, I wouldn’t want so many close friends anyway. Throughout my life, for every 100 people I’ve encountered, about 2 great friends come out, and I don’t meet that many people.

One of the greatest skills to learn is to know how to filter through people. Being selective or picky with who you surround yourself with isn’t a bad thing. Ask yourself if you know exactly who you want to be friends with and why.

The small group of friends I have will always fulfill my values and beliefs 100 times more compared to casual friends. The magnitude of their impact is so much greater than friends who aren’t compatible with you.

These are the kind of friends you want to keep:

1. Friends who make you feel lost in time. Spending time with them doesn’t have a limit.

If hours fly by within blinks of a second then this is a great sign that your valuable time is being spent carefully. You don’t feel tired or drained after a couple of hours talking to these friends, and the conversation stays intriguing.

When you don’t mind how much time is spent with this person means that there is value in time spent with them.

2. Friends who make you feel valuable

The things that you value should reflect on the friends that you have in some form. When it comes to how I feel valued, I refer to the 5 love languages: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch.

Knowing how you want to be valued can be a great asset in improving your relationships: click here to learn about more about the 5 love languages.

Alice Lam

I write about purpose finding, learning, mindful self-development, and relationships.