Finding friendships can sometimes be as easy as a smile or as daunting as a chemical equation for an English major. This makes one wonder, what qualities do people look for in starting a friendship?
Well, I took my notepad and pen and set out to find out.
I polled several people and asked them what their top 5 qualities they look for in friendships. Well, that might have been a mistake, because that gives an array of options to sift through. Not having a standard list for them to choose from made for quite an array of qualities that we might search for when finding new friendships.
After crunching the data with my trusty rusty calculator, yeah I am old-school like that, I have found the following qualities to be the most wanted when finding a friendship with someone:
Sense of Humor (5 votes)
Common Interest (4 votes)
Honesty (3 votes)
Reliability (3 votes)
Open-mind (3 votes)
Some others that are worth a mention are: Loyalty (2 votes), Fun, Communication, Kindness, Inner Beauty, Outer Beauty ,Considerate, Being Real, Adventurous, Respect, Passionate, Patient, and Likes to tease and be teased, which all had a mention.
I have a friend, Angelixa, whom I have personally witnessed being able to be friends with people who are of different circles, which is quite a juggling act, I would imagine. I posed the question to her about what she feels is important when finding new friends:
Angelixa: Every good friendship starts with humor. That's usually how you get into someone's contacts to begin with. But you cannot sustain a relationship on humor alone. Being privileged to anyone's humor requires respect, patience, and honesty. Respect their time, their privacy (especially in a space like SL), and their boundaries. The patience to listen and being honest in what you share. You don't have to share everything (we don't all have time for that), but for the things you do share... be honest.
Once you get past that stage of learning someone, you can finally begin to appreciate their true beauty... their passions. What drives them? What can they talk hours on end about? Only then will I truly consider them a friend.
I feel Angelixa has a good take on how to start and maintain a new friendship and has dispensed some sage advice. (Yes, she’s always like this, very wise and sage for her age.)
There are so many different qualities that people look for and this poll showed me that we all are so unique and look for different things in others. It was interesting to see which ones seemed to be most important (by being repeated by different people) and what some would include in their top 5 qualities that they look for in a friend.
For me personally, Honesty, Reliability, Sense of Humor, Intelligence, and Loyalty would probably be my top five qualities I look for in my own search for friends. I will admit, I have many more qualities I look for in new friends and it was very hard to reduce it to a top five list. I am taking applications for new friends currently, so hit me up if this sounds like you. *winks*
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