“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good friendship has changed my life. It has helped me learn who I am and accept who I am. It’s brought more smiles and laughter than I’ll ever be able to count. It’s healed past wounds and helped me feel alive and challenged me to grow. It’s given me companionship and connection. Of course, it’s brought pain, too. Friendship isn’t perfect. But the positive effects have outweighed the costs, for sure. 

For some people, the risks and pain of friendship makes them believe friendship isn’t worth another try. So they put up walls to keep people out, but this approach only hurts us more. 

For a few weeks, we’ll be talking about friendship in this space. We’re going to talk about best friends, safe people, boundaries, red and green flags in friendship, and when friendship hurts. But today, we’re talking about some reasons why we need it. 

Why we need good friends 

1. We weren’t meant to do life alone. 

I’m not sure God created Eve just so Adam could have a mom for his babies or a sexual partner. I’m more convinced God created Eve so Adam wouldn’t be alone, so he’d have a companion, and together, they’d be able to make more companions. It’s like God wanted Adam to have a friend. We weren’t ever meant to be alone. “No man is an island,” John Donne says. Though many of us (like me) enjoy being alone (or more accurately, spending time alone), we still need companions. One of the first questions counselors ask new clients is if they have any good friends because we can’t be wholly healthy people without them. We need good friends. 

2. Friends can help when we can’t help ourselves. 

  “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).  Not only can we get more accomplished in life when we work with others, we also can receive the help we need when we can’t help ourselves. A couple of my family members recently had surgery. After surgery, people have to move their bodies so they don’t get blood clots, but they can’t move their bodies without assistance. They need to lean on the arms of someone safe to help them walk. Just like Aaron and Hur helped Moses hold up his staff when his arms grew tired, friends can help hold us up when we have nothing left to give, when we can’t do the hard things alone anymore (Exodus 17:12). 

3. Our health depends on it. 

People who have strong social relationships are less likely to die prematurely than people who are isolated. In fact, according to a 2010 review of research, the effect of social ties on life span is twice as strong as that of exercising, and equivalent to that of someone who quit smoking. In the review, researchers examined 148 previous studies on social links and mortality, which together included more than 300,000 participants. These studies found that measures of the strength of people’s social relationships, from their number of friends to their integration into the community, were all linked to decreased mortality.

Though friendship is only one factor in holistic health, it still can have a significant impact. We need meaningful connections in order for us to be wholly healthy people.  

4. Friends help us become our authentic selves. 

True friends help us remove our masks and be who we really are— to say how we feel and what we think and what we need. We often figure out what we like and dislike, what we value and believe, and what we’re passionate about in the presence of friends. They bring out the real us because true friends are safe friends. We’ll talk more about safe people in the coming weeks, but if we can’t be our authentic selves around someone, that’s a sign they might not be a true friend. There is so much freedom that comes with good friendship— little to no judgment, just genuine acceptance. 

We’re only scratching the surface here because there are many more reasons we need good friends. I think we can all agree that good friendship is necessary in our lives. You may be in a season where you only have one or two friends, and that’s okay. Or maybe you’re in a season where you have lots of friends. Either way, let’s acknowledge together that we can’t live a satisfied, healthy life without friendship. It’s the way we’re wired. 

If you are in a season where you feel you have no friends, I hope you’ll consider seeking professional counseling to work through any past hurt or other barriers that might prevent positive friendships in your life today. But I also hope you’ll be honest with God and tell him how you feel. I hope you’ll be bold and tell him you need friends, that you want friends. And see how he responds.