Why You Need To Maintain Close Friendships And How To Do It

Relationships of mutual, loving criticism make you an adult.

As he outlines Rule I of his latest book, Beyond Order, Jordan Petersen describes how individual psychological health depends on thriving social networks.

When you’re done being a toddler, you learn to be a person by developing friendships. You get to know another child, learn to share, discover how you want to be treated, and realize that to be treated that way, you must reciprocate.

This dynamic continues as you get older, manifesting in more sophisticated lessons. From the playground to the lecture theatre to the workspace, your interactions with those who care about you make you, you.

Your friends correct you when you’re wrong. They scold you when you lie. And they ignore you when you’re selfish. They do these things for the fraternal love you share, and the interest they have in your becoming a mature and flourishing person. After all, it’s in their interest that you’re a friend worth having.

Without these checks on the darker sides of your nature, you don’t become a functional adult — one who can operate in the world with a diversity of others, formulate and pursue goals that are good for the many (not just the one), and live life in such a way that they’re responsible for their place in it — not a burden on others.

If you don’t become a functional adult, you’ll become isolated. People will drift away because no one’s got the energy to manage your shit on top of their own.

Humans are social animals — existing in communities and natural hierarchies. Without them — cast out from the herd — a human withers in confusion, loneliness, and despair. So, to euphemize, isolation should be avoided.

Your maturation depends on a social network in which you’re a key node. Your flourishing depends on close friendships and positive relationships with colleagues.

This begs the question — what can you do to make friends with those who love you enough to call you out on your shit? And this begs a further, related question: how do you make sure you’re a person your friends are comfortable criticizing? The answers are the same.

Be Honest

Deceit poisons friendships. When I was younger, I would lie to my friends. I lied to feel powerful — getting an unhealthy kick out of manipulating others’ worlds — and to protect an inflated yet vulnerable ego.

They eventually found me out on my lies. And after one major deceit, they’d had it. I had lied for months about secretly seeing my ex (the lying part being the problem). They eventually found out, and their trust in me was broken. I knew this, critically, because they showed it.

The shattering of trust broke my ego too. Amongst the wreckage, I finally saw that the foundation I’d built — the admiration of others — was hollow. It was just waiting to give way. So, to avoid going mad, I had to build myself on something more solid — decency.

I worked for months to re-earn my friends’ trust. I came clean about lies from the past — all of which had buttressed my sense of self. I revealed that the threesome I’d said I’d had was false. I opened up about the secret relationship. Time after time, old lies resurfaced in my mind and I’d force myself to tell them. It was a painful and unraveling experience.

But it made me into a better person. After breaking down, I could build back up. The process integrated honesty — an ethic I now live by. And I’m grateful for it. I’m a better person now. A bit more of a functional adult, able to work with others. I’m less likely to be a burden and more likely to be a help.

Be Humble

Humility ties into honesty.

My friends’ constructive and sometimes cutting critique of my actions after I came clean was the instrument of my improvement. Through honesty, my friends could nudge me in the right direction. You need to be nudged like this to grow.

But there can be no nudging if you refuse to be nudged. You can’t be helped if you’ve walled in from criticism. You do this for you think yourself above criticism. But, of course, an aversion to criticism exposes insecurity, not perfection.

If you don’t allow your friends to tell you when they think you’ve done something wrong, they can’t be honest with you. If they can’t be honest with you, you can’t learn. And remember, you’re a social animal. You learn through others, not yourself. Without your friends’ criticism, you won’t become a functional adult.

You’ll head into the world a child, and break things. You’ll hurt people. They’ll turn their backs, and you won’t know why (having made yourself immune to criticism). So you’ll become isolated. You might even fall victim to that most dysfunctional of witch-hunts — getting ‘canceled’.

Conclusion

There are many things you can do to maintain friendships. But for me, honesty and humility have been the most important. These traits open the door to friendships defined by mutual, loving criticism. As Dr. Peterson shows, it’s through these friendships that you grow into a functional adult — one who helps and doesn’t hinder.