“Electronic communication is instantaneous, illusionary contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships.” – Clifford Stoll, Silicone Snake Oil

It’s not enough that so many relationships at work, at home, and at play are disintegrating, losing their connectedness, intimacy, and depth of sympathy. People now have the opportunity to create new relationships, poof, by buying and selling “friendship.” uSocial, an Australian marketing company, will save you the time and hassle of building friendships by “buying” you a few thousand friends and colleagues. If you’re feeling lacking in friends, uSocial will help you “buy” friends by the thousands on Facebook for just $200 per thousand. So you need to feel like someone by being friends with someone who is popular, or you need to have someone like you, or you don’t have any friends, just bet! Money talks and says: “buy or sell your friendship!”

What if I don’t have $200?

While many may scoff at the superficiality and stupidity of buying or selling “friendship,” many of us actually “trade” friendship, albeit not with money. How is that?

Sacrifice for friendship

One way many people cultivate friendship is by doing-doing-doing for others in the hope of buying their acceptance and approval: their friendship. Even engaged and married couples do this with each other. We do this at work with colleagues and bosses, at home with partners, spouses, children, and parents, and in the outside world with neighbors and others. We sacrifice our own selves, our integrity, our time, even our hopes and dreams to please others so that we can feel accepted, loved, and “be their friend.”

Furthermore, many even sacrifice their life force so that they can be accepted by someone whose “friendship” they feel they desperately need. They will avoid relationships with certain co-workers, bosses or relatives, for example, to be accepted by another person whose friendship they feel they urgently need. Specific ways in which people sacrifice their lives for others are: putting their plans on hold, doing something for others or owing someone something, out of embarrassment, putting off making important decisions without consulting their “friend” first, feeling guilty about making a decision that their “friend” disagrees with, constantly seeking approval, and being in a codependent relationship.

Control others to gain friendship

One of the most insidious behavior patterns that people use to “buy” friendships is that of controlling others. For example, do you ever act like a victim, feign emotional or physical illness, or helplessness in order for a “friend” to save you or work to “cure” you? Do you ever, overtly or covertly, threaten to withhold or withdraw your friendship if a “friend” doesn’t “do something”? Do you ever say “It’s your turn” to take care of yourself? Do you feel like you need a “buddy” to constantly complete your activities or tasks because you are too stressed, anxious or overwhelmed? Do you offer friendship as a “reward” that your friend earns for doing what you want someone to do for you? On a deeper, more abusive level, do you threaten a friend with your own self-destruction to maintain their friendship? Do you try to play on the friendship of others by telling them how essential they are to your life?

Helpful

Probably the most unconscious and unhealthy way people seek to win and keep friends is by pandering, that is, doing whatever it takes to please others in order to win or keep their friendship. We accommodate ourselves when we tell others what we think they want to hear, we do for others what they want even though such actions or activities may go against our values ​​or moral code. Accommodation is the most common way people buy another person’s friendship, without directly paying for it, and sometimes we foot the bill and pay whatever it takes to make or keep a friendship.

Why do we buy friendship?

The worst loneliness is to be deprived of sincere friendship.” Sir Francis Bacon

From very early on, as infants and very young children, we have a deep need to relate and be related; we needed contact, warmth and human relationship. At that time we had the ability to be our True and Real Selves, but our parents and primary caregivers, given their own imperfections and struggles (as all parents and primary caregivers experience as a fact of the human condition) were unable to see and appreciate our Real and True Nature, our Real Self. So, we interpret their “rejection” to mean: “To be real means the absence of love, warmth, support, and security.”

Thus, growing up, we learned to pretend, to be like them, to join them in their world: the world of illusion, of “lies”, the conventional world. As part of the human condition, most of us learn to become what our parents and primary caregivers wanted us to be, focusing on what they paid attention to in us, what they preferred in us, what caused them to relate to us ( as we moved). away from, and abandoned, our True and Real Self, our Essential Nature). Thus, we learned to “accommodate” them and please them in order to gain their love, acceptance and approval.

And now, as adults, we find ourselves behaving in often self-limiting and self-destructive ways that we think will get us the love, approval, and acceptance of others (friendship), even paying $200 for a thousand “friends.”

Authentic friendship is an “inside job”

Essence is a quality of the heart and soul. Living one’s life isn’t about pleasing others, having a full dance card, or bragging that we have a lot of shallow “friends.” The foundation of a conscious, healthy, and real friendship comes from accessing one’s inner trust, value, and worth, not from controlling others, pleasing others, or responding to others’ controlling behaviors, in the work, at home or at play.

The core value of friendship comes deep from within, not from pleasing or needing others. Allowing one’s own fears of abandonment, guilt, shame and low self-esteem and then “doing the personal work” to move through our fears and insecurities, contact and allow our True and Real Self to allow the possibility of being and acting in ways independent, with more confidence and a healthy sense of self-esteem and worth. This flavor of Friendship arises from contact with our True and Real Being, where friendship is defined by quality, not quantity.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Friendship with oneself is of the utmost importance, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.” Especially the thousand you can buy for $200.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

How do you define friendship?

How would your friends describe your friendship?

How well do you know your friends from the “social network”. Actually.

How well do you know your real friends in real life? Actually.

Do you ever use controlling behaviors to keep a friend?

Do you ever sacrifice yourself, your plans, your energy or accommodate others to maintain your friendship?

Do you ever feel alone?

Do you feel that your parents/friends were/are “genuine” friends?

Would you invite your friends to share a Christmas dinner with your family? If not, why not?

Do you ever criticize, judge or feel ashamed of your friends?

Are your friends reliable and trustworthy? As his friend, is that you?

How was your friendship experience when you were little?