remaining ways to deepen friendships

• dare to talk about your affection
• those who are loved widely are usually those who throw caution to the winds and declare their love freely
• when a relationship is genuine, they empathetically share a common field of emotions. This leads to the fact that, in everyday life, we normally tend to fall in love with those who love us.
• There are pitfalls to avoid in the declaration of love. The following people misuse the privilege. The Gusher; don't express everything you don't feel, but do express every good feeling you have about others. The Pressurizer; Here is the person who says "I love you" in order to hear it back.. Instead of a lever of applying pressure, let your compliment be the free expression of what is going on inside you. The Ramrod; First: reach out, second: notice the reaction, third: move forward, stop or back up.
• when we think of love, we tend to think of spectacular emotions and heroic acts. But little of life is passed in such moments of intensity, important as they are. The best friendships are built up, like a fine lacquer finish, with the accumulated layers of many acts of kindness.
• The experts at love realize that emotions ebb and flow, and they look for gestures of love even when their emotions are on the wane. What's more, they are never contented with telling the beloved they care - they show it in small expressions of affections.
• The minuscule act of kindness has great power because it demonstrates that you have not taken your beloved for granted.
• There is an art to one of the oldest gestures of love - the giving of gifts. The most lavish gift does not necessarily bespeak the most love. Most important is the thoughtfulness the gift represents.
• Someone has said that the test of great men and women is the way they treat little people, and of one can develop the habit of looking for gestures that build goodwill, kindliness can become second nature.
• Those who have successful connections allow their loved ones room. Rather than possessing their friends, they try to help them expand and grow and become free.
• Create space in your relationships.
• Unhappily, the tendency to jockey for control and to manipulate our loved ones is being encouraged by some of the current pop psychologies. Be more aggressive and intimidating, so you can become top dog, they tell us. But such a view of interpersonal relationships as battleground is tragic, for it produces loneliness.
• The Take-Charge Manipulator: This is the person who must be smarter and stronger than you to be happy with you.
• The Poor-Me Manipulator: This person is the direct opposite of the take-charge type, manipulating by appearing weak.
• The Need -To-Be-Needed Manipulator: If you are not the clutching type, do not congratulate yourself too quickly on your independence until you have enquired: Am i on the other end of such friendships and encourage dependence in others?
• Be cautious with criticism; if it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue.
• a large part of our success at love will depend on our ability to accept human nature as it is.
  
• Judge not, that ye be not judged.
• Beethoven said, "We all make mistakes, but everyone makes different mistakes,"
• Do not think for a moment that i am urging here that you become a non-assertive blob who agrees with everyone and never expresses an opinion. No, be opinionated. Express your individuality as strongly as you'd like. But be sure to give our friend the same privilege. Assertiveness is okay as long as it is nonpossessive, noninterfering, nondemanding.
• Employ the language of acceptance
• If we can learn to acknowledge the integrity of the personality before us, our relationships will be greatly enhanced. That does not mean that we approve of everything in the other. Acceptance is an entirely different matter.
• Encourage your friends to be unique
• for loosening up of friendships, has to do with the peculiarities of your friends, their eccentricities, their unique dreams. Rather than urging your loved ones to conform, encourage their uniqueness. Everyone has dreams, dreams that no one else has, and you can make yourself loved by encouraging those aspirations.
• Like all virtues carried too far, it is possible for freedom to become a vice. The philosophy,"You do your thing and i'll do mine," if allowed to become the keystone of a relationship, means that you no longer have a relationship. Commitment is also essential. Different people require different amounts of interdependence, and the mix may need to be renegotiated from time to time
• A non possessive friendship will maintain a profound respect for each person's need for privacy. There is such a thing as too much closeness.
• If you get nervous when your best friend spend time with other friends or when a couple you and your mate enjoy excludes you from some of their social activities, you need to be wary of the corroding effects of jealousy. You never have exclusive rights to anyone, and you hobble people if you expect to be the only person who matters to them.
• Clutching behavior comes from overworking and overloading one's relationship. The antidote for jealousy is to expand your own interests and to make friends in several groupings. Your life must encompass multiple interests, passions in many areas, and several relationships if you are to avoid crowding any of your loved ones.
• Be ready for shifts in your friendships.
• the people around us are constantly changing, so healthy relationships must maintain an elasticity in order to accomodate to these shifts.

--- "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis