What makes good friends stay friends for life?

A good friend of mine is about to get married in a few days, and I was just thinking about the ingredients of a successful friendship.

What makes good friends stay friends for life?

I’ve mulled over some of the usual comments, from "mutual respect" to "honesty and openness," and I’ve come to realize that while these are, indeed, important, there is one quality that, in my humble opinion, trumps them all: the willingness to forgive each other.

Friends aren’t just the people who pick you up and make you happy. They aren’t just the people who buy you birthday presents or help set you up with your crush. They are the people who can hurt you the most… the people who can disappoint you the most. Friends are the people you often expect to always make you smile, so it comes as an extra-painful realization to find out that they are also often the reason you cry the hardest in life.

Friends can say the most hurtful things. They can dash your fondest wishes, shoot down your most loft ambitions, or even destroy your most secret of dreams.

But in order for me to still be friends with people like these, I often have to take that extra leap of faith that often defines the greatest of love affairs: the knowledge that none of these things were done to deliberately hurt me, and that many of these things were done to help.

I have to have faith that the person who is telling me not to pursue a career in law is doing so because he knows I wouldn’t be happy living with the judicial system, or the person telling me that I’m not athletic enough to make the school basketball team is just helping me focus on my studies, so that I have a better chance in life. I have to have faith that the person who tells me that I’m getting fat isn’t worrying about hurting my ego, but rather about protecting my heart. I have to have faith that the person who tells me I am not ready for a commitment to the girl I like isn’t trying to discourage me from trying but to encourage me to better myself as a person, so that whatever love I may then be privileged to share will be all the stronger for it.

Unfortunately, the nature of human beings and pain is that we often shun the people we think hurt us, and the understanding that perhaps they were actually helping us doesn’t often come until much later. I have had to examine whom I truly considered friends in my life, and have always had to make the choice: to forgive them for constantly "hurting" me, just as I rely on their goodness to forgive me for hurting them.

I’m not, by any measure, a perfect man. I have more flaws than most, in fact. But I do try to forgive those I know were willing to love me well enough to actually NOT give me everything I wanted, or tell me what I always wanted to hear. After all, these are the people who make me a better man, and I strive to be better, in part, because of them.

I will disappoint them; I will hurt them; and I will probably test their patience to the utmost limit… but if my friends and I are to last as friends for the rest of our lives, then nothing is more important than the willingness to forgive each other for all the myriad trials and tribulations we put each other through.

Any clown can make people laugh. It takes a true friend to still embrace those that make you cry the hardest.

So, to my dear, dear friend… please accept my most sincere and heartfelt wishes for a wonderful, wonderful life ahead. May you and your husband always find the time to reflect on what you each mean to each other, so that every tear you shed will not have to dry in vain. Besides, if you’ve been friends with me THIS long, you certainly have enough patience to deal with marriage anyway. = )