5 Ways To Save Yourself From Friending Up Too Fast

Posted by fxckfeelings on January 23, 2020

Rushing into a close relationship, even if it’s just platonic, is always dangerous. Whether you’re racing to the altar or to a full calendar of hang outs and confessional conversation, taking the time to really get to know someone, beyond the immediate rush of chemistry, will save you from getting too close, too quickly with someone you’ll soon want to get away from. Here are five ways to save yourself from friending up too fast.

1) Avoid Early Oversharing

Just because you have an intense, immediate intimacy with someone that involves deep personal discussions instead of diving into bed, that doesn’t make your relationship potentially more solid or substantial. Getting too close to someone before you really know them will blind you to qualities you may eventually dislike and create an attachment that hurts one or both of you when you discover that, on a basic, less exciting level, your friendship just doesn’t work. Yes, knowing that you connect with someone makes it worthwhile to get to know them better, but under the right (or wrong) circumstances, quick connections can happen easily. So before you and this exciting new someone share life stories, take a step back.

2) Avoid Exchanging Emotions

The best way to get to know someone isn’t just by going slowly, but by finding out about who they are, not how they feel. Fact-based bonding doesn’t just allow you to share interests and life stories without getting emotionally involved; when you’re not flooded with feelings, it’s easy to see possible red flags of poor friendship potential. For example, if you find out that this person can’t keep a job, apartment, or even a cat for very long, odds are their friendship track record is equally stellar. Finding out the basic facts about someone can tell you tons about their strength and character without invading their privacy or creating premature intimacy.

3) Select Friends While Sober

From consuming record amounts of Flaming Hot Cheetos to singing the entire Little Mermaid soundtrack in public, being drunk or high makes a lot of things easier, including meeting people. But however much being intoxicated can reduce shyness or awkwardness, or make it pleasurable to socialize, it can also reduce your ability to be selective and careful while enhancing your impulsivity. Besides, people you can count on for a party can rarely be counted on for much else. Drugs and booze can make it easy to talk to people but much harder to get to know who they are or whether they’re worth getting to know in the first place.

4) Overcome Attractiveness

Aside from having too much to drink or too few boundaries, getting over-focused on attractiveness, either yours or the other person’s, is a good way to blind yourself to red flags and danger signs. Whatever makes someone attractive also makes it harder for people to see or judge them for who they truly are. So whether it’s due to charm, wit, wealth, charisma, or sex appeal—your own or others’—don’t allow attractiveness to control your choice of friends. On the contrary, how you get along when you or they are at your least appealing will tell you more about the power of your real friendship chemistry.

5) Bond Through Bad Times

Just as partying may make it too easy to connect with someone, having a fun-based friendship can fool you into thinking your bond is solid. Real friendships don’t just require work, they survive it, so test your friendship by working together, on a project or planning a trip, particularly during a time of personal hardship. Doing so will require you to define priorities, manage stress, demonstrate strengths and weaknesses, and match values and motivation. If you work well together, even when you’re tired and irritable, then your chemistry, and your friendship overall, are more likely to be stable. So seek opportunities to travel, cook, or assemble Ikea; if you can get through it intact, then you know you’ve found the real deal.