Social Skills – Don’t Let Selfishness Destroy Your Relationship (Danger!)

Social Skills – Don’t Let Selfishness Destroy Your Relationship (Danger!)

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Cultivating and nurturing good Christian friendship is an important part of Catholic spiritual growth. To be truly effective at nourishing our friendships, we need to be aware of the influences and attitudes that can damage our relationships. This is one of the social skills we need to develop in all of our relationships. Selfishness is the very opposite of Christian friendship.

Reframing Friendship

Yet, we are trained to see friendship in selfish ways. We define a friend in terms of what we get from him or her. A friend is someone who is fun to be around, who supports us and is there for us, who shares our interests, or who has personality traits we find attractive.

Well then, how SHOULD we define friendship so we’re not approaching it in a selfish way? Well, the ancient Greek word for friendship is “philios” – brotherly love. Philios is expressed by the choice to “adopt” someone as our brother or sister. This means to choose what is good for them, and even putting their good before our own, just as we should put the needs of our family before our own needs.

What would our lives be like if we reframed our idea of friendship as “what can I give” rather than “what can I get?” I tell parents this all the time in our parenting program. This is one of the social skills that parents need to train their children in. Most parents assume that children just learn how to be friends by going to school and making friends. But what our children learn this way is the selfish definition of friendship. Parents need to consciously and deliberately teach their children friendship as an expression of love.

social skills - awareness of selfishness
Sometimes we’re not even aware of how selfish we are

 

So How Are Your Selfless Social Skills?

What definition of friendship did you grow up with? What definition of friendship do you operate from now?

You might be – in general – the most loving, giving, generous person in the world and still be operating within your friendships from the position of a selfish definition of friendship. It bears a healthy examination of conscience to discover this about yourself.

Social skills: young blonde woman brushing off red-headed girlfriend
If your friends are distancing themselves, that might be a sign that you need to change!

 

How will you know if you are – especially if your selfishness is subtle or even hidden? Well, if your own self-examination doesn’t root it out, you can always observe your friends. A selfish concept of friendship causes us to expect the pleasure and privilege of friendship without the duty or responsibility. It’s easy to fall into. But most likely our friends will subconsciously pick up on a selfish attitude. Do you find your friends suddenly cold and distant? Do you find yourself wondering, “What’s her problem?” Does it seem that our friends don’t enjoy being with us as much anymore?

Now, don’t make the mistake of getting scrupulous. Don’t get paranoid that you might be selfish without knowing it. Don’t begin over-reading your friends. Their bad mood or coolness may have nothing to do with you at all. It might be something else happening in their lives – and they may be unaware of how their emotions are coming across to you. So what do you do? Well, no matter what the reason is for your friend’s distance or coolness, the best response is to respond with selfless love! If the reason for their coolness is that we’ve slipped into selfishness, love is the proper corrective. If the cause is something else, well love and support is the proper response there too. So don’t fret about your personality. Just choose to love!

The good news is that these are social skills we can all learn!

Bottom Line:

Fortunately for us, the love of friendship is a skill that we can learn – and learning that skill opens us to the grace of Charity that in turn empowers us to love even more completely. That’s called cooperating with grace. If you’d like more help and support to cooperate with grace in your spiritual life, I hope you’ll check out the special opportunity below to get more involved with the work of From the Abbey. At From the Abbey we focus on developing specific spiritual virtues — including the virtues of friendship — that help you to develop a “lay rule of life” so you can grow in your faith even while you live your daily life.

Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.

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1 Comment

  1. […] part of Catholic spiritual growth. Unfortunately, there are some influences in our lives that make it difficult for us to even want to put the effort and energy into cultivating friendships. Nurturing friendship […]

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