Soul Wisdom: Why We Need to Treat Friends Like All Other Relationships

Soul Wisdom: Why We Need to Treat Friends Like All Other Relationships

All our connections are important. While some spiritual journeys ask their participants to spend their lives alone in contemplation of the divine, for most of us, our main spiritual growth takes place via interconnectedness with other people. We are after all, social creatures. Very often however, we tend to focus on our love relationships, seeing these as the most important in our lives (which they can be). But we ignore the importance of genuine, close friendships.

Choose your friends

In astrology there are two areas of our charts which rule friendships. There is the 11^th house which rules our social circle and connections including work colleagues and nowadays those we make via social media. Our close friendships however are ruled by the 7^th house which is the house of marriage and partnerships. This makes a lot of sense when we consider that many friendships out-last marriages and changes of romantic partners – after all, if it all goes wrong, who do you call? Very often we turn to close friends in preference to family members and for many people who have emerged from abusive or difficult childhoods, their friends are their families. Although we may choose our families for karmic/soul growth reasons before we get here, one of the greatest gifts life bestows upon us is our ability to choose our friends.

When a friendship ends it can be as traumatic as the end of a marriage or other intimate relationship. How many of you have been in a position where your friend suddenly stops communicating with you, leaving you wondering why? You may reach out with phone calls, emails or texts to receive no response leaving you baffled and running through reasons as to what you might have done to offend your friend.

Soul Contracts

While all soul contracts can be changed, I believe that as our friendships play such a crucial role in our soul development, that perhaps its time to have a set of rules we try to keep to when it comes to our friends. When we’re entering into a romantic relationship we usually have a conversation with the other party about our values and the kind of behaviour we expect from a partner. Trust, truthfulness and fidelity usually feature high on this list. But we don’t have these conversations with potential friends. My question is, why not? Telling someone early on that if they have an issue with you to air it – and vice versa, is always a good basis for any relationship.

Also, we’ve discussed in other articles how hurtful it is when you have been dating someone and they are unable to tell you directly they no longer want to continue seeing you but leave you dangling wondering what you have done wrong. If you don’t feel able to continue the friendship, let the person know. It allows them closure and the opportunity to move through the process of letting go faster. Women sadly are especially prone to just stop talking to someone, leaving them dangling. We need to start to set an example if we want friends we can count on, by letting them know they can count on us not to disappear!

Finding a friend on the same wavelength as us, who will often travel on our path with us, is one of life’s truly wonderful gifts. Let’s start taking our soul friendships seriously and treat them with the love, gratitude and respect they deserve.