Friends are supportive. Support is being able to listen and understand where you are coming from. Even if they disagree. With understanding, you can disagree with someone and still remain supportive in a way.

If someone thinks you’re screwing up but never bothers to find out what is really going on with you?

That’s not support, that’s judging.

I had one friend who I really liked. I told her all the time how much her friendship meant to me. Then I started realizing that she wasn’t supportive. I had a difficulty in my life and she didn’t like how she THOUGHT I was handling it. Things just went to hell from there.

Friends don’t tell you you’re screwing up, they ASK you “why are you doing that?” to find out what’s really going on.

Friends are open.

I had another friend. One of the dearest friends I’ve ever had. She was screwing up, in my mind. So I talked with her. She simply disagreed with me. We had a clash of ideology, I guess. We had disagreed before but it had never gotten personal.

Well she made it personal. Her actions were more important than our friendship. So I ended it.

I never had the chance to decide how I could be supportive of what was going on. Because she didn’t trust me or our friendship enough to bring me in and give me the truth. I can’t be supportive if you won’t tell me the truth. Twice.

Friends don’t hide things to keep the friendship, they allow the other person to make their choices and have faith that compromise of some kind is possible.