Thinking back to my inspiration for this project, one of the things that I was concerned about was the way that my perception of my relationship with my friends can be so vastly different from theirs. I wanted to know how we could both be in the same relationship and not see eye to eye on what the relationship was made of. During my research, the idea of expedient friendships kept coming up and I now think it’s one of the things that was blinding my vision in regard to my relationships. The theory of expedient friendships comes from a researcher named Arthur Brooks who caught my attention when he asked his readers if they have “real friends or deal friends”. The idea of expedient relationships, also known as deal friendships, is that these are not people that you would call on an everyday basis but you would reach out to them if you needed something and vice versa.

I mentioned earlier that the most important aspect of a friendship for me is the ability to enjoy spending time with that person. Brooks mentions that the best kinds of friends we can have are those that we don’t actually need to have and I completely agree with that. This project work made me realize that I have a lot of people that I view as expedient friends because they only reach out to me when they need something. These types of expedient relationships are not enjoyable for me because they sometimes leave me feeling used and drained because I’m constantly giving but I’m not getting anything back. It made me realize that my friends might actually think about our relationship differently than I do, partially because I never tell them when I’m upset. I don’t mention things that bother me and so they probably don’t see their many requests as a problem the way that I sometimes do. This research has showed me what situations to avoid and how to characterize my friendships accordingly, which is definitely something I’ll continue to to do in the future.

Another interesting thing that came up in the course of my research was that there have actually been empirical studies done to determine how the way that we experience our friendships affects our future levels of happiness. One such study that was published in the journal of happiness studies found that perception is an important factor in determining future happiness. To be more specific, these studies found that how much you think you matter to your friends will explain the relationship between friendship quality and happiness. Therefore, if you think that you are more important to your friends and that you matter to them, then you will think that your relationship with them is of a higher quality. However, if you think the opposite then you will think the relationship is of a lower quality and will not value that friendship as much.

Perhaps this is why I felt such positive emotions about friendships that my friends were not happy in. I know (or at least I assume) that I matter to them even if they don’t constantly reach out to me or we don’t talk every day and so I thought that these were high-quality friendships. This concept made me realize that not everyone thinks in the way that I do and so by not talking to them as much or not attending an event with them, I was unintentionally making them feel like they didn’t matter to me and therefore making them unhappy in our friendship. I see now that I need to make more of an effort to ask my friends what they need for me and respect what they say even if it’s different from what I need from them.

One final thing to note is that the results of the study are even more relevant because it used college students at a Midwestern University in order to come to these conclusions. This means that it can be safely generalized to younger populations. I should also note that it’s possible that your perception of how much you matter will also affect your perception of yourself and your self-concept as well. That being said, I want to reiterate that I’m not saying that new friends matter less to you and so they’re not important. In fact, it is quite the opposite, those new relationships are definitely still important. If anything, this research has shown me that you have to put effective time and energy into these relationships in order for them to blossom into the stronger, more stable connections that we all desire to have.