Building authentic relationships

When I went to Thailand a few months ago, one of the main takeaways that came out of the trip was the importance of building authentic relationships, whether that is with family, friends or other people. This blog can be found here. Therefore, since I came back from Thailand, I have looked to prioritise building authentic relationships. In this blog post I will talk about what I consider an authentic relationship and 4 things that have helped me when building authentic relationships.

When I reflected on things in my trip to Thailand, one thing that was clear was that I have a lot of surface level relationships. There are a lot of ways you can tell whether a relationship is surface level but for me, there are two key indicators that have stood out. The first is the conversations that I was having with the other person. I have found that a lot of conversations I had in the past didn’t go much further than asking and answering the generic questions “How are you?”, “How is work?”, “What have you been you to”, “Have you been in the office much”. Conversations that don’t go much further than these generic questions are surface level ones, which strongly imply that the relationship is surface level. Another indicator of a surface level relationship related to how much I know about someone’s personal life. There are obviously some things I wouldn’t know about someone personal life. However, in any authentic relationship, you would know some basic personal things, such as holidays they are planning, the hobbies they have, and things they are looking forward to in the next few months. I found that for a lot of cases, I didn’t know a single thing about someone’s personal life, which again strongly implied a surface level relationship. Overall, there are some relationships that had good reason to be surface level, such as professional relationships at work. However, upon my reflections in Thailand, I wanted to reduce the proportion of surface level relationships I had, and that meant addressing these 2 key indicators.

It is also important to think about what an authentic relationship looks like for me. For me, it all boils down to communication. There are lots of different ways that communication plays a part in an authentic relationship. Firstly, there should be clear communication throughout the relationship, and one example of this is when it comes to organising plans. Furthermore, we should also be having good quality communications that add value. As mentioned in the paragraph above, a lot of conversations I was having in the past didn’t go further than asking and answering generic questions. In an authentic relationship, I want to be having conversations that are interesting and add value, such as discussing an interesting topic, or talking about someone’s holiday. Furthermore, an authentic relationship is one where I can communicate in my authentic self, rather than resort to masking and holding back. Building authentic relationships is a key part of my unmasking journey, which is another reason to prioritize it.

From my experiences, here are some things that I feel are important to take into account when building authentic relationships:

Get to know people on a personal level.

When we are at school, we probably know about the subjects someone is taking and the grades they are getting. When we are at university, we probably know about how someone is finding an assignment and the modules they are taking. When we are at work, we probably know about the department someone is working in and progress in any professional qualifications they are studying for. However, for the vast majority of people, we don’t know much more than that. If you want to build an authentic relationship with someone, it is important to get to know them on a personal level. That doesn’t mean that you should know things which they may find difficult and uncomfortable to share. However, it is good to ask them things such as the sort of hobbies they have, any goals that they are looking to achieve outside of work, and their opinions on certain topics. This helps to genuinely get to know someone, and these things can be the basis of future conversations. This will lead to conversations being more interesting, helping build authentic relationships.

Be proactive.

From my experiences, one of the biggest reasons why relationships that have the potential to be authentic stay surface level is because neither person is being proactive, and then that relationship naturally drifts apart. One easy way where you can be proactive is to sometimes be the one to initiate having a catch up. However, being proactive can also come in other ways. For example, if you know that someone is going through a hard time, then being proactive can involve checking in on them after a period of time. It is easy to claim that we are all busy and that life does get in the way. However, being proactive in a friendship can come in easy ways, and in many cases just involves a quick one-minute message. Therefore, in most cases, a busy schedule shouldn’t be getting in the way when it comes to being proactive to help build and maintain an authentic relationship.

Make it a priority.

This is similar to the point above. In addition to being proactive, it is also important to see building and maintaining authentic relationships as a priority in your life. The reality is that life is very hectic and we all are very busy. Therefore, things that we don’t actively prioritize effectively get pushed aside. When we say that we are too busy to maintain authentic relationships, the chances are that this was because building and maintaining authentic relationships was not an active priority for us. There are so many benefits of authentic relationships for our wellbeing, just like how there are so many benefits of exercise for our wellbeing. A lot of us are able to have good gym habits or other good habits amongst a super busy schedule because we actively block out time for it each week. In the same way, you can prioritise building and maintaining authentic relationships by actively blocking out time for it, whether that is setting aside time to reach out to people or blocking out time to meet up with friends.

Make sure you are focusing on building authentic relationships with people that are compatible.

In the point above, I talked about how building and maintaining authentic relationships should be a priority. However, you can’t build an authentic relationship with everyone and you have to effectively choose who you want to build an authentic relationship with. You are much more likely to build an authentic relationship with someone you are compatible with. There are so many things that determine compatibility such as having similar hobbies, being in similar life stages and not having completely different opinions. There are lots of people I know who are very nice people and who I get on with well, but they wouldn’t be compatible when it comes to building an authentic relationship. These sorts of relationships will remain surface level, and that’s fine. One question you can ask yourself when judging whether someone is compatible enough to build an authentic relationship with is “Can I be my authentic self with them?”. If the answer is no then you shouldn’t waste your time trying to build an authentic relationship with them. In summary, you should focus on building and maintaining authentic relationships with the right people rather than try and do it with everyone.