How to Tell If Someone's a Real Friend

The test of a real friend is how they react when things don't go so well.

We have all heard of fair weather friends; those who are happy to spend time with us, and perhaps help us, when times are good. Sometimes we can be fooled into thinking these friends are the real thing. Such friendships can last for years with all seeming well between you, no apparent problem. Each one is there for the other whatever happens, or so you think.

Then the sky falls in. Something disastrous happens to your life. Perhaps your marriage ends, or a serious illness appears out of the blue, or someone close to you dies. Now you really need a friend. Someone who will be there for you whenever you need them. Someone who is prepared to put their own life on hold to help you, as you know you would for them, if the shoe were on the other foot.

Let us take these three examples of unwanted circumstances one at a time, and consider what effect they might have on your friendships.

If someone dies, your friend may not know quite how to respond. We would hope that a close friend would be familiar with your views on both death and the person who has died, and therefore be there to comfort, understand, laugh, cry and do with you whatever is your overwhelming emotion. Perhaps this is one test of a real friend. What level of understanding of you have they achieved in your time together. When you have poured your all out to them, have they been listening? Have they really taken it all in? Are they able to show true empathy to your condition?

You will know when it happens. Either your friend will be there for you, with all that may entail, or they will slide quietly off into a distant part of your consciousness.

If you have a serious illness diagnosed suddenly, you will be in shock. You will need someone to provide the real or metaphorical shoulder to lean or cry upon. Someone prepared to give you time; able to cope with your distress; willing to listen to your blabberings; prepared to help with the inconvenience of treatment and aftercare. A true friend will be able to provide all of this and more.

However, perhaps the sternest test for a friendship is a marriage break-up. As a couple you have had lots of friends, many of them couples too. You have socialised as a couple and you are known, by your friends, more as a couple than as an individual.

Then the separation devastates your life. What are your friends to do? They are in torment. Which one of the original couple do they support? There is a tendency for people to think, in this situation, that they need to show solidarity, but they can only do this for one person - and half of the couple becomes suddenly discarded.
When this happens one person, needing as much care, understanding and support as the other, loses friends just when they are needed the most. This is perhaps the ultimate test of a friendship, how it is sustained through the anguish of separation and divorce.

The saddest thing about all this is that we sometimes never get to know how true our friends are until the worst happens and we lose them.

How to tell when a friend is true? See what happens when things go wrong, and situations and relationships become strained. If your friend stays with you and supports you throughout, whatever it takes, then you have a real friend.