When you’re young, what constitutes a good friend is someone who’s down for a good time, lets you borrow their best, will belt out the same song out of your car windows with you 100 times, covers for you, tells you have something in your teeth, lets you cry about the same boy for years on end, loud belly laughs – they always showed up.

Eventually, friendship that once looked and felt like that approaches a fork in the road. Two signs: Enabling <- this way, Accountability -> that way.

I’ve participated in, been personally victimized by, and been leveled up by both.

Enabling. Enabling friendships are the bumper stickers that sound like:
“Live life!”
“Do you!”
“YOLO”
“Do it for the plot!”
It’s you texting your best friend for the 3rd time this month saying “I’m done with him,” and you are suddenly the opposite of done when she’s dropping you off at his place hours later when he rings. It’s watching them cope with another drink or another night out or another spend and telling them, “It’s, fineeee.”

There’s truth in wanting to support our friends’ antics and plot-worthy behavior. There’s truth in them supporting ours. Doing so implies seeing one another for just being human. Doing so also implies that our lives are movies without the element of being human, without true character development – the character we take with us into adulthood.

Accountability. It isn’t guilt. It isn’t shame. It’s a gentle nudge, “Help me understand because two weeks ago you said,”
“I don’t want to do this anymore,”
“I feel so guilty,”
“they don’t deserve this,”
“I’m never going back there,”
“I don’t want to be this person,”
“I feel so empty,”
“I’m going backward,”
“this is a waste of my time.”

When we are young, to be a good friend is as easy as providing comfort. Some friends, that’s all they want from you – comfort and validation, regardless of the cost. You can see the discomfort in them; why add more confrontation to it? But the way you address their choices doesn’t have to be polar opposite; it’s not a hug or a fist to the stomach.

It’s uncomfortable to be reminded that you failed against your desires and promises you made for yourself. But a good friend does it with compassion and grace.

Accountability is a reminder of the goal or boundary your friend set for themselves.

Being a good friend in adulthood is more than calling out bad love & bad habits; it’s calling one another up.

XX,
Kenny

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