Navigating Friendships & Relationships in College

Yesterday I had a friend reach out to me in advance of today’s Sunday questions and ask me a question that I’m certain many college students, along with many members of the general human population, have been seeking answers on. I would usually respond with a text offering my advice, but I wanted to make this a blog post rather than a one-on-one exchange, because I believe it to be a valuable topic—an honest conversation that we all, as humans, college students, friends, family members, teammates—can learn from. 

This friend—an introspective, caring, sunbeam of a human being that I have the pleasure of knowing—asked a direct, thoughtful question: “what are some tangible steps to take to create deep, meaningful friendships in college? Or what has worked for you? Specifically, how can I lead others into a deeper connection with me?” 

After ruminating on this question, I decided that a blog post offering actionable ways to develop deeper, more meaningful, fulfilling relationships in college—both platonic and romantic—was something I wanted to create. Ultimately, this sort of guide to navigating and developing friendships and relationships in college can be applied to any stage of life, be it high school, your twenties, parenthood. Hell, you could be eighty five in a nursing home, looking for a new friend to knit with or a boyfriend to flirt with during bingo and extract some value from this blog post. 

My friend had included in her message an explanation, elaborating on why she was coming to me for this kind of advice or even needed this advice at all. She explained that her friendships with her friends from high school were deeper, more emotionally intimate relationships than that of most of her friendships in college. She was very clear on the fact that she knows people want to connect, and theorized that perhaps the reason she wasn’t finding those same kinds of deep connections in college was because she wasn’t offering people an invitation to foster a deeper emotional relationship with her. Which I would agree with, and which leads me to my first of four pieces of actionable advice to help you and deepen your relationships with the people in your life…

1. You can only meet someone else as deeply as you’ve met yourself. 

Sit with that one if you must. You can only meet someone as deeply as you’ve met yourself. So when you enter a new friendship or a new relationship, what I want you to understand is that having a deep relationship with yourself is the first step to being able to create relationships with others that have the same level of depth. 

I’m not saying that you have to achieve self-actualization in order to form meaningful connections. Rather, I’m encouraging you to get to know yourself. Because often when we embark on self-exploration, we find things out about ourselves that we didn’t even know we didn’t know. For example, ask yourself some questions: what are the things that you really like? What are the things that make you feel emotions like loneliness, fear, insecurity? What moments or patterns in your childhood have most influenced the way you are now? Screw how you come across to other people (that’s their business, not yours), how do you come across to yourself? What does your internal voice sound like? Do you actually like the things that you eat every day? Why is your favorite color your favorite color? Gold social stars and checked boxes aside, what do you want to do with your life? What do you want to get out of it? What do you think is fun? What kind of qualities do you want in a friend? What do you want your eventual partner, if you want one, to value? What have been the most influential models of relationships (romantic or platonic) in your life? How were boundaries modeled for you growing up? What boundaries, if any, exist in the kinds of relationships you’re seeking? What habits or patterns have you exhibited in previous friendships or relationships? 

Those are the questions that we need to be asking ourselves before we can reach the level of depth that we yearn for with other people. Again, I’m not telling you to uproot your life and spend months at an Ashram on a spiritual journey to self-actualization. I’m just encouraging you to get to know your truest self, and to develop a relationship with that person—a stable, emotionally intimate, fulfilling relationship. We need to meet ourselves first, and from there, we will meet the people in our lives and truly get to know them the way that we’ve gotten to know ourselves. 

2. Nurture the relationships in your life. 

The grass is greener where you water it.

Imagine you have this beautiful garden of flowers. For the sake of the analogy, the flowers represent the relationships in your life. Maybe you really like one flower. Maybe you’re even in love with that flower. Said flower has piqued your interest so intensely that you figure why not give this flower all of my water? Logically, you know that flowers will die if you give them too much water, so you keep a little bit to hydrate the rest of your garden, offering the remaining flowers drops here and there. Slowly those flowers begin to wither and their leaves begin to dry and one day, you go out to your garden, and there stands only one flower—your favorite flower. But the rest are gone. So now you don’t have a garden, really. You just have a flower. And you realize that you actually really enjoyed having a whole garden, and wished you’d watered them all rather than saving your water for just one. You realize that saving all that water for your favorite flower didn’t make that flower grow more than it would have had you simply watered them all equally. 

Friendships and relationships work in a similar way. In order to develop and maintain deep, soul-nourishing relationships, you need to water them, so to speak. 

If you find a friend (or even a friend group) that you adore, or a romantic partner that you want to spend all of your time with, I encourage you to remember the story of the garden and the gardener who picked a favorite flower. Rarely does watering only one plant turn out well. You can love and care for many friends at once, and naturally you’ll tend to some of those relationships more than others in a way that is organic, but ultimately what you want to create is a garden of friends that will flourish as you nurture it. 

It goes beyond don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You don’t have to tend to eggs, you just have to make sure that they don’t go rotten. And that’s no comparison for something as terrific as human connection. 

So, invest in the relationships that you want to develop. Spend time with people you’re excited to be with—people from all different circles and of plenty of different backgrounds and ages. Create a garden so colorful and wonderful that the prospect of depriving even one flower of hydration would be preposterous to you, and each day when you wake up and remember the garden you’ve created, you will be soaked in gratitude for all of the time you’ve spent watering it. You will have witnessed the growth of this beautiful garden, and from there you will learn that just the way you were watering the flowers in your garden, you yourself were a flower in someone else’s garden, and they’ve been watering you just the same. 

Invest in your people—show them you care, show them you will be there consistently, show them you will make time for them, you will listen, and you will love them—and the right ones will invest right back. The ones who don’t invest right back can be considered weeds in the garden and we can gracefully, forgivingly remove them from our plot. 

3. Be clear with people, be in integrity in all of your relationships.  

This one very much goes for both friendships and romantic relationships. Clarity is a gift for everyone. When we’re clear with people, even when it may be disappointing for someone else, we free ourselves from the confines of people-pleasing and we free the people in our lives from confusion, mistrust, and ultimately, from disappointment. 

In romantic relationships, clarity looks like: telling people how you truly feel about them, sharing where you’re at and seeking to understand with compassion and curiosity where the other person is at, being honest with yourself about what you need out of a romantic relationship and similarly, what you don’t want out of a romantic relationship. 

Being clear is also incredibly important in those foggy college relationships, when you’re talking or hooking up or whatever it is. It’s not sexy or mysterious or intriguing to be deceptive with people, and it’s most definitely not respectful to be allusive when it comes to navigating a relationship with someone who has been vulnerable with you, be it through physical intimacy or emotional intimacy. Things that are admirable and attractive on everyone: maturity, clarity, honesty, being in touch with oneself and being able to communicate feelings, desires, and needs. That is attractive, and it is sustainable, and it serves everyone. Clarity is a sign of respect, and if you do not respect a relationship, I can guarantee you that the relationship will not develop or deepen in a way that serves you or the other party involved. 

In friendships, clarity looks like: saying yes to plans you genuinely want to attend, and saying no to plans that you don’t actually want to be a part of. As per Tinx’ advice, when you receive an invitation to something, ask yourself: Would I want to do this today? If the answer is no, then chances are, you probably won’t want to do it next week or next month. Plans and relationships should excite you! You should want to fulfill the plans that you agree to, because you should only be agreeing to plans that you actually want to partake in. I know that this is easier said than done, because often saying yes seems like the polite thing to do. But I disagree with that. I think clarity is the most polite thing you can do. Okay, maybe not polite, but it is the most respectful thing you can do. If you respect someone, and you respect their time just as you hope that they respect yours, then you should feel comfortable saying a simple “I so appreciate the invitation, but I don’t want to commit to a plan that I’m not sure I can follow through on. I have a habit of saying yes to things that might overwhelm my schedule, and I’d rather make plans with you when I know I can offer you my full time, energy, and presence” when they ask if you want to join them for lunch next week or go to that concert next month. 

Yes, I realize that it’s challenging to work up the guts to be that clear with people. I still struggle with it. But it’s better to be up front and honest with someone and potentially disappoint them, then to flake on someone at the last minute, cancel plans, make an excuse, and disrespect them and their time in the process.

In that same vein, be clear with people about how you feel about the friendship. I’ve taken to making sure the people that I really like know that I really like them. I used to be bashful about telling people when I just adore them. I care a lot about the people in my life, especially my friends, and I often get really excited about their presence in my life. And then sometimes I wonder… am I being too clear? Should I leave some guessing room for them to wonder how I feel about them so as not to be overbearing? And then when I quiet down my insufferable ego, I remind myself that I’d rather embarrass myself proclaiming my love for people than to leave this lifetime without those people knowing that I loved them with every ounce of my being. So, I go ahead and tell them. Maybe it’s a text that says “I love you and I was just thinking about your presence in my life. I am so grateful for you” or maybe it looks like something I did the other day, driving with two of my friends, shocking even myself with such unadulterated appreciation, blurting out: “Guys, I just want you to know that you’re some of my favorite people. I really, really like you guys. Not just love you guys. I like, love, and respect you and I don’t feel that way about everyone.” So tell people how you feel, right when you feel it and pour your love into the relationships that really matter to you. 

4. Ask people questions. 

The greatest conversations begin with the most genuine questions. Questions born from true curiosity, that is. The relationships in my life began to flourish and deepen immensely when I started getting curious about other people. Many of my deepest friendships have been formed on road trips, going from question to question on lists like “36 Questions that Lead to Love” or “101 Questions to Ask Your Friends on a Road Trip” and getting curious about my fellow passengers (in the car, but also on the ride that is life). 

With respect to psychology, and take this as you will, prompting people to talk about themselves will actually make them like you more. When I learned that, I realized that some of my favorite people I’ve known during my lifetime have been people that were intensely curious about everyone they met. So if you’re seeking to get to know someone, go ahead and ask them about themself. And it doesn’t have to be that you’re unpacking some massive trauma with them. You can ask people questions like “What were you interested in as a kid? Do you think you’ll incorporate that in your career?” or the beloved “Describe to me your perfect day. Meals, snacks, location, the people you’d be with, the activities you’d do, the things you’d be feeling, the scents.” There is so much to get to know about people, and what I’ve found is that you’ll really never stop learning, so questions can be used to further develop relationships at any stage. You can use questions to get to know a stranger just the same way you can use questions to further deepen your relationship with your spouse. Questions are a wonderful way to open the door for connection. 

It’s worth noting that some people are just more private than others, and that’s something you need to respect if you’re pursuing a friendship or a relationship with them. My advice would be to open the door for them to share about themselves, and even if they don’t choose to walk through that door immediately, simply knowing that they have the option will be comforting to them and demonstrate your willingness to be there if they ever do choose to walk through that door. Even the most quiet, reserved, and private of my friends have come to me when they have felt they needed me, acknowledging that my own vulnerability served as an invitation to them to share parts of their lives and stories with me. And what a beautiful exchange that is.

So, there you have it. Four pieces of what I believe to be actionable advice for deepening and strengthening the relationships in your life (in college, sure, but really at any stage of life or in any setting). I hope you found some seeds of value in this piece, and I hope that you all find yourselves with beautiful, expansive gardens. 

Big love, 

Cail