A Hack for Building Friendships

My sister Mindy has a knack for making and retaining friendships.  Not only is she very friendly, but she puts a lot of time, thought and effort into keeping those friendships vibrant and active.

I, on the other hand, tend to be much more task-oriented than relationship-oriented.  At any given time, I am keenly aware of a myriad of tasks that I intend to accomplish.  I appreciate the value of friends, but if left to my own devices, I will rarely seek out times to enrich friendships as these don't help me to check off items on my immediate to-do list.

My wife Christine has even more of an appreciation for good friendships than I do, but she is similarly unlikely to organize get-togethers or plan lunches with friends.  She is, however, a great cook and very willing to have people over to our house.  This opens up a unique opportunity for us to invite people over on a regular basis.

A few years ago, we started inviting a couple we like to come over to our house for dinner and board games about every 2 months.  This got to be enough of a routine that we realized we could save ourselves some scheduling headache if we just made it a point to schedule the next dinner date before they left the house at our current one.  2 months always seemed like a long time away, but after living life for a couple months, it somehow also seemed to sneak up on us.  And before we knew it, we had a fun weekend date right around the corner!

This worked so well with this couple that we started doing the thing with other couples that we knew from church and other various activities.  Even when we only had a casual relationship with them, that was often enough to warrant inviting them over for dinner and games.  And at the end of a fun evening, we would plan another one two months out.  Before long, we got to the point where we averaged more than one of these dates per week, and this cycle continued so that we have a large number of friendships that still continue to deepen every week.

I am not good about remembering to call or plan outings very often, but i can follow a routine of keeping one day per week free, and scheduling dates out into the future.  And thank God for my wonderful wife who eagerly cooks and helps clean to allow our house to be an inviting place for our friends!  This has been a wonderful discovery for us this year as it has led to many improved friendships with terrific people.

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