Why Your Best Friend Is Not a Problem Solver

We tend to consider that the friends who can help us the most are those who, in addition to always being available to listen to us, are always ready to tell us what to do. Those who are always ready to propose a quick solution to the problems we share with them.

Our starting point, our first reason, is to think that we are going to tell a friend a problem and that he is going to give us solutions to solve that problem. We think this is the role of a true friend.

Although this reasoning may make some sense in an ideal world, in the real world it turns out not to be so — perhaps these are not the friends who help us the most.

- Our problems are not the problems of our friends

This is an indisputable fact, but when we ask the help of a friend to solve our problems, we sometimes forget the advantages and disadvantages that this implies.

On the one hand, our friends will never be able to feel the problem in the same way that we do. Despite sharing our friendship and wanting the best for us, they will not be able to share our experience, in the same way, they will not be able to feel the full impact that the problem has on us.

How a situation affects us often depends much on how we identify it with our past experiences, and this is often too intimate to be expressed by us and felt by others. It can be understood in an approximate way, but never in the same way. This is a disadvantage.

On the other hand, thankfully it is so. This disadvantage also has a positive side, it also has an advantage associated.

It is exactly because they are involved in our personal experience, that our friends can have a different view of the situation. Without the weight of our entire history, they may be able to do what is most difficult for us: distinguishing facts from interpretations.

A true friend can help us in this regard. He can make that distinction because he is not so involved, he can help us to see the different elements of the situation, to distinguish between what really happened (the facts) and what we think of what happened (the interpretations).

- Not all problems require solutions

This difficulty — in distinguishing between what really happens and what we think is happening — is one of our main obstacles in solving the problems we face.

This can also be the main obstacle that prevents us from accepting what is going on, what has happened, what we call “a problem”.

Sometimes our problems do not require a solution, nor is it that we are looking for when we occupy our minds with them.

Many times — more times than we realize — what we need is just to accept what happened. If we are able to do that, we will already be taking the first step (if some action is needed to solve the problem) or the final step (when there is simply nothing else to do but learn to deal with the emotions that the situation causes).

Problems often do not need a solution — what they do require is acceptance.

The role of true friends

All things considered, our friends can be a precious help in dealing with problems. However, we cannot expect or demand from them to do what they cannot do or what it is up to us to do.

Perhaps the main role of our friends is more of listening to us and accepting us than trying to offer us solutions. If we keep this in mind, we will be able to better distinguish who our best friends are, that is, to identify the people who can contribute most to our well-being and to our development.

Perhaps those who hear and accept us the way we are — those who are able to accept what we think, what we do, and what we feel — are really our best friends.

On top of that, those who can add to this quality the ability to also accept what we don’t think, what we don’t do, and what we don’t feel — those are sure to be among those who can help us to be happier and more truthful.

As Jim Morrison said:

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself — and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to — letting a person be what he really is. ”