The 3 Traits of Incredibly Loyal Friends

We can’t go long without having good friends, and the best of our friends are incredibly loyal. They stand with you even in times of great turmoil in your life, like a divorce, breakup, death in the family, or job loss. You know your friend is incredibly loyal when they reach out in times of need, even when there is no transactional need in your relationship.

I was in this position in my last year of college. My personal life had been misconstrued and misunderstood by seemingly everyone, and a lot of people I thought were my “friends” didn’t even make eye contact with me anymore. I don’t know if it was just in my head or if it was real, but I was treated like I didn’t even exist. Perception certainly felt like reality. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at 21, two years ago, I didn’t quite understand that I needed to do what was best for me as well.

However, I had five friends who stuck with me the whole time and helped me block out the noise. They not only spent time with me, but listened in my time of need without trying to fix me. It’s not like everyone else was a bad person, but these were the friends that gave me grace in my time of greatest need, and I gave everything I could to them as well.

These are all ideals, and reality proves to be pretty messy for us because life is messy. Not everything was perfect all the time in our friendships. But we stuck with each other and are moving closer to these ideals. Here is what they did to make me realize they were incredibly loyal friends:

They treat you like family, even when you’re in trouble

To your incredibly loyal friends, and as someone who (hopefully) is loyal to a couple of people yourself, your best friends are not only friends, but effectively family. You spend a lot of time together and celebrate massive achievements together. You don’t get jealous of each others’ success because their success is your success. You comfort each other in failure because your pain is mutual.

They’re the kind of friends that you can tell anything to, no matter how good, bad, or ugly. They don’t disclose confidential and super personal information to others who have no business knowing that information, like your family issues, addiction, or mental health struggles.

Your incredibly loyal friends will create boundaries when they need to, because no matter what you’re going through, they have their lives, too.

I remember that I had one really good friend who was always there for me and who listened to me all the time. She was a constant bedrock of support, and then she started going to therapy to work on herself because she was struggling, too. I did my best to listen, but as her therapy progressed, she started to take a week or more to respond to messages and was clearly distancing herself from me because she needed to do what was best for herself.

I wish I can say that I understood it and let it go, but we had a difficult conversation on why there was so much distance. I wish I could have respected then, as I do now, that she had to set boundaries and that she had to do what was best for herself — after all, I was a very messy and difficult person at the time.

Treating people like family isn’t a rosy and picturesque ideal that we normally think it is. Family relationships can be very difficult, inconvenient, and complicated. However, at the end of the day, those relationships are still family, and no matter what happens, being an incredibly loyal friend means sticking by a person no matter how much they might change or how difficult they can be. It doesn’t mean not setting any boundaries, but loving people for who they are rather than your ideal of them.

I have several friends that I would call as close as family, people who know seemingly everything about me. It isn’t always easy and we don’t agree on everything, whether it’s politics, religion, or anything in between. But if I’m in trouble, they’re the first I turn to for help, and vice versa.

If a friendship is easy, always convenient, and unchallenged, then in some sense, it isn’t authentic. I wish I could say that all my friendships have been super easy, but that would be a lie. They were challenged by conflicts and disagreements, all of which were resolved and made stronger.

At the end of the day, your incredibly loyal friends will call you out when need be, also:

They are not judgmental

Few people seem to acknowledge that you always judge yourself worse than anyone from the outside can judge you. Your closest friends know that and accept that, and they’re the kind that you can sit in silence with for hours, or the ones that you can pour your heart to for a while, and vice versa.

No, your incredibly loyal friends are not just some echo chamber for your thoughts or soundboard for your feelings — but they realize that advice shouldn’t come unless it’s directly prompted or asked for. They realize, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, that:

“To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times, what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks but a special heart that listens.”

Incredibly loyal friends not only know that you’re your own critic, but know the best ways to support you. They realize that you don’t need someone to be right, but you need someone to be kind. They let you know their thoughts, but reserve judgment when you’re in the depths of your despair.

I used to not be a good listener, until the listeners in my life taught me how to be better, ask questions that are open-ended and prompt more exploration, and use minimum encouragers to show that you’re listening. Instead of always needing to have the answers, I just sat with my friends.

Your incredibly loyal friends might come from all different walks of life, and have a lot of different beliefs. But to you, they recognize that you need mercy in your times of greatest need, not justice. In a spiritual sense, they are God’s gift of unconditional love in human form, because above all:

They love you unconditionally

Loyalty, at its core, can only be truly tested by fire when it’s inconvenient when no one sees any transactional benefit to the friendship. Your loyal friends will go above and beyond for you when it seems like there’s no benefit to it, and you will do the same for them because, again, their successes are your successes, their failures are your failures, and their pain is your pain.

Of course, that’s not what happens all the time. You can be everywhere for everyone all the time. That’s why you don’t have a million incredibly loyal friends — you’re lucky to even have one. I’m lucky to have several, and even though we might be separated by hundreds if not thousands of models, I know that I can tell them anything about me and they will not give up on me.

Since people evolve, friendships evolve too. But the key to incredibly loyal friends is that they evolve with you, together. You have some distance, but you always come back and remember your bond.

I have one friend who I can call at any time about anything, and who will do the same for me in return. We live very different lives, myself as an educator, and he as a financial consultant. I grew into my faith, and he grew out of it, and we know personal, vulnerable details of each others’ lives that most people would see as unwise to share with anyone.

There are no secrets in that relationship because it is a safe space with no risk. And our there’s a complete vulnerability in that relationship because there is complete trust, as well as the duration of our friendship. Since we’re both young, our friendship from college has lasted more than four years and stayed strong the whole time, and I don’t see it stopping any time soon.

Sure, I am in my early 20s, and I still have a lot to learn. A hell of a lot can change, but I don’t think it’s naive to say that my personal trials and tribulations have taught me who my real friends are, and they are friends who treat you like family, even when you’re in trouble, don’t judge you, and love you unconditionally.

I only have maybe five people who qualify under as incredibly loyal friends, and you will probably only have a few people too. Chances are that they aren’t the people you’ve just met, but rather are people you’ve known through thick and thin, hell and back.

Who are those incredibly loyal people to you?

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Previously published on medium

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