Question 2

My relationship with my best friend Elizabeth who I call "Beast" immediately came to mind for answering this question. In Wood (2010) we read that investments are "what we put into relationships....and investments cannot be recovered." With this friendship also comes a solid commitment, trust and acceptance, and closeness of which all make up the dimensions of our friendship. The commitment lies in the fact that we talk to each other at least once a day even though we live in different cites. These investments we have made into our friendship have lead to a trust that we are both investing equally so we don't have a fear that we will ever lose these investments. Having such a fear would only cause stress for the friendship because our trust would be questioned each time we did something nice for the other. We trust each other which creates the "psychological safeness" that is described in the book. We share a closeness in dialogue by our desire to chat with each other about everything that is going on in our lives. I place a lot of value on being able to talk to her each day about my life, and I usually feel much healthier mentally on the days where we can talk longer. The acceptance is crucial in our friendship because we do expect one another to accept each other as a whole rather than just particular parts of ourselves. Some friendships are based on only partial acceptance because of the fear of self-disclosure that relationships without trust suffer from. If I were to tell Elizabeth about something I see as a flaw of myself, she would accept me just the same, and she usually finds comforting words to make me feel better. All of these aspects of our friendship are what make it able to survive and grow through the years.