Almost all the movies and TV shows I have watched feature a pair or trio of best friends. They would go to school together, hang out during the weekends, and de-stress collectively by pulling the craziest sleepover. Sure, they often had arguments. But those crises only strengthened their bond into something greater: soulmates, the best of the best friends whom you can trust, be sincere and authentic, and have unlimited fun together.
Throughout my early teenage years, I was in a constant search for my soul-mates-to-be. I desperately wanted to have the relationships I saw in the media, which came across to me as so appealing and dreamlike. Imagine having an extended version of your family at your school: your people whom you can confidently put your trust in. They will cry with you when you are sad, share the joyful moments, and care for you as if you were their own family. Finding my soulmates was one of my biggest fantasies in middle school up until my first year at Andover.
Since all the movie characters found their besties so early on in their lives, it didn’t occur to me that it’s a miraculous fortune of your lifetime to find your soul mates. I didn’t know that most people wait decades to find their soul mates and that some people don’t ever find those kinds of relationships at all. Unaware of the scarceness of such findings, I set a high threshold for defining who could be my true “friends.”
Since my expectations were unreasonably high, my utmost source of stress in my first year at Andover came from making friends. I often felt stressed or doubtful since it felt as if I was floating around, not docked to an intimate friend group. Of course, I did make a number of friends whom I ate lunch, studied, and enjoyed the Weekender events with. All of them were so kind, approachable, and funny that I still loved being around them. My main problem with making friends was the insecurity that I wasn’t always with my friends, that sometimes I didn’t have people to go to Paresky Commons to eat dinner with, and that I was falling behind when everyone already began making their firm and deep friendships.
What I want to highlight is not that we don’t need deep relationships, but that we don’t need to be afraid or feel deprived because our relationships feel relatively “weak” compared to the ones we see in the media. It’s common that we desire to have people whom we can depend on, especially in our age group and in a boarding school setting. Away from my family, I, too, had felt an urge to find and hold on to a sense of intimacy. It’s hard to be alone. It’s exhausting when you’re floating around in constant anticipation for the moment you can finally land at a place made just for you. But as all unripe fruits eventually burst into full colors, so do your relationships. What matters more is for you to take the time to cultivate the crux of deep relationships: individual independence.
At this stage of life, it’s crucial that we prioritize exploring who we are, what we like, what we don’t like, and who we want to be around so that we have grounded the foundation for our identity. Finding your soul must come first before you find your soulmate. Without the necessary muscles for standing up by yourself, you and your soulmates aren’t capable of supporting each other. Identity and self-reliance is essential in building a healthy and trustful friendship: receptive but not impressionable, authentic while having boundaries.
On a similar note, we shouldn’t limit ourselves from meeting diverse people and experiencing different opportunities just because we feel the need to develop deep relationships. Throughout the course of your life, you will make myriads of relationships of unique, incomparable values. As intimate as best friends sound like, there are also the ebbs and flows in the intimacy of each relationship. With the ebbing of one relationship may come the flow of another. A catalyst for new relationships resides almost everywhere—your classes, clubs, lunch period, dorm, or just simply a common interest or favorite study spot on campus.
Building identity takes time because it’s a process of trial and error. You never know when or where you’ll find the people you truly resonate with. So approach all relationships with patience and mindfulness. Time will bring your soulmates to you.
