Benefits of a Boy Best Friend

Today, as you can probably guess from the title, I’m going to be talking about one of my best friends.

Now although I’ve only known this person for the last seven months, I can easily consider him as one of my best friends.

The story of how we ended up being friends is a funny one; we met on a pub crawl and started talking since we do the same degree.

About two weeks later, he asked me if I wanted to have lunch with him. I was about to refuse, thinking he meant it as a date, and when he denied that as his intention, we laughed about how awkward that conversation was, and from then on were firm friends.

Over the last seven months, he has been there for me so much and sometimes I don’t know what I’d have done without him. He’s always been there with kindness, wisdom and something to cheer me up whenever I needed.

Now you may wonder why I’ve singled this person out particularly amongst all the other friends I’ve made at uni. I have another group of friends who are like a little family to me, but this person is special.

Going to an all girl’s high school, the last male friend of my own age I had was about eight years ago. So, when I arrived at uni, I hadn’t really considered the benefits of having a male best friend.

The list below is the advantages I’ve come up with off the top of my head:

- Introduces you to new stuff

- Never asks you about stuff you don’t want to talk about but is always there when you do

- Can always make you laugh

- Can be nice to you and you know he isn’t just doing it because he’s interested in you

- Makes you feel protected on nights out and stuff

- Always seems to know how you’re feeling

- You don’t have to overthink everything you text him

- You don’t have to wait like twenty minutes to respond

- You can talk about real stuff and not worry about being judged as a nerd or anything

- You can chat about boys/girls that either of you’re interested in

- You can give each other advice about relationships (even when, or especially when, you have no experience upon which to base this advice)

- You can send memes with no context and not worry about how they’re interpreted

- You can plus one each other to events

And a specific one to my best friend – he makes the best coffee ever

Obviously, the above list is applicable to all best friends, but until I met my friend, I never realised how good it is to have a guy as a best friend.

My other uni friends often tease me about how much time I spend with this guy or how much I talk about him.

But they don’t get it; the reason our friendship means so much to me is that we’re like brother and sister. I feel as if I could tell him anything, and I’ve never had that feeling with anyone other than my closest friends.

You know at the start of this post when I said I’d only known this guy seven months and yet still count him as one of my best friends?

This year, through meeting him and other people, I've learned that time doesn’t matter. We think it does, but really, it doesn’t. You can have known someone a week or two and know definitively who that person is to you.

Similarly, you can know them for a lifetime and not know them at all really.

My message with this post, if I really have one, is that how long you’ve known someone isn’t important. Time is an abstract concept, and I’m coming round to the belief that despite the fact we like to complicate things in life, most things are relatively simple.

And simple is that from the moment I met him, I knew that we were going to be great friends.

#boybestfriend #advantages #appreciationpost