Friendship and relationships between different kinds of people require a lot of empathy – not sympathy.

Sympathy is something people connect through when they are with people kin to themselves. They feel the same. They understand each other effortlessly. Friendship between different kinds of people requires empathy both ways. You must acknowledge your differences and still understand each other, your perspectives, situations, and life goals. “Do unto others as you’d do to yourself” no longer applies; you have to do onto another as they’d do to themselves. You will have to UNDERSTAND a different perspective.

If one of you is a fitness enthusiast, a beauty influencer with a romantic mind and ambitious goals, and one is a low-key bakery-product enthusiast who wants to be a domestic partner to a nice guy and a mother to five, your entire stance in life differs. It doesn’t mean you can’t be friends, but it does require EMPATHY from BOTH OF YOU, not just the fitness enthusiast. Even if you think your goals are more wholesome, it doesn’t mean you get to ignore your friends’ ambitions and interests. If you think that’s alright, I think you’re not much of a friend, at the end of the day.

It is also likely that this friendship will come to an end eventually. At least your life paths will lead you in such different directions that you must be prepared to part ways at some stage. You need to be able to let go of your friend painlessly and beautifully, to be a good friend at all.

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