You know the friend who you can usually never find on a daily basis but is usually available when you call? Yeah, I’m that friend.

I suck at maintaining friendships.

This whole staying stuck in my thoughts thing really restricts the time I have to reach out to others, and I truly hate it. I am also that friend who is extremely thankful for friends amazing friends who seem to understand my reclusive moments and just let me be.

In an effort to change the connotation of a term that’s so cliché my PARENTS understand it, I will call these women my “friends with benefits”. Don’t close this tab just yet, please. Stay with me. I refuse to define the current connotation of the term, but I will present my redefinition.

A true friend with benefits is equipped with the ability to provide unfailing support and advice regardless of the circumstances.

I haven’t seen three of my closest friends in at least 2 years, another in about a year, and another in at least six months. Yet when I emerge from my cyclic hibernation, they are there. They are there for me with questions, stories, laughs, and concerns. And the truth. Which from perusing Facebook (I go on hiatus from FB quite often), I think is rare. It’s not as common as it should be nowadays to have people outside of your family who care enough to tell you the truth. Friends with benefits listen to a situation, determine your state of mind (read: are you in the mood to listen openly), and either proceed full force or with caution.

In general, advice from others is typically hit or miss. MY friends with benefits, however, are pretty smart cookies both in the books and in everyday (yeah, I’m bragging) so their advice is spot on. Sometimes it’s reassuring to have them echo my unspoken feelings about a situation. Sometimes the conversation ends with me puzzled as to how I could have possibly overlooked such a simple solution. Other conversations end with me receiving no advice at all. Because on that night, in that text-convo, phone call, or FB thread, it was my turn to listen.

I think that’s the best part of having friends with benefits. You get to be there for them. You get to connect/reconnect with someone you care about. Someone who befriended you the first day of 2^nd grade when you were brand new at school. Or someone who helped you learned your scales in band. Maybe this friend with benefits is related to you or calls you “Mama”. Maybe this friend with benefits thought you talked way too much the first time you met then introduced you to another friend with benefits.

Who knows or even cares how they entered your life. Although, the subject of seasonal friends versus permanent ones is intriguing…

Anyway, having friends with benefits is, well, beneficial. For everyone involved. Or at least it should be. Which brings me back to this whole “I suck at maintaining friendships thing.” It’s going to stop. Between this blog and some ventures that I’m working on, I’m going to have to pull myself out of my head and engage with the people I love and the world much more than I currently am.

Cheers to having friends with benefits. Never has such a tawdry phrase had such meaning to me.