Friendship lessons from Ted Lasso

I've started watching Ted Lasso recently, and while it's filled with language... the contrast of how incredibly nice Ted is to everyone is just startling. The impact he has on people is heart-warming and profound and challenging. I want to go back through all the episodes and make notes of lessons learned and just funny stuff he says.

In the episode I watched today, something really stood out to me. Rebecca is dating a kind of boring guy who is just fine. Keeley, her friend, tries to be supportive about how he's fine...but Roy, Keeley's boyfriend, can't take it. He tells her not to settle for fine. You can watch the clip below, but be warned, it's very heavy on the F bomb.

The point being that Roy says it's not about the guy who is fine. It's about why Rebecca thinks the fine guy deserves her. He says that she deserves someone who makes her feel like she's been struck by lightening. "Don't you dare settle for fine."

Later, Rebecca, with the fine guy, starts reflecting out loud... "Dating is so odd, isn't it? I mean, we are all strangers essentially. So I mean, how is it ever possible to truly feel safe with someone? I suppose you can't. You know, my friend, Flo, once told me that intimacy was all about leaving yourself open to being attacked. Isn't that horrible? But it does make you realize how scary it is, allowing yourself to be intimate again. I mean, you really do have to be brave. And that's it right there, isn't it? I need to be brave enough to let someone wonderful love me, without fear of being hurt and without fear of being safe."

I'm not dating anyone, so that's not what this is about. But I'm new here in the ME, and so I'm building friendships. There are people I'd really like to be friends with. I feel like I've been struck by lightening to know them. But one thing has been becoming clear to me lately... maybe they don't feel that way about me. And so when I watched this episode and saw Rebecca come to the realization of what intimacy is, and that she needs "to be brave enough to let someone wonderful love [her] without fear of being hurt and without fear of being safe..." I sort of had my own epiphany.

I deserve friends who want to be friends with me. Who we have that mutual delight in each other that makes us want to spend time together. Who speak truth, even when it hurts. That think I deserve more than fine. Who we both feel like we struck lightening to find each other and call each other friend. 

Friends reciprocate friendship. While I may be new and may be building friendships still... I think it may be time to start leaning into the folks who have sought me out instead of into the ones who barely even respond to my leaning in. Time to be the kind of friend I want to have by reciprocating to the ones who are showing up.