Family Weekend Article: "The Personality of Friendship " - by Kate Ensign-Lewis

Becca and I were inseparable. Because her mother worked away from home and mine didn’t, she came home with me everyday after school. We watched TV, ate rice with soy sauce, did our German homework together, and laughed until we couldn’t breathe.

But sophomore year our personalities became stronger, and we started realizing how different we were. Although we still spent most of our time together, she started to spend time with other people, doing natural teenager things like going to popular hang-outs and attending co-ed parties, while I studied and limited my interaction with boys to Church dances.

I, a traditionalist, didn’t understand why she was dissatisfied with the status quo, and she, a free spirit, thought that I was stifling, even judgmental. Our personalities were too different. By our senior year, things had totally fallen apart. After all our years of being best friends, we didn’t even sign one another’s yearbooks.

Dealing with a different personality can be difficult at the least, and unbearable at most. And, in a culture where we are encouraged to love everyone and bear one another’s burdens—or at least visit two families once a month—we come across the conflict of different personalities more often than some. How should you comfort your friend when you know he places little value in emotion? How should do you confront a problem with your best friend when you know she’s non-confrontational? Difference of personality frequently causes miscommunication and confusion, especially when we don’t know how to address conflict.

The first key to solving these difficulties and being a good friend is to identify the personality characteristics of the person you’re dealing with. “People of different personalities can still have wonderful friendships. It’s just a matter of appreciating their talents,” says Paul Tieger, author of several books, including Do What You Are and Just Your Type and CEO of SpeedReading People, LLC, which teaches people how to better communicate with others by knowing their type.

Read more here >

Submit a comment here >

Learn more about LDS Living Magazine >

Weekend Fare: "Keeping Winter Lively" - by LDS Living Staff

With winter chill comes a tendency to stay inside . . . and a tendency to be inactive. But adults are supposed to get thirty consecutive minutes of movement a day, and kids are supposed to get sixty. To keep your family moving during the winter months, here are a few fun ideas for weekend activities.

• Have a snowman-building contest. See who can build a three-tiered snowman to a certain height (say 4 feet)—with button eyes, carrot nose, and scarf—the fastest. The team that wins gets to choose the evening’s meal.
• Take a trip to the zoo and point out how animals adjust for the winter months. Ask each person in the family to come up with something.
• Check out more great ideas...

Read more here >