Practical Psychology is a weekly newspaper column written by Dr. Lloyd J. Thomas, Phd for over 20 years. It is designed to address psychological topics that are most useful to its readers. Please feel free to re-print any of them in any form you wish. It is asked only that you give the information about how to subscribe and credit for authorship. Thanks.

Whether or not we acknowledge it, friendships are important. Without friendships, the quality of our lives is diminished. True friendships bring psychological richness to our lifestyles. Friendship matters. No person can function without direct or indirect contact with others. We are social creatures. In order to be fully human, we need friendships.

As with all relationships, friendships are created, nurtured, developed and changed. They sometimes wither and end. Sometimes, friendships are broken intentionally or unintentionally. When valued friendships end due to a quarrel or a hurt, very few of us know how to go about repairing the breach. Learning how to repair broken friendships is an interpersonal skill from which each of us could benefit.

It is not always wise to repair some broken friendships. Before I share with you some ideas about friendship fixing, I want to describe some "friendships" which may not be worth the effort to repair.

If your friend always undermines your self-esteem, consistently challenges or discounts your desires, dreams or actions, takes advantage of you, or is overly clinging or dominating, you may wish to think twice before seeking to repair a rift between you and your friend. If a friend pursues only his or her own concerns, is deceitful, critical, or attacking, it may be time to dissolve the relationship. When your partner is only self-absorbed, lacking in awareness or consideration of what may be important to you, or simply doesn't value your relationship, it may not be wise to resuscitate a dying friendship.

If you decide that a broken friendship is worth repair, here are a few suggestions about how to begin.

Evaluate yourself. Have you been too demanding of the friendship? Have you been too busy, absorbed in your own activities, too self-centered, careless or thoughtless? Have you been making assumptions about the other without checking them out? Have you ignored or neglected the relationship? If so, you may be contributing to the problem rather than to the healing.

Often, neither person wants to "make the first move" to repair a broken friendship. However, initiation of some kind of contact is rarely dangerous. If you are too proud or fearful to make face-to-face contact, call him or her on the phone. Send a note. Clip out an article or picture and write, "When I saw this, I thought of you." Initiate contact through a common acquaintance, saying "I'm sorry about what has happened" or simply "I miss you."

Avoid making assumptions about the other person. You can never know if they are feeling bad, sad or angry unless you check. And certainly avoid drawing conclusions based upon gossip or hearsay. Perhaps a note checking out "How ya' doin'?" will imply you are desirous of "testing the water" of patching up the friendship.

Sometimes, after a rift in the friendship, the best thing is to allow a "cooling off period" to occur. Then return to the relationship as though nothing had happened. This is not denial. Rather it is recognition that neither needs to apologize, and that both are desirous of making a tacit agreement to "forgive and forget" and go forward from the immediate moment. This way recriminations or explanatory reasons for past events are by-passed. You both can rebuild your friendship from the present moment without cluttering it up with past painful events.

Kingsley once wrote: "A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend; one human soul whom we can trust utterly; who knows the best and the worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us...who, again, will comfort and encourage us in the day of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our own battle as we can." True friendships are the golden nuggets found in the sands of life. When broken, most are certainly worth repairing.