The Friendship Secret I Wish I Had Learned 20 Years Ago

But it is all the sweeter and more special to have it now.

By

Sarah Walker Caron

 
Published August 13, 2025
illustration of 2 friends surrounded by flowers
Monica Garwood

When I think back to friendship in my teenage years, I remember being blunt about a lot of things — thoughts, feelings, curiosities, opinions… I was figuring out who I was and processing it with my friends. And my willingness to say exactly what I was thinking was, I am told, one of my more endearing qualities. But what a lot of people didn’t know then was that I was still censoring myself, masking the pieces of myself and my life that I kept off-limits.

Sometimes it was discomfort. For as open as I was, I was hyper-aware of what made me different. Sometimes it was because I didn’t want to be confronted with bad choices. Like many people, I had my share of those. Sometimes it was simply sheer embarrassment that I wasn’t perfect — in school, at home or otherwise.

From where I stood, I was the weird one. The one who just stumbled where others ran. The one whose personal history firmly checked the category of “other.” The one drawn to musicals who couldn’t sing a note. So, I curated a version of myself that seemed to be an open book as a defense mechanism.

At 44, I now realize that the strongest friendships are built on utter, complete oversharing — not hiding the scary parts.

When you are with the right people, this level of honesty makes your friendship stronger. Your friends then really know you. In turn, those people — your people, so to speak — don’t judge you. Instead, they support and guide.

Why did it take me so long to learn this? It’s taken years, therapy, self-reflection and letting go to get here — and a bit of reexamining the past to see why some friendships faltered.

I mean, who hasn’t had the friend who, when faced with a health crisis, lobbed your own history at you like a grenade while complaining that it wasn’t fair that it was happening to them and not you? What? That’s not a universal experience?

Or what about when you screwed up the courage to tell your friends you didn’t want to get married, and they wrote it off as cold feet because they thought you’d never wavered before. Just me?

These are the things that caused me to pull back further from friends and to maintain a firm boundary, hiding the imperfections, failures, worries and broken parts. I know now that this was unhealthy, and I am happier for having torn it all down.

As it turns out, with the truest friends, you can share anything — including when you are making questionable dating choices or irrationally upset over something minor. Instead of judgment, you are met with support, advice or reality checks.

“I’m playing with fire,” I said recently to two of them.

“No, you’re fine. Just have fun with it as long as it’s not hurting anyone. And when it’s not fun, move on,” they said.

And as that situation has shifted, they’ve buckled in. After all, that’s what friends do.

Life is a lot better when you have good friends you can tell anything to. I’m fortunate, now in my 40s, to have held onto the friends who were like this all along — even if I wasn’t always sharing when I should have. I do now. And I’ve nabbed a few more who are as well. Together we navigate relationships and professional challenges, laugh about so many things and check in on the questionable decisions that keep life interesting.

I wish I had learned this lesson 20 years ago. But it is all the sweeter and more special to have it now, when I can appreciate the value of strong friendships and support my friends in equal measure.

 

Do you find you can truly be yourself with your friends? Let us know in the comments below.

Sarah Walker Caron is a writer, editor and author based in Bangor, Maine, where she lives with her two kids and a cat named Bippity. She’s a senior editor for the Bangor Daily News and writes about quick and easy from scratch recipes on Sarah’s Cucina Bella. Her recent cookbooks, including The Super Easy 5-Ingredient Cookbook and The Disney Princess Tea Parties Cookbook, are available where books are sold.