Differentiate Friendship from Love, Accept Family Ties, and Let Go of Regrets

Sept. 26, 2025, 5:56 a.m. Essays

Life is but one chance, and if you lack affection from family, friendship, and love, it is a regret;

If you lack two of them, it is pitiful;

If you lack all three, you live as if dead.

A friend asked me, ‘In your heart, how do you rank family affection, friendship, and love?’

I replied, ‘In my heart, all emotions have no priority, no importance. Each one is very important to me, but it has a position.’

The order of relationships is wrong, and people will live a tired life; entanglement in various relationships, the order is correct, life is easy and happy.

Parents, children, partners, and yourself—what is the most important person in your life?

Love in the world is aimed at aggregation, but only parental love is aimed at separation.

If one party prioritizes the child over the partner, neglecting the partner who receives little attention, it may easily lead to infidelity.

When both spouses focus on the child, they may create excessive pressure for the child, leading to the child’s aversion to school or running away.

For a child, the harmony between parents is more important than their own needs.

Husbands and wives should first become good couples before becoming good parents, so that children can become truly happy children.

Life stages such as birth, old age, sickness and death are inevitable. Although separation from loved ones is something we all dread, we will all face the departure of our dearest.

Order is not just applied to things, but also to human family systems.

If we violate this order and the hidden rules within it, we will encounter family disputes, husband and wife disagreements, mental distress, emotional setbacks, physical illness, business failure, and these harms can be repeated across generations.

Some say: ‘Parents first, children second, partners third, oneself fourth, followed by siblings;’

Others say: ‘Children first, parents second, partners third, oneself fourth, and finally siblings.’

What about you?

For example, in most family education, in most parent-child relationships, control is used to treat family members.

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Control—to satisfy one’s inner needs, make others obey.

Control means treating others as part of one’s body or as tools, using them as hands and feet, and expecting them to serve perfectly.

Controllers always strive to deny others’ abilities, suppress others’ autonomy, and make them obedient.

When a child becomes the most powerful and privileged person in the family, they can be raised to be lawless and disrespectful of their parents, and they cannot understand right and wrong.

During the process of educating children, the child’s position is higher, and the parents’ position is lower, which makes it more difficult to educate the child. This is related to the ‘order of love’ in family relationships.

In the ‘Relationship Order Map’, the center position is the most important—correct order is ‘myself’ at the most important position.

As humans, we can only learn to love ourselves, then we can learn to love others;

Only by taking care of ourselves can we take care of our family.

The second most important relationship in a close relationship is partner.

The most important relationship in a marital relationship is husband and wife relationship, and husband and wife relationship is harmonious, husband and wife can put more energy into managing family and preparing for children.

When one party focuses on the child and neglects the other party, the love between husband and wife will be missing, and the connection will be reduced, making husband and wife relationship dependent on the child.

When the child grows up and leaves home, this link suddenly disappears, and it is difficult to rebuild it later.

Friendship:

Friends don’t rely on sacrifice to prove themselves.Friends aren’t there to offer superficial comfort when you're down;

Instead, they can give you insightful perspectives during chaos, help you navigate treacherous currents, and such people are worth cherishing.

Some people constantly give, even if the other person doesn’t really need it, continually offering, offering, offering.

Because in their hearts, only by constantly giving, are they good, are they valuable, are they worthy of love.

Whether it’s constant demanding or constant giving, it will lead to imbalance, and eventually lead to the failure of the relationship.

Friends are useless.

This is a sentence by Professor Chen Guo of Fudan University.

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Friends themselves are useless, and they should not be used.

If you really need a friend, you must respect the friend and don’t let the friend suffer.

Friendship doesn’t bear the brunt of neglect or exploitation.

A mature interpersonal relationship, whether emotional, friendship, or work, is based on the ‘balance of giving and receiving.’

Maintaining a friendship doesn’t mean you must have the same three views to become friends; it usually requires you to understand each other, make concessions for each other’s habits, so that your friendship can last for a long time.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Zhang’ is the classic case of harmonious marriage.

Einstein once said: ‘The most beautiful things in the world are a few honest people with brilliant minds and good hearts.’

Each life’s sole purpose is to become oneself; besides this, there is no other purpose.

Life is precious, we should learn to cherish it, and give it to trustworthy people and things.

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