“We build trust not by offering help, but by asking for it.” ~Simon Sinek
I have always been the strong sister, partner and friend.
One day I didn’t make a conscious decision to be the strong one and stick to it. She became who she was at a very young age, as her first-born daughter. I’m used to carrying a heavier load than my siblings. My parents rewarded me for being strong and responsible, and that kept people close.
I’m the friend you call when you can’t think straight. I am the friend who celebrates your victories. The therapy friend. The inspiring friend. Someone who sits with you for six hours pours everything into this conversation and then goes home and needs three days of silence to recharge. And then I’ll send you an SMS to log in. Because that’s what I do.
I never sat and thought about whether I was a good friend or what I wanted from my friendships.
The question no one asked…
Simon Sinek has an exercise that the Friends exercise. He suggests calling your closest friends and asking them a simple question: why are you my friend
According to Simon, the first answers can be superficial things like loyal, fun and good listeners. But you look deeper for the answers. What you’re really paying attention to, Sinek explains, is what happens next when your friend stops describing her and starts describing how to feel when they are around you. The real impact lives in this shift.
So I called her. I wrote an SMS. All four are my closest friends.
Here’s what came back: great friend, always willing to listen, heart of gold to bounce ideas off of, understanding, fun, dynamic, authentic, inspiring, motivating. I like the positive things my friends mentioned. He was proud to hear it.
And then almost immediately I felt different.
Why are none of my friendships emotional?
I began to wonder how vulnerable I was with my close friends. Do I feel comfortable asking for help? How vulnerable can my friends be with me? Do they feel comfortable asking for help? The feedback from my friends was beautiful, but I was wondering what else they thought of me. So I pondered the question of how my friends appeared to me as well.
This was information I was not prepared for.
The pattern behind the Force
Here’s what I know about myself now that I didn’t have words for back then.
Other than anger and frustration, I don’t bring my emotions into my friendships. Not really. If something hard comes up, we quickly smooth it out. We go straight into problem-solving mode. we say everything will be fine before the other had finished his sentence.
My friendships were very similar to my romantic relationships. We were all emotionally unavailable in our own ways. Or at least I was. And I built a circuit that matched that frequency without realizing it.
After recently reading a book about friendship, I realized that I tend to put off platonic intimacy rather than build it. I was the person who always shows up, always has the answer, always holds the space, but I didn’t create closeness. I created a role. And the role is not the same as the relationship.
My friendships began to revolve around who I was and what I had to offer. I wasn’t vulnerable, I showed the frustrated, angry or sad side to some of my friends, even though we’ve been friends for years. I kept showing up and playing a part. This distinction dawned on me slowly, then all at once.
Where did it actually come from
I was the girl who had no friends. Not the way the other girls looked. Not the sleepovers, the trips to the mall, and the person who was always someone’s person. I spent a lot of time alone when I was young. So I learned early on to be independent in relationships. So that you don’t need too much. To be valuable enough to be maintained without maintenance.
That’s why I think the emotional attachment never came for me. It was a foreign feeling. Like a language I understood intellectually but never actually spoke out loud.
As I grew up, I became someone people depended on. Someone who gave freely and received carefully. And I told myself that this is just the way I am, that not everyone has to be emotionally open to have good friendships.
Somewhere along the way, I made a conscious decision that I didn’t want an only best friend. A person who was everything to me felt like too much weight both ways. I didn’t want to carry it. I didn’t want someone to take it for me.
What I didn’t see was how this decision quietly shaped everything else. The help I never asked for. The vulnerability I kept out of reach. My version that didn’t arrive until I cleaned myself up a bit.
What the audit revealed
As I thought about what really creates closeness in friendship, three things stood out to me: support, symmetry, and trust. Support is being there for each other when life gets messy. Symmetry is the feeling that the relationship goes both ways—not just one person giving and the other receiving. And trust is the quiet understanding that certain conversations are safe between you.
I had the support. I had the confidentiality. Symmetry was what I quietly avoided. Because true symmetry means you need things too. You need to let yourself be the one calling at 2am instead of being the one answering. You need to bring your real, unpolished life to the friendship—not just the version of you that has already been made up.
Two of my closest friends are local. Two live further away. All four had the same feedback: I am inspirational. I am a motivator. I will come safely.
What wasn’t in it? A single moment when it appeared that I needed something.
This was data too.
It’s a matter of asking
Simon Sinek said something that left me cold.
“We build trust not by offering help, but by asking for it.”
It was completely backwards for me. I thought that a strong friend who never needed anything made me trustworthy. What made it worth keeping? What made friendship real?
But what Sinek points to is something deeper. When you never ask for help, you deny those who love you the honor of showing up for you. You are making the relationship one-way without realizing it. And one-way relationships, no matter how loving, eventually create distance.
Asking for help is not weakness. It’s not a burden. In fact, it’s one of the most intimate things you can offer someone—the trust that they can keep you.
What has changed for me
I started small.
Instead of “How are you?” I started asking my friends:How you feel emotionally?” Specific, deliberate, a bit fiddly at first. Our friendships have always been about the good side of things. Naming the emotional layer out loud was strange for all of us.
But I continued. And I started allowing myself to say when things weren’t going well for me. When I felt low. When I was struggling. Not as a performance, not as an overshare – but as an example. The more vulnerable I was, the safer it became for them to be vulnerable.
It worked. Slowly, little by little, as real things change.
My friend of over twenty years recently quietly told me in the middle of a casual conversation that I was being too hard on myself. I admitted. I said I needed to show myself more grace.
It was a brief moment. It wasn’t dramatic. But I sat with him for days.
Because it meant he was paying attention. It meant he finally said it instead of glossing over it. It meant that after all this time we finally chose each other over the easier, smoother version of friendship.
Now it’s your turn…
If you are the strong friend, the therapy friend that everyone relies on, then this is for you.
Try the Simon Sinek exercise. Call the most important people and ask them why they are your friend. Then see what the feedback says—and doesn’t say.
Notice if your fortress has quietly turned into a wall. Notice if the people around you recognize the parts of you that are still put together. Notice if you ever let someone carry something for you.
Asking for help is not the end of strength. Maybe your strength will finally rest.
And the friendships that can sustain it? These are worth building.
About Siedah Johnson
Writer and author Siedah Johnson I am love: Learn to love yourself and tap into your power. Through his publication The author’s alchemyshe writes about self-love, healing generational patterns, and our relationships with ourselves and others.
