There are many things in this world you can prepare for, and in my experience, finding your best friend most certainly is NOT one of them.  Everything short of a giant meteor the size of Texas approaching Earth’s surface only to be destroyed by a group of oil riggers at the last second (don’t laugh someone actually made a movie out of it and even more shocking is Ben Affleck’s questionable decision to play the lead), obtrusively interrupting your daily norm one day only to be completely ineradicable from your memory the next.  Over time, their life story becomes merged with yours, a communal blend of simultaneous triumph and regret.  And without second thought you find yourself recounting each other’s stories as if you had lived each and every detail entirely on your own.   

Well, at least in hindsight that’s how I’d like to imagine the perfect friend courtship.  But if I’m truly going to dive into what my best friend in college taught me about love, I should probably begin with a little bit of honesty, which brings me to point number one:

1)   Real relationships are messy

Or at least the one’s worth having are.  No relationship worth fighting for is going to fit perfectly into a Sisterhood of the Traveling pants synopsis.  Real relationships have their ups, downs, sideways and down right backwards way about the world.  The first major fight I ever had with my best friend was over chicken wings, yes, chicken wings!  So both literally and figuratively speaking, accept the mess and move on, because the minute you stop to wonder why in the world you’re yelling across the hallway at the top of your lungs debating whether or not you were supposed to order Sweet Barbeque or Classic Buffalo, you’ll miss the fantastic opportunity to look back and laugh at your combined stupidity.   

2)   Never underestimate the power of fate

I first met my best friend, coincidentally on the night my Freshman Orientation 'friends for life' group had ditched me for a better gig.  Turns out our vows to 'eternal friendship' weren’t so unbreakable after all.  Thankfully a girl on my floor dragged me to a party in a nearby dormitory, likely out of pity.   Well, I owe that girl on my floor just about every exciting memory I had in college…not because she became my best friend but because she introduced me to mine.  After about an hour of sitting awkwardly in the corner of a way past maximum capacity 100 square foot dorm room, I met my best friend to be and never looked back.    

3)   Lasting relationships take time

Having a best friend in your life is the equivalent of placing your body in some kind of strange time warp where there is no definite beginning or foreseeable end, everything just is as it always was.  Well, outside of your BFF glow is a world that unfortunately operates on a little something called time.  Love, is much the same.  It’s easy to accept the notion that you and your best friend clicked instantly and the rest well, like I said, is an unimportant part of history, but I’m willing to bet that your bestie status didn’t develop overnight.  It took form over a myriad of awkward silences and forced conversations about people from each other’s past lives.  That is, until you both began making memories of your own.   So if you find yourself demanding that love blossom and grow overnight, take a realistic reflection of your friendships.  I mean, who really suggests swapping Facebook passwords and stalking exes on week one?

4)   …and healthy relationships take breaks 

Perhaps one of the most difficult and most important lessons I’ve learned from my 5 year relationship with my best friend, is that sometimes there is such a thing as too close.  Once upon a sophomore year after spending eight consecutive days sharing the same twin bed and beginning to contemplate the creation of our own biffle language, we decided it might be a good time to evaluate our relationship.  We took a healthy weeklong separation and disconnected briefly from our near obsession with each other’s company.  We had more time to devote to our individual activities and maintain the other friendships in our lives (because, yes, having other friends is okay not to mention healthy).  So sure, it’s fine to go on best friend binges from time to time, but a little bit of space will give you a new appreciation for each other and some much needed new topics of conversation. 

5)   Don’t anticipate what you can’t control

One of the greatest fears in graduating from college was the distance.  How would we make it work from so far away?  I was moving to New Orleans and she would be stationed in Boston…I mean, what were we supposed to do, plan 'impromptu' Ice Cream runs over Skype?  Truth be told, we spent the better part of our last days together crying and sulking over something that was entirely out of our control.  In hindsight, we should’ve spent those final weeks reliving every crazy memory (well maybe not every) we’d collected over the course of our college years from boyfriends, to major life changes, to simply growing up.  I mean, not to spoil the ending but we did end up moving away from each other…and everything ended up just fine. 

6)   Happiness really is a choice

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but no relationship is perfect and while there are 101 ways to anticipate what will happen and how it will happen, sometimes the best course of action is taking a deep breath and laughing through the pain.  Sure, happiness may not always present itself in the way you’d like — we both thought we’d end our Junior Spring Formal with the loves of our lives…instead, we both got dumped and the dresses we spent hours shopping for and grooming went heinously out of style the minute we purchased them.  But we ended the night together, hysterically laughing through runny mascara and two pairs of completely ruined pumps. 

I find myself currently in the healthiest and happiest relationship I have ever been a part of, my best friendship was an example long before.

7)   …and more importantly, so is love

That’s right, love is a choice.  Far too often it’s depicted as this fantastic feeling that consumes your body and robs you of all free will! Well it’s not.  It’s a rational decision to put someone else’s needs fully and completely before your own.  My best friend chose to love me after I cancelled our weekly Mindy sessions to secretly attend a date with an underwhelming ex boyfriend and I chose to love her after she broke into my room and ate an entire blueberry pie without my permission (it was a really good blueberry pie okay?).  Like any other commitment you make in your life, at the end of the day, either you show up or you don’t.  Lucky for me, she always did…even when I completely deserved to get left at the best friend altar.   

Well, I’m sure you’re wondering at this point when I’m going to chime in with a massive end all be all epiphany about love.  Not to burst your bubble, but after years of clinging to made for TV movies, Cosmo dating tips, and skimming self-help novels in the Barnes and Noble, I’ve learned that some of the best lessons in life are the ones that we are coincidentally already living.  Because while I find myself currently in the healthiest and happiest relationship I have ever been a part of, my best friendship was an example long before.  She taught me how to communicate, how to maintain my independence, even how to effectively articulate anger (if there even is such a thing) but most importantly, she taught me how to love unconditionally, and for that I am eternally grateful…just for the record, it was Classic Buffalo, always Classic Buffalo. 

Amina is a Chicago-based blogger/writer who works as an advertising strategist in her free time. She graduated from Amherst College in May of 2013 with a degree in American Studies and is still very much in the process of decoding the post grad life on a daily basis. If you like what you’ve read on bSmart Guide, feel free to check out more of her work on her personal blog Yours Exceptionally or for post grad advice on the go, follow her on Twitter @Amina_Taylor.