Leos tend to be very interesting people. They are a fire element that is ruled
by the Sun and their modality is fixed. They can be great leaders that are self-confident, determined, and ambitious. But are they dependable as friends? Let’s see.
As a whole, Leo’s dependability as a friend is questionable. They are strong in only 3 out of the 9 qualities that constitute dependability in a friendship identified by experts and need to improve in the other 6. Although they are charismatic and honest, their inflexibility, egotism, and attention-seeking can cause others to question their sincerity.
This article focuses on one aspect of Leo’s personality: dependability. If you would like a broader view of this zodiac sign, I recommend that you consult our guide to Leo.
How can we know if Leos are dependable friends?
A genuine friendship between two people requires that both strike a balance between things that they treasure about the other person and things that annoy them. Let’s face it. We all have developed habits throughout life and have aspects of our personality that under certain circumstances others might find distasteful. It’s what makes us unique individuals and not robots. A true friend will weigh those annoying things about you against others that they value. Over time, the love and patience that they bring to the friendship will probably cause your rough edges to be smoothed, just as your love and patience will smooth theirs. The two of you will grow together.
As you read this article, you will learn about some beneficial characteristics that, in general, make Leos dependable friends, as well as some annoying things about them that they may need to improve. You will have to decide if you want to be a friend that nurtures their good qualities and helps them to improve in areas that they are weak. Friendships take time, effort, and patience to thrive.
The best way to know if a Leo is a dependable friend is through your own experience. Nothing can match that. However, your experience often is not broad enough for you to make reliable predictions about future friendships with Leos. Research can help to fill this gap and provide you with a more comprehensive view of Leo’s dependability in friendships.
The table below presents original research that I conducted on whether or not Leos are dependable friends. The left column lists nine qualities that constitute a dependable friend identified by psychologist Dr. Lisa Wagner in her article Good Character Is What We Look for in a Friend. The right column indicates whether Leo natives are strong in that quality, weak (in need of improvement), or are inconsistent according to astrologers that I polled from the Americas, European Union, and India.
| QUALITY | DEPENDABILITY OF LEO |
|---|---|
| A dependable friend is emotionally supportive. They are patient when you are upset and are not judgmental. | Weak. Leos can be supportive in other ways but are not really emotionally supportive. They also are not particularly patient. |
| A dependable friend will go above and beyond to help you. They will not abandon you in times of need. | Strong. However, if your need persists, you might find a Leo eventually abandoning you. |
| A dependable friend listens. They are able to hear your words, rather than simply react to what they think you are saying. | Weak. Leos tend to want you to listen to themselves more than they want to listen to you. |
| A dependable friend is thoughtful and often are able to sense your needs. They will do things for you that would not even be on someone else’s radar. | Inconsistent. A Leo can lavish you with attention and gifts but are weak when it comes to sensing your needs. |
| A dependable friend is reliable. They are the first person that you think of when facing a challenge. | Strong. Leos are there for you when you need them and keep their promises. |
| A dependable friend accepts you as you are with all of your flaws. Their friendship with you is not conditional. | Weak. Friendships for Leos tend to be conditional on you following their lead. |
| A dependable friend is your best advocate. They bring out your best qualities. | Weak. Leos are their own best advocates. Friends are further down on their priority list. |
| A dependable friend is honest. They will let you know when your actions are questionable or if you are headed down an unproductive path. | Strong. Leos place a high premium on honesty. |
| A dependable friend is trustworthy. You can confide in them and know that they will always have your back. | Inconsistent. Leos are honest and want to be trustworthy, but they also tend to have big mouths. They sometimes reveal things that they shouldn’t just to get their point across or to win an argument. |
If you have someone in your life that exhibits all nine of the above qualities in the left column, you are truly a fortunate person. You should do everything you can to preserve and nurture this friendship.
Keep reading as I delve into Leo’s dependability in friendships in more detail.
Can you depend on Leo for emotional support?
Our poll of astrologers revealed that Leo natives typically are eager to help friends, but the type of help that they offer may not meet your needs for emotional support.
Leos are known for having a big heart. They are compassionate and generous to those who are close to them. As long as you recover quickly, you can rely on support from a Leo. They will go above and beyond to help those that are close to them and to ensure that they are happy. However, Leos generally don’t have much tolerance for needy people and tend to find them overwhelming.
Leos are highly competitive and they will want to be the first to help you and to provide you with the best help. They will treat your need for emotional support as a challenge that needs to be solved immediately.
They initially will try to cheer you up with playfulness and laughter. This might make you feel better temporarily, but your need for emotional support likely will remain. Once they realize that their quick fix didn’t work, thus placing you into the needy category in their minds, they might disappear and hope that things work out for the best.
Being emotionally supportive also requires that you genuinely listen to the person in need. Our poll of astrologers indicated that Leos are weak in this area. They are too self-absorbed to allow you to be the center of attention for any protracted period of time and they are not particularly patient. More often than not, you can expect them to regale you with a pep talk about a challenge that they overcame in their own lives with the expectation that you will be able to apply it to your own situation. They don’t do this because they don’t care. On the contrary, they actually believe that they are helping you.
Leos are fun to be around
Leo natives are extroverts and like to live life gregariously. They exude confidence and excel at humor and having fun. Their spontaneity makes Leos people that everyone wants to be friends with. They can be the life of the party and eagerly embrace trying new things. At times, they can be very generous to friends and seem genuinely interested in making them happy. If being around a person that displays confidence and enjoys having a good time were all that is needed in a dependable friendship, then you could reliably count on a Leo.
However, the nine characteristics listed at the beginning of this article also are very important. Unfortunately, our poll of astrologers revealed that Leos do not exhibit a majority of them routinely.
For example, Leos tend to like drama and chaotic environments. Both allow them to play the role of savior in situations that are tense and focus the spotlight on themselves. This may not be what you are looking for in a dependable friendship.
Leos are dependable in goal-oriented environments
Determination, self-confidence, and ambition are required to set and achieve goals. These are qualities that Leos have in abundance. A person must have sufficient motivation to complete a task. They also need the self-confidence to navigate challenges encountered in the process of reaching a goal.
Leos tend to make great individual workers and leaders in goal-oriented environments. Their charismatic personality inspires others, which makes them a good choice to oversee work projects. A Leo native will keep team members on task, ensure that the work is up to standard, and that it is completed on time.
These are highly valued qualities in business and work settings and in some cases, such as honesty and reliability, they translate to dependability in a friendship. However, our poll results suggest that in other important areas, Leos tend to be weak and in need of improvement.
Friendships with Leos tend to be conditional
A caring relationship, such as a friendship, is not like a work contract. It is not supposed to have terms that both parties are meant to uphold. Important qualities that characterize a caring friendship are respect, honesty, and appreciation. Although our poll of astrologers found that Leos are honest (at times to a fault), they tend to fall short in the respect and appreciation departments.
As noted in the table at the beginning of this article, a dependable friend will accept you as you are with all of your flaws. If you find yourself needing to compromise or realign your interests and values to match those of another person without them reciprocating, then this is not a genuine egalitarian friendship. Instead, it is one in which another person has power over you. As long as you do what they want, they will treat you like a friend. But the minute that you show independence of thought or action, they will reject you.
Our poll of astrologers indicated that Leos, in general, fall into this category. Their actions tend to be taken with the aim of calling attention to themselves. They relish being in charge and expect those around them to follow their path. When a person questions that path, even if their criticism is just and constructive, they often will view this as a personal attack and may respond in a domineering manner, sometimes to the point of bullying the person. In this case, the relationship is conditional and double standards are applied. The Leo native wants you to respect them, but they do not offer the same respect to you.
Leos are honest friends
You also want to be able to depend on a friend being honest with you. Dependable friends can help you to make good decisions as you negotiate the torturous challenges of life. But if a person always seems to be telling you things that you want to hear to placate you, then this is manipulation and is not a genuine friendship.
Our poll of astrologers revealed that Leo is a dependable friend in this respect. They are very honest, particularly with those that have earned their trust. They don’t play confusing mind games and do not engage in manipulative behavior. They place a premium on keeping their promises to others.
Leos may not appreciate you as a friend
Each person is unique and we all like to feel that our uniqueness is appreciated. If you are being ridiculed and discounted by someone, then that person is not really a caring friend.
Leos tend to be oriented toward self-aggrandizement. As long as you pamper them with lots of attention and adoration, they might show what seems like appreciation towards you. However, this is not valuing your uniqueness as a person. Instead, it is rewarding your blind loyalty. Remember that friendships with Leo natives tend to be conditional and contain some double standards. They definitely want you to appreciate them, but tend to be stingy when it comes to appreciating you.
Leos have big egos
Leos are charismatic and grandiose. They crave social interaction and love being the center of attention. Leos have bloated self-esteem that borders on arrogance. This means that they are not particularly good listeners.
Instead of listening to you, they tend to talk more about themselves and expect you to give them your undivided attention. If you need a person to show compassion even when you are wrong or attempt to see your side of things despite their own disagreement, a Leo native would probably not be the best choice. They simply are too focused on themselves.
The trustworthiness of Leo might not be absolute
Our poll of astrologers found that Leo’s trustworthiness is somewhat questionable. While it generally is true that Leos are honest, telling them things in confidence could turn out to be a risky endeavor. Leos crave being in the spotlight, which means that they have a lot to say. Unfortunately, this can cause them to be somewhat of a blabbermouth. They enthusiastically share information about themselves, which means that they could also share information about you too if they think that it will keep those around them engaged.
Leos will do almost anything to preserve their perceived social standing and remain the center of attention. Moreover, their inflated egos have a propensity to be bruised easily. When this occurs, things can turn ugly very fast. If they see you as somehow posing a threat to their ego, Leo may override your confidence in an effort to strike back at you. They also might reveal private information about others in order to win an argument or to keep the attention focused on themselves.
Leos Can Be Very Inflexible
Leos tend to stick to their ideals and struggle with change. Living a life of consistency is very important to them and they have a hard time switching from their agenda to your agenda.
I once had a classmate that later in life I learned was a Leo. It was difficult to be around him because he had high standards and expectations that he applied both to himself and to others. In his mind, his way always was the best way.
One day our teacher divided the class into groups and gave each a specific and unique assignment. The Leo native didn’t like the task we had been given. He wanted to modify it to align with his interests and tried to convince the rest of us in the group that the teacher would reward us for our originality. We briefly considered this as a group, but ultimately decided that we should follow the instructions of our teacher.
The Leo native became belligerent, which caught the attention of our the teacher. We explained that we were having a disagreement about the focus of the assignment. The teacher explained that we were correct to follow her instructions because the group projects were part of a greater whole and that altering one group project would disrupt the final product. But the Leo native was adamant that his idea was better.
Of course, in the end, the teacher prevailed in the argument and the Leo native acquiesced, but he remained livid. He sat in his chair pouting and did not make any contributions to the work.
As you can see, Leos are inflexible and do not respond well to situations that shift attention away from them and onto someone else. In this case, members of our group threatened the Leo native’s ego by deciding not to follow him. He became bitter as a result.
Final Thoughts
Our poll of astrologers found that Leos can be very dependable friends under certain circumstances, but in others, particularly those related to connecting with you emotionally, they are weak and in need of improvement.
A Leo will show their best and worst characteristics in the most passionate way possible. They make amazing workers and have an unquenchable ambition. They bring that same ambition into their social life.
As long as you are willing to allow the Leo native to lead, you potentially can have a productive and meaningful friendship. Be open to trying out new experiences since this is how Leos like to live their lives. They also like it when you lavish them with attention and verbal praise.
There is no doubt that you will have fun around a Leo. The question is if that is enough. You may find them to be too self-absorbed and egotistical. This may remove any chance for you to form a solid friendship, because you may feel that you cannot share parts of yourself that you typically would with a friend.
Acknowledgements
I would like to graciously thank the group of astrologers who participated in this poll. Your willingness to help me with this original research is greatly appreciated.
- Headline photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
- Party photo by Maurício Mascaro from Pexels
- Handshake photo by Kamaji Ogino from Pexels
- Stubborn woman photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
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