On friendship

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my friendships, and why some are so satisfying while others seem to require so much energy and effort with far less satisfaction. Especially interesting to me is how my sense of a friendship can change so much over time even when the friendship itself has changed very little. I am starting to make some sense of it, though.

There are some things that I always need in a friendship for me to really consider someone a friend. Trust. Rapport. Some shared core values. Respect. And a kind of reciprocity over the long-term—an equal positioning of each other in our lives. I see my friend G. less than once a year, but these things are present and I will always consider him a friend, even though we email a handful of times a year and talk even less. Most of our contact is work-related, but we share the deeply personal aspects of our work—our struggles and strategies, mistakes and lessons learned. His friendship is so important to me, and I never question it. On the other hand, I have much more contact with B, but I feel like I’m her therapist, not her friend. I care about her, but I would never look to her for support or advice and I feel no urge to share my “stuff of life” with her. I give and she takes, not because she’s selfish. She just doesn’t feed my soul or connect with my core the way a real friend does. And that’s okay.

So I always need trust, respect, shared values and mutual regard. The problem is that I’ve had these things with MANY people over the years as I’ve moved and expanded my social network. And my busy life can only sustain so many friendships in any given moment. Sometimes a friend who is 2,000 miles away can give me what I need in a friendship more than my neighbor down the street. How, then, do I choose where to invest my efforts? Which friendships do I attend to intentionally while others drift to the outer circles of my life?

I think different stages in life demand different kinds of friendships. I hate recognizing this... this sort of “instrumentalist” understanding of friendship as having to fill some need or use in the moment. But that IS part of it. And I’ve changed stages recently. Almost two years ago, my marriage ended abruptly and I needed something specific from my friends. I needed normalcy. I needed activity. I needed to fill the time that used to go to supporting and caring for my partner in life. I didn’t need much comfort or deep conversations about my broken life. I’d already done that work. I needed to NOT HAVE a broken life. So I treasured the friends who had lunch with me, went hiking with me, went to wineries or the movies with me. I delighted in happy hours and cafe conversations. I prioritized friends who were local and who gave me a semblance of a life—friends who kept me from withdrawing into isolation.

Something has shifted recently, though. I’ve discovered that I have different needs now. I filled my life with so much activity that I’ve lost two things in the process: the time and space to be thoughtful, and deep meaningful connections with a few close friends. In other words, I need to focus my efforts and energies on deeper connections with self and with others. And deeper connections require focusing on fewer people when there’s only so much time and energy to go around. So how do I choose where to focus?

In general, I think the two things I really need right now are authenticity and availability. In the past, I could be satisfied with one or the other, but right now, I need EACH friend to have a good dose of BOTH. Because both are needed for the sort of deep connection I need right now.

1) AUTHENTIC STUFF OF LIFE. I need to focus on friends who share their doubts, their struggles, their hopes and their triumphs—the real “stuff” of life. Because right now, single and unpartnered, I NEED to be able to share MY authentic “stuff of life” with my core friends in a way that I DIDN’T need to share it when I was married. I need deep, authentic, risk-taking conversations right now. I have this sort of connection with some new friends and old friends alike. I also LACK this kind of connection with some treasured old friends who, for one reason or another, just can’t “go there” with me. For now, I really need this and have to invest my time and energy in friends with this potential.

2) AVAILABILITY AND COMMITMENT. I need to focus on the friends who actually have space in their lives for me. This sounds obvious, but it’s not. Some wonderful people simply have demanding lives that are too full for anything more than a superficial friendship, at least with me. I know it’s not personal and I know they care about me. But if their lives don’t have space for me, then their friendship isn’t the kind of friendship I need to focus on right now. I need people who are committed to making space—even virtual space—to stay connected in ways that go beyond the superficial. My friend GB. does this, even though he lives about 4 hours away. JM, a friend from campus, makes this happen through our regular hikes together. Even my new friend, JO, is making this happen from the other side of the country. So availability isn’t about proximity (although that was my first thought). It’s about commitment and finding ways to share a life within the constraints of your current situation, instead of waiting for the situation to get easier.

As we get older and busier, with more and more responsibilities, I think this deeper kind of friendship requires real intentionality. I spent three hours with my friend Claudia this morning and it was like the old days, when we took long walks together and shared the best and the worst of our lives with each other. I haven’t actually seen her in years—I’m not even sure how many! But it didn’t matter. And we talked about what we’re going to do to maintain the connection.

I don’t think everyone needs this deeper kind of friendship. I think some folks have spouses, partners, or family members who meet this need in them. They might be satisfied with friendships based on common activities or shared history. Right now, though, I know that I need this deeper connection.

I still have one dilemma to resolve. I know that in order to fulfill my relationship needs right now, I need to shift my attention to particular friendships. That feels right, and I’m on that path. It still leaves me with a couple of different levels of sadness, though. The first is just the sadness of letting go. Letting go, even temporarily, of the people whose needs and priorities for friendship are different right now. The second sadness has to do with accepting that deep friendships can’t fill all of the gaps in my life, no matter how meaningful the connections are. The two saddest days for me are generally Thanksgiving and Easter. My deepest friendships aren’t generally with people who live near me, and these two days are the holidays in which I really want to be with others. I need to accept this and acknowledge that being single and 36 with no family on the West Coast DOES have a cost. Just like my family, my “real” friends might live far away and I might have to accept a few disappointing holidays or lonely moments during this stage of my life. But I also know it won’t be forever. And all of those OTHER days will be much richer if I invest in the people who are able to invest in me.

Alone in paradise

I've been emailing a friend about what it means to be happy or content. Is it possible to be content and be single when all of my friends are married? It is. I don't know if I'd call myself "happy," but I'm definitely content. Not with my life, but with mySELF. My life will always have gaps and warts... things I want to do, things I wish I could undo, hopes and dreams that might or might not come true. But when I think about the last 36 years, I wouldn't want to give up TODAY for one of those other times in my life. I really LIKE myself. I'm flawed but unapologetic. I'm committed to growing and learning from my mistakes. I know what I have to offer, and have some small sense of what I need. And although my understanding of God is more amorphous and vague than it ever was in the past, my TRUST in that God is as firm as always.

So, next month I will go to Maui alone. And there's a guy who would go with me in a heartbeat, who would make it the ultimate romantic getaway. And he doesn't respect me, so I'm going alone. There are friends who perhaps could have joined me if I waited until summer, but I NEED this vacation NOW. So I'm going alone. I'm going to be alone in paradise. And I will be content. But I still have my fingers crossed for happy. :-)