I've made some brilliant and terrible choices. I originally wanted to discuss the possibilities of men and women being friends, and to an extent, it will still be done; however, a debate I had with someone yesterday got me thinking about how equally difficult it can be for people of the same genders to be friends. Karma being what it is, I also had an experience with a "friend" yesterday that got me thinking that there is a great deal of truth to that matter.
If we are going to be honest with ourselves, friendships are difficult to maintain. As we get older, it becomes less important to have a massive quantity of friends as opposed to having a few friends of great quality. As I get older, I find myself judging those that claim to have "sooooo many friends". How can they possibly be a good friend to any of them? Which begs the question: What makes a good friend?
This isn't really a question of relativity because I think that the qualities of being a characteristically good friend are pretty universal. I have four or five close female friends, and I've got a really full plate. They keep me busy, laughing, and frustrated. And I love them dearly for all of it.
1. Common Interests/Bond: College, work, childhood...we tend to gravitate toward people that have some kind of common interests or values as us. A few of my closest friends are people that I work with; we became friends because we could commiserate or lend support with our jobs. Then, it happily turned out that we have the same addictions to shoes, shopping, and chocolate...
Another friend of mine is a friend from college, we became friends because we were in the same work study program and could discuss the finer points of management and technology with one another. And we've struggled together through the trials of life for 6 years now to be at the point where we don't even consider each other "friends" as much "family". We fight like sisters and then make up over ice cream and tears.
My high school friend is not someone that anyone would expect me to be friends with, let alone as close as we actually are. In fact her note to me in our senior yearbook was "Well, Chicken Little, I would have never put 'you' and 'I' in the same sentence, but what a sentence we've become..." And it's been a happily functioning sentence since 1999, when I sat down at her lunch table freshman year and happily announced to her that I thought we would be "great friends!" Lots of exclamation points.
2. Parallel Values: My closest friends are the women that view life similarly to the way that I do. We certainly have our differences and that is what keeps us honest and on our toes. I expect that my friends will call me out for something or be brutally honest with me about everything from the way that a pair of jeans does not flatter my badunka-dunk to if they think the current guy I'm seeing is a tool or not. I ask both questions, not because I want the answer (who wants to hear that their ass looks big?!) but because I know that they will be honest and are looking out for my best interests.
I think that it is also important to have friends that respect your values and decisions, even if they aren't ones that they would make for themselves. I choose to be a religious and spiritual person and practice my faith regularly. Some of my friends do not. My friends have never judged me for that or made me feel uncomfortable about it. And really, why would they?
In a conversation recently, my friend Steph told me to never date someone just because I think she, or any of my friends, would approve of them. As she put it, they don't have to be with that person, and it's my right to make my own choices. She said that she and her husband (who is another childhood friend) would like anyone that makes me happy and treats me nicely. Otherwise, they'll happily beat them up. (As an aside, despite their differences in size, my money would be on Steph doing more damage than her husband, especially since she became a mother.)
All in all, my friends have the same basic set of values that I do. And that is a tie that binds.
3. Respect and Trust: For me, these are bound tightly together. I can't trust someone that I don't respect, and I don't respect someone that I don't trust. We have friends because we need confidantes and secret-keepers. I have a difficult time letting someone that I don't respect be responsible for keeping my confidences and secrets. I also have to respect your opinion if I'm going to let my more vulnerable side be shown. Let's face it, when we are asking for a confidence or advice, we are opening ourselves up to someone else's opinions. At least for me, I have to value the intelligence, values, and opinions of the one I am trusting. Because of this, I also am honored and flattered when a friend will trust me with a confidence or ask my opinion due to the implied respect.
4. Disagreeing Agreeably: You take the good; you take the bad...and there you have....friendships. There are going to be times when disagreements or even arguments erupt between friends. As I said earlier, my friend/roommate and I fight like sisters. With other friends, we either passively disagree and just take a little distance, or we just let it be known "Yeah....I don't really agree with that..." There aren't any hard feelings, because we disagree agreeably and do not attack or belittle one another. We still want to be friends in an hour, so there is no sense in saying something that we would regret later. To me, you know that you have a true friend when you can disagree and get over it. And truly get over it. There isn't any room in friendships for grudges...
I'm sure that there are others, but to me, those are the "Big Four" characteristics of successfully maintaining friendships. I'm doing my "Spring Cleaning" of friendships, and yesterday, I realized that there are a few people that I cannot even attempt to remain friends with because it is a toxic situation. I was accused of "bailing" constantly and told to "stop pretending to be a friend". In a mature moment, I told this person to "stuff it". When really, what I meant was..."stuff it". I was in Mass (Palm Sunday Mass, no less) and this person had the nerve to accuse me of bailing on tentative plans. First of all, plans were tentative. I hadn't heard a definitive time, so my day was going to go on. And we'd have plans to go out during the afternoon, which she had bailed on the previous day.
First faux pas: not making definitive plans. Make definitive plans and KEEP THEM! Give a time, give a place. Second faux pas: Getting angry and making silly comments. This is one of the many times that this girl has gotten nasty entirely too quickly. And here's the third and final faux pas that has made the decision to clean her out: she is now close friends with my former boyfriend. She even described them as "really close". I realized that I can't trust her because she knows how much of a jerk he actually is (and no, I don't think that all of my ex-boyfriends are jerks) and how he ended things, and even commented on what a not-nice guy she thought he was. And NOW....they hang out and "talk all the time". What? That just defies the rules of feminism. So, toxic friend and ex-boyfriend = lemons.
Another blog will be about how men and women judge one another, but I'd like to explore the no-man's land of male/female friendships. There are, in my opinion, only certain conditions when men and women can actually be friends. The first of which is when one of them is married. I don't view married men as "men". They are "so and so's husband".
Another exception to the friendship rule are friendships that have existed since childhood. In this case, I have to point out Steph's husband, Sean. He and I have been friends since we were 10. He's never progressed passed the age of 15 in my view and is still the gross football-playing brother-like person that makes fun of me with glee, intimidates my boyfriends, and provides hugs that are rib-crushing. That kind of friendship doesn't always progress in the way that mine did....for instance, Sean and Steph were childhood friends. So even then, childhood friendships can be murky waters.
All in all, I'd have to say that I really don't think that men and women are friends for the sake of just being friends in the way that women are just friends with each other or that men are just buddies. Both genders subconsciously look at their "friends" of the opposite sex as "options". In any given male/female friendship, one or both of them has been attracted to the other at any given time (and it can switch) and views them as a viable dating/hook up option and is keeping them close because of the sheer possibility that they present. I know that it is a rather simplistic view, and that there are other possibilities that I am not considering; however, in talking to married women, a few have said that they had to give up their male friends when they got married. Why? Because the men didn't necessarily respect the marriage and that the flirting had to stop. And the same has happened in reverse. Problems arise when distance and respect cannot be maintained by either the 'friend' or the person in a relationship. That has been a problem that I faced in a relationship. My former boyfriend could not understand why it drove me up a wall that he and his ex-girlfriend were constantly in contact. He would lie about it and would make excuses all the time. It created an atmosphere of distrust and was a huge catalyst in our breakup. But, staying friends with an ex is also an entirely different topic for another day as well.
I don't think that men and women "need" each other to be friends to fulfill that human need. I think that they fulfill other needs. But then again, I am a Freudian thinker.
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