Not too long ago, I read and reviewed MWF Seeking BFF. To save you from having to re-read the review, the gist of it is this: it's hard to admit you're looking for friends, hard to make them, and hard to keep them. But they're important, so don't give up trying.
As we all get older, it seems that friendships cease to be just that, and instead become more like networks of convenience. A "friend" used to be a person you spent time with just for the sake of spending time with them, because you liked them, because you enjoyed the conversation or both loved New Kids on the Block or whatever. All too often, you grow up and they become a person who can offer you something: "Oh, I have a friend who's an accountant. I'll ask them that question." And the truth is that they probably don't mind (or wouldn't, if you weren't asking them at the busiest time of the year). After all, an important facet of friendship is helping the other person out; they're happy to do it.
It's obvious why this relationship changes. Everyone gets busy, buys
houses, has kids, makes commitments, works too many hours, money gets tight. If you can kill three birds with
one stone, why not do it? (1) See friend, (2) get help, (3) save
money.
As I said, there is nothing wrong with that! Everyone is busy - even people who don't buy houses or have kids or work too many hours. (Can you think of anyone - anyone? - who says they have too much free time? I can't.) Saving time and money is important. I just miss pure friendships, which exist purely because you like each other, because you value each other's point of view and sense of humor and advice. To wit, last weekend I had lunch with a new friend - or at least someone I hope will be a new friend. Lunch ran for five hours. Know what we did? We talked. We talked about each other's lives, what's hard, what's frustrating, what's good. Neither of us answered our phones. Neither of us had anywhere else we wanted to be. We were just there, talking. It was great.
Not long after I read MWF, an article came out in the New York Times called "Friends of a Certain Age: Why is it Hard to Make Friends Over 30?"
It's long but if you're interested in the subject, as I obviously am,
it's totally worth the read. Or just read this (which is, believe it or not, shorter than the original):
The article highlights the reasons why making new friends is
difficult and why keeping the ones you already have is hard
too. Friendship generally requires three things: "proximity; repeated,
unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let
their guard down and confide in each other."
Requirements 1 and 2 are tough. Proximity is hard these days because everyone is mobile. People don't settle down in one neighborhood for their whole lives and stick with one job their whole careers. Better opportunities are often elsewhere, and we're all willing to go somewhere else if the situation calls for it. Can't blame anybody for doing that. So proximity? No more. And unfortunately, the repeated, unplanned interactions - which are so closely tied to proximity - often go the way of the dodo as well.
If you have old friends from whom you are separated, it's often easy to continue that sense of confiding in one another - the third requirement. They're those friends who inspire you to say, "whenever I talk to her, it's like no time passed at all." I have lots of those people. It's great to be able to confide. Often they're the people who've known you the longest, so even though you're lacking proximity and interaction, their understanding of your situation and the advice they dish out is still on point. But, lest we overlook what I just said, you're still missing two of the three elements which psychologists say are vital for a good friendship. You still love these people dearly, but there is something missing from the friendship.
Once people are coupled up, it's even harder. It's a four-pronged (or at least three-pronged, if there's a couple and a third wheel) match that needs to be made, rather than just a being a two-way street. Do you like him? Does he like her? Does he like him? Does she like me? It becomes all too easy to become "just the two of you" because, well, it's easy. There's no weird chemistry.
In case that isn't all difficult enough, we also become more picky in selecting the people with whom we want to be friends. "Manipulators, drama queens, egomaniacs: a lot of them just no longer make the cut." Maybe they don't have to be completely eliminated as friends, but they can be pigeonholed as a certain type of friend: the martini friend, the brunch friend, the theater friend, the sappy movie friend. But they may not be the friend you'd go running to in a life crisis which you need to overanalyze for days.
To be continued...
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