Friendship Deficit Syndrome

After reading this article, I was sitting at the table with dh eating rhubarb cobbler and while he flipped through a comic:

Me:So do you have any friends at work you would like to go do stuff with?

DH: Like who?

Me: I dunno, like Eddie or somebody?

DH: No, Eddie gets on my nerves. He likes to hang out with the coworkers after work and drink beer. I don't like doing that. Why?

Me: I dunno, I always complain that I need you home, and I thought maybe I should give you a chance to go be with some guys. You just never seem to have any guy friends. You know friends to talk to or whatever.

DH:what you mean like gay guys?

Me:No, I just mean male companions.

DH: I dunno, most guys are two faced and we don't have a lot in common.

Sadly he is right, which is the difficulty with friendships in general these days...

That part about calculating your "net worth" is really depressing. I don't get it.

This article hurt my heart, mostly because I think it applies to a lot of women just as much as it does to men. And I think Fr. McCloskey is right on the mark about the causes of the problem. People move away now, in search of the better job or more fulfilling career path. Not, in itself, wrong certainly, but a cause of atomization of society. Now you can become at least "beginner friends" with someone, only to have them move away 2 years later. I find it depressing in the extreme.

My DH has few, if any, male friends. Oh, he *knows* people at work, etc. But he has NO ONE other than Zteen and me that he hangs out with on a regular basis. Maybe that's why he enjoys the "maleness" of Knights of Columbus.

ain't it the truth?

ps: i'm telling you, MamaT, we must remedy this.

I've thought about the "beginner friends" thing too, since how many people with similar life circumstances to ours (20s and 30s, small children) are in their long-term family homes? I don't think we are, for that matter. I don't think the people who currently live about two minutes' drive from us who have agreed to be Baby 2's godparents are. I'm so happy to even have any "beginner friends" who are devout Catholics and have other important things in common that it would make me sad to start all over again in some place that had lots of benefits but no people we know. But I don't even know where the beginner friendships are going to go. I don't know that there will ever be time or circumstances for cementing the bond in a way that causes us and our "outside" friends to keep trying to get past conflicts and/or the distance imposed by shifting priorities, the same way that we feel motivated to do when there are problems with blood relatives.

(Adding to my last sentence.) Or relatives by marriage, for that matter.

OK, I am going to say something very cynical sounding, but it has been very true. I am not sure we are really called to be closer tp anyone than beginner friends. Everyone I ever got closer to turned out to be real crazy, and something of a destructive force in my life. People are too strange, too different, circumstances you have in common now, change like heartbeat tomorrow. Real life friends/people should be kepot at a certain arms length. I have never seen friendships like in the movies with people starting out kindegarten together and growing old like some Bette Midler movie. I think if we have "beginner friends" we should be blessed with the here and now and not ask for too much more.

D's mom -- the part about "net worth" refers to the "measuring of success in worldy terms" from the earlier part of the paragraph. Fr McCloskey worked on Wall Street before he discerned his call to the priesthood, so I suspect that financial metaphors come readily to him.

***

Well, Iris and I have known each other since we were ten, and, well, right now I don't feel like doing the math on how many years that makes ;) But we also had to work on keeping in contact, since we haven't always lived close by each other -- that mobile society thing. Actually, Iris has stayed relatively close to her home, I'm the one who's been casting about.

I do agree that if we have "beginner friendships" now, then we should enjoy those friendships for what they are right now, and not worry about making friends today if they're just going to move away later on.

But I do think it's also worth it to see if some "beginner" friendships can be cultivated and grow into deeper, long-lasting friendships. Not all can, or will. But even if friends move away, it's easier and cheaper than ever to keep up long-distance (email, IM; even long-distance phone calls are getting very inexpensive) Friendships can grow, and they can last. But it won't just happen, we have to work at it. It takes time, and patience.

Of course, if we do that, we run the risk of disappointment. Anything short of Heaven that's worth working for carries the risk of disappointment. But that's part of life.

I know I have often been disappointed by how few people seem to want to make the effort to work on a friendship. But our society offers lots and lots of distractions. And look at how few people are ready to work on friendship with their spouses or even their children.

But I do think it's also worth it to see if some "beginner" friendships can be cultivated and grow into deeper, long-lasting friendships. Not all can, or will. But even if friends move away, it's easier and cheaper than ever to keep up long-distance (email, IM; even long-distance phone calls are getting very inexpensive) Friendships can grow, and they can last. But it won't just happen, we have to work at it. It takes time, and patience.

I'm not saying it is not something that is worth while, or should not be cultivated. If it were a matter of working on relationships, then it is possible. That is not what I am talking about. I think it is very unrealistic. The friendships we see on TV just do not exist in the real world. One of my best friends prior to marriage, while I still keep in touch with her through visit, email etc, practically dropped from my life since I got married-and not because I stopped keeping in touch with her, I think it was awkward because she was single and I no longer was. Another got divorced and we have little in common now. Another became so jealous after I got married she sent her husband to my dh's job everyday telling all kinds of made up stories aboout all the abortions I was having behind his back. Another became a rock star and seems to have dissappeared. Now these are people who i though enough of to make them my children's God parents. Girls I went to school with. Some had a lot more "issues" than others, but the circumstances or our lives all changed significantly enough we all had very little in common.

We are blessed when we meet someone in the here and now who even has anything remotely in common with us. Davey's Mommy mentioned a Catholic couple with small children down the street from her. That is a blessing.
I know I have often been disappointed by how few people seem to want to make the effort to work on a friendship.
I'm not just talking about that. Most people when you get really close to them turn out to be nuts. Some of it is normal things we all have issues with, but when you get too close to someone it rears it's ugly head in dangerous levels, so most friendships are kept best at certain distance.

I am not saying there are not good friendships, I adore you Peony, but I think I really lucked out in finding you because you are like one in about ten friends who doesn't have some major psychological or control freak issues. For the most part, when I meet people IRL, I do not push the relationship closer than that beginning level. I put it in God's hands and assume if God wants me to be closer to that person, it will happen.

Pansy, I've really been thinking about what you said. I certainly can attest to some of that happening in my own life. The most notable being my psycho college roommate! (Though, you know, she probably refers to me the same way, all these years later!)

And I'm not sure I'll explain myself well here, but here we go:

I think we are unable, in many cases, to even *conceive* of a lifelong friendship anymore. Like Peony and D&? Mommy said, either we are moving around so much or there are so many other distractions in our lives. It's too easy to go on to the next thing for many of us.

And many of us have no idea that friendship does not equal "possession", for lack of a better word. Those psychos like my college roommate didn't want to be my *friend*, they wanted to *own* me. That can't work. (Because it's CRAZY!)

But take, for example, my Aunt Gigi. She was delightful and marvelous. She lived in the town I grew up in all her life. She had a cadre of loyal and supportive friends up until the day she died, at 80. One friend she had known since they walked to school together in the FIRST GRADE! An almost 75 year friendship. And she had a host of other good, female friends. Friends that had lasted through marriages, babies, divorces, deaths, illnesses, etc.

How did she do that????? Certainly stability of place had something to do with it, but not everything. There are hundreds or thousands of people who have never left Abilene TX who are lonely.

Did she just have a gift? Did she know to overlook the little annoyances and have hers overlooked as well? I don't know. I wish I had talked to her about it.

But standing at her funeral MonaV (her oldest friend) wept like a baby. "Terry, what will I do without her? I've known her all my life!"

No one will say that at my funeral, and I think that's really too bad......

Fr. McCloskey said it was also a "measure that applies... supernaturally." I am just having trouble thinking that the sheer number of true friends you have also indicates how God views you or how virtuous you are or likely to "get into" Heaven or whatever. I am sure there are people whose answers to those questions he poses reflect how they have truly loved others but I just don't see that everyone who has would make a good showing there.

And many of us have no idea that friendship does not equal "possession", for lack of a better word. Those psychos like my college roommate didn't want to be my *friend*, they wanted to *own* me. That can't work. (Because it's CRAZY!)
Terry,
After I logged off and I thought about what I wrote, I realised this exact same thing. For some reason many of these friends did not want relationships, or if they did, they did not know how to deal with a relationship without manipulation. When I disagreed about whatever, they had fits and turned control freak like I had broken some laws. Very much what you described.
I think this is the problem with many relationships these days. We have all talked about how contraception and abortion has reduced the man-woman relationship and the mother-child relationship to that of more ownership rather than respect. I suppose when you view the people you love most in this distorted fashion, why not friendships?