Tag Archives: Friendship

Why Close Friendship is Elusive

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A friend of mine was irked because his partner didn’t want to send out Christmas cards this year. Nothing to do with the expense, the time, anything, turns out she just didn’t feel like it. “We didn’t deserve to receive any,” he reflected.

A year off is no big deal, but this understandable tension illustrates a foundational idea that explains why close friendships are elusive—they depend upon reciprocity.

Zuckerberg has zucked up our understanding of terms like “acquaintance,” “friend,” and “close friend”. If you’re like most people, you have many acquaintances, maybe a handful or two or three of friends, and very few close friends. This Daily Mail article says most people have two close friends, down from three 25 years ago. I’ve seen similar U.S.-based research numbers. What distinguishes friends from acquaintances and close friends from mere friends?

Friends spend more time together than acquaintances. Acquaintances are people we enjoy when we occasionally end up at the same place at the same time. A large proportion of Facebook “friends” are acquaintances. With an acquaintance, you can go weeks or months without any face-to-face contact. You don’t really know what makes them tick and they’re clueless as to your inner life. In contrast, friends do things together more frequently—whether writing back and forth, talking, helping one another, working out together, eating, traveling, etc. Time together gives friends a feel for each other’s daily activities, hopes, fears, and thoughts more generally.

What distinguishes especially close friendships is both people initiate a similar amount. Communication; invitations to do things; and the degree of honesty, transparency, and trust are balanced. There’s a natural, shared reciprocity. That sounds more simplistic than it is. In actuality, no friendship is ever perfectly balanced. Close friends can weather a slight imbalance (10-15%?) at any given time, but more than that and closeness is inevitably sacrificed.

How to apply these ideas? Most people would trade several acquaintances for a friend and a handful of friends for one especially close one. Quality trumps quantity. All of us have friends we wish we were closer to, but they don’t initiate as much as we’d like. This is why life for middle schoolers is so filled with drama, the social imbalances wreak havoc. When it comes to unrequited friendship, most middle schoolers are not self-confident or secure enough to say, “Your loss.” We never completely escape the complexities prompted by social imbalances.

Think about your social constellation. Who are your acquaintances, friends, and close friends? Odds are you have acquaintances or friends who you wish would initiate more. I shortchange my long-distance friends because I’m allergic to telephones. I shortchange local friends because I’m similarly allergic to cell phones which means, like a modern day Rudolph, I can’t join in all the texting fun. More important than telephone calls and texts is a willingness to be vulnerable enough to allow friendships to deepen.

Consider using the changing of the calendar to tell a friend or two through your words and/or actions that you’d like to spend more time with them. If they don’t initiate any more than normal for whatever reason, don’t push it or dwell on it, life’s too short, close friendship can’t be forced. If need be, accept the limits of that particular friendship and invest your time and energy in another friend who may be waiting for an invitation to spend more time together and to be more vulnerable.

Here’s hoping your 2012 is filled with meaningful friendships.

Of related interest, here’s a 2008 post on how the limits of time force friendship making trade-offs.

Developing In-depth, Intimate Friendships

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Who knew there’s something really nice about driving to swim meets way out on the Kitsap Peninsula. Or more specifically, driving home from them.

Four years ago, following the South Kitsap meet, Nineteen and I started out listening to National Public Radio, and then as the sun set on Commencement Bay and the Narrows Bridge, talked about the world, her world, our worlds. Not a top-down father-daughter talk, a balanced adult one.

Last week, as Sixteen’s (S’s) passenger, I was in the right place at the right time for another thoughtful and memorable conversation. I mostly listened as she described a moving letter she had received earlier in the day from a close friend who struggled with anxiety last year. The friend wanted S to know how important her help had been and how much her understanding presence meant to her. Her other friends, she explained, ran a little hot and cold, which made her especially appreciative of S’s consistent care.

“What I like about A.F. is she’s vulnerable,” S reflected while hugging the right line of the two lane highway. “She’s not afraid to admit everything’s not all right. That gives me the opportunity to help.” She explained how good it felt to help her friends, to share insights from the serious difficulties she experienced as a middle schooler. It gives purpose to that especially challenging chapter of her life.

S’s story reminded me of two important steps in developing in-depth, intimate friendships—admitting one’s vulnerabilities and humbly asking for help.

Taken together, sometimes saying, “I’m afraid. I’m anxious. I’m lost. I’m stuck. Can you help me?”

Knowing that doesn’t mean I do it well. I don’t. At all. I probably inherited my stubborn, sometimes self-defeating self-sufficiency from my parents who grew up in barren eastern Montana on the heels of the Depression.

Paradoxically, I enjoy helping my friends whenever they ask for help, but I don’t like inconveniencing them. At all. A tip of the iceberg example. I spent twenty minutes in the garage last week unsuccessfully trying to tighten a bolt, while holding a washer, and screw in a very awkward position because I didn’t want to inconvenience the wife. Finally threw in the towel, asked for her help in applying pressure to the top of the screw, and had everything assembled in less than a minute.

More significantly, I’m almost always resistant to counseling, yet the few times I’ve committed to it, it’s proven helpful.

Obviously, everyone has to be somewhat self-sufficient, but there’s a point of diminishing returns, a point I cross fairly regularly. I’m not sure how to explain my stubborn, sometimes self-defeating self-sufficiency. It’s irrational. If I could throw a “start depending upon others more on occasion” switch, I would have already.

I’d ask you for help, but I don’t want to inconvenience you.

Maybe I’ll just groove some more to Bill Withers in the hope it’ll eventually sink it.

Thanks S for the inspiration.

Teach Friendship

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Most friendships just evolve. Our closest friends typically end up being people with whom we share a common activity or interest. In terms of living emotionally healthy, constructive, fulfilling lives, nothing matters much more than who we become friends with and whether they inspire us to be better or worse people than we would be without them.

Because we aren’t as intentional as we might be about our friendships, we assume the young people we have responsibility for will just “find their way”. Experience is a great teacher, but parents, teachers, coaches, youth pastors, and other adults that regularly work with young people should explicitly teach friendship. Choosing friends that inspire is a learned skill. Just hope that those types of friendships naturally evolve at your children’s and your own risk.

Those were my thoughts while reading a nice one-pager by KJ Fields titled “How to spot an unhealthy relationship” in Group Health’s Spring 2011 NWHealth magazine. Thanks to Fields for providing a tool for teaching friendship. These are signs that a relationship may be bad for you:

  • You don’t feel respected or listened to.
  • The other person’s opinion is always the one that matters most.
  • Your feelings are belittled.
  • You act differently around this person, fearing disapproval or anger.
  • You feel worried and tense about the relationship, rather than enjoying it.
  • You’re always the one to make the effort or compromise.
  • Your values and beliefs are far apart.
  • The other person is overly critical of you, and frequently insults you.
  • You find yourself lying to hide information from the other person.

That’s a nice conceptual framework for dinner table, school, or youth group conversations with adolescents especially about peer relations in general and dating relationships more specifically.

Bridging the Political Divide One Mile at a Time 1

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The first in a two-part series. The election is heating up so I thought it was time to “reprint” this essay which appeared in the Tacoma News Tribune in October 2004. At the time, it struck a chord with quite a few people.  

Increasingly it seems birds of a political feather almost exclusively fly together. All of my teaching colleagues are Kerry supporters as are the parents from my daughter’s soccer team; on the other hand, I live in a Bush-Cheney neighborhood (2008 update: surprisingly, the Obama signs outnumber the McCain signs). I buck this trend towards ideological segregation four times a week when I run between 10 kilometers and 10 miles with M, my neighbor, friend, and loyal training partner. M is a conservative republican; I’m a liberal democrat.

Our friendship, formed over several thousand miles of running together over the last six years, is unique. Few people have close friends whose politics are markedly different than their own.  People prefer associating with like-minded friends who affirm rather than challenge their thinking, their values, and their politics. We are either too insecure to engage with those who think and vote differently than us, or it takes too much energy, or we haven’t figured out how to disagree with one another without compromising our friendships.

My friendship with M gives me hope when pundits tell us our country has never been more divided and partisanship has never been more pronounced. How do we, as red and blue runners (2008 update: dated cliche), bridge the political chasm that exists between us?

We bridge the chasm by spending time together getting to know one another as people. 

We pass the miles debating the merits of the war in Iraq, multiculturalism, Title IX, gay marriage, candidates for political office, and tax and education reform (2008 update: Sarah Palin). Sometimes I measure our debates by miles telling my wife after a run, “We had a nine mile debate on gender differences and athletics today.” Our political disagreements often lead to personal stories, stories that help me respond more thoughtfully to M’s conservative claims.  The nature of my internal dialogue has changed from “How can you be so stupid or reactionary to take a position like that?” to “What in your past might explain you’re taking that position?” In listening to M’s stories, and learning his story, I better understand his politics. 

In interacting with M, I have also learned to appreciate many of his personal qualities including his work ethic and unpredictable sense of humor. More importantly, despite our extreme political differences, we have learned we hold some important values in common. He is as committed to his wife, kids, church, and friends as I am to mine. We work hard and respect those with whom we work. We both try to make our corners of the world better than they otherwise would be in our absence. In the end, M’s human decency matters more to me than the way he votes. 

We bridge the chasm by respectfully considering each person’s position on specific issues while realizing neither person is going to forsake their overarching political philosophy.

People are threatened and fearful of political differences. When a dinner party guest states an unpopular point of view, typically he or she is met with awkward silence. Conservatives don’t just want liberals to support the President’s actions in Iraq; they want them to passionately embrace the ideas of limited government and free market capitalism. Similarly, liberals don’t just want conservatives to oppose the death penalty; they want them to passionately embrace the ideas of pluralism and social justice. 

To be continued.