A greeting card depicts a young woman telling her female friend, "I'll always be there for you." Inside the card is the postscript, "unless, of course, I have a date."
The message takes me back to my college days when my friends and I put more real energy into our discussions about men than into all other subjects combined. But even back then, the stereotype didn't hold water. Schmoozing with my friends is what sustained and nourished me, as it does now.
Friendship rarely becomes a nest of extreme pathology. I've yet to receive a letter that says: "Dear Harriet: A close friend insults and degrades me, and sometimes hits me. I love her and I don't know what to do.". If a friend behaves terribly or evokes awful feelings, we don't just dream of escape-we get out.
But friendship is not without it's wrenching moments. Probably everyone has felt hurt or deeply disappointed or betrayed by a friend at some time, or dismayed to recognize mean-spirited feelings of one's own.
When I was sixteen my best friend dropped me for another girl because I wasn't "deep" enough for her. I felt devastated, my confidence crushed.
A boy might reject me because I wasn't cool enough, or pretty enough, or "his type". But this girl was my soul mate. When she dropped me for another best friend (whom I imagined to be far more complex and interesting than I was) the injury and loss were immense.
What a relief to be grown up, to longer take rejection so personally and to have best friends instead of one best friend. I treasure my friends, I count on them, I call them terms of endearment like "sweetums" and "honey-bunny". Sometimes I get judgmental. But when my own self-esteem is intact, I am simply amazed by who they are, their limitations and vulnerabilities only adding to my appreciation of their uniqueness.
I resonate with the words of Anais Nin, "Each friend represents a world in us."
Here's my advice about friendship:
1 Move toward having a number of "best friends" as well as friends who are more peripheral than others but who still count.
Each friend contributes something unique in the way of wisdom, support, and just plain good times. Having a community of friends will help you to not overreact to the limitations of any one friend. When we depend on one person to meet all of our needs, that person can't help but disappoint us.
2. Understand that friendship will evoke (and can survive) feelings of anger, envy, competition, and the entire range of emotions that make us human.
Indeed, our friendships suffer not from these "unacceptable feelings," but from the denial of them. For example, if you're not in touch with the fact that your friend is suddenly getting lots of money and recognition for her work, you risk acting out by ignoring or devaluing her work. (This doesn't mean you can't keep your feelings to yourself, when appropriate).
Despite the difficult challenges of friendship, Novelist Alice Adams puts it most succinctly: "I think women know how to be friends. That's what saves our lives."
