By: Revanche

On friendship

August 31, 2016

A ramble on friendship, prompted by links

Like this woman, I once believed I didn’t get along with other women. I didn’t have a best friend, and it seemed like everyone had one of those, but I couldn’t ever quite get the hang of it.

In middle school, my personality and interests weren’t aligned with other girls’. Animals, yes. Stickers and stationery, JOY! Sparring and wrestling? Comics? Fighting bullies? No, nyet, and nope. My weirdness they could overlook but fighting bullies, physically,  scared the girls. They made no bones about how they didn’t want me mad at them because apparently they didn’t trust me not to beat them up. I was barbaric for fighting back by polite society’s standards. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t bother me.

Maybe I was barbaric but at 8 years old, it never occurred to me to do anything but punch the boy when he laid hands on and shoved me. Does there exist another, equally effective and satisfying, response? Because not one of those bullying boys, and it was always a boy, came back for seconds, I’ll tell you that much.

I craved a close friendship, a best friendship that was second best to having a sister (possibly even better than a sister). But I didn’t understand social conventions, the girls didn’t know that non-conforming was ok, and thus, no friendship blossomed.

Male schoolmates thought of me “like a guy”, their way of reconciling a girl who wouldn’t take their crap. For a minute, it made sense that I felt like I wasn’t like other women and maybe that’s why I got along with boys better. That was simple truth – for that period of my life. Some years on, it struck me that the “not like other girls/women” compliment wasn’t at all a compliment to me. It was a poorly disguised way to put women down. It implies that being like other women is a bad thing, that women are inferior and to be better than them is a good thing. That’s insulting and stupid. We’re not a single monolith but neither are men and you don’t hear women complimenting men by saying “you’re not like other men”, suggesting that men as a group are inferior and being unlike them is the best possible outcome.  Or maybe you do, I don’t.

Children vs childfree

A blogger friend I’ve gotten to know over the years was shocked to find that at least half, maybe more, of my close friends are childfree. Whether by choice or not, they are childfree. Her surprise was a surprise to me. It’s completely normal to me to hear a friend state that they never want to have kids, or maybe more confidingly, they did want them but couldn’t, so have moved on to enjoy their child-free lives.

In so few cases has the choice to have kids, or not to have them, changed a friendship for us that I was surprised by this AAM reader’s question: Has any childfree person successfully maintained a friendship with someone after they had kids or vice versa?

It seems that this is the adult version of othering women.

Of course having a kid will alter your reality when you become a parent. But so will many other things. So why wouldn’t you treat having a child, or treat a friend having a child, as another life adventure that’s happening and react accordingly?

Parents don’t get a pass on participating in friendships that they would like to maintain any more than workaholics get a pass on doing so. Speaking as an almost former workaholic, I think that’s fair. Speaking as a parent, I think that’s fair.

You get to choose how to adjust the friendship so you don’t knock yourself sideways accommodating it, and you have to have respect for each other’s life choices, but unless you loathe the very idea and presence of kids, kids don’t have to be the reason you break up with your friends.

Growing up

I’m still mostly the same person but I’m a little wiser, quite a lot older. More patient, mellow, comfortable in my me.

I still don’t fit in with any crowd, male or female, but I do have deep and fulfilling relationships. It turns out that you don’t need to click into place with other puzzle pieces. I used to think that was my irredeemable flaw that I’d never overcome: I just couldn’t FIT.

I saw Mom in myself. We struggled to create and cultivate friendships. We struggled with having faith in those relationships. We struggled to extend a hand of friendship to others, not knowing if they were in the market for a friend or an accessory. I wondered if I just had to find more people like me. I wondered if there were other people like me. My flawed assumption was that my classmates were a representative sample of the female population and that I’d always fly solo.

Now, my clan of kindred spirits is composed of singular women and men who seem to be nothing like me.

They are avid beer lovers and teetolars, dog lovers and cat people. They are reptile people and mammals-only people. Some are stars in their careers, some are building their career foundations, or finding themselves. Some are super stylish, or wizards with makeup wands (I am not and NOT). They’re librarians, goatherders, craftspeople, lawyers, romance novelists, consummate professionals, teachers, horror authors, doctors, feminists, activists, small business owners, journalists, bringers of proper hugs, hilarious stories, goofs. They’re passionate about money, stories, ancient textiles, traveling the world, helping women learn about finances, investing, creating youth initiatives, rescuing dogs, going to concerts, drinking all the coffee in all the world (or the wine). They’re loud and brash, quiet, thoughtful, intellectually without peer. They’re raising half a dozen kids, or a few, or one, or eschew human critters in favor of four legged critters. They remember JuggerBaby’s birthday, they dote on JuggerBaby stories, and gush over JuggerBaby pictures. They text, they DM, they email, they call.

I’d go on but I can’t feel my fingers anymore. Some of you will recognize yourselves in this list, some of this list have no idea this blog exists. But to the many of you, the multitude of who share with me a little of your lives, I’m lucky to have you.

I had to learn to be comfortable with myself, and learn that relationships with people will ebb and flow. They will almost always thrive when based on mutual respect, not need, friendships happened. I learned that some people are friends for the moment, and that’s fine. Some people are friends for all the moments, and they became family.

Someone once noted, for a misanthrope, I sure do have a lot of friends.

To which I reply, “pshaw.” I’m lucky to know good people. And maybe that’s all it is and it’s folly to claim all these interesting, eccentric, awesome people as friends. Not a one of them match me. They outmatch me. That small doubting voice, that one I inherited from Mom, points this out. I know why they’re great but how do I fit with them?

I don’t.

And yet that’s the beauty of it. We don’t match. We don’t need to look or be similar to be a good fit. What we do have is a shared sense of responsibility, a willingness to learn and make things better, to leave the world a better place for having had us in it. We don’t have a prescribed way to enjoy each other’s company: we talk, we text, we email, we tweet. Whatever works is what we do.

Even if they don’t feel as fondly toward me as I do them, or vice versa, there is fondness. It doesn’t have to be this perfectly calculated level of friendship to work.

At this stage of life, I appreciate what that’s worth. My nearest and dearest are far-flung and scattered and that’s ok.

Since we’ve become parents, we’ve found ourselves making the acquaintance of other parents in passing but we can’t and won’t force those relationships solely on the basis of their having reproduced. It’s nice to have friends in the same life stage, but those friendships, if they’re a good fit, will grow naturally, or not.

:: Do you have a best friend or many best friends? Who are you grateful to have in your life? Why?

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