Talking About Friendship
What do we owe our friends? What do we owe ourselves?
Untitled (1960) by Dorothea Tanning
Earlier this week, Ava Huang from Bookbear Express asked me a bunch of great questions about friendship, and I wanted to share some of my answers here because I’ve been thinking a lot about the responsibilities of close friendship lately.
People get tired of hearing this from me, but intimacy with others necessarily includes facing yourself, reckoning with what you truly desire, humbling yourself, noticing your bad habits, and observing your defense mechanisms. You have to be able to admit the many, many ways you fuck up and blame others and distance yourself every day in order to be a good friend to another flawed human being. You have to take responsibility for the fact that you are a fallible animal, ruled by huge emotions, and you’re never going to get it exactly right – never, ever, ever.
When you surrender to that simple fact, it’s very romantic. And when two people surrender to it, watch out! Fireworks, shivers, lust, loyalty, optimism, joy, communion. Deep connections are everything, yet we walk around pretending we don’t need each other. It boggles the mind how warped our culture is! But noticing just how bent and ashamed and angry this world is just as important as noticing your own flaws and taking responsibility for the self you drag through the world.
I care a lot about cultivating extremely close friendships. Over the past few months, I’ve been paying close attention to my avoidant habits, how inconsistent I can be, and how unpredictable other people can be, too.
In some ways, texting makes friendships more complicated. You can give the appearance of being fully engaged even though you’re not. And you can also ask “How are you?” and really want to know the answer, only to be met with silence. Texting can trick you into believing that a casual friend is a close friend and vice versa. But it’s rare for anyone to ask, “How often should we see each other? How much texting feels right? Are you afraid of seeming needy? Are you worried about letting me down?”
It would be nice if people talked about friendship more!
That said, if someone asked me those exact questions, my first reaction would be “WOW, CALM DOWN, BUDDY. We’re just hanging out! Let’s not draw up a contract just yet.”
I mentioned this knee-jerk aversion in my conversation with Ava:
I think I’ve historically been attracted to slightly more guarded, avoidant people at times. I probably admired that control, and I feared emotional people who might get anxious and needy, which was just a side effect of my shame and self-hatred, honestly, because I can be anxious and needy myself. But I can’t gush enough about how rewarding it’s been to love people who are as intense as I am. I guess I’d say they’re also very principled, each in their own way, which I didn’t understand was very important to me until recently.
Intimate friendships require work and a lot of patience. Finding two people who are absolutely all in has been such a gift. You know, shit comes up. Things get weird when you’re both really invested. You get emotional over random stuff, and shame and fear show up. That’s emotional engagement. It’s always messy and vulnerable. I love understanding that and not feeling as terrified of it. I mean, look, I tried to befriend people who were a lot like me when I was younger. It was very challenging for me. So it’s great to be able to do that again, but with much less fear and shame in the mix.
I would just add that fear and shame are always person-specific. You can feel free with one person and absolutely ashamed with another, and you might have no idea why.
And if you’re going through a crisis, these random preferences become more pronounced. A friend who sometimes grates on your nerves might suddenly seem perfect when the sky is falling, and a friend who you trust with daily updates on your life might suddenly seem completely wrong.
In my writing, I tend to urge people to choose open communication instead of backing away, withdrawing, and ghosting. My belief is that most people tend to let conflicts curdle in silence when they should be talking about them directly. But every friend is different, and every day is different. People have dramatically different needs at different moments in their lives. It’s not always possible to be consistent and reliable to every close friend you have. Sometimes you have to admit your limits.
I am very bad at admitting my limits! This means my expectations are sometimes too high. So I have to remind myself that I’m allowed to fail completely sometimes, and so is everyone else.
I want to give other people the gift of allowing themselves to be sad and confused and fearful, like all animals are. It’s a massive disservice to humanity that we all pretend we’re not afraid and bewildered a lot of the time, no matter how old we are. You would be amazed at the layers and layers of shame and fear that are acting on everyone you know, including the wisest, calmest humans among them. Smart people struggle with neuroticism a lot, I want to add. And it takes a lot of very good habits and a lot of compassion for yourself and others to step back from that puzzle. You can’t turn everything you feel into a twisted knot of ideas and problems to solve. You can’t intellectualize your heart all day long.
Even though the challenges of friendship can feel overwhelming at times, it’s important to lighten up and let go whenever you can. Lately I’ve been trying to remind myself that even when everything feels stressful or overwhelming, it can help to just stop and make fun of something. Make a weird voice. Sing a random song.
This is also why we have friends, isn’t it? To laugh about random stuff and tell stupid jokes and tease each other and goof off?
I think that’s where I landed with my heavy friendship thoughts this week: a huge chunk of every day should be spent goofing off, and a huge chunk of every friendship should be about laughing and acting absolutely idiotic together. This was the foundation of every friendship I had for the first 30 years of my life! So why do I insist on turning every social interaction into a therapy session lately?
Life is too short for relentless emotional heavy lifting. We need to be ridiculous and obnoxious and sing dumb songs into each other’s voicemails. We need more dance parties and puppet shows. Friendship should be loving and real, but above all else, it should be fun.
Thanks for reading Ask Polly! The entire Bookbear Express interview can be read here. More to read: My New York Times essay about tearjerkers, Ava Huang’s friendship theory of everything, Sarah Miller’s Ten Bennifer Theories, and Samantha Irby’s exhaustively researched compilation of the greatest black erotic thrillers ever made.
Everything you wrote is true and is the advice I most often hear (although a bit more direct). Thing is, I've never been willing to cultivate friendships. Even my relationships have come second to my work, which is the ONLY place I feel validated. I suppose that sounds sad, but close relationships aren't for everyone. I'm even a little surprised myself how happy I am in my house with my dog. I do have a couple of friends, hundreds of miles away and that go back decades, and whom I know I can count on and whom I would be there for if they ever called on me. We only lightly stay in touch, and it works. So, yes, if you want friends or more (and all young people do, I think), this is a great article. If you don't, I hope that's OK, too. Thanks for posting.
There is much that I can relate to from your writing about friendship. I have friends that I’ve had for over 20 years and at times I have struggled with walking away from all of the relationships because of my severe health issues. At times I wanted to walk away because I felt like in no way could they understand me since they hadn't experienced anything close to what I’d been through. But then I put myself in their shoes and realized to do that isn't fair to them. How could I expect them to understand something so rare? At times they showed up when I needed them most doing the best they could. My introversion doesn't help my struggle, struggle to make a phone call, struggle to answer one. You are right about what you said about texting. It seems like the coward’s way out. What you wrote is perfectly lined with my day. I am about to call one of my friends who I’ve been friends with since 1997 grieving the passing of her mother and her mother’s birthday is tomorrow. Then later after 5 pm, my friend since I was 4 years old is coming by and I haven't seen her in months. What you wrote is perfect for my day and for the rest of my days. You are right, we will never ever get it right, ever. Just when it seems that we have gotten it right, something shows up showing us that we are wrong. And I find myself forgiving myself over and over again.