I’ve never had many friends. Yes, I’m okay with that. In this regard, I prefer quality to quantity. The following are my own highly subjective guidelines for friendship:
- I only become and remain friends with people I like, whose company I enjoy.
- Even in this era of social networking, I refuse to meet people online. I want to know real people, not online personae. My Facebook and Myspace friends basically fall into two categories: famous people whose work I admire and people whom I know in real life. Most of those f2f friends are not casual acquaintances, either. I do not friend my mail carrier, that down-the-street neighbor I wave to three times a year, or the girl who sat next to me in first grade. I friend actual friends.
- I won't maintain friendships on the basis of time served. Even having shared intensely personal or traumatic experiences doesn’t obligate us to remain friends. Like all relationships, friendships (and the friends involved) grow and change. Sometimes, we find ourselves in different and incompatible places. Sometimes, we simply grow apart. Sometimes, a friendship that started out positive becomes a destructive force in our lives. The end of a friendship--again, like any relationship--can be painful, certainly. I ended one of those a couple years ago. Did it hurt? Yes. Am I better for it? Yes.
- I won’t have “frenemies.” This phenomenon of having friends whom we don’t like, or are secretly competing with, or are jealous of, baffles me. I know people who play frenemy-like games--like the coworker who comments regularly on my weight and appearance in such a way that she's never outright insulting, but she's clearly not being complimentary. I refuse to play. Finding time to spend with the people I do love is hard enough. My time is too valuable to waste on people I don’t like.
- As a culture, we lack good examples of close female friendships. Because contrary to many media models, we’re not all scratching each other's eyes out over a man. Sex and the City, for all its other faults (there were many faults, but that’s another post), featured women who were true friends to one another, not catty and backstabbing. Refreshingly, the friendships weren’t perfect--they argued and disagreed--but they also clearly loved one another. Unfortunately, no other shows, at least none that have become cultural phenoms like SaTC, have since emerged to fill that void. (No, not all my friends are women, but I recognize and value the particular closeness and support that female friendships can offer.)
So, as we approach Valentine’s Day this year, I want to say to all my friends--you know who you are; it’s an exclusive club!--I love you. Thank you.
