Making Friendships That Last

We all want someone who knows us better than anyone else does, and yet accepts us, enjoys us, needs us, holds nothing back from us, keeps our secrets, and is there for us when we want to be near him.

We all seem to need at least one close friend. Even people who believe they ought to love everybody need special people they want to be close to just because they like them. And are liked by them. It's different from charity; we ought to feel charity for needy people. But we want somebody as a close friend because we like her, not because she needs our kindness.

I'm talking about a close friend, a best friend, not a casual friend or a friendly acquaintance. It's hard to describe the precise difference between a close friend and a casual friend. But this doesn't matter much because if you have a close friend, you will know the difference.

It's a matter of preference. A close friend is somebody who prefers to have us around, is partial to us, makes us his favorite. We talk about things together we don't talk about with other people. We do things together that we don't want to do with anyone else, at least not as much as we want to do them with each other. Friends stick with their favorites; that's the way of friendship; it always discriminates.

There is a friend that sticks to us closed than a brother, the Bible says, telling us as much about brothers as it does about friends. Not a surprising revelation, in fact, because most friends do stick closer to us than brothers do, or sisters.

But is there a friend who lasts a long as a brother does? Maybe until death? Are we expecting too much when we Wang close friend to be our friends forever in a world where almost everything is only for the time being?

We Don't Really Expect Friendship To Last Forever

Even the way we become friends is a hint that we do not believe that they are meant to last forever.

For instance, we don't usually arrange a ceremony to begin a friendship with solemn vows. Fancy asking the Minister to arrange a "Friendship Ceremony" for you at the church. Telling you want a high church service, a cleric well robed, a grand organ, with the slow strains coaxing both of you, arm in arm, as befits friends; toward the altar, before which the two of you will vow a solemn covenant of friendship "until death do us part". A traditional Minister will probably think you are a bit crazy, but will tell you in sympathetic tones, " I surely do respect your feelings". But that sort of thing is not done in this church.

It happened once in a while, in the olden days, that friends vowed to be friends, no matter what. Maybe you remember the Biblical story of Jonathan and David, and how they took and oath to friendship forever. "Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him...." And they both banked on that sweet swearing when the times turned treacherous and friendship was tested by blood. A great story, and worth thinking about; maybe it would help friends to stay together always if they swore an oath at the beginning.

But it isn't the way most of us get to be friends. We are more likely to stray into friendship, fumble into it almost by accident. We meet, needy, ready for a friend, and we feel each othet's pulse, delicately, discreetly, as the openings come. We look each other over, discover that we talk the same language, that we agree on what is important in life, that we like to do the same sorts of things, and that we get special satisfaction from doing them with each other. And so we fumble into friendship just by hitting it off.

It is the same when casual friends become best friends; we do not step beyond the casual stage into best friendships the way people move from being lovers to becoming wife and husband. We get to be best friends, as Lillian Rubin notes in her book "JUST FRIENDS", by a kind of grafting and a growing together as we learn to trust each other, feel safe with each other, understand each other, admire each other, maybe even envy each other, and simply expect each other to be there to do things we especially like to do together.

If a time comes when we don't feel safe in it anymore, can't count on each other, get too involved with other relationships, maybe fall in love and get married, we gradually remove the life support systems and let the friendship die, let it die with dignity if we are lucky, but die anyhow.

And when it dies neither of us feels that we have violated a sacred commitment. Preachers do not tell us that the country is going to the dogs because of the decline of friendship. Friendship die and nobody clucks a more cluck. Nor do we formalize the ending of friendships. Popes do not annul friendships, the courts do not issue a decree of divorce between friends. All this suggests that we do not really expect friendships to last permanently.

And after all, maybe friendship is not really the sort of relationship that is meant to last?

Are Friendships Ever Forever?

What goes into the making of any friendship? What are the ingredients that mesh ordinary people into this wonderful, this tender, this too fragile relationship? And why can't we count on it to last?

There are three kinds of friendship, as Aristotle saw it. One of them is a friendship based on affection: friends like each other and enjoy each other. Another is a friendship based on usefulness: friends do things for each other. And a third kind is based on character: friends admire each other.

I think every real friendship is a mixture of all three ingredients. It's just that the blend changes from one friendship to another. But there is a lot to say for Aristotle's list, enough anyway to see why none of his three kinds of friendship can last long if it doesn't have commitment as the bonding agent. Let's look at each of them.

Friendships of Affection: We Like Each Other

Someone gets special pleasure out of being in your company. Your presence adds to her enjoyment of whatever she is doing with you, you are a joy to her. And you make her feel better. You are a comfort to her. This is affection, and it makes for close friends.

Maybe it is just the sort of person you are, your personality, your style; it blends well with the sort of person she is. She feels comfortable with you, they way a person gets comfortable with an old shoe; the longer you are around, the better you fit. You make a friend feel good in almost any situation.

She may rate other people higher on the character scale, and you may not be the smartest person she knows; no matter, she likes being with you, even if she isn't sure why.

It isn't as if she looks in your eyes and tells you that she really likes being with you. In fact, she doesn't think about you much when she is with you, just as she doesn't think about the comfortable shoes she's wearing. You and she are concentrating on your tennis shots. Or on getting a party organized. Maybe you are arguing about why God allows so much pain in the world, or you are just rooting for your kids at a soccer game. The point is that you get pleasure out of doing these things with each other. And at the end of a long afternoon, you may just say" That was good", let's do it again."

And we are not close friends just because we like doing the same things. I have known people who liked coffee as much as I do, but they are the last persons with whom I would want to have a coffee. There has something about the person himself that makes doing something fun because I am doing it with him.

We like each other, of course. If I wanted to be with you because I liked you, and you were only willing to be with me because you felt sorry for me, we couldn't be friends. Reciprocity is the key.

Too bad liking each other a lot can't make friendships last for life. Two things get in the way.

For one thing, even best friends move to new jobs in new locations, and get too far apart to play together or work together. So they find new people in their new place, people whom they like and with whom they enjoy doing things. Alvin Toffler warns us, in Future Shock, that in the future- which has since become the present-all our friendships would be ad hoc: here, now, and over with when the company sends one of us to another plant, or when we join another church or move to another neighborhood. Friendship for this place, this time, and as long as we stay put. But not much longer.

For another thing, friends change, and they may discover that they have stopped liking the new version of each other. Everybody's friend has something unlikable sneaking about in her personality. We discover it in each other sooner or later, and sometimes it annoys us too much to put with it. Jane liked a lot of things about her friend Thelma, even though she was forever borrowing her things and hardly ever returned them. But she's tired of having to ask her to give them back, and her nagging gradually siphoned the pleasure out of their friendship for both of them. So, as they stopped liking each other, they gradually slipped out of friendship.

Aristotle says in his Ethics that friendships of affection fade always "as soon as the reasons for which the friends loved each other no longer present themselves." And such thought led Gilbert Meilander glumly, with a touch of exaggeration, to put it on the line, in his book, Friendship: "Fidelity and friendship are incompatible."

In any case, liking each other is not enough to turn two people into like-long friends. Lifelong friendship need commitment.

Friendships of Usefulness: We Do Things For Each Other

Good friends do favors for each other. Most of my friends do more for me than I do for them. Not more than I want to do for them. But more than I can do for them. So being their friend is an advantage for me. They are not my friends because they do me favors; they want to do me favors because they are my friends.

But some people become friends simply because of what they can do for each other. Business friends, for instance. They give each other tax advice and investment tips. They help each other make contacts at conventions. They exchange notes on where to buy equipment at discount, and they gossip about competitors. What an advantage to have one another as friends!

But that is about as far as it goes. They don't share each other's family problems. Henry Morton, who runs a computer store, is a friend of Gerry Mansfield, a sales representative at IBM; they do a lot for each other. But Henry never tells Gerry that his heart is breaking because his teenage daughter is pregnant. And Sally Nordew, who has her own accounting firm, is a friend of Richard Holbert, a tax attorney; they both benefit from their relationship. But Sally sees Richard only over a lunch once a week or so, and she never tells him that she is worried sick that she might have cancer.

Some people make friends only with people who can be useful to them. Franklin D. Roosevelt loved to have people around him, cronies, politicians, intellectuals, all kinds. But we are told that he made friends only with people who could help him keep his rendezvous with destiny. One historian (Doris Kearns Goodwin, in the FITZGERALDS and the Kennedys) says of him: "At bottom, for all his warmt and capacity to make friends instantly, FDR was a man without a deep commitment to anyone. He enjoyed people....but he rarely gave himself to them." Maybe the great and powerful people of the world pay for being great and powerful by missing out on committed friendship.

Friendships of usefulness can be flavored with feelings of affection. They can even become intimate. But getting close is not the same as being committed.

Being useful to each other keeps two people together only as long as the advantage is enjoyed by both of them, and doesn't get too ones-sided. And the trade-off eventually does get uneven. One of the friends ends up doing a lot more for his friends than his friend does for him. Or her. One of them may get fired, or lose his clout, and not be able to do much for the other. When it happens his friends may stop calling, never have time for lunch, and a chill wind may blow the friendship away.

These friendships do not depend on what people are to each other, but on what they do for each other. They are based on a kind of service contract; the friend who is giving more service than he is getting is free to cancel the contract with honor. So this is one reason why friendships based on reciprocated services don't usually last for life. They lack personal commitment.

Friendships of Character: We Admire Each Other

I admire most of my friends. I even envy them; I wish I had some of their good qualities. In fact, I don't think I would want to be friends with people who did not have something about them that I admired.

But admiration needs to be shared. I like people whom I admire to admire me as well. Admire at least something about me. Otherwise it's hard for me to be their friend.

I have a good friend whom everyone admires. One reason that everyone admires him is that he has a radar in his mind that picks up something worthy beneath the skin of almost everyone he knows, and he finds loving ways to tell them what sorts of nice things he sees in them. But what makes me his friend and not his fan is that he sees good stuff in me too, and now and then he let's me know what he sees.

If I admired a person who saw nothing in me worth admiring, I could be his fan. Maybe even his disciple. But not his friend. To be friends we need to admire each other.

Aristotle thought that friends who admire each other's character are likely to have a lasting friendship. Why? Because character doesn't change very much. Good people do not usually become bad people. So if we are friends because we admire each other's character, we could be friends for life.

But not even mutual admiration is, by itself, enough to keep a friendship alive that long. For one thing, we discover somewhere along the line that even people we admire have feet of clay. The best of us is flawed. Our flaws show through eventually; we disappoint our friends, and sometimes their disappointment hurts enough to wound our friendship. Or even worse, we may discover that the traits we so much admired were put-ons, cosmetics hiding a shaddy interior. And we cannot count on any friendship to survive the feeling of being conned.

Besides, even friends who admire each other a lot drift apart when one of them moves to another part of the country. If I stay in close touch, our friendship is likely to die of malnutrition, with dignity maybe, and peacefully, but with the same result as any dying. I may still admire him, but I would admire him as a person who used to be my friend.

I feel a good deal of melancholy when I think of it, but it is true that we cannot count on mutual admiration to make friendships last forever, any more than we can expect friendships to last because friends like each other or are useful to each other. If friendships like these do happen to last a lifetime, it is probably because they are more than friendships of affection, or usefulness, or admiration. Most likely, they are held together because the friends are committed to each other.

Any thoughts?

Let's have a coffee

Hari

Enjoy reading...Blessing