Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [101]
If you feel like a valuable friendship is slipping away, do what you can to reel it back in. If face-to-face contact is impossible, arrange a way to maintain regular contact by cell phone or on the Internet so you can keep up with each other’s lives until you meet.
“Facebook is an amazingly wonderful thing,” says one woman. “It enabled me to talk more often with a friend who now lives many states away from me.” She uses the social network to contact friends who are important but are more peripheral to her day-to-day life: friends she met vacationing, at overnight camp, and from middle school. “If you think someone is special to you, let them know exactly how you feel whether they reciprocate or not.”
One woman said that when she meets someone with whom she really connects, it’s worth the effort to make the relationship work. She called it “taking extra steps” and explained it like this: “I make sure I go the extra mile to stay close to her (e.g., calling her frequently, making the 1.5-hour drive to see her often, paying attention to her birthday as well as her two kids’ birthdays.) We’ve had some bumps in our relationship but I’ve learned not to take this one for granted.”
Why do some relatively strong friendships fall apart while others endure? Certainly, the duration of the friendship has some bearing. The less you have invested in a relationship, both in terms of time and emotion, the less likely you are to make a Herculean effort to save it.
A history of shared experiences often provides the glue that enables friends to stick together and to keep their relationship cemented during rocky times. When misunderstandings, disappointments, or disagreements occur, they are easier to overlook or to get over within the context of a friendship that has longevity. Being able to reminisce about past events and experiences, knowing many of the same people and places, and having a long-term investment in another person enriches a relationship and gives it a special dimension.
Two women who know each other since childhood, who have experienced firsts in their lives together and who have similar socio-cultural backgrounds have more common ground—and a greater chance of overcoming rough patches—than those with fewer ties, who come from disparate vantage points.
Personality counts, too. Every relationship has rough spots. But if two friends are able to communicate with tact and sensitivity, there is a better chance that their needs will be met and that the relationship will survive. When friends are relatively inflexible and unwilling to communicate, they are less likely to weather difficulties.
One woman says: “Your best friend is the person who not only knows all the important stories and events in your life, but has lived through them with you. Your best friend isn’t the person you call when you are in jail; most likely, she is sitting in the cell beside you.” Your best friend is the person you could call if you had to get rid of a dead body on your living room floor.
On the other hand, rather than a pointed disagreement, many times there are profound and fundamental changes that occur in a relationship over time as two people grow and change in different directions. This is as likely to happen in female friendships as it is in marriage. If a friendship becomes so weak that there is only history, there is less reason and motivation for both parties to try to preserve the relationship. In essence, no one is at fault or has precipitated a unilateral change, but the loss can be just as painful.
A woman needs close friends whom she can turn to every day (and night) of her life. It may not be the same person each day because, like our lives, friendships are dynamic. But I hope that your best friends—even if the list is serial—offer you the unique sense of intimacy, trust, and reciprocity that will allow you to feel loved, understood, needed, supported, challenged, and inspired.
Yes, these relationships are complicated, some even bordering on mysterious, and creating them and making the meaningful