Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [7]
A few caveats: this book expresses the collective wisdom of the many women who contributed their experiences—through the survey, personal interviews, posts, and e-mails directed to my blog (www.TheFriendshipBlog.com), and stories I have been told by friends and strangers. To protect their anonymity and privacy, I have changed their names and altered other identifying information as necessary. I’ve also truncated some of the stories and quotes, although I did my best to preserve their integrity.
Any advice contained in this book is intended to be practical rather than clinical, the type I might give or get from my own female friends, although I hope that my training as a clinical psychologist has enhanced my ability to be a good listener, and to analyze and interpret responses. Female Friendship 101 isn’t a course found among the offerings of most schools of higher education.
Also, although there are two sides to every friendship story, I surveyed individuals rather than pairs, so the anecdotes reflect one subjective side of the equation. But that’s precisely what I was interested in: women’s feelings and perceptions about their own friendships. While many of the questions I asked tapped into the negative aspects of female friendships, this was done to illuminate the common pitfalls of these complex relationships. The women I surveyed were generous in describing the unanticipated heartbreak of their failed friendships.
Many of the women who completed the survey told me that just thinking about their own friendships, past and present, was a useful exercise that changed their attitudes and behaviors. I can certainly say the same for me. Spending many months placing my own female friendships under the microscope has left me eager to carve out more time to strengthen these wonderful relationships. I have already tried to selectively breathe life into some that have fizzled, and to find ways to cultivate new ones to sustain me over the years that lie ahead. I realize that such a commitment will entail a reordering of my priorities, but I am convinced that female friendships are worth it. They are crucial to every woman’s well-being, including my own.
If you are reading this book, I hope it will inspire you to take a close look at your own friendships and their endings, and to find comfort in knowing you are not alone. Remarkably, whether we are 5, 55, or 75 years old, whether our friendships end slowly (almost imperceptibly) or abruptly, these endings play havoc with our emotions—leaving many unresolved, painful feelings in their wake. But most women agree, as painful as breakups can be, they make us wiser and make our future friendships stronger and more resilient.
CHAPTER 1
UNDERSTANDING FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
—ANAÏS NIN
Why do women enjoy watching endless reruns of TV classics like I Love Lucy, Friends, and Sex in the City? Like our mothers and grandmothers before us, we are fascinated by the joys, the angst, and the intensity of female friendships. Women are still riveted by the antics of two best friends, Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, on a sitcom that initially aired more than fifty years ago. We crave relationships like that of Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courtney Cox), who are close friends both on and off the show. We mull over the lessons Carrie Bradshaw offers in each episode of Sex and the City, a show that was really as much about nuances in adult female friendships as it was about sex or the city. One thing is for sure: we never tire of observing, thinking, and talking about women’s friendships on screen and off.
The term friend seems relatively straightforward, but it is mired in imprecision and ambiguity, and means different things to different people. This is because every person views the world (and his or her friendships) through different sets of lenses, which vary based on the person’s background, temperament, and experiences. Since