• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Phone Friends

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Pontifical Catholic University in Chile examined 8 million phone calls made by 2 million people and found that if two friends make contact with each other at least every fifteen days, they are more likely to have an enduring friendship.

People around the world send out billions of e-mails each day. The Internet provides another tool for women, even those who work at home, to meet new friends from around the world and to nurture existing connections. For example, e-mail has enabled women to maintain friendships that allow for close communication even when their respective schedules are out of sync.

For example, my friend Patricia is an early bird. After purging my accumulated junk mail from the night before, I love to read her e-mail messages each morning. She tells me what she is writing about, sends me interesting web links, asks advice, or lets me know about the latest sales at Chico’s. As a night owl, I tend to respond to her late at night with all the stories of my day. We both met online through a writer’s organization and arranged a face-to-face meeting about a year after we met. Although we live too far apart to shop together or have lunch, our online friendship remains strong. When my father died, Patricia and her husband made the sixty-mile trip to visit and offer her condolences to my family and me.

One woman I know keeps a package of note cards in her glove compartment so when she’s waiting to pick up her kids from school she can write a personal note to an out-of-town friend. There are so many ways to stay in touch with friends. The many women I interviewed over the course of writing this book offered their advice about how to enhance the odds of your friends making you a keeper too.

How to Make Yourself a Keeper

• Be yourself. If a friend can’t take it or doesn’t like you for being yourself, then she isn’t a true friend anyway.

• Be human. Smile whenever you are so moved. Try not to moan too much.

• If you make a promise, live up to that promise.

• Be punctual, dependable, and reliable.

• Show up. If she’s having an event or a party, be a body for her—she’ll appreciate you for it.

• Learn as much as you can about a friend before telling your entire life story.

• Make yourself a better listener and try not to interrupt. Pay attention and tune in to what your friend is saying or not saying before you chime in and talk about yourself.

• Let your friend know that you are interested in her feelings and opinions. All of us want friends who allow us to feel understood.

• Express your needs. Even close friends aren’t mind-readers.

• Be there with your fire extinguisher when they crash and burn.

• Give each other space. Don’t box each other in.

• Be a comfort blanket but don’t smother her.

• Remember that she detests olives in her salad.

• Abandon judgment and resist saying “I told you so.”

• Be willing to make sacrifices and compromise; if everything always has to be your way, you will be one lonely person.

• When she has three kids and they’re sick, go clean their bathtub or something.

• Don’t sleep with your best friend’s boyfriend.

• Assesss the friendship periodically to see if it needs adjustments on either side.

KEEPING FRIENDSHIPS FRESH

Here are some additional tips for keeping the friendships you’ve made:

BREAK THE SILENCE

With the ubiquity of cell phones and computers, there is no reason to be incommunicado with friends, no matter how busy you are! Take a few minutes to say hello, tell your friend what is going on in your life, and to show some interest in what is going on in hers. Oral communication, whatever form it takes, has helped forge friendship since the time of tribal cultures.

One woman told me she always makes a point of checking in with her friends if she hasn’t heard from them for a few months. She’s done this over thirty years and says it’s worth it, even if she is always the one to make the call. Don’t ever