I thought it was my fault, or particular to my situation. That somehow, my life had become so over-scheduled, so harried, so wrapped up in the long days of single parenting that I didn’t make time for friends. Or for that matter, for friendship. Not the real thing, anyway – the sort of profound friendships that I maintained for years.
There’s no question that friendship requires an investment of time, energy, and even money – like any other sort of relationship. Had I stopped investing?
What happened to the great women in my life? Did they disappear because of events in their lives or had I pushed them away, and not realized?
Life Events
I maintained relationships across decades, career changes, accident and illness, not to mention relocation that put thousands of miles between myself and old friends – smart, compassionate, and fun-loving women I’d known since high school and college. We stayed involved in each others’ lives. That is, until the years following my divorce.
Is divorce the one event that destroys friendships?
Shouldn’t I examine the circumstances around my change in marital status as much as the fact of it? The messy manipulations that went on for years, the dramatic change in financial circumstances that made all of us uncomfortable, not to mention my fatigue, my lack of availability, my increasingly complicated life?
Old Friends, New Friends
I recall that when I got engaged, and then married – older than most women – I was suddenly part of an exclusive new club.
Yet I wore the trappings of something like marriage more than its substance. It was enough to belong to the club, though I was on my own a great deal of the time with a spouse who traveled. My reality was this: My closest friends were single mothers, because my life more closely resembled theirs, though I belonged to the traditional world of married couples with children.
As for divorce – old friends who knew me before marriage remained friends. Those who were part of a circle of couples – with one exception – drifted away. And I pulled back for many reasons, I know.
I was out of the club. Life was a handful. Life was about getting through the day. Time and money constraints made any sort of friendship nearly impossible – at least with those women who had no such constraints or constant stresses.
But who can manage without friends? And isn’t friendship the foundation of the best romantic relationships?
And what else played a role? Aging? Gender? The isolation of being a writer, stuck behind a computer screen?
Friendship, By Any Other Name
Recently I was speaking with a male acquaintance who is divorced – and like me, around 50. He mentioned that he doesn’t have many close friends. That got me to wondering about several other divorced men I know who have let something similar slip, as though embarrassed by the fact. They don’t have the buddies they once did. Not since divorce.
I’ve always believed that men retain their friendships following divorce, though they may transact the business of sharing lives differently from women. But I may be wrong.
Friendship – like so many other types of relationships – may be a matter of many factors, and the individual.
Still, in the past three or four years, with one or two exceptions, keeping up with women friends has been nearly impossible for me. Even with the conveniences of email or Facebook. And I’m unsure why that is, whether or not it is a common phenomenon that crosses genders, whether it is about age and stage in life, and the effort required in maintaining relationships of any sort.
I wonder if it is about priorities. Or even pride.
Because we don’t feel as though we are who we once were – successful enough or attractive enough – in some strange throwback to the comparative days of adolescence.
Community
Enter the online community, and an entirely different group of individuals – readers and writers – some 20 years younger, others 10 years older. Some men, some women, some married, some divorced. Single dads, single moms, singles – period.
We gather around a communal water cooler in the mornings or at odd hours of the night. Some of the dialog simulates friendship; some of it becomes genuine friendship.
Logistics disappear as an issue. The need to meet face-to-face, likewise. Physical limitations – or financial – become irrelevant. We talk, we listen, we even pick up the phone and support each other. Through hard days, through little triumphs.
Friendship doesn’t “fix” everything that ails you, but it certainly makes getting through the day easier and life, so much richer.
- Have your friendships thrived across distance and years?
- Have your friendships survived changes in marital status and the parenting divide?
- Have they survived dramatic changes in your health or financial status?
- Has the online community become your lifeline in otherwise challenging times?
Since I’ve had kids my friendships have always been a matter of convenience. The only way I maintain is by playing weekly in my pool league – this is the only source of face-to-face interaction I get with them. It’s sad really. But, like you, I am short on time. I appreciate the friends I’ve found in the virtual world, but nothing beats two girls chatting it up over a glass of wine or a beer.
@Cathy – Time really is the most significant constraint, I find. Like you, there are so many demands for my time, something has to give.
@NoName – That “judge-i-ness” factor. Yes, indeed.
@Paul – There certainly is a difference between those we know and those we really count on and share with. I love that you discussed this issue of maintaining friendships with Fran. I think we all need that profound connection, and with more than our significant other. Now, that “sinking ship off Australia” story – how can you leave us hanging??
Oh, I hear you I pulled away out of trying to survive, including heal quietly, like an animal in the woods. But, now, I am working all the time. Friendship requires time.
I have found the winnowing effect interesting. Those who remain seem to occupy this philosophical space: compassionate, with a view that names things as neither good nor bad but simply as “is.” We begin there. I am so grateful to not be around “judge-i-ness.”
Folks tend to have more friends when younger than when older. Young people are more active, mobile and flexible. We all have lots of friends in school… that environment makes it easy. I have kept one close friend from that period, and our friendship is essentially based on our shared experience of that period. The hook for getting folks into those retirement communities is the idea that you will relive that youthful life with lots of like-minded friends who have time and opportunity to do things with you. Sometimes (in a restricted fashion) this may even come true.
We all have lots of friends when our children are young, based on that shared experience of being parents.
I “know” lots of people, but I am grateful for three friends who can be considered confidants, along with a couple of others whom I know I could always call upon if needed. I chose them as friends and have known all of them for decades. Some friends are at a distance, but Fran and I do so much together that that is okay. When I met Fran, I gently grilled her in my unique (sic) way. Perhaps the most challenging thing I learned about Fran (forget the time that she was at the wheel in the pilot house of a sinking ship off Australia) was that she had no female confidant and did not feel that she particularly needed to have one or that anything was missing. She is the only woman I have ever met without a female confidant. Fran is open and confided/trusted in me almost immediately in a way that was surprising. She always has friends, enjoys friends, makes friends, but does not have any need for old friends and tends to just move on when she moves on. I made sure we discussed this, and she has since reconnected with some old friends based on her experience with me.
It may be easier to maintain male friendships after divorce since the basis for these friendships is usually more activity-based (watching/playing sports, concerts, travel, jamming) than sharing emotions (if I can generalize). With good friends from before the divorce, I know I miss out on couples events but that is cool with me; I get included in other invites where the couple-factor isn’t as important and when in doubt, I organize events on my own. The self-starting aspect is probably the toughest part for somebody that never took care of the social schedule during marriage, it is tough work to organize but worth it in the end.
@batticus – The activity-based friendship, as you say, is what I expect more of men, and have seen in my experience as well. As we get older, I think finding a “single environment” within which to organize socializing becomes more difficult – male or female. You haven’t found that to be the case? (Maybe you’re still a spring chicken. :))
I’m happy to consider you a friend (albeit a long-distance one). Call anytime and we’ll “chat it up” over a glass of wine. Or we can meet in email inboxes or fb chat boxes. But let’s not forget the wine. 🙂
Thanks, Lisa! (I’ll be sure to remember the wine.) 😉
The sinking ship story mentioned above…. It really needs a lifetime of context, but brief story is that in 1970 Fran was living on an old navy supply ship/barge anchored on a river upstream from Sydney, with a mailbox and a rowboat on shore. Her nearest neighbor/friend lived on an old minesweeper, a rowboat ride away. He and his buddy decided that another inlet was more suitable, and they invited Fran along on moving day. All was going well except that it had been some years since the ship had actually put to sea, severe leaks developed in a heavy swell, and the old pumps failed to work. Friend takes over working with the pumps and puts Fran in wheelhouse with instructions to “steer into the waves.” Next thing she knows, he runs back up and sends out “Mayday” and runs down to balky pumps again. Coast Guard cutter arrives, they abandon ship (Fran gracefully sprains ankle jumping from deck down to Coast Guard vessel). Ship sinks, two men and a beautiful girl arrive back in Sydney minus ship (guy’s whole house went down), and Fran is on front page of Sydney newspapers after daring rescue. Usual story for Fran.
Gotta love the Fran story thanks to Paul. As for friendship—I feel blessed to have some great ones; and yet there is a lack of time (and problems of different cities) that do frustrate. Nevertheless, I think the key is real connection—and too many relationships stall out at the facile level and thus stagnate, and as we mature we’d rather be in bed with a book than making small talk (or I should say this is true for me anyway). As a man I know that the friends I treasure are not afraid to connect, to reveal themselves, to be real—face to face and in virtual space. Either way, thanks for your friendship Wolf.
Ditto, Bruce. To the book, and the thank you.
Do you know Bella DePaulo’s work? Her new book is on friendship. Friendships are so incredibly important to me. Some of them, granted, I rely on our closeness so that I don’t always make the efforts required, but at the same time, I grant them the same flexibility. And when we finally do get together, like I just got together with a friend last week that I hadn’t had a one-on-one conversation with in about 15 years (!), it was almost like no time had passed. Of course, we played catch-up a bit, but it’s truly amazing how the essence of a person doesn’t change. Hmmm…I think I’ve finally been inspired to write a post of my own!
I don’t know her work, April, so thank you for the recommendation! What an interesting point about the essence of a person not changing – even over the years. I think that may be true for many of us, and yet we allow more superficial differences to block out what once was a friendship – circumstantial differences that make for lives of very different experience. That begs the question – can you only remain friends even after decades if you can at least value and respect the different experience a friend may have lived?
I wonder, too, if we are more able to maintain a relationship with former romantic partners if the core of friendship is there. (I have found that former romantic involvements who are European value retaining the friendship connection, but I’ve rarely found that to be the case in the US. An individual difference, or a cultural one?)
Finding a “single environment” is difficult and I have not found one yet; I stick with my existing friends for now. I have found a site called meetup.com that seems interesting, you can find local events organized by singles of your own vintage there; I haven’t attended one yet but a cursory view of the events being organized looked interesting.
Friends come and go. Some are always there for you. Other friendships become twisted by envy and competition (frenemy) and you are forced to cut ties. I like what Madea has to say about people and friends: some are there for a lifetime, some are there for a season. Here’s a clip on youtube (apologies for the brief ad at the beginning):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYH6sn2ulfs
I think I’d go crazy without a place in my life where the truth can be spoken. My deepest connections are to the men in my men’s group. Some have become friends. All are brothers.
I envy the ease with which women connect emotionally with one another. Men fear showing their vulnerability to other men. They have to be taught. It’s very powerful when the teacher is a man.
I like the way you put this “have I stopped investing?” In some ways, I think I have. I have may aquaintances but few people I’d truly call friends. I finally got tired of being the initiator and only invest in those who return…probably makes me selfish, but I really don’t have the time or energy for a massive amount of superficial relationships.
I had a friend tell me that you must accept that certain friends will weave in and out of your life. I’ve always been the type to make a friend for life, but have found that isn’t always reciprocated. I’m still learning, enjoying the friendships that I have formed and letting go of those that aren’t working anymore.