Some musings on friendship

I know its been forever since I last posted anything on this. Most of the time I forget this/these blogs even exist. I have also been having amazingly meaningful conversations lately, often in the most random of situations, which has made journal processing less pertinent. Still I suppose updating this has its place and its point, and, though I doubt any still follow this (if any ever did), I feel like I am finally reaching a sort of synthesis of thought, a compilation of a series of strains of ideas, that can finally be made public and opened up for a larger form of discourse. Or maybe, more importantly, public discourse can offer new insights that only aide in further conclusions being drawn, and new ideas being generated.

It was realized last week that this year marks the 10 year friend anniversary for my core group of friends and I. Really makes you feel the years, doesn’t it? And its interesting, on a variety of levels, that this is the decade mark, for a lot of shuffling and changing and thought has been spent these last months centered around notions of friendship, meaning, intimacy, and relationship building, without me even aware that some of my old friends really are, officially, old.

I feel like the last year has gone far in terms of my ability to define what people mean to me, what I need from those around me, and what I have to offer. As I learn more about myself, how I react to emotional pulls and pushes, how I respond to and process information, I consistently find myself ever re-defining and re-evaluating the relationships I work to maintain. And they are work: more than ever before in my life, I feel I have a true understanding that real relationships- be they friendships, familial ties, working partnerships, neighbors, or lovers, require constant striving, problem solving, thought, and effort. At this point in my maturing, passive co-existence is no longer satisfying or healthy- that is to say- going on as we always have simply because we always have is unacceptable. If we want relationships with depth, with substance, with purpose and with a future, we must explore our interactions with one another- are they beneficial? Do they offer support, solace, amusement, a shoulder to lean on? Or do they simply subtract- do they drain your emotions, do they only cause discourse and stress, are they vampirical in nature, are they stagnant?

For example, I have a few close friendships with people whom, despite the amount of time spent in one another’s company, and despite my heady feelings of closeness, I have realized really offer little in the form of emotional support for me. That is, I feel like I am expending a lot of effort in supporting them with very little return emotional support. By emotional support, I mean active listening to my concerns, aiding in my ability to process events and emotions, or just being a solid person to go to when I feel the need to vent/complain/cry/rejoice. BUT- they do offer a ton in different ways: they are project partners, they are entertaining distractions, they are collaborators in idea generating, etc.

After coming to this understanding, I then went through a period of time spent in determining the healthiness of such relationships, and, for lack of a better word, the worth of them. This was a hot topic the other evening, as a group of us gathered to inaugurate Ken’s new studio apartment. We were discussing these ideas and I used the word “investment”, which led to a whole avenue of discourse around what we all mean by “investing” in relationships. For me, it means that the work I am putting towards a relationship is mutually beneficial- that I am bringing something healthy and necessary to the relationship as is the other person involved. If it’s a friendship like the one described above (one person = emotional support, the other = project partner) is the emotional support I am offering a fair trade for the non-emotional but still important support they provide? I don’t mean to imply here that all relationships at all times are comprised of equal out puts and inputs, nor do I mean to suggest that one should keep a running tally of what they give and, in turn, receive out of a friendship! But I do think that one huge factor of critical thinking and personal evolution is evaluating the time you spend with the people you chose to be around you, and part of that is summing up the various pluses and minuses in your relationships.

What I determined is that yes, its ok for me to maintain some close relationships with people who offer little in terms of emotional support or sympathy, because I am blessed with a great emotional support system- and one that has been evolving, growing, and solidifying for the last 10 years! That is, I have a lot of emo-isms to offer because my needs in that arena are currently being met. This is especially important to me when I think about the future of my romantic relationships: knowing, solidly, that I will not come to a romantic partner with a debt of emotional needs, just waiting for that one person to satisfy, because my friends are doing a damn good job of sustaining me, takes a sort of emotional load off.

It also serves as a good working model of what I need in new friendships and relationships. By evaluating what is healthy in my existing relationships, what makes me happy, what areas need improvement, and what I can offer my friends helps me to see those traits and equities in new people I meet. It also offers immense clarity in evaluating relationships that I think trend towards the unhealthy, and feeling confident and secure in my decision to end those, if necessary, and also providing methods and tools for working on them, if that seems important. This was recently helpful in examining a turbulent relationship that I was feeling a ton of anger around: I was able to sit with my friends and, based on discussions of our interactions and history with one another, determine why this relationship was so dramatic and stressful and, after a long discussion around “investing”, articulate why it needed to be dissolved, and the best method to go about doing so.

Anyways- this is just one avenue of thought I have been working my way down lately. I’ll have more thoughts on friendship to come soon, but think I have done enough rambling for one afternoon.