Many-Worlds Theory of Friendships

[mrissa]

Sinuses hurt yesterday and today, woke me up today. C'mon, sinus infection! Woooo! Only six days left until I find out whether my hopes are realized.

Yesterday anne_mommy made a comment about motherhood and creative projects that ended like this: "I haven't lost anything. It's just different." Yes. Definitely. And that made me think of something one of you asked three weeks ago now, when I was having my sleep-dep study. She said, "I'd like to hear your philosophy on friendship, or at least your inklings on friendship." The piece that made me link the two was when someone asked me, regarding two of my close friends getting married to each other, whether I didn't feel I'd lost something as well as gained something.

So here's what I think: we get our past to build on, but not to keep. You never, ever get to have your old friendship back -- even if it was just the old friendship from yesterday, when you meant to call but didn't find the time -- or when you thought you didn't have the time but somehow found it, or whatever it is you did.

When two of my favorite people from college, gaaldine and the_overqual, got romantically involved and eventually married each other, things changed with us. Of course they did. But if they hadn't -- if they'd gone on to meet other partners, or to stay single -- things would also have changed with us. Because that's what things do: they change. It is how life goes.

So if you have a friendship that lasts, it kind of accretes. You end up with someone who gets a tag like "old friend since junior high" in casual conversation, but if you really put all the attributes on it, it would end up longer than the geek code, down to "...and we used to talk about every two weeks on the phone but now we e-mail, mostly during the day, either long chunks a couple times a week or back-and-forth a few sentences daily, and sometimes we talk about...." It contains all the stuff that used to be there -- in this non-random scottjames example, it would contain "junior high math geeks together" -- but that doesn't mean we have to stay junior high math geeks. (Good thing, too.)

Sometimes a friendship descriptor gets "for years" tacked onto it: "We've been meeting for coffee and to talk about our families for years." "We've been lending each other books for years." But it isn't the same thing to be friends who are meeting for coffee now as friends who are now and have done so for years. Staying the same is a change, too. My grandparents are different people for having argued about cowboy boots for nearly fifty-seven years now than they were for arguing about cowboy boots fifty-seven years ago.

Someone also asked me what scares and comforts me regarding change. For me, this is like asking what scares and comforts me regarding gravity. I can come up with a few things like, "Errr...I like sticking to the planet all right, and having atmosphere stick to the planet, and having a planet...all those things are good...but falling down is bad, and I don't like plane crashes...." But for the most part it's a very basic assumption of life. Change is like that, to my way of thinking. When we explode in frustration that nothing has changed in months, we don't really mean that: we're more frustrated because whatever the situation is has gone on for months, and it hadn't before. Or if we sigh happily that we had old friends in town and it was as though nothing had changed, that isn't really what we mean either -- what we mean is that the elements we liked before have been preserved despite the changes obvious to everyone involved. In the former case, we're more frustrated because of the change, and in the latter, probably happier, but in either case, having things come out the same at a different time is change.

It's like gravity. You work with it, or you fall flat on your face (or sometimes, unfortunately, both). And if you fall flat on your face, you pick yourself up and keep going, and sometimes friendship is about that, too.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Ralph W. Emerson said, "For everything you have lost, you have gained something else, and for eerything you have gained, you have lost something else." I think that realizing and accepting that has been one of the most important things I've ever done to make my life good.

[marksiegal.livejournal.com]

What a great post. This really resonates with how I feel about friendship. The timing also resonates. As of yesterday, I've been married two years to a longterm friend from high school. Sure it changed things, but all these friendships would have changed anyway.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Friendships, like everything else, change. When my best friend "since we were six" (which is definitely different than being best friends now) got married, I tried to explain to her how I was feeling by saying.

"It's like Anne of Green Gables when Diana gets married. It's not that I'm unhappy for you, but I know things are changing forever."

Most of the time that change sneaks up, in big life moments (like marriage) it's a little more obvious.

(Of course, in my narrative Josie Pye, who was her other bridesmaid, ran off with my Gilbert Blythe, about the time of the wedding, which is how I should explain to her why I never want to see Josie again.)

I have an awful lot of "old" friends, I'm decided short on the people I hang out with and talk with NOW.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't really understand people crying at weddings, even when my best girl friend sobbed at mine. Then I sobbed at hers. So.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

Angela used to cry at weddings. Then she was in my wedding and didn't cry (despite being prepared with kleenex), and now she doesn't cry at weddings anymore. :)

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

I did *not* _sob._

Grrr.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I could hear you quite distinctly all the way through "Love Divine All Loves Excelling."

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

That is only because I was standing directly next to you. You were supposed to be thinking about life loves and the enormity of what you were doing, not whether or not my eyes were glistening.

Bah.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I had already done all the enormous bits. Marriages are about the people directly involved. Weddings are about friends and family.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think weddings are about society, and giving it ways to demarcate the passage of time, categorize people, etc.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But the representatives of society at a wedding are friends and family, and very occasionally non-friend colleagues.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

But even they tend to be more interested in the idea of the event than the event itself.

I think weddings are so you can say, "We have been married X years," and allow people (capital S Society) a reference point.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In a lot of my social circles, that's broken down or is breaking down a bit: people will say, "We've been together for X years, married for Y years."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We aim to please.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

Although we are "only" two of her favorite people from college, not two of her favorite people. *grin*

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's like that. I don't understand railing against change, really. It'd be like me shaking my fist and crying out, "Damn you, gravity!"

Which I have done, but I was being ironical.

Is it cool if I do not go lick rocks, despite being mentioned with the word "accreting"? My boss isn't a geologist, so I'm not sure he'd appreciate it nearly as much.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, that's cool. Although you're permitted to change your mind, too.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

My definition of 'friend' has lately expanded to include the falling on faces. That is, one sign of a good friend is that you're allowed to make mistakes with them.

Not the only sign. And this probably isn't as much of a shock to the rest of the world as it was to me, but...yah.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think it's not a shocking theoretical revelation, but it's often a shocking practical one.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

"arguing about cowboy boots"? For fifty-seven years?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Obviously they have stopped to do other things like raise a child and sleep and so on. But Grandma hates cowboy boots, and Grandpa loves them, and she sent him home from their first date to change out of his cowboy boots, and he came back anyway, and it's been like that since.

[anne-mommy.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post.

It seems to me the hardest part of accepting what you've stated, which I have found to be true, is that change is the ultimate fear. It means embracing the unknown and the possible, and leaving behind the safe and familiar.

Throwing the label of "for years" or "my best friend since Junior High" is a way to keep those changing relationships familiar, and keep us connected to the part of that relationship which has remained constant.

Just my $0.02

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

And yes, I agree that part of "for years" or "since kindergarten" or whatever is a good reminder of the constants. I also think it's good for us to have people who remember what we were like when we were not so grown-up and glamorous (or aged and stodgy, depending on how you want to look at it).

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

A problem, though, is that sometimes they can't forget it . . .

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

True, that can be a problem -- the more so the more deliberate the change, I think, or the more extreme. And possibly even more than that when the change is more obvious within than without.

But then -- I just got off the phone with Marylyn, who wanted to talk to me about the death of her friend Charlotte, whom she had met on the first day of college 53 years ago -- 54 come September -- and I thought, "Must find out if gaaldine will be home tonight."

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

She will be. Is, actually.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

It's not just friendship, of course. In discussions about, for example, what sf/fantasy is likely to sell, I sometimes begin with "This week...." The Almanac of American Politics becomes at least slightly obsolete between the time it's sent to press and Election Day.