If you knew me in the early 2000s, you may recall that I overused the word “unclear.” Like, a lot. It was my go-to response for so many simple and complicated queries, when it felt clever or I didn’t want to be bothered to be specific with an answer.
At some point, even I grew tired of hearing myself say the word, and I found alternatives. I swapped out “inexplicable” or “nebulous” or did something even bolder, just gave definitive responses.
I have another word I’ve noticed recently I’m overusing: Friend. I first caught myself while relaying a story about a former coworker to someone and referred to him as a friend. I paused after saying the word, questioning its use to myself. We’re friendly, sure, but a friend? That might be an overstatement, I thought.
Throw out half your friend list
My gratuitous use of the word “friend” got a bit of a wakeup call by this great piece in The New York Times last month, and one paragraph in particular:
To be sure, there is a lot of churn in human social networks even in the best of times. Several studies show we replace as much as half of our social network every five to seven years. Little wonder when research also shows only half of our friendships are mutual. That is, only half of those who we think are our friends feel the same way about us. It just normally takes us a while to figure that out.
Half of the people we think are our friends don’t feel the same way about us. Half! And then there’s probably a whole group of people who consider us a friend who we don’t consider to be a friend. Wild.
This stat has bounced around my head since I read it, a little pinball of information that has made me question my casual use of “friend” as a one-size-fits-all word to describe someone I know, without any hint of how well we know each other. It’s far too simple of a word for some people and far too generous for others. And I’ve long resisted bestowing “best friend” on anyone, as I’m not 5 years old and it seems silly to put one friend above all others, especially because our lives (and friendships) evolve.
It doesn’t help that social media has co-opted “friend,” ensuring that the person you barely remember from high school gets the same noun treatment as someone you talk with regularly. I often think about how several friends — yes, mutual friends (I think?!) — have buggered off social media altogether, confident in their decisions about who is, and who isn’t, a friend. Maybe they’re onto something.
Lest you think this is just something I think about, there have been a lot of think pieces about friendships in the past year — and how they have changed (or will change) as a result of the pandemic. It’s a topic I noticed just how often other people broach as I bopped about the country last year on what I dubbed — I kid you not — The Great American Friend Tour.
Here’s a smattering of comments from guys and gals, both married (with kids) or single or anything in-between: One person lamented how hurt she was by a close friend who never called to check on her after her father died, another talked about her guilt (even if unwarranted) related to a friend who had recently committed suicide, another told tales of the meanness of some mom “friends,” one questioned aloud how close you can be to people who fundamentally don’t share the same values as you do, one person talked candidly about feeling really lonely, and another documented how divisive comments by one member of a group chat seemed to spell its demise. Whew, it’s been a helluva year for friendships.
The bitching bridesmaids
Women have a particular knack for complicated friendships. Hang around a gal who is prepping to be a bridesmaid, and you’ll inevitably hear a fair share of grumbling, only to witness a genuine and (often) tearful speech at the wedding. I have joked before, only partly in jest, that a fair share of female friendships are born from a mutual disdain for someone or something. I’m surprised at times by the shit-talking I hear taking place behind the scenes of what seems to be a close-knit group of friends who are fully formed adults. And group chats, oh lord. Hey, somebody track down Heidi Cruz and ask her how she feels about that group of neighborhood friends these days…
As a kid, relationships are foisted on you before you start making a lifelong series of decisions about friendships. So many friendships are born of some shared circumstance — you met at school or work or through mutual friends or thanks to common interests or proximity or your kids/significant other. At some point, the orbits of your lives are no longer in sync. As The Real World’s opening credits teased: “Find out what happens … when people stop being polite … and start getting real.”
Show up or show yourself out
The realness is that friendships become a choice. Be it conscious or unconscious, you make a series of small decisions to show up or to show yourself out. For any friendship that’s faded away, there was a point of last contact — a message that went unanswered or a happy event that went uncelebrated or a slight that went unapologized for or a terrible life event that went unnoticed.
Meanwhile, many men offer a curious contradiction. They may require less day-to-day upkeep, but their friendships fall into place a bit easier when together. And if they’re not in a relationship, they may have a go-to woman (friend or family member) for when they need to talk about, ya know, emotions. I’m painting with a broad brush; both men and women have varying levels of depth they want or need from friendships and the disappearing act that often coincides with coupling up doesn’t appear to be exclusive to either gender. I’ve watched people drift off and pop back up when they hit a rough patch, which sort-of makes you wonder how this strategy will play out over time.
A friend in need is a friend indeed
I recall one of those friend-in-need situations clearly. Sitting at my desk while at a brief internship in Paris, I was bombarded by the furious IMs of a former roommate going through a breakup. I was busy, could never get enough sleep (night shifts, oy), and was mild-to-moderately miserable, but I was muddling through it with early-morning Skype calls to a boyfriend back home, a daily Snickers fix, and by hanging out with the one person I befriended who seemed to hate all Americans, but was (presumably) making an exception for me. The friend back in the U.S. didn’t know any of this, or really anything going on with me, and despite a few half-hearted, “and how are you?!” type messages, there was only one thing on her mind: She needed someone to talk to, and I tried to help as best I could. A few weeks later, she shared that she’d patched things up with the boy, and we fell out of regular contact once again.
This is exactly the type of person I lack a good label for these days. We were friends, maybe even close friends, at one point. But then life changed and we drifted apart. She still sends me Christmas cards, and recently texted me to apologize that one of her kids errantly tried to video chat me. I suppose if I were passing through where she lives, I could reach out and go over to her house for a barbeque and we’d catch up about old times. In reality, I have passed through many times and she didn’t make the cut of who I had time to visit. Does that make me a shitty friend? Unclear.
Defining what a friend is, and isn’t
I get that labeling someone as a friend isn’t a big deal. (If you’ve read to this point, you’re a real friend!) But my perpetual overuse of the noun, and the stat about mutual friendships, got me to investigate that question: What is a friend? Here are a few unsatisfying definitions:
Merriam-Webster: “One attached to another by affection or esteem.” ~or~ “One that is not hostile.”
Dictionary.com: “A person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.” ~or~ “A person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile.”
Oxford: “A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
These definitions, like the word itself, leave so much to interpretation. The idea that a friend falls somewhere in the spectrum from someone you hold in high regard but who isn’t hostile is a terribly unsatisfying answer.
People differ in what they want or need from friendships — or even how many friends is the “right” number. For what it’s worth, a 2004 Gallup poll found that Americans have an average of 9 “close” friends. And Psychology Today outlines two different ways to think about friendships:
By depth — ranging from acquaintances to casual friends to close friends to intimate or “best” friends.
By function — friendships of utility (aka of convenience), friendships of pleasure, (enjoying each other’s company), and friendships of the good (mutual respect).
The packing friends vs the “not my place” friends
The confusion, it seems, comes when two people have differing interpretations — or that whole mutual friendship idea. If you want to know if someone is a close friend ask yourself this: Would you help them with the thankless task of moving, and would they return the favor? I’m half joking here, but it’s not a terrible barometer.
A friend recently relayed a story about a group of people she knows who have been friends since high school. The guys were out playing golf on a Friday, and had a few beers. They split off, but one guy went to another bar to drink alone. Driving home, he was pulled over, arrested for his fourth DUI, and spent the weekend in jail. Hearing this, one friend found his booking photo and sent it around in a group chat that (obviously) excluded him. They wondered what his wife might do, since a fourth DUI is a felony carrying a minimum jail sentence. My friend asked the person breathlessly recounting all of this a simple question: “Has anyone tried to help him? It sounds like he needs help.” The answer was no, they didn’t feel it was their place.
What’s the point of friends, anyway?
I don’t know the guy in the above scenario, but it reminds me of that saying: “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Some friendships are obvious, you know the person is a friend without giving it much thought. But we collectively seem to spend a lot of time and money and mental energy and annoyance and angst — and sure, joy and fun and laughter and inspiration and great memories — on people who, with only a 50% chance, consider us a friend in return.
And there’s one final, albeit a bit less optimistic, take on friendships that I think about frequently, courtesy of Chris Rock in The New York Times:
The other day I realized I’ve never met an elderly person that was cared for by their friends. Every elderly person I know that’s got any trouble is cared for by a spouse or a child. Sometimes they have, like, five kids, but only one helps. Where are your friends? Your friends are probably not going to be there when it really counts. [Laughs.] When my dad was dying in the hospital, where were his friends? My grandmother, where were her friends? Don’t get me wrong, you get sick in your 20s, your friends will come to the hospital. It’s an adventure. [Laughs.] You get sick in your 60s, they farm it out. “You go Wednesday, and I’ll go Sunday.”
Enjoy them while you have them. But if you think your friends are your long-term solution to loneliness, you’re an idiot.
Fuck. That was deep and dark. Thought provoking.