I've been thinking about friendship obsessively for months (I kinda blame you for that). About its nature, what kind of friend I am to others, why did I left some dear friendships that grew apart in the frizzer instead of making an effort to keep the spark alive, who are my "real" friends and why, and so on.
A friend of mine -one of my closest, or I thought she was- broke my heart recently (real hard... I mean I feel like weeping writing this). And I still feel a bit lost 'cause I don't know how to handle it. How to move from that feeling of disappointment, sorrow and mourning, and where to place that friendship in a new shelf it belongs to. I think that situation was related with the reciprocity you are talking about. And non-aligned expectations. We all have different needs and styles of communication, yes, but also we all have different ways to show love and care. And must times we expect that our friends (and our family or our partners) show us their love a certain way and it's hard when that doesn't happen, no matter how many hours of therapy we have on our records.
Anyway, as you said "there is something beautiful about the midlife search for deep, immersive friendships". Love having this conversation with you, my brilliant friend.
Querida, I’m sorry to read this and I wish we could go grab a drink to talk in person about the delights and disappointments of friendship. One of the consistent life-mysteries for me is: “I’m pretty sure that I’m an important part of some person’s life, but they don’t seem to treat me that way.” With marriage, it’s obvious that we are important to the other person and so we can easily say “look, I’m your life-partner, so I need more of this” to each other.
But with friends, we never truly know how important we are to them. And we can’t just, like, ask, right? I remember reading some research years ago suggesting that we’re terrible at knowing how much we matter to our friends:
And then last year Iris and I listened to a heartbreaking segment of This American Life about a comic who built a whole standup routine about his best friend who stole away his high school girlfriend. He had been stewing about it for years, and so he processed it through comedy, but he never spoke to his old best friend about it. So a reporter from This American Life decided to track down the old best friend. And she found out that the idea of “best friend” wasn’t reciprocated. The girlfriend-stealer said something like, “yeah, he was one of my 20 closest friends, but definitely not my best friend.” And the other guy, the standup comic, refused to believe it. “No, he’s wrong, we were absolutely best friends.”
Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling to say that I think the hardest part of unreciprocated friendships is not knowing if it’s because 1) we don’t matter to them as much as we assumed, or 2) we do matter to them but psychological or logistical obstacle is in the way. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just talk about it frankly? I’d rather know and move on than spend years of doing this awkward dance of uncertainty.
Well, let’s continue the conversation over drinks. Big hugs.
I feel you on this situation - it has been also for me a matter of misaligned values and orientations toward the world. I wonder if it really is possible to find deep friendships in mid-life given my experience of those being extremely weak. Or maybe it's me. Anyway, it's possible, but difficult. I'm not sure if I would call it beautiful, because of said experience, and I'm not even sure the effort has much value. But, curious if you've found this process to have value given your experience.
Those first two end notes are critical: the first for obvi reasons and the second because I was thinking "OOOOhhh D R A M A" when word gets out. And you quoted Maya Angelou 🥰. I will push back that AI will never replace friendships, and if you are a person who does replace friendships with AI, then you don't know how to be a friend. Similar argument for VR headsets replacing traveling to see friends, then you don't understand and appreciate the point of travel. The silver lining of both AI and VR headsets is that they are going to remove the fake players from the real ones in life, thus less bullshit for me to wade through.
That's a good question my friend. Let me turn it back on you and ask, as a good friend who has access to real world friend me and social media friend me, how does it sit for you? A quick answer from me would be social media is a platform for my storytelling. I've always been a storyteller and Instagram is the platform that works best for me. Facebook didn't cut and that's why I deleted it years ago, Twitter, I mean, X, nope, as well as Tik Tok. Instagram is the sweet spot for me for short-form storytelling (with music! I love music) and Substack for long-from storytelling.
I think that you have an unusually healthy relationship with social media. I think you mostly use it like parents in the 1950s used slide shows to share meaningful moments of recent trips with their friends.
But I sense that a lot of people use social media to project an idealized version of their lives to seek prestige instead of bonding. For some people, social media becomes a substitute for social life instead of an add-on. Like VR, it can be both alluring and not entirely real.
And yes, I think the same dangers lurk within Substack. Part of me dislikes responding here instead of in-person. But with our friendship, I know that it’s not one or the other.
I've been thinking about this on and off for years. Recently, my changes in opinion and worldview have led friends to drop me (women, primarily). That said, those are all people I met in my 30s or late 20s, so we didn't have a shared milestone. I've found that my closest friends were all made between the ages of 18 and 22, which means that college is your prime time to make a network. If you don't, good luck. Because friendships not based on milestones for me have been the weakest of all aspects of my network. At the same time, there is a benefit of maintaining weak ties in the sense of a professional network. But friends you try to make after your 20s are stronger than the weak ties of former colleagues but weaker than the strong ties of friends you made sharing milestones. So, I don't know how to square this, because it seems like people who have known you in your formative years are most able to go along with the multiple versions of yourself that show up after those years.
Alan, I really appreciate that comment. I much prefer Nora's framing over the more transactional "what do I get and give" even if they're naturally related.
Oh man, so many thoughts on this one.
I've been thinking about friendship obsessively for months (I kinda blame you for that). About its nature, what kind of friend I am to others, why did I left some dear friendships that grew apart in the frizzer instead of making an effort to keep the spark alive, who are my "real" friends and why, and so on.
A friend of mine -one of my closest, or I thought she was- broke my heart recently (real hard... I mean I feel like weeping writing this). And I still feel a bit lost 'cause I don't know how to handle it. How to move from that feeling of disappointment, sorrow and mourning, and where to place that friendship in a new shelf it belongs to. I think that situation was related with the reciprocity you are talking about. And non-aligned expectations. We all have different needs and styles of communication, yes, but also we all have different ways to show love and care. And must times we expect that our friends (and our family or our partners) show us their love a certain way and it's hard when that doesn't happen, no matter how many hours of therapy we have on our records.
Anyway, as you said "there is something beautiful about the midlife search for deep, immersive friendships". Love having this conversation with you, my brilliant friend.
Querida, I’m sorry to read this and I wish we could go grab a drink to talk in person about the delights and disappointments of friendship. One of the consistent life-mysteries for me is: “I’m pretty sure that I’m an important part of some person’s life, but they don’t seem to treat me that way.” With marriage, it’s obvious that we are important to the other person and so we can easily say “look, I’m your life-partner, so I need more of this” to each other.
But with friends, we never truly know how important we are to them. And we can’t just, like, ask, right? I remember reading some research years ago suggesting that we’re terrible at knowing how much we matter to our friends:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/do-your-friends-actually-like-you.html
And then last year Iris and I listened to a heartbreaking segment of This American Life about a comic who built a whole standup routine about his best friend who stole away his high school girlfriend. He had been stewing about it for years, and so he processed it through comedy, but he never spoke to his old best friend about it. So a reporter from This American Life decided to track down the old best friend. And she found out that the idea of “best friend” wasn’t reciprocated. The girlfriend-stealer said something like, “yeah, he was one of my 20 closest friends, but definitely not my best friend.” And the other guy, the standup comic, refused to believe it. “No, he’s wrong, we were absolutely best friends.”
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/810/say-it-to-my-face/act-one-7
Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling to say that I think the hardest part of unreciprocated friendships is not knowing if it’s because 1) we don’t matter to them as much as we assumed, or 2) we do matter to them but psychological or logistical obstacle is in the way. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just talk about it frankly? I’d rather know and move on than spend years of doing this awkward dance of uncertainty.
Well, let’s continue the conversation over drinks. Big hugs.
Counting the days for those drinks! <3
I feel you on this situation - it has been also for me a matter of misaligned values and orientations toward the world. I wonder if it really is possible to find deep friendships in mid-life given my experience of those being extremely weak. Or maybe it's me. Anyway, it's possible, but difficult. I'm not sure if I would call it beautiful, because of said experience, and I'm not even sure the effort has much value. But, curious if you've found this process to have value given your experience.
Those first two end notes are critical: the first for obvi reasons and the second because I was thinking "OOOOhhh D R A M A" when word gets out. And you quoted Maya Angelou 🥰. I will push back that AI will never replace friendships, and if you are a person who does replace friendships with AI, then you don't know how to be a friend. Similar argument for VR headsets replacing traveling to see friends, then you don't understand and appreciate the point of travel. The silver lining of both AI and VR headsets is that they are going to remove the fake players from the real ones in life, thus less bullshit for me to wade through.
I fully support your human-friend campaign and your students are lucky to have you guiding them toward the good life.
Where does social media sit for you between the fakeness of being mediated by a VR headset and the realness of sitting around a dining table?
That's a good question my friend. Let me turn it back on you and ask, as a good friend who has access to real world friend me and social media friend me, how does it sit for you? A quick answer from me would be social media is a platform for my storytelling. I've always been a storyteller and Instagram is the platform that works best for me. Facebook didn't cut and that's why I deleted it years ago, Twitter, I mean, X, nope, as well as Tik Tok. Instagram is the sweet spot for me for short-form storytelling (with music! I love music) and Substack for long-from storytelling.
I think that you have an unusually healthy relationship with social media. I think you mostly use it like parents in the 1950s used slide shows to share meaningful moments of recent trips with their friends.
But I sense that a lot of people use social media to project an idealized version of their lives to seek prestige instead of bonding. For some people, social media becomes a substitute for social life instead of an add-on. Like VR, it can be both alluring and not entirely real.
And yes, I think the same dangers lurk within Substack. Part of me dislikes responding here instead of in-person. But with our friendship, I know that it’s not one or the other.
that looks like a wholesome crew :')
I've been thinking about this on and off for years. Recently, my changes in opinion and worldview have led friends to drop me (women, primarily). That said, those are all people I met in my 30s or late 20s, so we didn't have a shared milestone. I've found that my closest friends were all made between the ages of 18 and 22, which means that college is your prime time to make a network. If you don't, good luck. Because friendships not based on milestones for me have been the weakest of all aspects of my network. At the same time, there is a benefit of maintaining weak ties in the sense of a professional network. But friends you try to make after your 20s are stronger than the weak ties of former colleagues but weaker than the strong ties of friends you made sharing milestones. So, I don't know how to square this, because it seems like people who have known you in your formative years are most able to go along with the multiple versions of yourself that show up after those years.
The questions "who can you be when you are with me?" and "who can I be when I am with you?" - from Nora Bateson - came to mind when reading this.
We are who we are, in relationship with others. Ubuntu, in African terms.
I find these questions helpful when thinking about friendships and relationships.
https://twitter.com/NoraBateson/status/1645862167143501825
Alan, I really appreciate that comment. I much prefer Nora's framing over the more transactional "what do I get and give" even if they're naturally related.