Browsing tag: relationships

Friendship is a complicated beast. It takes many shapes and forms. Female friendship, I’m told, is especially fraught with anxieties. I don’t know; maybe bitch fights are just par for the course for some. The more intense a relationship, the more likely you are to clash at times, so maybe that’s not so surprising. Like I’ve said before, I don’t really have close female friends. I don’t like to spill everything that I’m thinking and feeling. Youknow how they say women don’t share their misery because they want answers, they just want to wallow? When others share their problems, my first instinct is to try and think of a solution, not commiserate.

Two of my oldest friends are in a crisis. One has had enough of the other and is ready to cut ties. C says Z just doesn’t seem to care enough, to respond to messages, to make the effort to see her, to keep the friendship moving forward. While I am happy enough just to catch Z a couple times a year – she’s an insanely busy person, and I’m not going to kill myself chasing her shadow – that doesn’t seem to be enough for C.

Sure, she can be frustrating. Things usually have to be done on her terms, but to her credit, she’s not quite as tardy or flaky as some of the others in our circle. She may not usually make it to my birthday parties, but when we do meet up, we reconnect instantly. That’s so rare, so invaluable, and maybe that’s why I give her leeway.

We’re kindred spirits. Old souls with a dark sense of humour; she’s the one I sat next to in classes, whom I called as soon as I got home, who listened to me overanalyse every sideways glance from the boy I liked or offhand comment, who always had time to lend me her shoulder. I leaned on her and she never asked for anything in return. She understood me unlike anyone else I knew. She’s so smart that I never even contemplating competing with her, and I’m so proud of how successful she’s been and how much she’s bloomed since we escaped the microcosm of high school.

The possibility of a rift between the two saddens me to no end. Will it weaken (or worse, break) the circle?

But ultimately, this is a matter between them. As I told C, it comes down to this: Are you getting out what you put in? And if not, are you happy with it? All friendships ebb and flow. We take turns pushing and pulling. Sometimes we’re the ones making the effort to keep the flame alive, sometimes the dynamic reverses. And sometimes, that discrepancy becomes too big to handle.

<image via twose on flickr>

I believe, to a degree, in fate. I believe things are meant to be, and that things work out. Yet I still think we are responsible for our own choices (don’t ask me how I reconcile those wildly conflicting beliefs, because, well, I don’t).

Sometimes I look at him and wonder how we came to be. What we’re doing together. Where four years have gone, and what the next four years will bring. I marvel at the miracle of love and life and opposites attracting.

We went to the same schools for most of our school-aged years. We had nothing to do with each other. He was big, sporty, a loudmouth, a bit of a troublemaker, not one of the elite popular but part of the cool crowds who went to parties and drank beer. I wouldn’t have been allowed to go to those parties even if I had been invited.

Shortly after my first big relationship fell apart, I went to a low-key party at a friend’s. T was there, as part of the extended social circle. As the night wound down, we sat in a circle under the stars, and I compiled a list out loud of all the qualities I wanted in my next boyfriend. He met them all. We hung out a few times on our own after that; I resisted his attempts to ask me out. I thought it was too much, too soon. When I finally agreed, I made him wait a week for my answer.

I can honestly say if it was not for the one night when our paths crossed, I don’t think we would be together. We come from such different backgrounds and ran in such different circles, that I don’t see how we could possibly have come together otherwise.

Sure, I know anything is possible – we live in a strange world – but let’s talk big picture here. He had finished up with school and was due to go off to the army (he left three months later). And although he didn’t end up making a career of it, what if he had? Odds are I would have carried on with my life and spent my university years bar-hopping and trying to find a decent guy, winding up bitter and alone. Or something like that.

I’ve had one other ‘real’ boyfriend in my entire life. As much as I wanted him to be ‘the one’ and loved the romantic idea of my first love being forever, I couldn’t picture us getting married, having kids, etc. But I can with T. I don’t know how our families would gel, but me and him? I know we could do it, and I’m looking forward to it.

He often talks about marriage. Our situation is kinda reversed; he’s the one who wants to do it sooner rather than later. And I’ll admit, with so many bloggers getting engaged, and getting the warm fuzzies everytime I see his baby niece/nephew, sometimes I feel the same way. But realistically, I don’t REALLY want to be changing dirty nappies for planning a wedding for years yet. And aside from my vision of getting married in my late twenties, there’s another reason I’m still not quite ready.

See, to me marriage means becoming a real adult. That means security and stability. It means having a steady job, a steady income, being able to provide for your future family. It’s all very romantic to spout sentiments like “all you need is love”, but that’s not going to feed you, put a roof over your head and keep your car running. And if that makes me an unromantic, so be it.

Money isn’t EVERYTHING, but it does matter – not least of all when you’re looking at a lifelong commitment. When he is at the stage where he can present me with a ring without having to raid his bank account – who knows? That might be as soon as a year, or it could be much longer – then I’ll be ready to say yes.

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(Points if you can identify what song that line comes from!)

I have to disagree with that sentiment, though. Some friendships endure. Some ebb and flow. Some, unfortunately, just peter out.

Fresh grad Classy in Philly recently blogged about the disappointment of losing touch with people she thought were real friends. How, post-college, they stopped calling and emailing…and generally failing to live up to the definition of “friend”.

Unlike her, I didn’t have the traditional uni experience. I moved in with BF right before starting my first semester. I lived out in the suburbs. Hell, I lived out west, and only about three other people on my course could say the same thing. I really took my studies seriously, even though first year comms was far from gruelling. I had rent and bills to pay, so for me, uni wasn’t even less of a bubble than high school, it really was the real world. Sure, I was sheltered by receiving a student allowance, but that didn’t cover all the essentials, and it didn’t cover term breaks, either.

So I didn’t really have friends at uni. I had a couple of people I went for coffees with, and sometimes sat with in class. It wasn’t till we were all thrown together in our final year as journalism majors that I formed any meaningful relationships. Even then, we didn’t go out on Friday nights together. We stumbled home exhausted – if we weren’t going to work, or toiling on in the newsroom.

I do, however, know what it’s like to lose a friend. We went to school together for, oh, a solid 10 years. He lived around the corner from me. We got on like a house on fire, traded barbs, and once we got to high school, walked there and back together. We put up with each other’s foul moods (you think I’m temperamental? I had nothing on him) and discussed everything from the true extent of Kurt Cobain’s talent to the meaning of human existence. He introduced me to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for chrissake.

And then after years of that, we got together. The “relationship” lasted six months. It never went anywhere, physically or otherwise. Nothing had changed.

We broke up. I got another boyfriend. He got jealous, and after a year or so of various dramas and sniping, we stopped talking. He moved over the Harbour Bridge – which might as well be the other side of the world for an Aucklander – and we went our separate ways – me to AUT, him to AU.

Sometimes I miss those halcyon days. On the very rare occasion I run into him, I catch glimpses of the person who used to know me better than anyone else. And there’s nothing worse than making small talk with someone you could once sit in comfortable, companionable silence with.

I’ve changed. He’s changed. From time to time, I hear updates through the grapevine – and while in some ways he’s stayed exactly the same, in others, he’s continued the metamorphosis he begun right about the time our friendship began to rot. I don’t know what he thinks of me today, but for both our sakes, I know it’s better that we don’t have contact, even as acquaintances.