Friendships are a complicated subject for me. For some people, surely, an easy one, and always steady. Not for me.
It started back in elementary school. I was always looking for a good friend, really, for a best friend. Everyone had one. I didn’t.
I was a very adaptable friend. Surely that was also one reason the other children weren’t especially interested in me. I didn’t bring much of my own, but I did what pleased the others. It never got me lasting or truly good friendships, but it did get me changing ones, whenever the children had no one else. I know this pattern of friendships coming and going to this day, and only too well.
Surely it also has to do with how I was shaped, but keeping a friendship going, just like a relationship, always takes two.
Because I try so hard to find someone who suits me, friendships spring up quickly, because I’m available. Over the decades, all kinds of people have benefited from that. I’m an extremely good listener, a good advisor, and people like to come to me with all sorts of questions about life. With me you can have deep, reflective conversations, be honest, laugh, cry. I have a pronounced helper syndrome, and it can be put to good use in words, too.
As a teenager I was already the one people came to with their worries and heartbreak, and I always had an open ear and an open heart for whoever happened to be interested in me at the time.
And since we humans learn quickly when someone gives a lot and asks little for themselves, it always quickly became a habit that there was a reliable place to turn to. For the others that was reassuring, and for me it was tied to the hope that what I was trying to be for the other person would, in turn, fall on fertile ground. But it was rarely enough for that. So when it suited them, they forgot to invite me, or at some point it fizzled out one way or another.
So I brought along a few qualities that helped, but because of where I came from and the strict rules at home, certainly not all of the ones that would also have been useful as a teenager. I wasn’t brave, had little self-confidence and little of my own. Anything personal wasn’t encouraged in my family at home, and was even less welcome. There, too, I learned to adapt, and as I grew up I became more and more able to make myself invisible. Children and teenagers sense that, of course. So it was never a great loss when I was no longer in their lives. For me it often was; I often felt lonely and sad.
When I became an adult, in my early twenties, I had lots of contacts and always someone to hang out with, go partying with or be out and about with in some other way. I was rarely alone, because I’m a communicative person and have no problem with small talk. So the contacts piled up in my phone. But they weren’t friends. Some stayed a few months, some a few weeks, a few for several years.
Rarely was anyone truly interested in me as a person, but for a while, when it suited them, my presence was appreciated, because after all, everyone has something to tell.
As I got older, the conversations became more intense, more layered, and the friendships lasted a little longer. But they mostly ended the same way. No more friendship.
Why? Really, the reason is always the same. I listened. Attracted narcissistic women, was kind, funny, deep, honest. Held myself back, as I always had, and let the other go first. For a long time, until now and then I began to say that I’d like to be able to tell her something too, to get some advice too. That was usually the beginning of the end of the friendship. The others were used to the way things were, after all. They can’t be blamed for that either.
I was just sad, again and again, that it never occurred to them on their own to listen to me for more than five minutes. One would let me talk for a few minutes, brush my stories aside and go on for another two hours about her inner life and her relationship. Another, on the phone – as soon as I started to talk – would start typing on her cell phone on the side and answer only in single words, or not at all.
By then I had often spent years listening for many hours a day, sometimes from seven in the morning until one at night, helping, suffering along with them. I’m a very empathetic person and can feel a lot, and feel with others. They all valued that equally.
What this kind of friend has in common: when we first met, a gut feeling stirred that told me something wasn’t right. Again and again I ignored it for the sake of my longing for a friend. Or, as most recently, when my pity was triggered.
For quite a while I didn’t pay much attention to a person who didn’t particularly appeal to me. Until one evening I noticed her tears. And then the helper syndrome kicked in again. I told her that if she ever needed someone to talk to, I’d be glad to listen.
A friendship began, based on pity and on the wish to do something good for the people around me. Whether I knew them or not. I wanted to be good. She was glad to get to know me, and so was I. So we met regularly to talk.
In a fairly short time, the same old pattern developed. I listened and tried to help. She talked.
But for a year now I’ve been able to learn a lot about old patterns, triggers, habits and, above all, protecting my boundaries. Sometimes it goes faster, sometimes not as fast, but I’m more and more able to set boundaries.
And again … with the first boundary, the turning point comes as sure as night follows day. The friend becomes more demanding, louder, more intrusive. And when I ask to be listened to more, or at least name the obvious, to make room again for a friendship that has long since stopped being one, or never was one, they all react in much the same way.
Offended, with accusations; suddenly I’m bad, no longer useful. Then I’m described as intrusive, or accused of something else. For one of them I was changing my life too fast, for another I’m too arrogant. The answers come in many forms, and I get to collect them one by one, until I pull the plug and end the friendship that isn’t good for me. That, at least, is progress.
I’m aware, of course, that with my way of always being available, always the reliable one to turn to, I play a part in this dynamic too. Two nervous systems attract each other here, just as in a relationship. But can’t it simply be balanced for once? Why don’t the others ever notice that a pause would be fair, for the sake of the other person, who has already been listening to the same old rubbish for three hours?
But it can be different.
With my best friend.
Because she and I have been friends for ten years now. She didn’t become my best friend “overnight” – no, it grew slowly, in its own time.
Neither of us clung, neither of us spread out everything happening in our lives right at the start. My best friend can listen, empathize, be honest and set boundaries, and by now she can also talk about herself when she feels like it. And I can do all of that for her in the same way.
Here it has actually often been the other way around. I was the one who got to talk, and she listened. That is a very lovely feeling. I can confide everything in her, and trust her. She gives me advice and slows me down. And the other way around.
Unlike so many others, she doesn’t expect to always come first and then see how much time and patience is left over. And I believe that here, too, it’s balanced on both sides.
Constancy and mutual respect shape this friendship. No resentment, no envy, not even when one of us is doing better than the other. No smugness when one of us is doing worse. Constancy and loyalty are what set this friendship apart most of all.
The will to keep it and take care of it, and also the certainty that if we ever have to cancel a plan, neither of us will be offended. With her I can be who I am. My willingness to help and my listening have never been taken advantage of and never taken for granted. And the same goes the other way around.
The friendship lives on appreciation, and on joy in each other and with each other. I’m glad to have found a best friend like this. And she’s the first who says the same about me, without my having said it to her a dozen times first.
It grew lightly, even though neither of us always lives lightly. She will be the only friend I’ll miss painfully when I emigrate to Sweden next year. But she is also the only one of whom I’d say that we’ll keep our friendship and take care of it into old age, despite the great distance.
Over the years she has become the first person I turn to, my closest confidante, my best listener, my most faithful companion through thick and thin.
If she were a man, she’d be my dream man 🙂
But I think this is something a relationship can rarely give, and a true best friend can. Between women there’s a different way into closeness and shared things, into emotions, wishes and dreams. We understand each other on a level a relationship rarely reaches. And that’s probably just as it should be. A relationship lives on different stories and experiences than the one with a best friend.
For my best friend I would do everything I can. Give a lot, and always with the certainty that she would never expect or demand any of it. That is a kind of trust I was able to learn with her, and had never known like this before.
She is a big and important part of my life, and of my healing too. She is there with me, and she knows me better than anyone else. I’m endlessly grateful that I get to experience this.
That I’ve found the one friend I’ve wished for since I was a child. And without bending myself out of shape, without having to earn it. Someone who values me just as I am, with all my strengths and weaknesses.
Love you, M. 😘