The survival of friendships

I’ve been thinking a lot about the survival of friendships and why some last longer than others. Friendships sometimes feel stifling to me, like the other’s presence shrinks your lungs, while at other times, friendships feel like all the good things: freedom, love, joy, kindness, effortlessness.

That kind of friendship, the easy kind, is something I have been blessed to have in life. Remember that moment in Fleabag, when the Hot Priest talks about how scary love is, making it something we don’t want to do alone? Well, love is scary, but I’d also like to point this out: “The world as we know it mostly focuses on how hard love is – all suffering and sacrifice and so on – but no one really speaks about how easy love is when you get it right. Because love is easy when you get it right, when you are given it right.”

This was how the ‘Slices of Life by Marianne David’ column began in The Daily Morning last month, and this is something Marianne and I had spoken about before the column made it to print. You see, within our friendship is that ease. It’s not tedious. It’s not a job. We talk about things without a fear of not just judgment but advice. And I think this is what friendships often get wrong.

After a certain point of life, you are old enough to know right from wrong, good from bad. And if you choose to do the wrong or bad thing, you are conscious, at least at some level, of it. You know that what you are doing will come back to bite you in the ass. And so you don’t need your friends to tell you that you are being stupid or that you’ll regret something. You need friends to be there for a laugh or a cry or just a quiet drink.

Of course, there are exceptions. There are the ridiculous hypothetical scenarios that this doesn’t apply to, but in an ordinary life context, friends can care for you, make sure you are safe, inquire about your happiness, but they can’t mother you. They can’t force you to be the person they want you to be.

And it’s this pressure, this expectation, or even this hope that drives a wedge between people.

I was talking to one of Amma’s friends recently. He was recalling a moment from the past, and said something like: “I was 27 at the time, your mother was 20…” And I thought about how she is 60 now, their friendship having survived four decades. That’s more years than I’ve been alive.

She also meets her school friends every couple of months. I once commented on how I never meet my school friends as regularly, despite leaving school just 12 years ago. Of course, her friends are retired, the kids grown up, whereas I am at an age where our batch mates are at different points of their lives. Some are bringing up children, others are building organisations, some are a bit lost, others are taking it a day at a time (and yes, some are doing more than one thing at a time).

But perhaps 30 years from now, we will find more time for each other and then, perhaps, we will find new forms of friendship.

Back to the question of why some friendships survive and others don’t, well, obviously there are a thousand reasons, aren’t there? But I think one of the main things, for me at least, is space. My mother doesn’t talk to her friends every single day. They don’t get too involved in each other’s lives. There is a sense of respect towards decisions and choices and even silence.

You understand that people have shit to do. That sometimes life gets overwhelming and days and weeks have gone by before you realise you haven’t spoken to your friends. But you don’t beat yourself up about this and you don’t hold it against your friends.

You let friendships breathe. That’s how they survive.

 

I’m thirty now, an age where I feel young but also realise that I’m not. People my age are getting married, having kids, sending their kids to school… Others are pursuing higher education in the masters and above way. Some are discovering new ambitions, drives, and goals. I’ve been a bit directionless, to be honest, these past few years. I’ve been feeling a bit uninterested in life, I suppose.

And yet, I have friends I’ve known for most, if not all, my adult life. This is nothing compared to, say, the friendships my mother has, but for me, it’s been a miracle. Sometimes I think about these friendships, whether I met them in school, at work, or online, and can’t believe I have such good but effortless friendships in life.

I’m not one to plan too much into the future, but if I do make it to 40 or 50 or 60 or whatever, I do hope that these friendships survive. That this love and affection and connection remains.