Friendship Blog

Mother's Day celebrates motherhood---as well as children, flowers, candy, and greeting cards. But there's a seedy side to everything---and motherhood is a known friendship-killer. Motherhood challenges female friendships for a variety of reasons:

• You are a mother, and your BFF isn't one and wants to be one. Her fertility problems are making her extremely frustrated, depressed, and angry at you.

• Your BFF is a merry mother of six and you have no desire to even be a mother of one. When you're together, she never stops talking about her brood.

• You and your BFF both have children but they are at different ages or stages (And one of hers is a biter).

• You and your BFF have vastly different views on child-rearing. You're permissive and believe in letting kids be kids. She believes in turning children into little adults.

• Your children and/or spouse don't get along with your BFF's children and/or spouse. When her son punched yours in the nose, her husband said your son provoked him.

• On a practical level, all other things being equal, you have less discretionary time for friendships than high-school or college-age women, married women without children, and older women. With all your responsibilities, you barely have time to shower.

• You are a mother-martyr who places the needs of your children and family above your own social needs.

• You have fewer opportunities to meet new friends than you did when you were younger and more care-free---you only go to noisy, active places with children where it's hard to have heart-to-heart conversations.

At different times of our lives, there are real shifts in the number and nature of our female friendships. Living in a dorm, you may have been surrounded by a circle of close female friends. For one or more of the reasons mentioned above, motherhood is one of those times when you might have more than your share of problems making or maintaining female friendships.

Many of us spend so much time juggling our roles as daughters, wives, workers, caregivers, and mothers that we wake up one morning and suddenly realize we have a serious friendship deficit! We think: If only there was someone we could call---or have coffee with---who could understand the gaping hole it has left.

This Mother's Day, give yourself a little gift that no one else would ever think of. Jot down an appointment on your calendar to have lunch with a friend, or to have a girl's night out. It's the equivalent of putting on your own oxygen mask first.

Taking small steps to build female friendships enhances our own physical and emotional well-being, and makes us better mothers in the long-run.

QUESTION:

Not sure how I will find this once I post it, but here is a good question about women and friendship. If you are busy with work/play/school/other responsibilities and have a totally different time and life schedule, is it okay for a friend to drop by anytime without calling?

I have a friend/maybe had, that feels a friend should never have to call ahead to visit. She says her door is always open. We had a blow-up over that very issue. She was upset that she spent gas to come here and didn't get to be invited inside. I had left with someone, taking their transportation, not my own, so she assumed (car is there-pets are there) that I must be home and not answering.

I say, even if I had been, that is okay too, to not want company unannounced. My apology and an offer to give her money for gas led to a response that any friend would welcome me as I do them, open door. And she said though I did say sorry to get on with my life and if I want to visit her I do not need to call ahead.

-Anonymous

ANSWER:

Dear Anonymous,

You’re asking about whether it’s okay for friends to drop in on one another. There's no right or wrong: It depends on their relationship and how each friend feels about it.

In your case, it sounds like you may have an out-of-sync friendship. You seem to be on a fast-track, juggling multiple responsibilities; your friend has enough spare time to take a cruise to your house not knowing whether you’ll be there or not (even though the price of gas is nearly 4 bucks a gallon!) One of you is a casual type and thinks it is perfectly okay to drop in on a friend unannounced; the other would always call and expect to be called if the situation were reversed.

What concerns me more than these differences is that your friend is unwilling to accept the boundaries that make you feel comfortable, and she doesn’t trust or believe you when you tell her something.

Seems like your communication problems ended in what must have been an uncomfortable blow-up. These are your options: You can apologize when cooler heads prevail; you can make believe it never happened and visit her to “patch up” the friendship, or you can let go of the friendship---if it feels toxic and makes you feel uncomfortable.

Whatever you decide to do, hopefully, this unpleasant experience has taught you something about yourself, about your friend, and about the complexities of friendships.

 

When I picked up the mail last week, I was pleasantly surprised to find a brief note from my friend Linda hand-written on beautiful stationary.

Although Linda and I now live several states apart, we stay in touch by cell phone and email---usually several times a day. But there was something special about her note.

I immediately realized that Linda, who is probably as busy as me and you, stopped what she was doing and took the time to write a couple of paragraphs. It made me smile inside and out. Yes, email is quicker but her taking the time to slow down to tell me how much my friendship meant to her was more precious.

I reached out to Sandra Lamb, author of Personal Notes: How to Write from the Heart for Any Occasion to pick her brain about the topic:

Question: Is there still a place for personal notes between female friends in a world laden with email, social media sites, and cell phones? Have such notes become dinosaurs or ironically, perhaps, has technology made them all the more special?

Answer: Email is great, and always welcome, and so are the communications that occur on social media sites. And it's always good to have a heart-to-heart chat on the phone. All three offer the possibilities of an immediate and intimate connection. But, yes, there's still something very special about going to the mailbox and seeing an envelope that contains a personal message, complete with a handwritten address--your name and your address. It says more clearly than these other methods of communications that the writer has committed time, care, thought and deliberate action to make a personal connection.

Question: In your experience, is writing personal notes an art form that can be polished?

Answer: Yes, writing personal notes is an art form that can be polished and perfected until it sparkles like gold. There is something quite wonderful in the very act of writing by hand that allows us to go into the very deepest and truest parts of ourselves. What a wonderful way to create strong and lasting bonds of connection.

Question: Since Mother’s Day is approaching, what are your thoughts about personal notes between mothers and daughters?

Answer: The habit of writing personal notes to each other can create a rich, true, and cherished legacy for mothers and daughters. These heartfelt connections can be preserved and shared over generations. It's something that may well be missing in our society so it's well worth the effort of reinstating.

If you aren't sure what to write, when to write, or how to say it to a friend, Lamb's book will inspire you to find just the right words to express what's in your heart.

From his hometown and mine---Chappaqua, New York---New York Times columnist Peter Applebome recently chronicled the impact of the Bear Stearns crisis (Metro Section, March 20, 2008) on the local folks. With great sympathy, he described the economic woes of the predominantly male commuters boarding the 6:13AM Metro North train into Manhattan---those affected directly and indirectly by the downtown on Wall Street.

But then his comments turned nasty. He wrote, “At Donna Hair Designs in Chappaqua, the financial meltdown barely registered on the yakometer when compared with the embarrassment of riches from the political world….,” referring to the discussions taking place all over the western world about the Spitzer sex saga.

I don’t know why Applebome’s vision of what women talk about is so skewed and limited. Perhaps, his foils were hanging too low over his ears while he was eavesdropping on our conversations.

Yes, men accuse women of “yakking,” a condescending term (oddly enough, derived from the long-haired ox of Tibet). But when it comes to clinching hard-to-get appointment at a hair salon, it isn’t simply about getting your hair done. Just like old-fashioned barbershops once were for men, contemporary hair shops are vital epicenters of in-person communication for women. Sometimes, the wash, cut, color and highlights are ancillary to other reasons for the visit.

Women truly connect in a hair shop. They form close emotional ties with their stylists, male and female. Like dating, if the personalities don’t click, the relationships break up quickly and the client moves on until she lands “the one.” When stylist and client do connect, the relationship is likely to be meaningful and long-lasting. Clients move out-of-town but they come back to Donna’s to get their hair done. Donna has blow-dried three generations in some families. She’s attended their weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals.

The hair salon is one of the few places (other than a blood bank) where multi-tasking women finally get to sit-down, think about the important issues on their minds, and talk about them to someone who is ready to listen. The stylist hovering over a head is in a perfect position (except for the din of the dryers) ---to question, counsel, and provide advice and information.

What do talking heads---reds, blonds, brunettes, and grays---talk about? They discuss marital and sexual problems (not only Spitzer’s, but also their own). They talk about their health problems, some of which are too embarrassing to talk about to their boyfriends or doctors. They ask where their friend undergoing chemotherapy can get a natural-looking wig and where they can find a financial advisor or lawyer.

They complain about unfair teachers in the elementary schools, bullies in the middle schools, and high school kids gone wild. They solicit recommendations for finding a responsive pediatrician for their children, a therapist for their kid sister, or a compassionate geriatrician for their parents. They whisper about husbands who have been laid off or who work incessantly, and network with other successful career women---often finding serendipitous ways to enhance each other’s careers. They confess when they haven’t been a good friend or when a friend has dumped on them.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in Paris, many sophisticated women gathered regularly at a “salon” in the home of a gifted hostess to learn from one other and refine their tastes. The same traditions of the “salon” of yesteryear bring women together at hair salons today. It’s place where women can let their hair down, talk, and share accumulated wisdom on a range of topics affecting them and their families.

Some balding men just don’t get it.

This week’s finale of Lipstick Jungle (Carpe Threesome) offered an important lesson about female friendship. We all need friends who will be there for us when we fall.

Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields) had been extremely critical when she found out about her friend Nico Reilly’s (played by Kim Raver) extramarital affair with a young stallion named Kirby (Robert Buckley). In fact, her remarks were so irritating that Nico accused her friend of acting like “Mother Superior.”

Was Wendy too judgmental? Too heavy-handed? Too strident? Whatever she felt and said wasn’t persuasive enough to make Nico change her mind---which is true to life. When friends we respect question our morals, it’s not that we ignore them completely. We hear them. On the other hand, when a close friend---or even a best friend---tells us what’s “right” or what they think is “right”, it usually isn’t enough to make us change our behavior.

People are only capable of making changes when they are emotionally ready to do so. In the (literally) steamy opener of the episode this week, which began with Kirby and Nico showering together, Nico still wasn’t ready to listen. Hours later (or minutes in TV series time), she finds out that her husband Charles hae suffered a sudden heart attack. When his life seemed to be hanging in the balance, Nico realized that her true allegiance was to her husband and her ambivalence was resolved for the moment. “I just want my marriage back,” she said.

Hospital waiting rooms are pretty lonely places (having been in one a couple of weeks ago myself). The third friend in the threesome, Victory Ford (Lindsay Price), left a pair of new clients to rush to be at her friend’s side and then Wendy showed up in tears soon after, giving Nico the hugs and understanding she needed.

The takeaway messages from the first season of Lipstick about friendship:

• Friends have a moral responsibility to be honest and forthcoming when they feel a friend has done something that seems self-destructive or unethical.

• Dishonesty among friends has the potential to destroy intimacy and lead to estrangement.

• Yet, we can’t expect friends to change on a dime just based on our say-so. Change has to come from within when the timing is right. Good friends understand that and are there without saying, “I told you so.”

When she was released from jail last June, Paris Hilton seemed to be looking for redemption---some way to give back to society---to help down-and-out women. But first things first: She is on the prowl for a new bestie. But maybe the two are linked.

 

Why the sudden friendship deficit? I can only speculate. A few of her well-known friends wound up in the clink in recent months and the Paris-Nicole relationship just isn’t what it used to be. Nicole has a two-month-old baby (and when one woman has a child and another doesn’t, it can alter even the best of normal friendships).

 

So the socialite-heiress-celebrity-newsmaker announced plans to star in a new 10-episode reality show on MTV, tentatively titled “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.” The series is scheduled to begin production in May and planned to air during the fourth quarter of the year.

 

The premise: Paris will be selecting from among 20 potential BFFs (best friends forever) to find the fairest of them all (male or female), a bestie. According to Broadcasting and Cable, the bestie will “accompany her to A-list parties and personal business functions.”

 

Paris has explained that she can "teach the secrets of celebrity living — how to turn your enchanted life into a multimillion dollar brand, how to manage public feuds and always rise above, how to survive scandal and then make it work for you, all the while wearing 6-inch heels."

 

An online voting site was launched on Thursday at ParisBFF.com to solicit BFF hopefuls who will vie to join a group of 20 from which she will choose the fairest of them all.

 

To be eligible, wannabes are asked to submit a 90-second video that answers the following:

• What is the wildest thing you've ever done?
• If you became a celebrity, what secret would you be most fearful of having exposed?
• Why do you think you would fit in with the socialite circle?

 

Well I know one woman who might fit the bill and could sure use a best friend right now. Paris, you might want to give Ashley Alexandra Dupre a casting call.

Picture of Paris Hilton courtesy of K Pinguino under Creative Commons.  

Contrary to the myth of best friends forever, many female friendships don't always turn out the way we hoped they would. The friend who is constantly making one-sided demands of you is one disappointing example.

 

When a close friend is always in need of one thing or another---money, favors, introductions, coddling, praise, or simply more time than you have to give---the relationship begins to grow weary. You feel like you're walking around with an emotional ball and chain around your ankle.

 

The term toxic friendship refers to a variety of relationships that are consistently negative and draining. The nature of these relationships is defined by patterns, not by one-time or occasional lapses in the reciprocity that is the essence of a healthy friendship.

 

Why would anyone put up with a friend like that? It, too, can be explained by the concept of reciprocity. Friendships continue when they are mutually satisfying---even if the relationship is toxic. Many women have a hard time extricating themselves from these relationships. These include:

• People who like to feel needed

• People who feel like they aren't worthy of healthier, more balanced relationships

• People who are stuck---either feeling angry or sorry for their needy friend

 

Get real: If your truly needy friend has been that way for some time, the real possibilities of changing the relationship verge on hopeless. Yet it's hard to find a way out. Here are some ways to unload:

1) Change the nature of your friendship by learning to say "no" and setting boundaries (e.g. "Even though we are both single, I don't want to spend every Friday night together" or "I can't have dinners with you after work because I need to get home to my family."')

2) Tell her that you have to tend to your own needs (or those of anyone else you can think of---your mother, your kid or your cat)

3) Slip away - Spend less time with her and add other less demanding friends to your inventory

4) Take a relationship sabbatical, a well-deserved hiatus from the friendship

5) If you've reached the point where you feel there is nothing really to lose, simply cut loose!

 

Get rid of the guilt. These are people whose needs can never be satiated. No matter what you give, what you do, how much, or how often, it will never be enough. Since character tends to endure, this person probably treats other people the same way she treats you. It's likely that many of her friends have probably already dropped out of the picture and that's why she is so dependent on you.

 

This blog entry also appeared on the Huffington Post

"She'll have no shortage of people wanting to be there for her," says one of Silda's friends quoted in the Washington Post. But will her friends know how to be there for her?
When something lousy happens to a friend, it often leaves us at a loss for words.

That's why I'm writing this open letter to all of Friends of Silda Spitzer (FOSSs) and to other women who may find themselves with friends in painful circumstances. Whether you're her friend or not, the heart of every woman reaches out to Silda and her teenage daughters when we saw that look on her face.

But it's not an exaggeration to say that if you live long enough, most of us know someone who has suddenly been thrust into a personal hell that is a deeper one than she can climb out of by herself. It may have happened to you or one of your close friends.

The first lady of New York has been described as brilliant, accomplished and wealthy. But like ordinary women, right now she has to be awash in a morass of painful emotions. Her needs are not too different than the immigrant single-mother who suddenly loses her below-minimum wage job; the woman whose husband has been accused of incompetence by his employer; the mother whose child has been expelled from school for using drugs; or the middle-age woman who has just lost a parent or received a life-threatening diagnosis.

At times like this, women hope they will be surrounded by female friends with whom they can talk openly, express anger, or even just cry. Silda can't unload the depth of her hurt to her teenage daughters, and she can't possibly restrain the anger and disappointment she must feel towards her husband who showed a terrible lapse in judgment. Isn't that what friends are for?

Yet, situations like this often place friends in an uncomfortable situation, not knowing exactly what to say or do. Here are a few tips for how to be there for your female friend in trying times:

Be there

Circle around her but don't impose yourself. Find a subtle, non-obtrusive way to let her know you are there if and when she wants to talk. If you know she is a CrackBerry addict, send her an email or text her. If you generally are phone friends, you may want to reach out and touch her by telephone.

Be sensitive to the cues about whether she is ready to talk or is simply too overwhelmed. Remember that a warm note---an old-fashioned snail mail one written in your own handwriting that says "I'm thinking of you"---always feels heartfelt.

Don't make the embarrassment seem larger than life. "I'm always amazed how many people just simply don't treat the person the same as they did two weeks ago," says Peter Shankman, CEO of the Geek Factory, whose firm often gets called in to assist with crisis management. "I'm sure Silda would kill for a friend to call and say ‘Hey, let's grab brunch.'"

Listen, don't tell

Don't ask too many questions or pry. Instead express your feelings: presumably that that you feel for her, care for her and her family, and want to be there anyway you can. There are times when a hug means more than words.

Ask her if she wants you to be with her or if you can do anything concrete to help her out (I assume Silda has a kitchen staff but other people may appreciate a home-cooked casserole left at the door.)

Don't ask her why she was standing there. In fact, don't try to second guess the reasons for any friend's decisions while she is in a reactive crisis mode. (Think about it: You never really know what you would choose to do if you were in standing in her stilettos.) Interpersonal relationships are complex and hard to understand from the outside. It takes time for a woman to work through her feelings and allegiances during and after a crisis.

Give her the gift of time

If she declines contact, give her some space and try again a few days later. Shock and/or depression make it difficult to accept help.

This also isn't the time to rile against whomever you perceive to be the perpetrator of your friend's pain. As hypocritical or reprehensible as you may feel the other person to be, your friend needs to reach that conclusion by herself.

Honesty trumps eloquence

Even if you are struggling with what to say and how to say it, never pretend not to know what happened. Of course, in Silda's case, you would have had to be living in a cave. But whatever the situation, it's always better to do something rather than nothing.

Based on online survey of more than 1300 women, Irene is writing a book about female friendships called The Myth of Best Friends Forever (Overlook Press, January 2009).

The fourth episode (called Bombay Highway) of Candace Bushnell's hot new TV series Lipstick Jungle raises an important set of issues that many women grapple with during the course of their friendships with one another.

 

What should a friend do or say, if anything, when her Bestie does something illegal, immoral or hurtful to herself or to others---or something that clearly conflicts with her own moral or ethical values? Can they still remain close friends or will it eventually alter the nature of their relationship?

On Lipstick, Nico Reilly (played by Kim Raver) plunges into a steamy affair (behind her professor husband's back) with a young stud named Kirby. There are hints that her husband, too, might be having an affair but he comes across as a pretty decent guy.

 

Nico, a high-achiever like the other women on the show, has such strong needs for affirmation that she never considers the potential ramifications of her lusty indiscretions for her marriage or her career---let alone her own self-esteem. Her friends Wendy (Brooke Shields) and Victory (Lindsay Price) are a bit taken aback and seem puzzled by this out-of-character behavior. They accept it to Nico's face but talk about it disparagingly behind her back.

 

This scenario isn't far-fetched---nor is it only the stuff of Hollywood scripts. When I surveyed women for my friendship study, women of all ages told me stories about friends with addictions who they painfully watched destroying themselves; ones who were abusive to their husbands or children; ones who lied to their friends and let them down; and ones who committed crimes. They struggled with the feelings of dissonance over these once-close but now fractured friendships.

 

Is it the duty of a good friend to support whatever path her friend decides to take? Or should she dissuade her friend from jumping off a cliff? Should she ignore, isolate or overlook behavior she doesn't condone? To step in, how egregious does the behavior have to be?

 

Although the answers aren't clear-cut and depend on the people involved, what has transpired, and how discrepant the friends' values have become, it is truly a myth that, "Good friends stand behind you, no matter what."

 

Lipstick, along with Cashmere Mafia, is one of a genre of TV shows that depict women's friendships---like I Love Lucy, Laverne and Shirley, Kate & Allie, Cagney & Lacey, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Friends, Designing Women, The Golden Girls, Sex and the City, and Desperate Housewives that came before them. What women love about watching these shows is that they raise issues in Technicolor that are often just beneath the surface of our own lives.

I’m so excited that I’ve been asked to blog for the Living Section of the Huffington Post (AKA HuffPo or HuffPost). This popular weblog offers: syndicated columns, blogs, news stories and moderated comments to 5.7 million readers---talk about reach! I will continue to blog on FracturedFriendships.com and many of the entries that you read here will find their way to HuffPo too.

But now you will be able to register with the Huffington Post and get my blog entries delivered directly to your virtual mailbox whenever a new entry is posted (probably about once or twice a week). I hope you will sign up as a “fan” when you read this post by clicking the little red heart at the top of any of my HuffPo blog entries.

The topic of female friendships is of universal interest (even to men who don’t always understand us!) As you nurture the close relationships in your own life, I hope you will continue to help me think about all the dimensions of female friendships and how those rich bonds enhance our lives.

And don’t forget: Please leave your comments and post your questions here or on HuffPo so I stay relevant to your needs and interests.

To be continued…