friendship

Have you ever poached a friend or had one poached from you? This is how it happens: Your friend introduces you to her friend and the two of you develop a friendship---independent of the friend who introduced you. If you’ve been there, done that, you’re a poacher. Or if you have introduced two friends and one of them snares the other for herself, leaving you in the dust, you’ve been poached.

Is it ethically wrong to become a ‘friend of a friend’ or is it a legitimate way to expand your friendship network? What are the rules and could they be changing?

CNN.com recent ran an article called, When social poachers snatch your friends, that posed both sides of the issue. Through one lens, poaching can be viewed as the ultimate betrayal, akin to “friend-napping.” Through another, it can be seen as a reasonable way of making new friends through vetted introductions.

A 2004 essay by Lucinda Rosenfeld in New York Magazine, Our Mutual Friend, expressed the jealousy and hurt the author experienced after she had been poached. When she learned that her two friends were planning a ski trip together---without her---she felt excluded (even though she had no interest in skiing). It harked back to the days of junior high school.

I’ve been poached, too. I had two close friends, let’s call them Marcie and Hayley, whom I decided to introduce to one another. I knew they would instantly “click” because they had so much in common: neither worked outside the home, both loved competitive tennis, and each had two kids around the same ages. It was a good hunch because they soon became best friends with each other as I drifted into the background.

Admittedly, the first time I bumped into them at Starbuck’s having coffee without me, I felt a bit strange and awkward, even hurt, but as soon as I regrouped mentally I realized that I didn’t have as much time or motivation to spend with either one of them as they did with each other. Now we get together as a threesome occasionally. Rosenfeld also found that being poached can be a blessing in disguise. Prior to the treachery, she had found herself in the unpleasant role of constantly ministering to one of the women who was needy and always crying on her shoulder. It gave her a way out.

With the booming popularity of social network sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, the ethics and etiquette of friend poaching may be turning upside down. In cyberspace, becoming a friend of a cyber-friend is not only socially acceptable, but is actually one of the raison d’êtres of participation.

Being poached offline isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either. Because friendships change over time, a friendship that is 'stolen' may have long been gone. It may offer the poachee an opportunity to change, take a break from, or get rid of a friendship that was draining, all-consuming, or toxic in other ways.

The corollary: Don’t feel guilty about poaching. Unlike family or marriage, friendships have no blood or legal ties; the good ones are totally voluntary relationships that enhance our lives. Feel guilty? Remember that your new friend has the free will to add, subtract, or realign her friendships.

One caveat: Friend poaching is unacceptable, and maybe even pathological, when an individual consistently tries to derail friendships and hurt people around her.

It’s depressing to be with a friend who is truly depressed. You may even get weepy yourself. The black cloud of depression spreads over you too, making you feel like you want to escape and be with anyone else but her. But read this first!

I’ve blogged here repeatedly about the importance of female friendships to women’s emotional and physical well-being---and about the perils of toxic ones as well. I’ve talked about friends who are too needy, too self-centered, too angry, too demanding, or too unreliable and have pointed out that some friendships reach a tipping point when it’s time to call it quits. I still believe that relationships that are consistently draining should be ended or at least, placed on hold.

Then I received a post from a reader entitled, Toxic Friends May Be Crying Out for Help, which reminded me that there are exceptions to every rule---and that it is important to distinguish between a toxic friendship (which is pathological relationship) and depression (which is a mental disorder). Here's the post:

Dear Irene:

Thanks for pointing out that there are bad friends out there, However I want to play devil's advocate here and say that in 2006 when ALL and I do mean ALL 5 of my close friends bailed on me like a chain of dominoes I nearly died from the depression it caused. In the wake of that nightmare I found out I had a mental problem and needed HELP. Your call to DUMP Toxic Friendships would be better served by advocating INTERVENTION for people who may possibly be in serious trouble rather than leaving them behind like trash on the street corner.

Signed,

Anonymous

Yes, there are some cases when close friends need to cut a little slack. Could it be that your friendship feels burdensome and painful because your friend is depressed?

Recognizing depression

Clinical depression is extremely common, affecting nearly one out of ten people in a given year, and it’s is twice as prevalent in women as it is in men. It’s more than a case of the blues or a bad mood that passes. Depression profoundly affects a person’s ability to function. And as hard as someone tries to shake it, it recurs nearly every day, all day, for at least two weeks or longer.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the symptoms of depression may include:

• Persistent sad, anxious or “empty” feelings
• Feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
• Irritability, restlessness, anxiety
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness and/or helplessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details and making decisions
• Insomnia, waking up during the night, or excessive sleeping
• Overeating, or appetite loss
• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
• Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment

Does this list of symptoms and signs make you think of one of your friends? Well, this is a reminder. As much as you might like to, you can’t talk a friend out of being depressed. Even a kick in the pants won’t help. Depression is a biological illness.

What you can do

• If you are a good friend, there are some ways in which you can help and possibly make a difference:
• You can listen carefully, provide support, and offer to spend some time doing things you enjoy together (taking a walk or bicycle ride, or going to a movie).
• You can offer to help her with concrete tasks she can’t accomplish on her own because she feels so overwhelmed or has no energy.
• Try to be patient---and never be pushy. Don’t dismiss her feelings. Show that you understand them but encourage her to realize that these feelings are only temporary and will eventually pass.
• Don’t pussyfoot around the issue. Remind her that depression is a treatable illness and encourage your friend to seek treatment.
• If she resists your initial suggestion, try again but don’t nag. Don’t make demands or set ultimatums. Many depressed people need time to find their way to treatment and some people just want to be left alone.
• If you worry that your friend may be harboring suicidal thoughts, you have certain ethical obligations. Be direct and ask her if she feels suicidal. If she does, remind her that she is important to you and that she needs immediate professional help. Never allow the burden of having a depressed friend be yours alone. Be sure to inform someone else (e.g. her partner or closest relative.) If you’re her partner, tell her doctor.

Recognize that you can only be a friend, not a mental health professional. There is just so much that friends can do and so much that they can give. You may need to reluctantly cut loose and be there for her when she begins to recover.

Note: This post is about friendship and isn't intended as medical advice.

This post can also be read on The Huffington Post.

If you haven’t yet realized it, graduation from high school or college can be a friendship-killer. When you are no longer living side-by-side or seeing each other every day, it will never be quite as easy to keep up once-close female friendships or to make new ones.

With more than $55 million in domestic box office sales, Sex and the City made its mark as the highest-grossing chick flick in history on its opening weekend. Why did working women and working-at-home women leave their boyfriends, husbands, and kids behind, flocking in droves to see a movie that will likely be available on Netflix and pay-per-view in the blink of an eye? They wanted to see each other.

Sex is the ultimate excuse for a girl’s night out---something that women are desperately craving as our multi-tasking lifestyles leave less discretionary time for female friendships. The march of Stilettos to movie houses across the country was nothing short of a surge. Women clicked on Fandango and lined up for tickets because they were eager to redress their friendship deficit. Regardless of our age or stage in life, many women simply don’t have enough friends to meet their needs for understanding and being understood.

Sex, both movie and the series, hit the nail on the head when it comes to female friendships. We all covet the close friendships like the ones mirrored by Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte. Women went to see Sex but they were more excited about the before and after cocktails, dinners and parties they had planned with each other. They wanted to walk in the footsteps of the foursome.

Getting back to my commencement remarks---Graduation often means going home or moving away, leaving the familiar and making new starts. As a result, it is a time when many of us lose touch with women whom we see every day and call and text in-between---both besties and entire friendship circles that are meaningful parts of our lives.

Make yourself a promise to keep up with your school chums---especially the ones with whom you have been able to share both happiness and heartbreaks. As you age and life becomes more complex and demanding, you’ll realize that you have given yourself the most wonderful treasure. A few of the basics:

1) Always make friendship a priority (right up there after family). If you need a rationale to convince you, here it is: Research shows that social support and close friendships are linked to improved health and emotional well-being.

2) Get rid of toxic friendships that are consistently negative and emotionally draining. We all have one or two gal pals that are annoying to be with, people we feel ambivalent about and who probably feel ambivalent about us. Just let go of them.

3) Find any excuse to create rituals to stay in touch with the good friends. It shouldn’t be a one-time affair. Make a plan to get together every month or at least several times a year. It can be on milestone birthdays or periodic girlfriend getaway jaunts. Or even the opening of a long-awaited chick flick!

4) In-between, use every way possible to stay connected---via cell phones, Blackberries, and old-fashioned letters until the next time your see each other.

Female graduates: Congratulations---Go forth with your friends!

 

This post also appears on The Huffington Post. Sign up to become by fan at www.huffingtonpost.com/living and receive my posts directly in your in-box. 

Might it be time to call it quits?

QUESTION:

My best friend is finally dumping her jerk husband of more than a decade and I'm glad about that but it's all wearing me to a nub.

Her frenzied dating is making me nuts. She talks about her boyfriends constantly, and about how many men are chasing her. She is convinced her life will be right back on track when she has a boyfriend, even though the divorce isn't even final yet.

She's really into psychotherapy which I hope might help her. I think she needs to stabilize before she gets involved with anyone but who am I to say? I don't know how to be supportive, honest, and not make my tongue bleed by biting it all at the same time.

I used to think that when she finally got away from her husband, who was emotionally abusive, she would grow into the woman she could be and our friendship would deepen. Now I just don't know. I'm feeling distant from her and irritated.

Please help!
Anonymous

 

ANSWER:

Dear Anonymous:

Sounds like you’ve had a hard time supporting your BFF’s choices almost as long as you’ve known her but you deluded yourself into thinking her rotten choice of mate was circumstantial: that she simply picked the wrong guy and had a hard time getting out of it.

In large part, people choose their circumstances, and if they don’t because they’ve fallen into them by mistake, they do have the free will to change them. Eighteen years of abuse must have eroded your friend’s self-esteem completely. What half-normal person would put up with all that stuff for that long?
Admittedly, this is probably a very difficult time for your BFF. She must worry about whether she will eventually land on the ground with both feet standing---and you may be wondering the same thing about her too!

Being indiscriminately “boy-crazy” diverts a woman from thinking about their own life (How do I know? Been there, done thatJ). Her interest in psychotherapy suggests that on some level, she would like to find her true self.

But let’s get back to you. It’s impossible to support a friend when you consistently don’t support her choices, unless she has other qualities that outweigh the negative ones. The value of every female friendship is determined by how well it meets our needs---I like to call this the concept of reciprocity. Friendships usually work when two friends feel like they are giving each other more---or at least as much---as they are getting. Sounds like this one isn’t working for you.

In this circumstance, what are your choices? You can leave things as they are and bite your tongue (but I think you are having a problem doing that or you wouldn’t have written to me). You can tell her things she isn’t ready to hear. Or there is one more approach that I think is the most prudent. I suggest that you take a friendship sabbatical.

You need to step back and give your friend time to work things out---and you need to give yourself time to think about whether the friendship is worth the angst. You can tell your friend that you need some time and space for yourself but you really care about her and what she is going through. In the meantime, spend more time with other friends and see if they can fill the deficit. Let me know what you decide and how it goes.

 

Best, Irene

 

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…

The first hand-made Valentine’s Day cards in the 1800s weren’t intended only for lovers. They celebrated affection between friends and relatives as well. The card shown expresses such a sentiment inside:

Friendship. Friendship, how dear thy name, How pure thy transports are, Blessed, fair, unsullied flame, Be thou my leading star.

It’s designer was Esther Howland. One of the pioneers of the greeting card industry in the US, Howland was charmed by an ornate English Valentine she received from a friend. So she began a business of importing lace and floral decorations from England and turning them into lacy cards. She advertised in the Worcester, Massachusetts paper, The Daily Spy, in 1850, and her business grew so quickly that she had to enlist friends in an assembly-line operation to meet the demand. Her sales are reported to have exceeded $100,000, a handy sum at the time for a female entrepreneur.

Even Hallmark has an ecumenical Valentine’s Day card with a cover that reads “Friendship is Forever.” The message inside:

Romance fades, chocolates grow stale, but friendship is forever. Happy Valentine's Day.

On February 14th, people in Finland celebrate Ystävänpäivä, which is translated as Friend’s Day. In Mexico, it is called the Día del amor y la amistad, the day of love and friendship.

Admittedly, the day has been over-commericalized but it still remains a fitting day to express love and appreciation to the important people in our life---which, of course, includes our friends.

With love to my dear husband, son, and friends
In memory to my Dad who died on Valentine’s Day, 2006

It’s wonderful to begin teaching young people about the joys of friendship. In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Perrot Memorial Library (Old Greenwich, Connecticut) just published a list of its Youth Services Staff's favorite books about love and friendship. Click here to view the full list.

One particularly lovely book on the list---and one of my favorites---is Leo Lionni’s Little Blue and Little Yellow, a simple but eloquent tale of two best friends who hug each other and become green. This picture book has entertained young children and their parents for nearly 50 years.

When Matt Raymond of the Library of Congress needed help tagging more than 3100 photos in the library’s collection, he teamed up with the Flickr, the photo-sharing website.

“If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity,” wrote Raymond in his blog.

Well, the pilot was enormously successful, proving the power of photosharing websites in fostering a sense of community. Two days later, Raymond posted that there had already been 650,000 views of the photos, with 420 of them commented on, and 1200 having been favorited

Photos can help us share our lives with our female friends. They can offer portraits of the woman we were yesterday and the one we are today. A snapshot can also capture the people, places and things that are meaningful to us. Want to stay connected? Send a captioned photo to a friend, either electronically or via snail mail. Or put a few up on Flickr---with tags, of course.

Nothing sells like youth, beauty, sex---and female friendships?

Pepperidge Farm is investing between 2 to 3 million dollars in a friendship-focused ad campaign designed to help sell its cookies, according to an article in today’s New York Times by advertising guru and journalist Stuart Elliott. This comes on the coattails of the recent Tupperware campaign that uses female friendships to sell its line of plastic leftover containers (see my blog entry on May 13th).

The new website for the campaign, artofthecookie.com, is intended to encourage women to connect with one another (and with Pepperidge Farm) over a cup of tea and naturally, cookies. Sally Horchow, co-author with Roger Horchow of The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections (St. Martin, 2006) serves as the campaign spokesperson, just as Brooke Shields carries the banner for Tupperware.

Print ads are expected to follow in popular women’s magazines like Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and Redbook with the tag line: “Friendship: Is yours an art form or a lost art?” The ads tap into our needs for social connectedness and should elicit positive feelings unless you are lonely or in the midst of a fight with a friend. Then you can go off into a corner and eat cookies, I guess.

On the new site are ten tips for connecting, advice on how to maintain friends from afar, and suggested excuses for hanging out and celebrating with friends. One tip for connecting (called Taking the Road Less Traveled) includes taking a new walking route, eating a different cookie than usual, choosing a different café, or meeting at a different time. A tip for maintaining long-distance friendships is to send a spontaneous gift like guess what?---a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

Other than the crass commercialism of the campaign, admittedly, most of the friendship messages are as sweet as maple syrup. But obviously absent is the perspective that some friendships are toxic, painful to maintain, and not worth saving. Now if this is sounding like sour grapes instead of sugar cookies, it’s merely because I believe that we need to dispel the myth that every female friendship has to last forever.

Well I know there is a day or a week to celebrate just about anything and everything but I was so excited when I heard about this one that I couldn’t resist sharing the news. The first week of each of four months---in January, April, July and October----has been designated “Buy A Friend A Book Week.”

Granted it was created by an author but wasn’t she smart? Debra Hamel said she thought of it one night while laying awake after an emergency diaper change. You can bet that when my book is published, I’ll celebrate the day!...