friendships

One political poll reported that a large majority of voters said they would be frightened if the presidential candidate—other than the one they supported—won the election. It reminded me of how we live in our own little worlds.

 

The differences between the parties’ candidates were great and I have to admit: Most of my friends have similar political leanings to my own. It isn’t that we agree on every issue but, in general, we have shared values--which I consider an important component of close friendships.

 

To tell you the truth, my world is actually so small that I even have a hard time relating to people who don’t like some of my favorite movies or television shows. How can we be friends if we don’t even laugh at the same jokes? Well the election is over and, hopefully, most of my friendships will remain intact.

 

Depending on how opinionated and strident a person is—whether the topic is politics or popular culture—it’s natural to feel alienated from people who aren’t like us. But just as politics has the power to make strange bedfellows, if we focus on what we have in common rather than what sets us apart, it’s a great way to build and strengthen our friendships.

 

Childhood friends, school chums, colleagues, neighbors, teammates and virtual friends---women accumulate hundreds, if not thousands, of friends based on where they’ve been and what they’ve done over the years. Friends are the living scrapbooks of our lives.

But every relationship doesn’t stick. In fact, very few of them do. It’s easy for friendships, even very close ones, to slip away--sometimes for no real reason at all. It just happens. A study of the friendship patterns of 10,000 people in the UK found that the average Brit collects 396 friends over a lifetime but winds up staying in touch with only one out of 12 of them.

This week a friend with whom I was once very close was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I hadn’t spoken to her in almost a decade and now I fear there might be time for only a brief reconnection, even though she is special to me and our friendship was an important chapter in my life story. Yes, we live in different states and no longer work in the same office. But why hadn’t I kept up the relationship? Was I really that busy? Maybe there wasn’t time to see her, but the ease of staying in touch via cell phones and e-mail make the excuse of being busy sound lame.

I know I’m not the only woman who is dancing as fast as she can. I once tried to introduce a close friend who moved to Washington DC to another close friend who already lived there. I thought they would enjoy each other as much as I enjoyed each of them. “I don’t even have enough time for my own friends so why would you ever think I would have time for yours,” said the DC native. And I understood.

Recognizing that life is finite (is that a new insight?), many of us have started composing “life lists” to set priorities. People are thinking about where they would like to go and what they would like to do before kicking the bucket. It’s not surprising that the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die became an instant best-seller. The same list-making mania has morphed into websites like www.43things.com. The film The Bucket List, which opened earlier this year, chronicles the story of two men, each with one year to live, who escape from the hospital where they meet to hit the open road and live life as they please.

Life is short. My suggestion: Make a list of the friends you truly want to keep in your life. To make the goal achievable, you don’t have to list 100 names and you don’t have to actually see those friends (unless you want to). You can just make ten phone calls or send ten e-mails, whenever it’s convenient, to tell your female friends how much they mean to you, before they disappear from your life.

 

This blog post also appears on www.HuffingtonPost.com/Living

"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).

What do lonely people do when they need friends but have none? According to new research, they tend to anthropomorphize: They attribute human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.

“When people lack a sense of connection with other people, they are more likely to see their pets, gadgets or gods as human-like,” says psychologist Nicholas Epley, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, in a press release.

The loneliness of having too few friends or being totally bereft of friends can be excruciatingly painful. In fact, Epley suggests that it can even be deadly. “It’s actually a greater risk for morbidity or mortality than cigarette smoking is. Being lonely is a bad thing for you,” he says.

The researchers suggest that humanizing the inhuman may confer some of the same benefits that people derive from friends and other social relationships. The bottom Line: If you find yourself talking to your cat, you may want to think about whether you have a friendship deficit that needs to be addressed.

 

The study will appear in the February issue of Psychological Science. Also contributing to the research were Scott Akalis of Harvard University and the University of Chicago’s Adam Waytz and John Cacioppo.

Preteens tend to worry. Why? As they’re simultaneously growing into awkward new bodies and tackling the social challenges of middle school, they’re also victims of the emotional roller coaster created by their fluctuating hormones. With these stressors, it’s a difficult time for kids well as their parents.

Preteens tend to be tight-lipped---preferring to share secrets with their friends over their parents---so it’s natural for moms, dads and teachers to wonder what they worry about. A new KidsHealth KidsPoll was designed to provide some answers. The January 2008 poll surveyed 1,154 kids between the ages of 9 and 13, looking at how much they worry and what they worry about.

By far, the largest proportion (86 per cent) worry “almost all the time” or “a lot” about someone they love. They also worry about tests and grades, the future, their appearance, and making mistakes---in that order. But 1 out of 4 worry about their friends “almost all the time” and a third of them worry about friends “a lot.” In fact, friendships ranked among the top 8 of 20 pre-teen worries.

One implication: Moms need to talk to their daughters about female friendships and share their wisdom and experience about the fragility of these relationships. Particularly during these pre-teen years, we need to help cushion the blow when our daughters are excluded from a clique at school or camp, or when they are inevitably rejected by one of their Besties.

 

The poll was conducted by KidsHealth.org, a web portal that provides health information for children.

An article by Stephanie Rosenbloom in yesterday’s New York Times, On Facebook, Scholars Link Up with Data, explains how the popular social networking site is increasingly being used by academic researchers to study friendships.

Rosenbloom quotes Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard sociology professor: “Our predecessors could only dream of the kind of data we now have.” While there are legitimate concerns that some of the 58 million Facebook may not know their habits and preferences are being tracked, never before have social scientists had such a fertile source of information to mine on the nature of our friendships.

As one example, the article mentions that researchers at Harvard and UCLA are using Facebook to examine the concept of triadic closure: whether your friends are friends of one another. Although the phenomenon was first described by a sociologist named Georg Simmel as long as a century ago, there were few empirical studies. Using Facebook as a laboratory, social scientists are studying triadic closure---which one day may shed light on the exclusionary social cliques that draw circles keeping some people in and others out.

Given the importance of friendship in our lives, used well, Facebook and other such social networking sites could potentially yield important information on how to build and sustain healthy relationships.

If you’ve never heard the term before, Ann Mack, director of trend spotting for JWT (the largest advertising agency in the U.S.), uses the term “digitivity denizens” to describe those of us who straddle two worlds, the real world and the digital one.

 

According to a report by Reuters, the agency surveyed more than 1000 Americans to find out how technology was changing their lives and behavior. We’ve come a long way, baby. Only a fifth of the respondents said they felt comfortable remaining offline for a week...