Tuesday, 8 July 2014
So where did I get this sense of responsibility, this idea that I need to look after people, this loyalty? My astrology-buff friends would say it's in my stars. I think it is more in my upbringing, and in my place as a middle child. Middle children are the renowned diplomats and peacemakers. But as well as that it comes from being influenced by my father's sense of sticking to his principals. He thought about principals and lived by them. It almost seems quaint and old-fashioned now, but it gave me a real sense of security as a kid. He had a strong sense of right and wrong; I remember feeling very secure knowing that. Sure, he had his flaws, but he was strong, reliable and he would be there when I needed him. He could not offer an abundance of financial security, but he did offer emotional security and values, which I feel now were more important.
Sometimes feeling responsible for others can be a weight and can cause us to ignore our own needs at some expense to ourselves. We have to learn, sometimes the hard way, that it is not a bad thing to put ourselves first. I don't mean in a selfish way, but in an assertive way that is better for everyone. Being able to set healthy boundaries provides a healthy role model for those around us.
Let me share this idea of responsibility with you. I can't recall where I first came across this quote, but it has certainly stuck in my brain: "We have a responsibility to everyone to ensure that WE are happy."
All the best to you for ensuring your own happiness. :)
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Back from the big wide world
I'm home. Finally, after four months of travelling, I am in my own home, sleeping in my own bed, and not living out of a suitcase.
It's not a bad feeling – I live in a beautiful part of the world. So I feel almost guilty to admit I was in no hurry to return at all. To me, nothing is as good as travel, particularly when one has a compatible someone with whom to share it.
Now I feel refreshed and renewed. Because I have seen different countries and cultures for the first time, it's as though my eyes have been opened. I am different. And I'm aware of what a privilege it is to be able to travel, particularly as not everyone can. In beautiful Sri Lanka, for instance, a third-world country I have come to like very much, the vast majority of the population could only dream about travel. We in the first world are so economically rich by comparison, but not necessarily richer in a spiritual sense.
My eyes have also been opened to the vastness and variety of the good old USA where the food, social mixes, accents and music change from state to state, making it endlessly interesting. Previously, my ideas about it had been based on politics or what I read in the newspapers or saw on television. Now, to my surprise, I feel I can't get enough of the US, and I look forward to seeing more one day. I will always remember the interesting conversations and heart-warming encounters I experienced with many people, a couple of whom I now count as friends.
It's hard to imagine that before leaving home, I had worried about whether I would miss it and want to return earlier. Now I feel liberated – nothing terrible happened as a result of stepping away from my old routines. The ground didn't cave in. This has caused me to consider the sense of responsibility that has always been such a part of my personal makeup. Next blog, I will write more about that.
Until then, I wish you plenty of harmony, health and humour in your own life.
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Sometimes enough is enough
A couple I know have just broken up. I love them both. They have struggled together for the past few years trying to make things work between them. They've had numerous counselling sessions and tried to change the way they are together, but it has always come back to both of them holding a firm belief – that things would be better if only the other would change!
This reminds me of something the renowned couples therapist Harville Hendrix often says: "When a person gets married, he or she often believes, 'Ah, now we two will become one – and I will be the one!'" But no. Two remain two, ideally firmly on their own two feet and with the desire and compassion to see their own shortcomings as well as the other's point of view.
Mostly it is sad when a couple who have loved each other decide to separate, especially when children are involved as they can take it very hard, but in this case it feels like a relief. I am probably not their only friend who feels that at last they will stop blaming each other for their own dissatisfaction. They tried, but there were areas where no compromise was ever going to be made. Fortunately no children were harmed in the making of this decision.
Monday, 2 July 2012
Why babies need cuddles and smiles
Propped on my desk is a homemade, hand-drawn postcard from my daughter overseas. It shows a mother rabbit cuddling one of her offspring and the words “I love you… to the stars and back”. It refers to a picture book I used to read to her, a reminder of sweet bed-times when she was little, when I’d make her giggle by adding my own words: “I love you to the stars, through the Milky Way, around the entire universe and back.” Naturally I found her reference to our shared memory very touching.
Even before Coco was born, I knew I loved her with the fierceness of a tigress standing guard over her cubs. When she did arrive, I found I also acquired the tenderness and patience of a saint. I was amazed by her beauty – those deep, shiny, crystal-clear eyes, dear little lips at my breast, her tiny starfish hands.
Many parents have felt his surge of love for their newborns, which is just as well for the human race. As it turns out, love and affection when we are babies are the essential ingredients of healthy development, with benefits for both the immune system and the brain.
Because the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex develops almost entirely after birth, a baby’s experiences then are crucial. So this part of the brain’s development, which largely governs a person’s ability to manage his or her emotional responses, is influenced by the baby’s key relationships. Without even realising it, when we enjoy our babies and give them affection, when we respond warmly to their smiles, sing songs to them and look lovingly into their eyes, we are helping to grow that part of the brain that will enable them to interact socially, including their ability to empathise with others.
What happens when that affection is missing was demonstrated by the discovery in 1989 of orphanages full of abandoned children in Romania where a ban on birth control had been in place since the late 1960s, leading to many unwanted births. Although their physical needs had been met, the orphans were left in their cots all day without any interaction with adults – no cuddles, no playing, talking or singing – and this part of the brain failed to develop, leaving them with lifelong emotional, behavioural and physical problems.
People with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex can’t relate to others sensitively and will be oblivious to the usual social and emotional cues. At the extreme, they can be sociopathic.
In evolutionary terms it is a newer part of the brain and is important in managing the emotional reactions set off in the more primitive parts. It can inhibit rage and fear reactions, for instance, applying the brakes and asserting control.
As Sue Gerhardt says in her excellent book Why Love Matters (Routledge, 2007), “This ability to hold back and defer immediate impulses and desires is the basis for our will power and self-control, as well as our capacity for empathy.”
She suggests that a possible evolutionary reason why this part of the human brain develops after birth, and is therefore open to social influence, is so each new person can be moulded to fit his or her environment. So there will be fewer 'cuckoos in the nest', if you like.
“In a sense, the human baby has to be invited to participate in human culture," she writes. "The first step in the process is to get the baby hooked on social interaction itself by making it highly pleasurable.”
All this shouldn’t scare new parents into feeling guilty for being cranky or frustrated at times. That's life. What counts most are the experiences that are frequent and repeated, so as long as you are giving your baby positive looks most of the time that you interact with him or her, you have nothing to fear. If that is not the case and you're feeling overwhelmed and out of control, seek support from friends, family or an organisation such as Lifeline (telephone 13 11 15).
Monday, 13 February 2012
Love without the cynicism
My last post discussed the first two of the three key stages of love. They were exciting and passionate and gifted with a wonderful ability to overlook the loved one’s flaws. They also had a use-by date and then the blinkers were off.
Here is what anthropologist Helen Fisher says about the third stage, which she calls the attachment phase:
“Perhaps this is the most elegant of human feelings, that sense of contentment, of sharing, of oneness with another human being. As you walk together holding hands, when you sit next to each other reading in the evening, as you laugh simultaneously at a movie or stroll through a park or on the beach, your souls are merged. All the world’s your paradise.”
Beautiful, isn’t it? Or perhaps it makes you cringe? Typing those words, it occurred to me that although it’s okay for poets or songwriters to express thoughts of love, it’s not something most people are comfortable doing. It’s almost as if it’s smarter or cooler to be cynical about it, which is fair enough, but I personally feel there’s not enough love in the world and I make no apologies for knowing exactly what Helen Fisher means.
If you do too, it's because you know how nourishing that kind of love is and that it exists alongside the whole range of emotions, including even flashes of rage. It can take many years, decades even, to achieve, and it’s absolutely worth the voyage, which is often parallel to the route to self-love. Acknowledging this love fills my heart with tenderness and thanks.
Many people are justifiably sceptical about love and marriage, especially with divorce skyrocketing and so many children living in single-parent households. But if almost half of all marriages break up, that means that more than half survive, which is quite an achievement. What’s more, the majority of people who divorce tend to marry again, so no doubt many eventually find that deeper, more “elegant” love with someone new.
Marriage isn’t compulsory, of course, and it is expected that it will occur less frequently in the future. Regardless of the form partnerships take, however, it’s a fair bet that people will continue to fall in love, pair up and try to find harmony together just as they always have.
Having the desire and intention to create that harmony is a major factor in achieving it. The high success rate of arranged marriages in India, where only 4 per cent of marriages end in divorce, seems to back this up. According to Helen Fisher, Hindu children are taught that marital love is the essence of life. Indian couples often enter married life with the expectation that romance will blossom and love will grow, and very often it does.
For those of us without such rules to live by, who make the big decisions all by ourselves, falling in love can be scary. “We’re never so defenceless against suffering as when we love,” said Sigmund Freud. Too true. Love takes courage.
Opening ourselves to love makes us vulnerable to loss. Many people, particularly if they lost someone close in their early lives, protect themselves from this pain by keeping love, and lovers, at a safe distance. Unfortunately, they miss out, and so does everyone around them.
To understand the nature of love, it's useful to consider its opposite. Although we learn in primary school that the opposite of love is hate, just as the opposite of hot is cold, it’s probably more accurate to think of the opposite of love as indifference or apathy. Love is caring, the opposite of indifference, and caring is also a component of hate – a person has to care enough to hate. It’s also possible, and a completely normal part of the human repertoire of feelings, to experience temporary flashes of hate for someone you love. Even a mother’s love, often held up as the ideal form, will include moments of less than ideal feelings, and women need to be able to accept this as normal and forgive themselves.
I will write more on the importance of love and affection for our babies in my next post.
Until then, I wish you love, and the ability to give it with abandon.
Here is what anthropologist Helen Fisher says about the third stage, which she calls the attachment phase:
“Perhaps this is the most elegant of human feelings, that sense of contentment, of sharing, of oneness with another human being. As you walk together holding hands, when you sit next to each other reading in the evening, as you laugh simultaneously at a movie or stroll through a park or on the beach, your souls are merged. All the world’s your paradise.”
Beautiful, isn’t it? Or perhaps it makes you cringe? Typing those words, it occurred to me that although it’s okay for poets or songwriters to express thoughts of love, it’s not something most people are comfortable doing. It’s almost as if it’s smarter or cooler to be cynical about it, which is fair enough, but I personally feel there’s not enough love in the world and I make no apologies for knowing exactly what Helen Fisher means.
If you do too, it's because you know how nourishing that kind of love is and that it exists alongside the whole range of emotions, including even flashes of rage. It can take many years, decades even, to achieve, and it’s absolutely worth the voyage, which is often parallel to the route to self-love. Acknowledging this love fills my heart with tenderness and thanks.
Many people are justifiably sceptical about love and marriage, especially with divorce skyrocketing and so many children living in single-parent households. But if almost half of all marriages break up, that means that more than half survive, which is quite an achievement. What’s more, the majority of people who divorce tend to marry again, so no doubt many eventually find that deeper, more “elegant” love with someone new.
Marriage isn’t compulsory, of course, and it is expected that it will occur less frequently in the future. Regardless of the form partnerships take, however, it’s a fair bet that people will continue to fall in love, pair up and try to find harmony together just as they always have.
Having the desire and intention to create that harmony is a major factor in achieving it. The high success rate of arranged marriages in India, where only 4 per cent of marriages end in divorce, seems to back this up. According to Helen Fisher, Hindu children are taught that marital love is the essence of life. Indian couples often enter married life with the expectation that romance will blossom and love will grow, and very often it does.
For those of us without such rules to live by, who make the big decisions all by ourselves, falling in love can be scary. “We’re never so defenceless against suffering as when we love,” said Sigmund Freud. Too true. Love takes courage.
Opening ourselves to love makes us vulnerable to loss. Many people, particularly if they lost someone close in their early lives, protect themselves from this pain by keeping love, and lovers, at a safe distance. Unfortunately, they miss out, and so does everyone around them.
To understand the nature of love, it's useful to consider its opposite. Although we learn in primary school that the opposite of love is hate, just as the opposite of hot is cold, it’s probably more accurate to think of the opposite of love as indifference or apathy. Love is caring, the opposite of indifference, and caring is also a component of hate – a person has to care enough to hate. It’s also possible, and a completely normal part of the human repertoire of feelings, to experience temporary flashes of hate for someone you love. Even a mother’s love, often held up as the ideal form, will include moments of less than ideal feelings, and women need to be able to accept this as normal and forgive themselves.
I will write more on the importance of love and affection for our babies in my next post.
Until then, I wish you love, and the ability to give it with abandon.
Friday, 27 January 2012
This thing called love
A couple in their 30s came to see me to work out whether their marriage had a chance. They sat facing me, as far away from each other as possible at opposite ends of the couch, the woman’s jaw firm and uncompromising, the husband sitting forward, hands clasped tightly, elbows on his knees. He jiggled his right leg incessantly, looking down at the floor.
It’s bittersweet, this thing called love, because its other side is pain.
It wasn’t so long ago that this pair, let’s call them Lance and Debbie, just couldn’t get enough of each other. It started with a lunch date, which led to dinner that same night and many wonderful times after that. They sizzled and sparkled; they were ‘in love’. Two years later, they married. And now, you could say, the honeymoon is over.
Where did the love go?
According to the songs, love “hurts”, “makes the world go around”, is “all there is” and it’s “in the air”, but what is love, actually?
Philosophers, religious leaders and psychologists have long tried to define love. Plato, who revered the love of knowledge, thought romantic love was a kind of madness – and he was a little bit right. Chemicals released in the brains of the newly ‘in love’ act like natural amphetamines, increasing the sense of excitement and making scans of their brains resemble those of people with mental illness.
Human beings have a huge capacity for love in many forms – from the romantic, passionate love we might feel for a lover to the protective love for a child or friend to a love of concepts like freedom or knowledge, and things, such as a beautiful painting or treasured object. All of these enrich us.
Love is the ideal espoused by the great religions. At its most spiritual, it’s a state of grace that makes forgiveness possible.
Nearly all of us will love something or someone in the course of our lives. It’s hard to put into words, it just is – something we feel, in our bodies, hearts and souls rather than rationalise in our minds.
The anthropologists, ‘evolutionary psychologists’ and neuroscientists of our modern world have joined the attempt to examine love. One of these, anthropologist Helen Fisher, made a fascinating study of the evolution of human mating habits and observed that love has three distinct and overlapping stages – lust (short-lived), then attraction (a bit more enduring), then attachment (more enduring still).
The first phase is like a green light when you telegraph messages of your availability to each other. It’s hot, it feels great – due to a rush of testosterone and oestrogen – and its effects are brief, just a few weeks or months at the most.
The attraction phase that follows is when lovers decide this particular person is ‘the one’. They’re committed, and ‘in love’; they think of each other all the time. This is a glorious, luminous period that highlights all the handsome/beautiful, good and lovable qualities of the other; they have no flaws, or if they do, it’s easy to overlook them.
This phase also feels great, again thanks to a range of chemicals flooding the brain, and it too has a use-by date. Apparently the brain can only cope with all this excitement for so long, usually for no more than 18 months to three years, when things change again.
And now the blinkers come off. Until now what the lovers have seen in each other has been largely their own creation, projections of what they wanted to see. If they weren’t ‘whole’, or complete, in themselves at the start (and who is?), they probably expected the other person to make them feel worthwhile. But it hasn’t happened.
My clients Lance and Debbie married during the attraction phase, otherwise known as infatuation, and now they’re having to come to grips with a different reality. They’re getting to know each other’s less appealing sides and adjusting to living with another unique individual from a completely different family culture.
They thought what they had was love, rather than a time-limited stage of love, and they’re feeling very uncertain and disappointed.
In a mature love people can ideally hold onto themselves, not being drawn into the drama or reacting defensively if their partner throws a tantrum. It’s a love of others for themselves, with all their quirks and vulnerabilities, rather than for some idea of how they might enhance one’s life. This kind of love is more possible when individuals can be authentic rather than what some marital therapists call their “pseudo selves”, trying to impress or please others and denying their real feelings and fears. The bottom line is that our relationships will only be as satisfactory as we are in ourselves.
Interestingly, Buddhists turn the truism about having to love yourself before you can love another on its head, saying you come to love yourself through the practice of loving others first. Now there’s food for thought.
After finding out what had brought Lance and Debbie to therapy and letting them vent their frustrations, I found what seemed an appropriate moment to ask what attracted them to each other in the first place. Smiles flickered across their faces as their memories flooded in.
“She was really pretty and smart and happy,” said Lance, sounding wistful.
“He was romantic and funny, he made me laugh,” said Deb. The atmosphere lightened, a break in the clouds.
Later it emerges that Deb came from an expressive family where arguments raged and were settled and forgotten. Lance’s family, on the other hand, went about life quietly, not feeling the need to talk much, just “knowing”, and certainly never raising their voices. His reluctance to argue drove Deb crazy because she never felt heard by him, which translated into feeling he didn’t care and further into not being “enough” for him. At the same time, her rages made Lance feel the end was near, which was frightening for him, and he protected himself by withdrawing even further.
When they could see how their different styles evolved and how their beliefs about arguing differed (to him it was disastrous, to her it was normal and no big deal), they were starting to have some chance of getting to the next stage of love. They also seemed to take heart from hearing me talk positively about the role of conflict and resolution in making relationships stronger. Conflict is part of the package, with the most successful couples the ones who can argue well.
Okay, so we’ve covered the phases of love that don’t last. What about the one that does? I will write about that in my next post. Till then, I wish you love and the ability to receive it.
It’s bittersweet, this thing called love, because its other side is pain.
It wasn’t so long ago that this pair, let’s call them Lance and Debbie, just couldn’t get enough of each other. It started with a lunch date, which led to dinner that same night and many wonderful times after that. They sizzled and sparkled; they were ‘in love’. Two years later, they married. And now, you could say, the honeymoon is over.
Where did the love go?
According to the songs, love “hurts”, “makes the world go around”, is “all there is” and it’s “in the air”, but what is love, actually?
Philosophers, religious leaders and psychologists have long tried to define love. Plato, who revered the love of knowledge, thought romantic love was a kind of madness – and he was a little bit right. Chemicals released in the brains of the newly ‘in love’ act like natural amphetamines, increasing the sense of excitement and making scans of their brains resemble those of people with mental illness.
Human beings have a huge capacity for love in many forms – from the romantic, passionate love we might feel for a lover to the protective love for a child or friend to a love of concepts like freedom or knowledge, and things, such as a beautiful painting or treasured object. All of these enrich us.
Love is the ideal espoused by the great religions. At its most spiritual, it’s a state of grace that makes forgiveness possible.
Nearly all of us will love something or someone in the course of our lives. It’s hard to put into words, it just is – something we feel, in our bodies, hearts and souls rather than rationalise in our minds.
The anthropologists, ‘evolutionary psychologists’ and neuroscientists of our modern world have joined the attempt to examine love. One of these, anthropologist Helen Fisher, made a fascinating study of the evolution of human mating habits and observed that love has three distinct and overlapping stages – lust (short-lived), then attraction (a bit more enduring), then attachment (more enduring still).
The first phase is like a green light when you telegraph messages of your availability to each other. It’s hot, it feels great – due to a rush of testosterone and oestrogen – and its effects are brief, just a few weeks or months at the most.
The attraction phase that follows is when lovers decide this particular person is ‘the one’. They’re committed, and ‘in love’; they think of each other all the time. This is a glorious, luminous period that highlights all the handsome/beautiful, good and lovable qualities of the other; they have no flaws, or if they do, it’s easy to overlook them.
This phase also feels great, again thanks to a range of chemicals flooding the brain, and it too has a use-by date. Apparently the brain can only cope with all this excitement for so long, usually for no more than 18 months to three years, when things change again.
And now the blinkers come off. Until now what the lovers have seen in each other has been largely their own creation, projections of what they wanted to see. If they weren’t ‘whole’, or complete, in themselves at the start (and who is?), they probably expected the other person to make them feel worthwhile. But it hasn’t happened.
My clients Lance and Debbie married during the attraction phase, otherwise known as infatuation, and now they’re having to come to grips with a different reality. They’re getting to know each other’s less appealing sides and adjusting to living with another unique individual from a completely different family culture.
They thought what they had was love, rather than a time-limited stage of love, and they’re feeling very uncertain and disappointed.
In a mature love people can ideally hold onto themselves, not being drawn into the drama or reacting defensively if their partner throws a tantrum. It’s a love of others for themselves, with all their quirks and vulnerabilities, rather than for some idea of how they might enhance one’s life. This kind of love is more possible when individuals can be authentic rather than what some marital therapists call their “pseudo selves”, trying to impress or please others and denying their real feelings and fears. The bottom line is that our relationships will only be as satisfactory as we are in ourselves.
Interestingly, Buddhists turn the truism about having to love yourself before you can love another on its head, saying you come to love yourself through the practice of loving others first. Now there’s food for thought.
After finding out what had brought Lance and Debbie to therapy and letting them vent their frustrations, I found what seemed an appropriate moment to ask what attracted them to each other in the first place. Smiles flickered across their faces as their memories flooded in.
“She was really pretty and smart and happy,” said Lance, sounding wistful.
“He was romantic and funny, he made me laugh,” said Deb. The atmosphere lightened, a break in the clouds.
Later it emerges that Deb came from an expressive family where arguments raged and were settled and forgotten. Lance’s family, on the other hand, went about life quietly, not feeling the need to talk much, just “knowing”, and certainly never raising their voices. His reluctance to argue drove Deb crazy because she never felt heard by him, which translated into feeling he didn’t care and further into not being “enough” for him. At the same time, her rages made Lance feel the end was near, which was frightening for him, and he protected himself by withdrawing even further.
When they could see how their different styles evolved and how their beliefs about arguing differed (to him it was disastrous, to her it was normal and no big deal), they were starting to have some chance of getting to the next stage of love. They also seemed to take heart from hearing me talk positively about the role of conflict and resolution in making relationships stronger. Conflict is part of the package, with the most successful couples the ones who can argue well.
Okay, so we’ve covered the phases of love that don’t last. What about the one that does? I will write about that in my next post. Till then, I wish you love and the ability to receive it.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Season's greetings, to my old and new friends
I’ll never forget Jennifer Isenhood. I was four and three-quarters and it was our first day at school. She had a round face, short thin hair with a cow-lick at the fringe and she bounced right up and asked if I would be her friend. Being that forthright would never have occurred to me. Jenny was five and a quarter.
“Okay.”
And that was the start of a friendship that lasted well into our teens, with me a sort of loyal Tonto to her swashbuckling Lone Ranger.
Eventually we developed completely different interests and aspirations and drifted apart, but the thought of Jenny and the adventures we shared still lifts my heart. I often wonder about contacting her after all these years.
Few people keep in touch with their best friends from childhood, but it does happen. A good friend of mine, now 67, has kept one friendship going since she was four years old.
I can’t help feeling slightly envious. Such a longstanding friendship seems like a wonderful security blanket to have in life. Even if most of the time you don’t see each other and don’t think about it, it must be comforting just knowing it’s there.
But friendship has another side too. Like the terms ‘motherhood’ or ‘family values’, ‘friendship’ can conjure up warm and fuzzy images of something noble or even self-sacrificing. And just like the other two concepts, it has some murky depths and the potential for pain.
Who doesn’t remember the heartache caused by falling out with a friend, particularly in those fickle, factional school years? Ouch. Somehow the rare times when the gang turned nasty or the best friend dropped you for someone else can be brought to mind much faster than the invariably more numerous good times.
One of the great things about friendship is that we choose it, which makes it different to most of our other relationships. But it does require knowing when to bite your tongue. At its best it’s full of give and take, live and let live, and wonderfully free of the obligations and rules that apply to family or work relationships, for example. At its worst we can find ourselves back in something like the button-pressing emotional blackmail that families do so well.
WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP?
Here are just a few definitions: “a single soul dwelling in two bodies” (ancient philosopher Aristotle); “the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words” (English novelist George Eliot, aka Mary Anne Evans); “the spirited inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him” (19th century philosopher Ralph Emerson); and, simply, “love made bearable” (American novelist Rita Mae Brown).
What do you expect from friends that you don’t expect from acquaintances? I polled my friends. “To remember what is important to me, to respect my interests and values,” said one, at the time offended by another friend who continually forgot her birthday. “To give me support and listen when I need it, even late at night at odd hours sometimes,” said another. Other responses included “acceptance of me as I am, with all my faults”; “to be discreet about confidences shared”; “insight, frankness, and the benefit of the doubt”; “to share tequila, personal stories, empathy and understanding”.
For myself, the ideal friend is someone with whom I can be as comfortable as I am when I’m on my own (which is pretty comfortable), with whom I can be at ease in silence, and who won’t be offended if I have to take a walk or a nap or read a book. It’s also, very importantly, about being able to share some secrets and have them stay secret, and in that I know I’m not alone.
WHAT MAKES IT GROW?
In the largest survey ever on the subject of friendship, covering 40,000 people, the US magazine Psychology Today found most people regarded loyalty and the ability to keep confidences as the most important components in friendship, followed by warmth, affection and supportiveness.
Being able to disclose your inner world – the fears, dreams, joys, aspirations and anxieties you wouldn’t want most people to know – and to have that part of you accepted and respected, even treasured, can be an enormous gift. And it’s what fosters a relationship. Once one person has confided in another, the way is open for the other person to share a confidence too, and so it goes back and forth and each time the pair grows a little more trusting and a little closer.
Everyone needs a friend like this. In fact, confiding in the right person can have benefits for your emotional health in much the same way that psychotherapy does. In psychotherapy the guarantee of confidentiality is essential in order to create a safe space where anything can be said and where all parts of you are allowed to show up, sometimes for the first time in your life.
Ideally your trust will be rewarded and you’ll receive the nourishment of knowing that at least one other person can handle your feelings with care.
DIFFERENT STROKES
Sociologist Graham Little, after interviewing a host of people about friendship, decided it could be divided into three categories – Social friendship (the most superficial one, basically at the level of belonging to the same club or workplace), Familiar friendship (operating like a mother-child nurturing relationship, with one party offering all the help, comfort and continuity) and Communicating friendship (the deepest one, reciprocal, unthreatened by our desire to just be ourselves, accepting us as we are).
Among researchers of the subject, the ideal one, Communicating friendship, is regarded as something we share with only a few of our friends. No matter how many acquaintances we have, they say, most people will only have between three and seven of these very close friends.
According to Graham Little, Communicating friends share a similar idea about friendship, are surer of their own individual identities and don’t need the constant reassurance that other friendships might.
“Communicating friends are built for change and for dealing with shame and what the world calls a fall from grace,” he says. They speak to the child in each other and “are partners in our still being kids, with everything in front of us, everything open to us or at least thinkable by us.”
WHAT ENDS A FRIENDSHIP?
Respondents to the Psychology Today survey nominated “feeling betrayed” as the most important reason for ending a friendship, along with discovering incompatible views on an issue they considered extremely important – for example, finding their friend held racist views they couldn’t tolerate.
But reasons for ending don’t have to be as dramatic as that. Many friendships just have a natural use-by date. They come and go at different times in our lives through different jobs and interests and life stages.
Other turning points that can cause friendships to founder or fade away include marriage or a new lover (as you’ll know if you ever couldn’t bear your friend’s new partner), the arrival of children, divorce, debt, favours, illness or a change in status that leads to insecurity and jealousy.
There’s no need to feel guilty if you leave a friendship you find unsatisfactory. Life’s short. Maybe you realise you just don’t have the energy or the time for this particular friend any more, even though the person is still perfectly okay with you. Maybe you’re not getting much nurturing in return.
COMPETITION AND ENVY
You’ve heard it before but it has to be said in this context too: The first person anyone needs to make friends with is herself. Yourself, myself, ourselves. These are the people who become Communicating friends (see Different Strokes, above) and are the ones who will still feel okay regardless of having friends who are more attractive in looks, more stylish, higher-earning, popular and so on. Knowing your own strengths and that you have qualities other people would like to have too is the greatest protection against envy. Be a good friend, live and let live and wish even more good looks, money and status for them.
BEING LIKED
Overall, the people we like the most are the people who like us, who cheer our successes and wish us many more, and enjoy the ways in which we are different from them. Good friends don’t need us to need them but they empathise when we hurt. They love us enough to (gently) give us an honest appraisal of how they perceive us. They are tactful without being false. They ground us, make the world a warmer place and provide those deeply gratifying moments when we feel truly known.
“Okay.”
And that was the start of a friendship that lasted well into our teens, with me a sort of loyal Tonto to her swashbuckling Lone Ranger.
Eventually we developed completely different interests and aspirations and drifted apart, but the thought of Jenny and the adventures we shared still lifts my heart. I often wonder about contacting her after all these years.
Few people keep in touch with their best friends from childhood, but it does happen. A good friend of mine, now 67, has kept one friendship going since she was four years old.
I can’t help feeling slightly envious. Such a longstanding friendship seems like a wonderful security blanket to have in life. Even if most of the time you don’t see each other and don’t think about it, it must be comforting just knowing it’s there.
But friendship has another side too. Like the terms ‘motherhood’ or ‘family values’, ‘friendship’ can conjure up warm and fuzzy images of something noble or even self-sacrificing. And just like the other two concepts, it has some murky depths and the potential for pain.
Who doesn’t remember the heartache caused by falling out with a friend, particularly in those fickle, factional school years? Ouch. Somehow the rare times when the gang turned nasty or the best friend dropped you for someone else can be brought to mind much faster than the invariably more numerous good times.
One of the great things about friendship is that we choose it, which makes it different to most of our other relationships. But it does require knowing when to bite your tongue. At its best it’s full of give and take, live and let live, and wonderfully free of the obligations and rules that apply to family or work relationships, for example. At its worst we can find ourselves back in something like the button-pressing emotional blackmail that families do so well.
WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP?
Here are just a few definitions: “a single soul dwelling in two bodies” (ancient philosopher Aristotle); “the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words” (English novelist George Eliot, aka Mary Anne Evans); “the spirited inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him” (19th century philosopher Ralph Emerson); and, simply, “love made bearable” (American novelist Rita Mae Brown).
What do you expect from friends that you don’t expect from acquaintances? I polled my friends. “To remember what is important to me, to respect my interests and values,” said one, at the time offended by another friend who continually forgot her birthday. “To give me support and listen when I need it, even late at night at odd hours sometimes,” said another. Other responses included “acceptance of me as I am, with all my faults”; “to be discreet about confidences shared”; “insight, frankness, and the benefit of the doubt”; “to share tequila, personal stories, empathy and understanding”.
For myself, the ideal friend is someone with whom I can be as comfortable as I am when I’m on my own (which is pretty comfortable), with whom I can be at ease in silence, and who won’t be offended if I have to take a walk or a nap or read a book. It’s also, very importantly, about being able to share some secrets and have them stay secret, and in that I know I’m not alone.
WHAT MAKES IT GROW?
In the largest survey ever on the subject of friendship, covering 40,000 people, the US magazine Psychology Today found most people regarded loyalty and the ability to keep confidences as the most important components in friendship, followed by warmth, affection and supportiveness.
Being able to disclose your inner world – the fears, dreams, joys, aspirations and anxieties you wouldn’t want most people to know – and to have that part of you accepted and respected, even treasured, can be an enormous gift. And it’s what fosters a relationship. Once one person has confided in another, the way is open for the other person to share a confidence too, and so it goes back and forth and each time the pair grows a little more trusting and a little closer.
Everyone needs a friend like this. In fact, confiding in the right person can have benefits for your emotional health in much the same way that psychotherapy does. In psychotherapy the guarantee of confidentiality is essential in order to create a safe space where anything can be said and where all parts of you are allowed to show up, sometimes for the first time in your life.
Ideally your trust will be rewarded and you’ll receive the nourishment of knowing that at least one other person can handle your feelings with care.
DIFFERENT STROKES
Sociologist Graham Little, after interviewing a host of people about friendship, decided it could be divided into three categories – Social friendship (the most superficial one, basically at the level of belonging to the same club or workplace), Familiar friendship (operating like a mother-child nurturing relationship, with one party offering all the help, comfort and continuity) and Communicating friendship (the deepest one, reciprocal, unthreatened by our desire to just be ourselves, accepting us as we are).
Among researchers of the subject, the ideal one, Communicating friendship, is regarded as something we share with only a few of our friends. No matter how many acquaintances we have, they say, most people will only have between three and seven of these very close friends.
According to Graham Little, Communicating friends share a similar idea about friendship, are surer of their own individual identities and don’t need the constant reassurance that other friendships might.
“Communicating friends are built for change and for dealing with shame and what the world calls a fall from grace,” he says. They speak to the child in each other and “are partners in our still being kids, with everything in front of us, everything open to us or at least thinkable by us.”
WHAT ENDS A FRIENDSHIP?
Respondents to the Psychology Today survey nominated “feeling betrayed” as the most important reason for ending a friendship, along with discovering incompatible views on an issue they considered extremely important – for example, finding their friend held racist views they couldn’t tolerate.
But reasons for ending don’t have to be as dramatic as that. Many friendships just have a natural use-by date. They come and go at different times in our lives through different jobs and interests and life stages.
Other turning points that can cause friendships to founder or fade away include marriage or a new lover (as you’ll know if you ever couldn’t bear your friend’s new partner), the arrival of children, divorce, debt, favours, illness or a change in status that leads to insecurity and jealousy.
There’s no need to feel guilty if you leave a friendship you find unsatisfactory. Life’s short. Maybe you realise you just don’t have the energy or the time for this particular friend any more, even though the person is still perfectly okay with you. Maybe you’re not getting much nurturing in return.
COMPETITION AND ENVY
You’ve heard it before but it has to be said in this context too: The first person anyone needs to make friends with is herself. Yourself, myself, ourselves. These are the people who become Communicating friends (see Different Strokes, above) and are the ones who will still feel okay regardless of having friends who are more attractive in looks, more stylish, higher-earning, popular and so on. Knowing your own strengths and that you have qualities other people would like to have too is the greatest protection against envy. Be a good friend, live and let live and wish even more good looks, money and status for them.
BEING LIKED
Overall, the people we like the most are the people who like us, who cheer our successes and wish us many more, and enjoy the ways in which we are different from them. Good friends don’t need us to need them but they empathise when we hurt. They love us enough to (gently) give us an honest appraisal of how they perceive us. They are tactful without being false. They ground us, make the world a warmer place and provide those deeply gratifying moments when we feel truly known.
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