Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    I've never understood something that seems to be an accepted part
    of our culture.  Specifically, I've never understood how one makes
    friends.  I have heard people say they wanted to "work on the
    frienship" with another person, and couples discussing "building
    friendships in the neighborhood", and I know how to do those things,
    but that doesn't seem to produce strong friendships.  The strong
    friendships I have seemed to be automatic, no effort required, no
    ambiguity.  They also seem to be independent of time - that months
    and years can pass without much contact, but the depth of
    communications is restored in moments when contact occurs.  I've
    heard people describe people they knew for a long time before 
    developing strong friendships, but I have not experienced that.

         It's funny, but this topic is a re-occuring theme at the men's
    support group I moderate. At one meeting I handed out paper and
    pencils and asked the guys to white down what the word "Friend"
    meant to them and, then how many people that they could truly call
    friends. The responses ranged from having no friends to having
    too many to count. 
        Some people call others friends who they just may chat with
    in the hallways at work or have a drink together after work. My
    definition is more conservative. To me a friend is someone who
    I have a regular ongoing relationship with, someone I share 
    interests and a lot of time with, a person I trust and who trusts
    me, a person who's company I really enjoy, a person I accept and
    like/love just as they are, someone I'de do a favor for without
    having to think about it and ask nothing in return because I know
    that they'de do the same, someone who's truly interested in you
    and vice versa.
        I can only claim to have one or two such relationships at one
    time. There was a married couple I had become friendly with long
    ago where every visit was something special, where on both our
    parts the evening just wasn't long enough; we laughed and cried
    together, shot pool and played ball together, worked on cars and
    his house together and just spent a lot of quality time in each
    other's company. The friendship cooled when he became a high 
    powered executive and his priorities shifted.
        True friendship is truly magic! The few times I've met such
    friends was totally by fate. I'de be at a party or other function
    and there would be a man or woman that for some reason, was just
    drawn to me or me ot them, no explanation. To me friendship has
    been more important than s.o.'s at times, since friendship is
    pure and unhampered by eros, jealousy and other romantic muddlings.
        One close friend I met was by accident. I was sent to another
    facility ot gather data and the man I met with asked ot have
    coffee. He became a close friend as well as mentor to me and maybe
    what he said holds true when I asked how we became friends. He
    basicly said that maybe we were friends inn another lifetime and
    this was a sort of reunion. Of all the real friends I've had none
    were contrived, there was no work involved....they were merely
    there and some mysterious chemistry drew us together.
    
    
    Ray

    	Unfortunately, I haved lived the life of a traveler...being
    somewhere else all the time.  When I grew up in California, I moved
    so much that I didn't know anyone longer than two or three years.
    I was lucky to stay in Arizona for over nine years, and had one
    very close friend...we did everything together, right down to loving
    the same woman, but we still keep in touch now that I've moved to
    Massachusetts.  It's good to have such quality friends, even if
    it's only one.  I'm happy with my friends, I don't know what I'd
    do without them!
    
    				Phil
    

    My mom always told me "if you can have one good friend then you
    are richer than the man with all the riches of the world".
    
    So I ain't got no money.....but there is one thing I have got.
    

    And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.  And he answered, saying
    Your friend is your needs answered.
    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
    And he is your board and your fireside.
    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your
    mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all
    expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
    When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
    as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening 
    of the spirit.
    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery
    is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
    And let your best be for your friend.
    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
    Seek him with hours to live.
    For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, 
    and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds 
    its morning and is refreshed.

   by Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet

    Guess I have my own idea of what a friend is (just like everyone else
    does!).  First of all, to me a friendship is, by definition, for life.
    It's love, pure and simple.  That word really says it all. 
    
    Bob, I agree with you that it isn't something you consciously "work on"
    -- the magic just seems to happen.  I DO feel, however, that a
    friendship grows deeper and deeper over time, as the two people trust
    more and feel less and less of the risk that Steve was talking about. 

    I have never seen a truly happy marriage where the two partners
    weren't best friends.  I believe the best chance for a successful
    marriage comes when the two people become best friends before they
    start a romantic relationship.
        
    Ray, you said a friend is someone you spend a great deal of time with.
    I have one friend whom I have loved for 13 years.  I have gone as long
    as 2 years without laying eyes on him, but he still remained my friend
    during that time and our relationship continued to grow.  Another
    friend of even more (17) years I see for maybe 2 - 3 days a year, but
    we still grow constantly closer.  Magic?  Yep, I believe it truly
    is.
    
    One of the most rewarding things in life is to develop a new
    friendship, to feel that kinship of the soul that makes you KNOW this
    relationship is real and lasting, to watch it grow almost as if you're
    an outside observer and the relationship itself is a living, developing
    thing.  It only happens a few times in a lifetime.
    
    Magic?  Without a doubt!    
    						Pat
    

    RE: .9  The part on friends and lovers
    
>    > when the two people become best friends before they start a romantic ...
>
>    Based on personal history, we'd rather keep the friend and forego
>    the romance.  Too many good friendships are ruined by romance ...

    Pat - I agree with your observation that happy marriages with any sort
    of history are composed of best friends, but I am fairly confident
    that they didn't all start out that way.  There is a popular song
    on the radio that asserts that people can be friends and lovers,
    but that doesn't match my experience (sample size = 1).  I share
    the eagles belief that friendships are too valuable to risk on romance.
    
    

I hope the following won't be harsh or unkind.  That's not my intent.  But, as 
they say, my button has been pushed by comments that friendships are doomed to 
end and not last and that friendships and relationships don't mix.

If happy marriages are built on the foundation of a deep and abiding 
friendship, then how the H*LL will there be any happy marriages or 
relationships if everyone is afraid to "risk on romance" as was elsewhere 
stated.

I don't think we should all go out and try to convert all our really good 
friendships into romantic affairs.  But to slam the door shut and make a 
blanket statement that we NEVER would even consider that a really solid and 
special friendship might be the basis of that once-in-a-lifetime relationship 
most of us want is to be ultra/ultra safe.  How can anyone expect to have a 
relationship which is anywhere near as satisfying as those special friendships 
if that isn't the basis.  Does not compute.  Illogical, illogical, illogical!

Maybe I'm sick, but I *WANT* any relationship I have to be based on such a rare 
and deep and honest thing as friendship.  I wouldn't be happy with less.  I 
wasn't.  And I'm not.  Greedy?  Perhaps.  Sick?  I think not. 

I think that a lot of this "we're *JUST* friends" talk and "let's keep it 
Platonic" and "we have such a special friendship, let's not *ruin* it" is a 
complex defense mechanism which we use to avoid being hurt, to avoid taking a 
risk.  There's no guarantee that a romance will work out and we don't want to 
risk a friendship.  We are *scared*!  Let's just call a spade and spade.  We're 
afraid to allow outselves to be vulnerable.  We've been hurt.  We don't want to 
get hurt again.  We probably will be hurt again.  

I do it too.  I'm not preaching about this from a theoretical level.  And I 
don't practice what I preach.  But let's at least try and be honest about it 
and not deceive ourselves!

Steve

    RE: 118.11    Don't scrap romance because it is risky
    
    A clearer statement might be:
    
    If a relationship doesn't have enough energy to turn itself into
    a romance without my/our conscious commitment, then it is not
    energetic enough for *ME* to risk romance in it.  
    
    It seems to me that looking for romance is like looking for a beautiful
    sunrise.  Other than opening my eyes at an appropriate time in the
    morning, I don't even understand the forces that make some a murky
    grey fog and other awesome displays of beauty, and believing
    that I can cause or prevent either is superstition.

    .8
    
        Well, for me at least friedns are people I see on a regular
    basis. I've had a lot of friends move to other parts of the country.
    There was the initial flurry of lettes and phone calls, maybe a
    visit or two. I did m,y best to keep up my half of the friendship,
    but once the other party got settled into his/her new environment,
    their half of the relationship stopped.
        I've had friends leave New England and years later come back.
    Both of us would get excited over the reunion, only to get dis-
    appointed that one or both of us had lost the magic, maybe we
    were not good friends in the first place
    
    .9
    
        I think what's sad is that friends come and go, due in part
    to being victim of a highly mobile society. When I was a kid most
    folks grew up in Lowell and stayed there, now jobs, marriages, etc
    take people all over the country. Now I develope a friendship and
    the other person moves to the opposite coast. It's funny, I've stayed
    within 35 miles of Lowell, even though I have no friends in the
    area. one thing I find is that it is very hard to make new friends
    in New England. People in the midwest and west are so much more
    open and friendly, but I would never want to live either place.
    caught in a bind!
    
    Ray

    C. S. Lewis, an author I admire but mostly do not agree with, said
    that while the "image" of lovers is two people staring into eachother's
    eyes, the "image" of friends is two people both looking at the same
    thing (_The_Four_Loves_).  Here I think he is correct: friendship
    requires a lively shared interest.  When your old camping buddy
    comes back for a visit, but both of you haven't been camping since
    you left Boy Scouts,  the shared interest is dead.
    
    My mother has keep an immense number of friends from her college
    days; she and they used to talk about literature, now they write
    letters back and forth about it.  My college days are a lot more
    recent, but I'm not in touch with the people I knew then--but then,
    we shared no lively interest, only the same dorm or class.
    
    				-John Bishop

    
    RE: .14  "disinteresting buddies"
    
    Oh, I don't know, Donald and I have remained close friends ever since
    our boy scout days more than twenty-five years ago.  He was our
    best man and I was their's.  We don't do as much camping now but
    we've always been there for each other through good times and bad.
                     
                     
    And my mother-in-law still gets together several times a year with
    the women she was in Campfire Girls with more sixty years ago.
    
    

Yesterday was a *terrible* day!  Everything went wrong.  Everything I touched
went bad.  I couldn't believe it.  To cap things off, the computer went
down--without warning--and ate five pages I had just written!  I was so
mad, I *evolved!*

When I got home, there was mail waiting for me from some very close friends
in California.  They didn't send a letter, but they did send me about 3
week's worth of "Calvin and Hobbs" clipped from The San Jose Mercury (this
is my all-time favorite comic strip and is not found in any Seattle
newspapers).

What an upper!  My heart soared like an eagle! (apologies to Steven Dana).

Don't you just love friends?

John M.

In the dozen or so years we've lived in this country, we have
made many acquaintances, but very few friends (in one case, we
made "semi friends", but then we had to move away and that was
that).

I always wondered why, since we left such a large number of
friends behind, these dozen years ago. Adi (my decidedly better
half) says that friendship takes time to grow. Just like all other
Americans (more or less all 240 millions of them) we have moved
around too much and that prevented the formation of the substances
Friendship is made of...

Four years ago (after eight years) I went back for a first visit,
and was immediately drawn back into the same pool of people, as if
the eight years had never happened.

There was Amos. A couple of years before, Adi was there for a
visit and had told him we were thinking about buying our first
house. The guy dug out ten grand and thrust the money into her
hands. That's all I have, he said, take it and bring it back when
you can. She had a hard time convincing him we are not THAT hard
up in far America...

There was Dagi. Many years before, he and his lady dropped in
late one evening (no one ever called first, in those days), while
we were having a fight. They sensed the tension in the air and left,
taking our two kids with them. Have a good fight (he said with a grin),
then have an undisturbed conciliation.

There was Giora. He had occupied the bunk below mine during our
Air Force stint. Later, before I got married, he let me use his
apartment, for l-o-n-g evenings, while he waited outside. Once
or twice, in the rain. There was Shim'on. He exacted the same
favour from us, after we got married.

There was Dan. We gave parties at his house, since we lived in a
dinky two room cellar. But we always invited both him and the misus.

There was Azaria. He would take the same cheap hotel with us, on
all those trips we took together, even though he could afford --and
was use to-- much better accommodations. He usually was a bit gruff
about it, but that's Azaria for you. I had known his wife, Ruby,
long before he did (she and I were once approached in the small
hours of the morning, sitting on a bench on the boulevard, by a
police patrol, who wanted to know what we were doing there. We had been
actually just talking but Ruby sweetly said that I was raping her).

There was Hanan. He'd never done anything special for me, nor I
for him; yet, not a week went by that we didn't see each other, one
way or another.

There were many others. People we had known for years and years.
People I didn't have to ask for anything - just tell them I want it.
People that would take the last shirt off my back, if they wanted it,
knowing full well it was okay. People I could say anything to - they
would listen, understand, offer comment and be there for me.

We never realised we were friends. God knows we never worked for it.
It just happened.

I have learned to live without THAT brand of friends. I've learned
to substitute friendliness for friendship (at least, for the most
part. My best friend is still living with me). I've come to the
conclusion that having friendS is awfully good for the human soul,
but not absolutely mandatory.

-- Ron

RE: .-1

  > (My best friend is still living with me). I've come to the conclusion
  > that having friendS is awfully good for the human soul, but not
  > absolutely mandatory.
    
    Would you still believe that last sentence if you had no "best friend"
    living with you?
    
    Just curious...
    
    								Pat

    Friends are people who will try to be patient when they feel impatient
    and for friendship's sake find patience.
    
    Friends are people who will try to cheer you when they feel sad
    and for friendship's sake find cheer.
    
    Friends are people who will try to love you when they feel unloving
    and for friendship's sake find love.
    
    
    			Taken from Abbey Press, St. Meinrad, Ind.
    
    Yes, Bob it is truly magic!

RE: .18

That is indeed, friendship...

Jim.

RE: .19


>  > (My best friend is still living with me). I've come to the conclusion
>  > that having friendS is awfully good for the human soul, but not
>  > absolutely mandatory.
>    
>    Would you still believe that last sentence if you had no "best friend"
>    living with you?

Sure. Living alone is harder, but still possible to do, as so many 
loney people can attest to.

-- Ron

    
    
    	Living alone does not mean one has to be or is lonely. Frankly,
    I prefer living alone. I have no one to clean up after, no one to
    move things around the way I don't want them moved, no surprises
    at 1am (like a cat that a roommates SO brings over to live with
    us - I don't like cats), I can leave the dishes in the sink for
    a while, I can walk around the house naked without having to worry
    about a roommates SO, I can play music nice and loud, etc.. There
    are MANY advantages to living alone.. Come February I'll be living
    alone and loving every minute of it! And I won't be lonely!
    
    							mike

    Way to go Mike!  I agree with that totally.  Don't get me wrong,
    I enjoy friends but they remain my friends if I DON'T live with
    them.  
    
    In college, dorm roommates are chosen so it is sort of a *forced*
    friendship (well, relationship, but let's not get picky).  I didn't
    much like rooming with a Junior when I was a freshman and the day
    I accidently knocked over her $4.50 electric clock and she wanted
    me to buy her one of those Digital ones (then $10.50), I said "you're
    crazy lady and I'm moving out into a Single room".  Since that time,
    I lived with a roommate once (in Natick, two bedroom) and that was
    awful because her "sexual activities" prevented me from my basic
    living needs: shower, food, even *my clothing*.  Her boyfriends
    used *our* shower when *I* needed to get to work [why didn't they
    take one together in the pm], he ate *my* food and didn't offer
    to pay a thing.  I was on a tight budget, had very little assertive
    power in me to tell her that rooming together is a two way street.
    I figured, I like myself, know myself and can (financially) afford
    to live on my own, so, why not.  Which I did and I love every minute
    of it: I have three rooms that may be small but the rent is cheap,
    my apartment can be messy or neat (I like neat but who cares, right?)
    and there is no one there, young or old, to tell me what to do.
    
    I will mention that moving "on my own" was a way to separate from
    the "nest" and gain some independence.  My mother warns me that
    it is more difficult adjusting to living with another person (when
    I get married) the longer I remain on my own.  She says, you'll
    get used to having "your own way" but when you live with the man
    you love and marry, he will have some "own way" things to let go
    of too.  Compromise, that's the key.
    
    But, until then, I'm enjoying my single freedom.
    
    Hey, Mike, watch out for peeping Toms.
                                            

    re:24
    
    NEVER COMPROMISE!!!!!!! no one wins in a compromise
    
    Learn to negotiate so the important needs of all can be met

    
    al