Facing Into Friendship Fears
How to Create and Enliven Friendships in an Alienating Age (Vol. 4; Issue 47)
Unless confined by five-point restraints in a locked psychiatric unit, you cannot miss the alienation sweeping contemporary culture. You see it daily: People walking on streets idiotically staring into their phones with glazed eyes; others speaking loudly to unknown listeners. A decade ago, you’d think them psychotic. You might’ve called 911. But now, you quickly realize, they’re loudly and rudely talking to someone else. Some hold their phones to their faces, walking, videoconferencing, jaywalking in absurd poses, chancing horrific deaths with severed limbs and bloody torsos.
Few, if any, say “hey” or “hello” anymore. They’ve withdrawn into private worlds. The unprecedented level of estrangement makes personal friendships more important than ever. We live, as we’re repeatedly reminded, in a pandemic of loneliness. It is this widespread social withdrawal, disaffection, and indifference that motivates my discussion of friendship. I’m also galvanized by a wish to help those who lack friends and need help making them.
Best captured by pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1992), creating and maintaining friendships creates fear. He writes:
It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.
Oh, what genius in a short sentence! On one hand, we all prefer to keep our personal vulnerabilities private; on the other, we desperately wish to be seen, known, understood.
When confronting the perils of friendship, the beckoning appeal of delightful retreat must be set aside. Many prefer to work, watch television, hear podcasts, cultivate gardens, collect stamps, knit sweaters, bake cookies, read books, cook stews, sew quilts, meditate quietly, sing softly, play music, do yoga, or draw, paint, or sculpt. These solo activities always await.
One person I know, Joey, has several friends. But he “forgets” to touch base with them. Such forgetting, obviously, represents just another form of avoidance. As it turns out, Joey was the third of three sons but the next eldest was 10 years his senior. He felt terrifically pained and alone when they went off to college. The wound still burns, and the rejection of it leads him to understandably fear re-injury. Another person, who often complains about loneliness, ghosts her friends for weeks at a time. She, too, is afraid. She reaches out when “feeling desperate” while unaware of the hurt her disappearances cause. Every appeal for love is an exposure of the throat. What if the person doesn’t call you back? What if it takes them two months to do so?
Despite frequent fun times with friends, it’s the dark vulnerability that binds. The sharing of insecurities, personal losses, childhood traumas, failures, and betrayals binds people to one another. These tender experiences later merge into memories that strengthen bonds further. Those of you lucky enough to have intimate friends understand. Your friendships have histories, literally.
Side point:
If you missed out on losses, trauma, or failures, you nonetheless walk on a cliff’s edge like all humans aware of their mortality. Death spares no one. Consciously or unconsciously, we feel anxiety about the uneasiness of existence. And, life brings oft-painful, unexpected changes. World-renowned, intellectual heavyweight Mike Tyson said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” With whom might you discuss your smashed nose? We’re social animals. The warmth and comfort of friendship salves.
But making friends, as noted, calls for facing into the discomfort of vulnerability. It’s always risky. Retreating in defense works, in a way, but only by hiding how it makes life worse. Isolation dangerously stresses body-minds, fracturing them and causing diseases from depression to diabetes.
Reciprocity forms a second and equally important theme for friendship. It’s tricky, particularly early in a new relationship, to balance degrees of vulnerable self-disclosure. A too-eager party, thrilled to have someone interested in them, might sabotage by sharing too much. The other party might feel overwhelmed, turned off, frightened. Readers experienced in friendships understand the dilemma here. What a relief to feel found while, at the same time, listening as much as hearing.
Reciprocity remains relevant throughout the life of a friendship, which, necessarily, twists and turns. Not all friendships last. People change. They move. They get distracted. They grow apart from you. The key lies in managing the degree of reciprocity. It’s not a specific calculation (Karbelnig, 2017). You can’t keep arithmetic track. One must keep aware of the oscillations in levels of give and take. I often hear stories from persons whose significant others speak much but listen little. Such imbalances pervert reciprocity. Friendship depends not only responsiveness, but on sensitivity to the balance of love.
In his book, The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1996) identifies four qualities needed for friendship:
Discipline, humility, faith, and courage.
Discipline means breaking the habit of retreat; humility requires knowing your needs; faith involves believing in the possibility of “being seen.” And courage, naturally, refers to chancing rejection.
The Roman stoic philosopher Seneca (63/1969) captures key requirements for friendship when writing:
Before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment. Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship, but when you have decided to admit that person, welcome him or her with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with your friend as with yourself.
Seneca’s words entice consideration of another topic, namely the parallel worlds of self- and other-knowledge. A solid friendship needs keen awareness of the authentic self; it also requires sound self-governance. I defer such an expedition for another time, fearing already an imbalance with you, dear reader-friends, who’ve reached the end of this particular issue.
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References
Fromm, E. (1995). The Art of Loving: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Love. New York: Thorsons.
Karbelnig, A.M. (2017). The geometry of intimacy: love triangles and couples therapy. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(1):70–82.
Seneca, L. A. (1969). Letters from a Stoic. Trans. R. Campbell. New York: Penguin Classics. (Original work published in approximately 63 ACE).
Winnicott, D. W. (1992). Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.