Thinking about…friendships

So yeah, something “interesting” happened in one of my friendships. I had a big argument with someone, and here a few months later, I’m still fuming a little.

Here’s a thing: I try my hardest to avoid getting into arguments with anybody. Yet this woman deliberately went out of her way to create this argument – and that is actually what made me angry about the whole situation – that as usual, I had bent over backwards to avoid an argument, and she did what she did, including some manufactured outrage on her part, refusing to let the whole thing go, until I had to hang up the phone (this was a telephone argument). The whole thing was so preposterous, I was beyond unimpressed. To be fair to her, I will say that it was likely out of character on her part. How many times have I made the point on this blog, that character is everything?!  Well this was yet another incident that confirmed to me that I truly have to insist on earthshattering character – firstly from my own self, and then secondly from people I associate with…  Those words might seem hurtful for me to write of someone with whom I was in some sort of friendship, and it is probably just as hurtful for anyone male I may have spoken about here to read when I may have suggested that their character was less than outstanding. I cannot begin to imagine how painful my words may have been. Unfortunately however, it remains a sad sad truth (which I perhaps need to learn to express more graciously – I’m not being flippant about this) – if someone does not work aggressively to cultivate outstanding character, then they will not have outstanding character – even if they are genuinely a lovely person. And this is true of absolutely everyone, myself very much included.  This telephone argument was particularly sad because I was so scared of being shouted out that I did not say anything afterwards, otherwise I would have reassured my friend that she is sincerely a lovely person – and she is. So if you happen to stumble across this blog/hate-read it, and you read me shouting endlessly about Christlike character, please do not feel less than, or worthless. We are all immensely valuable in the sight of God – which is the only valuation that matters. So at times we are tempted to feel as if we are not worth very much, whether that be through our actions, or expressions of poor character, we can remember “God says that I am precious, God says that I am worth the blood of Christ – so I am!” And this remains true of you – and me – even when our character is at the very worst it can be. Nothing that you or I do can change our incredibly precious worth in the sight of God. So when I shout about anyone’s poor character, it does not mean that such a person is less valuable than someone with outstanding character, it just means that I find it less easy to live with them or make myself vulnerable to them.

This is the problem with friendships compared with romantic relationships.
When you are in a romantic relationship, you have the opportunity to get married to signify to one another and to the world at large the extent of your commitment to one another.  Furthermore, one party asks the other, and together they officially enter into this recognised relationship status. So I know that I’m your wife, and you know that you’re my husband. One person proposes to the other, and the other accepts. So marriage is a distinct relationship status. It is not something that you can unknowingly fall into. A legal husband cannot reasonably say to his legal wife: “I had no idea that you thought of me as your husband!” – or vice versa. (That said, even within this supposedly “official” status of marriage, there can still be lots of ambiguity, ambivalence and mismatched expectations – that would be the problem of marriage…)
With friendships however, you don’t get that official recognition – for the most part. Do people tend to propose to one another “will you be my best friend?!” Maybe unofficially in teenage years, with the exchange of cute “bff” merch, friendship rings etc. But how about outside your closest circle of friends? What if you want someone to be a friend, but not necessarily your best friend?  The point I am making is that friendship is necessarily a lot more fluid than a romantic relationship. Even if you are close friends with someone in childhood, even if you exchange those “bff” rings, there is still a high probability that you will drift apart even during those same teenage years, and form entirely new friendship circles if you enter university, and then again when you start working etc.

So because of this fluidity, and because of the lack of official cementing of relationship status, there is the very real possibility of the different parties in a friendship to have different perceptions of the status of a friendship. So one friend might think that the two of them are best friends, and the other thinks that this is a casual interaction with someone on the periphery of their friendship circle. Or even worse, they might look at their friend as a friendship “project”, being nice to someone who clearly does not have a lot of friends. I’ve come across a few stories online that relate to this. One that particularly sticks out in my mind is this: one girl expected to be asked to be in the bridal party of the girl she thought was her best friend. Needless to say her “best friend” had other ideas, leaving the original friend somewhat heartbroken. Isn’t it funny how much store we as humans set by these markers of friendship and status?!

So then, if one friend thinks that this is established as a close friendship, then they might feel entitled to expect things. But with me though, through long experience, I have realised that I have to be really intentional about my friendships, as I am with potentially romantic relationships. So I might find myself in the friendship equivalent of a situationship, where there just happens to be someone around, and you are friendly with them because you find yourself in geographical proximity to one another. However you would not make the effort to cultivate this as a close friendship if for whatever reason that geographical proximity ended.  Not because the person in question is not a genuinely kind person, but rather because I have very stringent standards regarding my friends, because life has taught me that I have to have those standards.

So yeah, that was what happened in the telephone argument. Now here’s the thing, you have to understand that there are literally one or two  – 5 tops – people that I would consider as close friends in the whole wide world. I try my hardest to be friendly towards everyone else. Part of the reason for having such a low number of close friends is this:  I’ve never been good at friendships. I find it hard to communicate with people, to express necessary things.  Friendships often make me feel vulnerable. So I need to feel really, really comfortable with someone to bring them into close friendship, to trust that they will be gracious if they have to tell me anything difficult.  These are the kinds of friendships I actively cultivate even where we are no longer in geographical proximity to one another.
So this woman I was arguing with was kinda demanding my time as if she and I were close friends. On one hand these issues are so tied up together. Insisting on phenomenal character from my friends means that I can generally trust people not to make those kind of insistent demands, where I have clearly expressed my own wishes, but to respect my clearly expressed boundaries. So the fact that she would try to infringe my boundaries is exactly why I would not choose her as a close friend and it validated the fact that I did not think of her that way. I was just reading before writing this article about how gaslighting is not necessarily a conscious action on the part of the gaslighter. And yes, gaslighting was a part of that argument, from her. However the point I want to make about that is that going beyond the gaslighting she may not have deliberately chosen any of her behaviour in that argument – but that does not change the fact that she acted that way.

In this particular argument time was a big factor, as I don’t remember experiencing in any other previous argument, back when I was having arguments more frequently. Here’s the thing: I am stupendously busy. Having an argument takes time, and effort, and concentration and headspace. It was genuinely the case that I did not have the time to have that argument. I’ve read in a few articles online about acknowledging someone’s feelings in an argument to validate the person.  That is all very well, but how much time exactly should someone expend validating someone’s feelings, in an argument that seems to go on forever? Please believe me that if I had not brought an end to this thing, she would have kept it going forever. We would probably still be arguing right now. On one hand I genuinely respect your feelings. On the other hand, when I say I’m busy, I mean I’m busy.  There is only so much time I can dedicate to an argument that refuses to be resolved, that just keeps going around and around in circles. There were many things that I could have said and I really wanted to say to address the issues, if I thought that she would listen to me. However, I felt as if I could not risk bringing even a tiny thing up, because I suspected that she would just have used that as an entry point to freshly lobby those same accusations at me.

So it’s a shame that that is where that particular friendship ended. It is doubly a shame as she made a really big effort in that friendship.  But I just folded in upon myself in an act of self-preservation. Is there anything else that I could have done?  But long story short, if there is anyone out there who wants to build strong friendships, please please please believe me. You need to work on your character, as I also need to work on mine. Really. Even if you are the loveliest person on earth. Otherwise as in this situation there might come a time when your character fails, and all your hard work of friendship could be lost just like that.
Another thought: is it possible to lead someone on in friendship, as it is in a romantic relationship? IE did I lead her on, knowing that she and I could never truly be close friends?  I emphatically did not.  Rather what was the case was that she kind of foisted her friendship on me, without giving me a chance to really refuse. This is actually a bit controlling.  And just around the time of the big argument I was reading about generosity as a tool of manipulation, and I was thinking – yep!  Which is perhaps a little mean of me to say because she genuinely was generous, but all the same there was always a slightly controlling edge to the whole thing – until the big argument, when it became a very controlling edge.  So because of all the effort you have foisted on me, you think that we are closer than we are, and you think you have a right to make demands of my time? Actually the issue there was not even the time thing. It was more my fear of being shouted at, and also not knowing what she might be capable of, if I dared to try to be honest. Someone please tell me what more I could have done.