Friendships

Position: 54°18’39.4″N 9°40’56.9″E

Friendships form the backbone of our emotional lives. Aesthetes and rock stars may argue that love is life’s spinal column. But love, like time, is fleeting. Even the most passionate relationships will fail if the parties fall out of friendship. One of the young folks in our orbit recently asked us about the wisdom of marrying a friend. We told them that marrying your best friend is generally your best choice if you want to be in a committed, exclusive, monogamous, long-term relationship.^[1] Or if you are getting married.

Carol and I have been counting our blessings recently. At the top spot blessings-wise are our friends. They provide us with guidance, support, patience and beds to sleep in. We do our best to reciprocate. We happily do the dishes, replace light bulbs, look after dogs and mow lawns. And, because we live on Aleta, we will swap beds for berths – providing you bring your own Dramamine.

One of the peculiarities of American culture is how difficult making new friends can be. Ostensibly friendly and outgoing, many Americans seem to feel they have enough friends when they’ve graduated college. Friends in this case being folks you hang out with for more than a couple of hours every three months.

Glory Days

At a time when social media reconnects people to their past relationships, people are lonelier than ever.^[2] Men, however, don’t reach out as often to friends and networks in times of emotional need. Kind of like not asking for directions, women are better at engaging at times of vulnerability than men are. Relocating can be particularly problematic for the childless. That’s because kids often provide an introduction and bridge that brings parents together and eventually form friendships. The kid vector approach in these cis-normative times inevitably benefits mothers more than dads. Consequently, men often feel more isolated than women^[3].

Then again, like The Boss says, legions of people never got past their high school glory days.  Perhaps those that moved on and dropped their tenuous connection to their adolescence find themselves in a middle ground where past relationships lose their meaning and the effort of establishing new ones takes too much energy. Making friends became a little easier for us as we aged out of child rearing and corporate distractions. We reached a point in life when folks start valuing community over personal achievement. And community is vital for everyone, not just sailors.

Figuring it Out

A rare few value their friendships enough that they make a point of keeping in touch regularly with their networks, new and old. Those of us on the receiving end of such largesse are grateful to be remembered. Cadence in relationships is a thing. People have distinctly different communication rhythms. Some are long, some are short. Friends figure it out.

Friends are not like relatives. No child one chooses their relatives. Siblings and ancestors are a gift given to you by your parents. Your family relationships exist whether you like them or not. There’s not much you can do about it, other than leaning in or leaning out. If you’re really fortunate, your relatives become your friends.

Because friendships are voluntary, they take time and energy and patience. Most of all, they take trust. For friendships to work, both parties must give freely and accept their friends for the fascinating, complex, generous and mindful human beings they are.

Thank You

The past 18 months have been especially challenging and we have relied on our friends more than ever for their love and support as we worked through elder care, doggy adoption, itinerancy, getting Aleta restarted, among many other things. Without them, without you, we don’t know what we would have done. Knowing our friends are there for us makes it possible for us to weather life’s storms.

This is a long way of saying thank you to you – our friends – our community. Thank you for taking us in, accepting our flaws and foibles, and for supporting our dreams and adventures. Thank you for being you.

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^{[1] Thank 21st century sexual politics for this litany of qualifying terms.
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2025/01/16/men-women-and-social-connections/
[3] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-01-15/men-friendship-gen-z-loneliness}

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