Friendships in Our Lives
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive."
Anais Nin
Key Concepts in this Chapter:
Friends of the Heart
Friends of the Road
Internal Tensions
Relationship Rules
For most of us, friends are important. Friends help us pass time, figure out problems, grow personally, celebrate moments of joy, and get through hard times. Across differences in race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, most of us expect to provide intimacy, acceptance, trust, practical assistance, and support. These are common threads in diverse friendships. However, people differ in how they express trust, intimacy, acceptance, and support in friendship.
In this chapter, we explore what friendships are, how they work, and how they differ among people. To launch our discussion, we identify common features of friendship and then point out variations across cultures and social communities. Second, we explore the typical developmental path of friendships and some of the common rules for friendships. Next, we consider pressures on friendships and how we can deal with them. Guidelines for effective communication between friends conclude the chapter.
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Continue down the page a bit where the chapter begins under "The Nature of Friendship". The first couple of lines state:
"Friendship is a unique relationship. Unlike most relationships, friendship is voluntary." (emphasis mine) Some folks feel like they are 'stuck' in friendships, when in reality, friendships are voluntary.
Page 254 explains the idea of emotional closeness. It explains that sex and gender influence HOW we experience closeness. There are a couple of ideas here: 1). Closeness through dialogue, and 2). Closeness through doing.
When the book talks about closeness through dialogue, it refers to communities which emphasize talk as a primary path to intimacy. (Feminine socialization)
The book also covers the idea of closeness through doing. "Closeness through doing often is the primary, but not the only, emphasis in men's friendships." (Masculine socialization)
Personal Note: When my husband and I get together with either his brother and wife, or my sister and husband, guess what we do? My sister (or sister-in-law) sit around and chat, go shopping and chat, grab coffee and chat.......do we see a pattern here? The guys go 'do' something, as they are generally not content to sit around and chat with us.
A little glimpse into my house when we have family/friends over for a BBQ or for dinner will show that everyone arrives around the same time, and congregate in the living room. Most of us take a seat, and chat for a little while over some snacks. Then, most of the time what happens is the guys will gather around the BBQ (doing), while the ladies stay inside and chat and/or prepare food inside the house as we continue to carry on our conversations (dialogue). I tend to call it "worshiping the BBQ", but really, it's male bonding time as they cook. They talk about technique, recall other times we have BBQ'd, and socialize by doing. Whereas the ladies stay inside the house and talk about many other things, rarely talking about food prep. We engage in dialogue.
The Development of Friendship (starts on pg. 260)
The majority of friendships work through a set of stages. These stages are:
1). Role-Limited Interaction. Friendships begin with an initial encounter, either planned or accidental.
2). Friendly Relations occur when we spend time checking out whether we could develop a more lasting relationship with this person.
3). In the third stage, we work toward creating a longer-term friendship by starting to disclose our feelings, attitudes, values, thoughts, and interests. Moving toward friendship.
4). Nascent friendship is when we being to think of ourselves as friends and to work out our own rules for the relationship.
5). When we are in the stabilized friendship stage, we have determined that this relationship will continue, take future encounters for granted, and work at creating a high level of trust. Relationship rules are unspoken understandings that regulate how people interact.
6). When one or both people stop investing in the relationship, get pulled in different directions by family or career demands, or violate trust or a rule, the friendship can begin to wane; communication can become defensive if it exists at all. Waning Friendship.
The chapter also covers the idea of "Pressures on Friendships" which is quite interesting. I won't discuss these ideas in this post, but I'm convinced that you'll find this section very interesting. Don't skip reading it. You'll probably find yourself nodding your head in agreement quite a bit through this section.
I DO want to focus on a short section at the end of the chapter titled "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" (pg. 270-271). Starting on page 268 is a section called "Guidelines for Communication between Friends", and is incredibly useful! There are four specific guidelines for enhancing communication in friendships, one of them being the idea of "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff".
Pg. 270 - "The 18th century writer Samuel Johnson once remarked that most friendships die not because of major violations and problems but because of small slights and irritations that slowly destroy closeness."
This statement is so, so true! Is it not? It's not the big things that take down a friendship, rather it's the small things. The same can be said for relationships other than friendships. What about marriages, sibling relationships, professional relationships, etc....?
What a fabulous chapter!!! I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.
Reminder: Check out the links I posted to the "Useful Links" page at the top of my blog. I just finished updating links for chapter 10.
The Blogging Prof.
