Well, I’ve finally wised up. I used to think people were my enemies. I used to see everybody as strangers. Now, as I face death, I know differently. The only enemy I have is myself. The only stranger I meet is the friend I haven’t yet made inside myself. You know, deep down, we’re all the same. We dream, we hope, and we suffer the same way. You and I have a lot more friends out there than we dare to realize. Just look at the stars in the sky at night – that’s how many friends you and I have! Every night, I look up at the sky and I see in each of the stars some friend who has loved me. I let the starlight shine over me because I need it now more than ever. —Texas death row inmate
Friendship is the lifeblood of our existence. Having somebody honestly and regularly care about us gives our lives meaning and value well beyond any difficult circumstances we’re in. People in 12 Step programs often regard recovering friends as their “Higher Power.” Indeed, true friendship has been recognized throughout history. The Roman philosopher Cicero once said that a friend is a “second self.” Aristotle described friendship as a “single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Although there are many types of friends—casual friends, fair-weather friends, and friends in high places—the most significant are intimate friends. Intimate friends are people who generally accept us as we truly are and are honest about behaviors they cannot support. Whatever friendship means to us, we all need it. As the vignette above illustrates, true friendship is ours to find and is all around us. Someone always loves us.
Caring friends can enormously improve our self-care and overall resilience to stress.
The magic of friendship
Most of us already know how much happier times are when we have someone to share them with. Some of us are aware of how less stressful life can be when we have somebody to confide in who will not judge us. Even the toughest knocks of life can roll off us when we have someone to comfort and inspire us. In fact, most stress comes not from what happens to us but from how we treat ourselves while handling difficulties. Caring friends can enormously improve our self-care and overall resilience to stress.
There are many hidden values to friendship. True friends often represent undiscovered and unattended parts of ourselves. For example, many married people report a certain loneliness even when their partnerships are going well. Parts of ourselves may be suppressed in the comfortableness of good relationships. True friends magically dislodge such comfortableness and bring out hidden parts of ourselves. Similarly, friends may be there for us in ways that family relatives are only obliged to do. When we’re nurtured by non-relatives, we’re more prone to learn what we deserve from relationships. What’s more, so many of us have diminished ourselves and stayed stuck out of a sense of family loyalty, true friends support and propel us to bust out of our ruts and to be true to ourselves even when our relatives don’t approve. Such gifts come only with feeling enormous grief—the growing pains of life.
Intimate friendships both inoculate us from the myriad stresses of living and provide us with magical powers that allow us to transcend our circumstances. It’s not wonder that many of us find it difficult to find true friends as we avoid our grief and are not yet ready for the rewards of such friendships.
Friendships in the age of disconnection
If anything, true friendships in our modern world are more necessary than ever. Too many of us have been misled into believing that technology will bring us all closer together. Instead, those of us who worship at the altar of technology are more disconnected than ever from others and ourselves. For example, thanks to computer technology, the world has shrunk. Within seconds we can chat with anyone in the world who is hooked up to the Internet-an amazing feat. Some people do benefit from such forms of connection. Unfortunately, the allure of having innumerable, risk-free, anonymous, and non-committed relationships on the Internet is more than many of us can handle. People who engage in endless online communications become excited about the prospects of not having to expose all their personal limitations. However, it’s exactly the exposing of our humanness that allows us to feel genuinely connected to others and more accepting of ourselves. Internet communication often results in shallow, interchangeable, unreal, and sometimes exploitive connections with others. Consequently, Internet aficionados often become disillusioned and more empty, and they lose confidence in their ability to sustain relationships. People are not websites. The cheap thrills of chatting online cannot replace the risky, flesh-and-blood connections of real friendships. Lasting satisfaction in friendships and self-confidence-true magic-can only come from exposing those unacceptable parts of ourselves to real live human beings.
If anything, true friendships in our modern world are more necessary than ever.
Men and women in friendships
Men and women go about friendships differently. Women generally have face-to-face friendships with other women where emotional sharing is an integral part of the connection. Men seem to thrive on side-to-side friendships with other men where performing a common task is primary. Such companionship serves as an often passionate, non-verbal emotional connection. Men see distance with other men as a gesture of safety and trust, while women see distance as a threat or possible rejection. Women have more intimate friendships than men do and men often have difficulties emotionally sharing with other men, whom they see as too competitive or critical. Men frequently say their only real friends are women. Women often see their connections with women as being their only hope against the uncertainties of other relationships. Women frequently lament, “A man is a man for today. But a woman is friend for life.”
What if I have no friends?
Rest assured, you’re in good company. Many contemporary people, in brief moments of honesty, acknowledge their own pervasive loneliness, even when they have a full social life. Anomie—a sense of not belonging anywhere—is a curse of modern living. The fact that you’re genuinely admitting to a lack of friendship in your life undoubtedly speaks well of your but also announces your longing for connection – a universal need. Really, to have friends, we have to be friends to others first. Unfortunately, so many of us are scared to risk rejection, afraid to be seen as too needy, and unable to say no when we want some space from others, that real friendships elude us. These fears oftentimes originate from difficulties in the most important friendships in our lives—those with our parents and siblings. Most of us need reparative experiences to surmount such fears. Some of us may join 12 Step groups. Others may benefit from doing psychotherapy or attending organized religious services. Healing may occur from loving a favorite pet, watching a garden grow, or doing community service. To get a sense of the magic of friendship, I can recommend the video and book, Dead Man Walking, by Sister Helen Prejean or Just Friends by Lillian Rubin. I hope, in reading this article, you have felt a certain kinship with me. In fact, you and I are both stars in the heavens at night and we both shine brilliantly among many more stars.
