Friendships

I've been thinking a lot about friendships recently. For some reason I've always been the kind of person that yearns for the intensity of having a "best friend." There seems to be something wonderfully comforting about knowing that someone else knows all your deepest, darkest secrets - and still loves you anyway. And there's something reassuring about knowing that you can call that person at any hour of the night or day and they will be there to support you. And maybe I also think it lends someone a sort of legitimacy - if you can claim the same best friend for decades on end, then you really belong, you're really accepted, and you're really a good person.

Besides, who in my generation wasn't seduced by the portrayal of the close friendships in Sex and the City and didn't yearn for something similar for herself?

I've had a few best friends in my life. The first was Erica, who was my neighbor from age 5-ish to 11-ish. Most of my other friends single-handedly credit her for keeping me from being a totally obnoxious only child. Since we were both only children, we were like sisters - we learned how to play together, we were classmates in school, and we learned about conflict resolution (I still maintain that her hulu hoop was the misshapen one! And she totally stole that chocolate milk of mine in third grade!).

After she moved to the Netherlands and I moved to Minnesota, it took a little time before I found my next best friend, Heather. She shared my love of the arts (music! theatre! musical theatre!) and we did everything together throughout high school. We even, at her encouragement, ruined another friend's surprise birthday party together, which I still feel guilty about to this day. The closure we had on our relationship was not moving away to college, but rather a huge falling out that we had during our first year in college. Sadly (or perhaps it was for the best?), our friendship couldn't recover from it.

My next best friend was Rachel. We met on our pre-frosh trip and then lived together our junior and senior years in college. At that time, I think she knew everything about me. Knowing her has simply made me a better person, and I'm so happy that she was maid of honor in my wedding. But it turns out that I'm really terrible about keeping in touch across long distances, and I miss her terribly now that she's in Los Angeles. When we see each other it feels like we jump right in where we left off, but there are so many daily (and larger) details of my life that it's impossible to stay up to date on when we might not talk for months on end.

In grad school my best friend was Ryan. There's a psychological principle about "shared adversity" having a tendency to bring people closer together, and having the same advisor certainly did that for us. Grad school was hard, and I don't think I would have finished if it weren't for Ryan. Sometimes I wonder if she's my first real "grown up" friend, simply because we have somehow managed to stay close despite the fact that she moved to North Carolina in 2006. We're not "best friends" in the sense that I obviously couldn't call her at midnight with a flat tire (although if I did I'm sure she'd lend me much emotional support, even if she couldn't come pick me up!), but she is definitely one of my most valued friends and I'm really proud that we've been able to keep that connection despite our distance - I think it certainly helps that her in-laws live in Minneapolis so she gets to visit once or twice per year which is awesome.

After grad school it was the two Amandas (Amanda from internship and Amanda from postdoc) who were in the running for my next best friend. In the year that we each worked together, I became very close with each of them. But once I started working at Bethesda, postdoc Amanda moved to the way southeastern suburbs and intern Amanda and I started running together, so the best friend "award" (by default) went to intern Amanda - it's a lot easier to develop a closeness when you see each other weekly and spend an hour or more talking about all the big (and little) stuff in your life. So it makes sense that I felt sad and rejected when intern Amanda wanted to stop running together, since that was what our best friend-ness was built upon. But then last night at dinner with postdoc Amanda, she helped me to realize that this is just the first time that I've ever had a best friend-ship end for reasons other than moving away and thus not having daily (or at least weekly) interactions. So even though intern Amanda and I are not going to have that same level of intimacy in our friendship, that doesn't mean we can't still be friends - just like Rachel, Ryan, and postdoc Amanda and I are all still very good friends. Just like I tell my clients, it doesn't have to be all or nothing; I can be flexible in responding to changing characteristics of my friendships (right?).

In addition to recognizing that change and adaptability in friendships is foreign to me, I think I've come to realize that, in my acute focus on having a best friend, I don't give enough credit to all the other wonderful friends I do have. Just because I don't have one woman that knows everything about me doesn't mean that I don't have multiple women who each know a lot about a certain area of my life. Dotty, Megan, Anna, Mitra, Jane, and a whole host of other people are all so valuable to me!

Or, to look at it a completely different way, maybe I do have a best friend, albeit a non-traditional one: Mike. He's always there for me, he knows pretty much everything about me, and I don't hesitate to talk to him about anything. And maybe just because I don't have the stereotypical female best friend portrayed in Sex and the City, that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with me or that I'm lacking in the friend department or that people don't truly like me. (Has anyone else noticed my tendency to catastrophize?) So with that in mind, I want to consciously set the intention to acknowledge all the friends I have, and to actively cultivate each of those relationships, no matter how big or small. Those friendships may grow or shrink over time, but that doesn't make them any less valuable.  Consider it another lesson learned in flexibility and self-acceptance.