Gentry
"Perspectives"
September 2005 |
In the Company of Women
Friends forever?
Gentry's Christine VanDeVelde muses over the importance, and sometimes
fleeting nature, of friendships between women In any household
where a girl aged 8 to 18 resides, the subject of friendship arises
regularly. There is avid discussion of exactly how one defines a friend,
the criteria for BFFs (Best Friends Forever), and the importance of having
someone with whom to share inside jokes, solutions to geometry problems,
makeup tips, conversations with boys and problems with other girls. There
is a passionate wish to experience the power of being yourself, being
genuine and yet still belonging. On my daughter's desk, I find lists of
the girls she believes will be lifelong friends.
During one of those periods when the Kremlinology of the cafeteria seating
arrangements was being aired daily, The Friend Who Got Away landed
on my doorstep. Subtitled Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendships
that Blew Up, Burned Out, or Faded Away, this collection of essays is
equal parts cautionary tale, post mortem and investigation into the myriad
reasons that women's friendships fall apart -- changes in socioeconomic
status, class differences, the choice to have children, death, sickness,
spouses, competition, betrayal, disillusionment, politics, personal
ambition, and sometimes someone just goes nuts. These stories will be
familiar to many. As one reviewer noted, the friend breakup is like LSD --
"years later, hearing tales of other women's strife… can trigger vivid
emotional flashbacks." It did for me.
Having grown up with three brothers, I was always more comfortable in the
company of guys. I disliked the power plays and social pecking order of
girl's friendships and still do. It wasn't until I was married and had a
child that I truly discovered female friendship. I was thrilled by the
strength of the alliances I formed with other young mothers. We bonded
over detailed accounts of our deliveries, concern about our toddler's
milestones and complaints about our husbands. I was certain I would grow
old with one or two of these friends. But today my relationships with them
are for the most part cordial at best. That critical moment in our lives
when we belonged to each other because of our common experience of being
new mothers passed and with it the friendships, as well.
So in the last ten years of my life I have considered the subject of
female friendship more closely than ever before. I have learned that it's
really important to understand the role it plays in our lives. Almost all
teenaged girls are engaged in this quest, but it shouldn't stop there. One
of the problems with women's relationships may be that they're still
locked into the paradigm of the mean girl group from adolescence. I tell
my daughter this.
I also have passed on some advice that I've found invaluable in evaluating
my friendships. The first is a quote from Maya Angelou: "When people show
you who they are, believe them." The woman who traffics in your secrets,
the one who encourages you to self-destruct over your diet, your budget,
or your husband, or the one who sabotages your dinner party by throwing
her own soiree on the same night? She's not a friend. Believe her.
The second is a strategy for taking the measure of your friendships from
the writer Francine Prose, who has characterized it as life-saving: "If
you want to know who your friends really are and whom you should be
hanging around with, all you have to do is follow this simple test.
Whenever you've just finished spending time with a particular person, ask
yourself, 'Do I feel better or worse than I did before?' No long
explanations, no equivocations. No excuses. Just 'better' or 'worse'. Then
tally up the results and pretty soon everything will begin to seem very
clear."
The Friend Who Got Away may also make things a little more clear in
these twenty heartfelt, painfully honest tales. I'll be passing it on to
my daughter and a couple of my friends. Sometimes an insight into a
friendship that failed can help to preserve one for the future. |
