i'm thinking

[ironymaiden]

a link i picked up from webcowgirl has the brain turning over thoughts on friendship. no, it's not email spam cheeze. take a look.

Comments

WAAAAAAH!

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Is it not the most thoroughly heartbreaking thing you've ever read?

Re: WAAAAAAH!

[ironymaiden]

i refuse to find it heartbreaking. it just put names to a lot of stuff i had thought about on and off for years.

i've known for a long time that not everyone loves people the way i do, or has friendships that are as deeply felt. it is hard to look straight at it though.

Friends, lovers and other strangers

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Interesting to read this at a time in my life when my therapist is emphasizing the importance of friends in my life. I've always known that friendship is a continuum and that every day one has to recalibrate things just a little bit based on a multitude of factors that are barely perceptive to the conscious mind. I also have learned over time and trauma that periods of stress can reveal the seams, fractures and bonds that make a friendship what it is for better or worse.

Some of the points made in this article are also directly related to my ever and ongoing fight with myself about relationships with men, being single versus being married, and what one can often only glean from an LTR that one can't glean from a friendship. There are substantial differences and I don't believe that one can take the place of another, despite the vehement insistence that some will offer on the subject. This article, by inference, presents some very cogent thoughts on the hows and whys of the inherent differences.

Food for thought. Not very pleasant food for thought. Of course, there's some hope there, too, in the whole "people with many friends live longer than people with none," but the longer one lives, the fewer friends may be about given the limitations of the human condition. (Leave it to scarlettina to bring up mortality.)

Anyway, I'm blathering. Off to contemplate mortality and the ephemeral nature of huamn affection.

[writersweekend.livejournal.com]

This stuff sounds like the coursework I did in college...and I still walk into my friendships with the naive belief that everyone is exactly like me.

I'm reading Annie Lamott's memoir. She has her church, a built-in community which nurtures itself. It's so hard to build this when you are a secular humanist, or an atheist, or a non-denominational pagan with a big mouth...there's no presumptive friends group.

When I lived in the Ozarks, we hippies all found each other and helped each other through some very hard times. Here, in the city, it's easy not to know your neighbor's name, easy to have other plans when someone is dying.

I'm drifting away from a couple of friends I can't afford anymore...financially or emotionally. I don't think they will miss me. But it does bring up the very clear idea that it's hard to negotiate with someone upfront what your friendship will entail...unless you have very clear boundaries. For me, it's better to ask...and take it one day at a time.