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What are your friends like?

14:33 / 31.03.08

Friendship is one of the greatest joys in the world. What are your friends like?

I'll start. There are a gang of about six of us. Mixed bag, a couple of wimmin, one of them really sexy the other a bit of a square. The two lads are alright, one of 'em is a right scruffy cunt to be fair and the other is what I would class as a metrosexual, if you know what I mean.

Most of the time we just drive around in our hippy van with a great dane and his puppy solving mysteries and stuff.

They're a good laugh all in all...

15:23 / 31.03.08

Oh, I see. This is not in fact about friendship, but is rather a description of characters from the cartoon Scooby-Doo. Could you not find any unpleasant language to use to describe the van?

The topic of friendship is an interesting one, however. Friends are often described as a 'family you make for yourself' or 'family of choice' and this is sometimes true: some friendships seem to outlast their emotional or social utility and live on mostly through obligation, or perhaps the kind of feeling that makes me keep expensive but uncomfortable shoes: I'm not throwing out anything so costly to acquire. For me, these are mostly friendships from my adolescence, when all I really required from my friends was that they not openly mock me.

My gratitude for the internet as a social vehicle is great. It's made it much easier to find a certain type of affirmation and companionship. The friends I have who think like me and know interesting things I don't know almost all come from the internet. However, my 'best' friend is somebody completely unlike me, with whom I would never have connected online. I'm just as deeply grateful for having worked with her at a crappy record shop for a year until we warmed up to each other. Nobody makes me feel more protective and loving, or safer and more accepted.

15:34 / 31.03.08

Hippy van was meant in a pejorative way.

Whisky Priestess

15:46 / 31.03.08

I'm genuinely thinking of dropping a friend because - well, because it's all about him, really. We meet when he suggests it, watch or do what he wants, and most of the time I sit there listening to how fabulous (or rubbish) his life is.

I usually feel like I'd much rather stay home when I'm meant to go and meet him, although when I do go (and I always do - I'd never hear the end of it otherwise) I generally have a good time and remember what's great about him (funny, clever, supportive when I need him etc.)

I'm too lazy and scared to do much about it at the moment (I've known him since I was 19 or 20), but I'm afraid that this friendship is becoming rather more of an obligation than a pleasure. On the other hand, although he's got plenty of short-term/live abroad/work friends, I'm well aware that I'm one of the few he has known for ten or more years, and his birthday gatherings have been shrinking steadily since we left university.

So I feel somewhat sorry for him too, because he's a got a number of wonderful qualities but is also really quite draining and high maintenance, and I'm pretty sure much of the reason his other long-established mates have drifted away if that they simply can't be arsed with it. If he were a pop star, he'd be Elton John or Jennifer Lopez, let's put it that way.

What to do, eh? Anyone else been in this pickle?

16:41 / 31.03.08

Every time I edit or reword a post to make it less nasty, I wind up regretting it.

16:49 / 31.03.08

yes I have, from both sides I suppose.

Another particular version involves somebody who is difficult to be around and has difficulty coping with social situations in a kind of chiken/egg, "knots" way. To cope with the social situation and perhaps other stuff, said person begins to rely more and more on drugs and/or alcohol. This only exacerbates the problem and the situation becomes a dilemma. are you to cease seeing them at all or attempt decide that yes, it is your business to tell that person that they're drinking too much to hold a decent conversation anymore.

If two people merely coincide in life as a routine of obligation can it really be called a friendship? It can be very difficult to be a good friend to someone. My most cherished friends are the ones who challenge me, and refuse to just sit there smiling as I talk shit.

17:26 / 31.03.08

You have my sympathies WP. Sometime ago I grew apart from someone I considered to be my best friend in the world, he was like family to me.

A good few years ago this person crossed a line and broke my heart, but after a time I realised I missed him so much that I needed to forgive and put it aside.

Things went back to normal, both of us supporting each other through thick and thin. Can't really pinpoint how or when we started to drift apart but it was noticed by us both. During this time my friend had some health problems which I helped him through and was happy to do so. I actually put my own relationship with my partner at risk as I was spending so much time and energy on this other person, which wouldn't have been a problem had ze not begun to take it completely for granted, and to actually demand it (it infuriated my other half to see me running around with no real thanks).

I put up with quite a lot of crap for a good while until the day I got a telling off for a throwaway remark (he was tired and grumpy that day). Whereupon I freaked right out (I'm usually quite patient with my mates) gave him a dressing-down and cut him completely out of my life. I'd just had enough. I feel relieved on the whole but occasionally (like right now, reading this) I do feel like a complete turd. I was just so exhausted with it all.

I refuse to go back though, because when I think of the few crappy things he did I realise he obviously didn't have the same amount of respect for me as I did for him.

Not sure if this is at all helpful but friendship should be a two-way street and feeling drained by someone isn't fair, on you or your other loved ones.
Good luck with your decision, maybe it will give hir a kick in the behind to realise how one-sided your relationship is?

22:29 / 31.03.08

What to do, eh? Anyone else been in this pickle?
I've got a very similar situation of a nearly totally self-absorbed friend— he's been my friend for over 20 years now— but the situation is compounded by the fact that he is mentally ill and delusional. I waited for months, through weekly conversations on the phone, for him to ask me how I was doing, just to see how long it would take. I love and care for him and I'm not going to dump him when everyone else has because he's cuckoo. He was always odd in a very frustrating way, making unimportant things important and always reading meaning into the meaningless, but I never realized before how it all pointed to where he is now. If he wasn't so bad now he wouldn't be quite as insufferable, anyway. Besides, half of my family are utterly self-absorbed. I've been trained to take it. That's a bit of an extreme case, though.
I think everyone is fucked up in some way, just in unique and different ways and to different degrees. Your friends are the people whose shortcomings, for whatever reasons, you are able to get past. I mean, you can argue and complain about them, fight them and push them to change, but ultimately you accept them. I don't understand it. I've met many people who I like, who are smart, friendly, great people, but for unknown reasons I don't feel like I can ever be close to them, so I never get close. I'm exceedingly polite and open, but just don't go that extra bit. I think the people I'm friends with, ultimately, are people that I think share the same feelings about (redacted long useless list) life. Maybe eschewing hierarchies and a bitter, crude sense of humor. Things like that. But that's me, it's different for everyone. It's too bad that sometimes those people I get along with are raging alcoholic assholes or paranoid delusionals.
But, WP, if you become, after a point, unable to accept your friend's shortcomings, that's where the friendship ends. In my opinion it's that simple. It's sad but it does happen; at least, it has to me.

Whisky Priestess

09:02 / 01.04.08

Thanks folks. I really have no idea what I'll do in the long term (one of my utterly shameful reactions is enjoying his company more when he's having a more difficult time in job/work/relationships/whatever, because it means he doesn't spend the entire evening being so insufferably smug) - but in the short term, I'm going to suggest doing something I'd like to do and see what happens.

21:50 / 01.04.08

Really bloody hard work sometimes.

Well, one in particular.

*sigh*