There is a weird double standard that floats around in the world. There is an understanding that marriages and love relationships don’t always endure a full lifetime; that paths diverge; partners grow up and away from each other; there is an allowance for this to occur and yet, for friendships, there is a shame and disapproval when they hit similarly rocky times.
From my experience, friendships are not dramatically different from love relationships. There is always a honeymoon period, that time with a friend where you feel the soul bond, the bubbles of happiness in each other’s company, the hits of connection when your thoughts collide and that high of being ‘understood’. How long that lasts and what it transforms into is unique and varied but there is undoubtedly a pressure that, once a friendship has been created, it carries with it a veil of perfection that mustn’t be questioned.
In my relationship, if there is an ‘issue’, a moment of conflict, I am supported socially to endeavour to resolve it. ‘Don’t go to sleep angry’; if you carry resentment it will only rear its ugly head later down the line; best keep lines of communication clear and open etc etc. Apply this to a friendship model and it’s almost as if you are creating conflict, making trouble, rocking the boat.
I am that person who likes to clear the air, I like to talk things through when I’m pissed about something and try and figure out a better way for both of us. I think it is definitely a positive attribute in my relationship but in my friendships it makes them messy.
My husband will comment that I seem to have patterns of conflict in my friendships but when I step back and really take a wider view on it, actually I have the odd moment of disagreement. Certainly, compared to how often I argue with my husband, my points of disagreements with friends are few and far between (and rightly so, when we include the context of time spent together). However, they feel emotionally so much bigger, as if I have trespassed into forbidden territory. There is a fear of loss so much greater than in my marriage, where we hold a spoken and written commitment; in friendship there seems to be a stronger possibility of final separation.
Let me put this into context, imagine having a flash point with your partner and instead of cooling down to then talk it through, you choose not to speak to them for 6 weeks and then when you do pretend as if nothing’s happened. Is that at all sustainable as a relationship model? Yet it is widely used in friendships. And please don’t think I’m preaching from a high horse, I have been completely guilty of this too, more times than I care to confess.
But today it just struck me as totally crazy. I want my friends to be just like my relationships, that we front up to our difficult moments, that we stare them right in the face and work it out, because I know that it brings me into deeper and more loving connection with my husband when I do this and I know it would be the same for my friendships too. It might be messy but it would definitely feel more real.