Meet my friend ...

Ever wondered who you'd really be introducing as your friend if we put as much thought into our friendships as we do our relationships? Friendships are relationships too yet its surprising how the one often receives alot more consideration than the relationships that have sustained us through our fleeting love affairs.

When I was younger I kept a very close circle of female friends and as I got older I much preferred the company of my male counterparts than I did that of women. It wasn't that men made better friends per say because I really do believe that the gender of the company you keep is immaterial. It's instead the quality of the individual and how you engage with each other that should determine your selection of friends not their sex. But with that said there are typical scenarios that are specific to each gender that you wouldn't necessarily be confronted with with the other.

When I was in high school I had a handful of close female friends. We had tug of wars about boys and even on who was the prettiest/most popular of the group. In my much younger days there always seemed to be a "need" to identify the leader of the pack. Maybe because as we come into our own we're all more likely to take comfort in following rather than being a leader so we subconsciously fall in line when we're in the company of stronger personalities or just ones that seek out to claim that kind of position or power. Anyway whatever it was, it was definitely something I saw alot of on the playground and at sport meets and less so on campus and in the workplace.

In one instance on of my closest friends liked a boy who didn't like her and who instead showed interest me. I on the other hand was not interested in said boy. She then "turned" the rest of our friends against me as more and more I found myself excluded from chill sessions and sleepovers. They got closer and dangerously hostile. Kept up the pretense of being my friend despite overdosing on hate behind closed doors and on a weekly basis I endured some malignant scene from Mean Girls as I was insulted, always in the guise of a compliment, on what I was wearing, what I did and how I performed at school. I got tricksy, retaliating and we eventually "got passed it." But the truth is even when that phase came to pass the friendship was never the same or as sincere for me. We enjoyed an arms length friendship until I graduated. I didn't keep in touch. From an incredibly young age I got, that sometimes people, you'll note that I'm not saying women but people, like to feel kinships even if they are based on the wrong thing. Our relationships are based on common goals, common passions, common dislikes and common insecurities. I've witnessed friendships nursed more on common insecurities & common dislikes than I would have liked and early on I naively wrote off the idea of having too many female friends at one go, choosing instead to forego clicks if you will. I'd often be friends with one or two girls from existing clicks because my experience had "taught" me that the bigger the group the more inclined it would be towards drama. People can gas each other up to dangerous proportions and sometimes its best to know an individual outside their posse. To say that our behaviours are not shaped by the company we keep is, I believe, a costly naiveté. But to write off meaningful and positive relationships with a group of women was and is just stooooopid.

Growing up I've also entertained varying types of friendships. What I looked for in people varied depending on my short term needs. I had friends who I partied with, friends who I spent my downtime with, friends who challenged me and friends who inspired me. Finding a friend to offer all of this was and still is a very rare thing. I have come to realise and appreciate that true friendships are indeed special and irreplaceable. They are hard sometimes, take some effort and some really difficult conversations but they deserve the same care, effort and respect that we give and expect from our love affairs. Just this year I was "dumped" by a friend of mine. People come in and out of our lives all the time, I get and accept that. Its ones prerogative whom they want to spend or not spend their time with as it is their right to end any relationship but this particular break up niggled at me for some time. I basically had to catch clues that the friendship was over, the not returning calls, not responding to messages, exclusions from certain events and AHA! I later thought but wasn't this the equivalent of "dating" somebody and then having to catch clues that its over. Thats a social no no right? Maybe they have different rules. Maybe.

At the very least past my early twenties I thought that the one thing that people I had invited into my inner circle had in common was loyalty and respect. It is always disappointing to find out that what you've shared in confidence to an individual is used to strengthen their bond with another. When you become the common dislike and or the common insecurity but it happens. I try to understand it and tell myself that it happens because we are naturally critical of each other which we should be and I get how ugly that can become when you add esteem issues into the mix. I think positive criticism builds us and through our meaningful friendships gets us to where we need to be but criticism can take a nasty turn and become scathing, mean and actually says more about your own character than it ever will the person you are criticizing in the first place. I also think that friendships that cannot be positively critical are a waste of our time. Friends who cannot take criticism are doing themselves an injustice.

I dislike getting criticism but some of my more resilient friendships are with the individuals that have checked me. I have even fought to keep some of these friends around.

So lately I am mindful of who I call a friend and I am as equally aware of the responsibility and privilege it is when somebody considers me and introduces me as their friend.

Feast!