Friendship And The Friendship Hearing Test

I've been thinking about friendship lately. I've had my share of friends. Some good, some bad, some mostly just in passing. I've never actually recalled a time in my life when I couldn't make friends. I'm sure my parents will promptly inform you of a time in my life when I was certain I would never have another friend again. So, let's say friends have been easy to come by since junior high school. I still have a lot of people that I know and can hang out with, but I don't have any friends that are really close to me. Except my wonderful wife. At this moment in my life, I just don't need much else. I can talk to her about anything with honesty and the freedom of knowing that no matter what the conversation, she's still going to love me when it's over.

What brought this up was a good friend of mine, whom I hadn't talked to in a long while, called me the other day just to see what was going on in my life these days. There was no good reason that I know of for our break in communication, except that maybe we both realized we were heading in very different directions and had been for a long time. I don't mean to say that in order to be my friend you have to have the same lifestyle as me. I don't care about that. What matters is the other person has to understand my situation. My friend has no kids, and is single. More power to him if that's what he wants, it's just not the life for me.

All this got me to thinking about all my other friends from high school. There is one I know of for sure that has a family, and is secure in that lifestyle. Everybody else I know about is either single-no-kids, or single-with-kids. Nobody I use to know seems capable of having a meaningful relationship with a partner. Maybe they don't want that, which is fine. I just can't believe only one person out of all the people I use to know have found a partner.

And how strange that I should be the one with this life. Actually, it's not strange at all now that I think about it. Having met the woman of my dreams in 8Th grade, I knew I was going to be married and have kids someday, I guess I just didn't think the kids would come so soon. Still, I couldn't ask for a better family.

Anyway, I was wondering what has become of some of these old friends that I didn't keep in touch with. How many of them have lives like mine? I wouldn't think very many of them do, but how would I know? I'm sure that are ways to get in touch with people you haven't spoken to in ten years or more, but I don't think I'm quite that interested.

Speaking of friendships, my wife is having a fight with a friend of hers. I almost never get both sides of the story in these situations, partly because I'm always going to side with my wife anyway. And I'm not a big fan of drama.

However, this is a person that my wife is very close to, and I know it's a very sensitive situation for her. So, I read their joint blog (sorry, honey), and got the full scope of things. What really stood out with me is that we, as in most people, have a tendency to hear what we want to hear, or what we think we are going to hear. This seems especially true in emotional situations.

Sometimes when somebody says, "I didn't much care for that movie," when asked about our favorite movie, we sometimes hear, "Anybody who actually likes that movie is a boring, selfish, uninteresting prick."

"I just want to spend sometime alone," becomes "I've suddenly realized I don't like you anymore and I'd like to never see you again."

"I think you'd look better in a lighter shade of lipstick," becomes "Maybe you should just get your ass transplanted onto you neck. It'd certainly be an improvement."

You get the point.

No body's perfect, even if we think they are. Friends will sometimes let you down, or hurt your feelings, or make you feel like the most insignificant fucker on the planet. More often than not, those are never their intentions. Sometimes people say shit they don't really mean. Sometimes things are going to get said all wrong. And sometimes we hear what we want, or expect, to hear.

All relationships are a challenge at some point or another. What fun would it be if every relationship didn't challenge us in some way?

If you can't handle that...you were probably a friend of mine in high school.