Definition of "friend" (updated)
Rober...@yahoogroups.com
by Robert Elton Maas
Edited from my diary "I was a teenage mathematician"
(further edited 2003.Apr.14)
A friend is:
A person who likes to be around you, and who enjoys being
around to help if he can when you are in a bad mood, upset, depressed,
unhappy, lonely, worried, puzzled or otherwise not the best of company
for a while. A real friend gives you good advice if he has it, but
doesn't try to enslave you or force you to change if you don't
understand how the change will help life. A friend has some common
interest with you that the two of you can enjoy together. A friend is
not afraid to get closer to you, learning more about you, sharing more
about himself; a friend wants to be close.
If a friend is unsure he understood something you did or said,
he asks for more information. If he is bothered by something you did,
he asks you why you did it. If he disputes the reasons, he is willing
to hear your side and to discuss the issue, not debate it.
And basic to all this is an illogical unexplained liking for
you and a willingness to let this liking express itself and guide him.
He's just gotta like you so much that he always wants to be with you
soon. And you must be fair in your demands upon him, not "use" him,
but enjoy and make full use of the friendship he offers.
A "friend" is not a game you play in a group. It is an
individual one-to-one human relationship which exists independently of
any other person or thing. It may be initiated or enhanced or promoted
by a hobby or by the presence of other people, but the relationship
exists as a slight love of the two people for each other.
* Specific aspects of some friends, desiderata:
Someone you would tell the truth to, even if it hurts him, because it
would hurt him and you more to lie or conceal.
Someone you tell all the interesting thing you do, ditto reverse, such
that you enjoy telling, hearing, doing.
Someone you can really talk to.
Someone who can see you in all your moods, good & bad, help you through
the bad ones, and not abandon you just because your bad moods annoy
him.
Someone on whom you can burden your problems.
Someone who likes to do the same things you do, and who likes to do
them with you, and you like to do them with him too.
Someone with whom you can discuss the really important things in your
life and plan for life the way you want it.
Someone who cares about you enough to get personally involved.
Someone who likes you, and whom you like, and who knows so much about
you that he can almost begin to understand some tiny part of you.
Someone who keeps you informed of his whereabouts (trips, vacations,
new jobs, moving, ...) and who is interested in your whereabouts.
Someone to have around to talk to when I need someone. Someone to fill
that lonely gap in my life which is almost always.
Someone who invites me to visit him:
(1) By his own free will & initiative, not only in response to my request
or proximity.
(2) Personally to me, not just "everyone who is around".
(3) Purpose of visit is to be together and develop our relationship, or
to do things together, not for professionally interviewing or treating
me for mental disorders. No strings attached, just "come as you are
and visit".
(4) Doesn't go off and ignore me forget that I'm there.
(5) Actual consumation of the visit per the invitation.
(6) The person is approximately my age.
Someone who lets you park your car in front of their house when you are
lonely.
Somebody who comes over when I've been getting harassing phone calls,
and sits with me until the phone rings again, and answers my phone for
me, and explains to the caller that I want them to stop harassing me.
Somebody who lives nearby and likes me and cares about me enough to
drive me to the emergency room when the advice nurse says I need to go
there immediately but it's not safe to drive myself.
Somebody who has known me for at least one year and be willing to be
listed as a personal reference when I'm applying for a job.
Somebody who checks if I'm alive at least three times a week, in case
I'm in a coma or suffered a stroke or am flat on my back unable to move
so I can't reach the phone to call 911.
Somebody who introduces me to other people he knows, so I won't have to
be alone almost all the time.
Somebody who tries my latest computer software and tells me how he
likes it and suggests how to make it even better.
Somebody who goes with me to look for a job, telling recruiters and
potential employers how good my work is and how I deserve to be paid
for it.
Somebody willing to go to court with me to tell everyone what a good
person and parent I am and how I deserve to keep my children with me.
* (Specific extras for Girlfriend, Sweetheart, Lover, Wife):
Someone who likes me enough to kiss me a lot.
Someone I can love, but someone who truly deserves my love and accepts
it.
Someone with whom I can establish a relationship that includes all of
the following: kissing, hugging, sleeping together, talking and
communicating, doing things together, sharing, teaching each other,
loving each other.
Someone with whom I can find out what it is like to have a sexual partner.
Someone with whom I can rear children of our own.
Someone who doesn't beat me up, nor abuse our children, nor ransack
our home, nor abandon us, nor have affairs with other men.
Rober...@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 07:44:29 -0700
{{Friends don't enjoy being around you when you are in a bad mood.}}
But a real friend cares enough to stick around anyway during sad times,
and offer emotional support and companinship. If a so-called "friend"
dumps you the first time you aren't the life of the party, that person
wasn't a real friend. With "friends" like that, who needs strangers?
{{A friend wants to be close, assuming that there is something
interesting and compatable. A friendship has a basis, it is not an
unexplained desire to be close to someone.}}
A single-hobby buddy has a common interest to share, but doesn't want
to go beyond that to a real friendship. For example, if you play a
board game together, your relationship is limited to playing that board
game and perhaps drinking tea or eating food while playing, but then as
soon as the game is finished and you aren't going to play another game,
the visit is over. But with true friendship, there's an unexplained
mutual desire to go beyond being just single-hobby buddies, to get more
comprehensively involved in each other's lives.
> If a friend is unsure he understood something you did or said,
>he asks for more information. If he is bothered by something you did,
>he asks you why you did it. If he disputes the reasons, he is willing
>to hear your side and to discuss the issue, not debate it.
{{And if it is something that you did that is badly thought out, or
harmful or just mean spirited, the friend is no obliged to stick with
you no matter what.}}
I wasn't referring to deliberately doing hurtfulthings to your friend.
I was referrring to simple misunderstandings. For example, if you are
trying to communicate that one aspect of your shyness is that it takes
you a while to get used to a new person's face, so you'd like to see
your e-penpal's photo a few hours or days before meeting in person the
first time, to avoid any initial discomfort, but your penpal misreads
what you wrote, mistakenly believing that you'll reject your penpal if
she isn't perfectly beautiful, and so her feelings get hurt due to that
misunderstanding, then you discuss the misunderstanding and come to
understanding so her feelings aren't hurt any more. If your penpal
wants to be a friend,she doesn't use the misundertanding as an excuse
to terminate communication, then start e-mailing years later just to
harass you with repetitions of the mistaken reading.
Another example: Suppose you're chatting by e-mail, and you seem to
really like each other, and would like to meet in person, but your
penpal says she's afraid to meet penpals in person because she might
feel trapped in a conversation she can't carry, because she doesn't
know what to say when she first meets somebody, and it's terribly
embarrassing to sit there in silence with the feeling like she's
supposed to say something, but she doesn't have the social skills to
gracefully terminate the meeting, so she's afraid she'd be stuck in
such a silent meeting indefinitely. So you suggest maybe a sort of
half-meeting, where you arrange to pass by each other in a supermarket,
just saying 'hi' in passing, not staying in a conversation, then going
back home to discuss the feelings of that half-meeting. The idea would
be to eliminate any chance of feeling trapped in a silent or otherwise
uncomfortable conversation, yet still getting to (briefly) see each
other in-person, a resonable compromise between wanting to meet but
being afraid of awkward social situations. When this happened to me,
the other person immediately accused me of not caring about her
feelings, and cut off communication for more than a year. If she had
been a reasonable person, a potential friend, she would have tried to
understand my logic in proposing the half-meeting, and if she disagreed
she'd try to explain her feelings, and not cut off communication
totally. Maybe she'd propose some alternate compromise between our
conflicting emtional needs and desires, and eventually we'd find some
way to meet that would be comfortable for both of us. But just cutting
me off totally because my best attempt at accomodating her shyness
somehow offended her, wasn't how a potential friend would have reacted.
(Note: One year and nine months after she cut me off, her former
boyfriend e-mailed me two photos of her, and revealed that she keeps a
"shrine" for me on her computer, containing copies of articles I've
posted which sexually arouse her. I tried to contact her after that
revelation, and months later she finally replied, admitting indeed she
has such a "shrine" for me, and telling me a bit more about it. So
apparently she truly craves me romantically/sexually. Yet to this day,
two years after she confirmed the existance of the "shrine", she still
won't talk to me in any reasonable way, either just regular e-mail
correspondence, or finally meeting in person. The last I heard from her
she had lost her job and had been homeless for a few months. I'm hurt
by the way that she's treated me, but my offer of possible friendship
with her remains open. I wish she'd e-mail me again and let me know if
she is alive and healthy, or homeless or what. I still care about her.
I would be her good friend if she'd let me.)
>He's just gotta like you so much that he always wants to be with you
>soon. And you must be fair in your demands upon him, not "use" him,
>but enjoy and make full use of the friendship he offers.
{{Friends don't always want to be with each other.}}
Did you perhaps overlook the key word "soon"?? Of course most friends
don't always want to be together right now, all the time. But they want
to be together **soon**. Not five years from now, not even a year from
now, but sometime soon. If somebody doesn't want to see you for the
next two months, or two years, that person doesn't want to be your
friend. There's a difference between wanting and having. There's an old
cliche about a married couple, man in the military far away, woman at
home, each wishing to be together every day, yet knowing they can't be
together for a few months. So they write loveletters wishing they could
be together, expressing how they miss each other. But as soon as either
of them is glad to be away for months or years, the relationship no
longer eexists. The same thing happens, to a lesser degree, with
friendships. I wish I could see my friend within a few days, but she's
busy and can't get free to see me until next month, so we miss each
other until we can be together. But when we're free to see each other,
then we want to see each other soon again after each meeting, and we
actually do get together soon again. But if one or the other person
*chooses* not to see the other person any time soon, like not for
months, that person isn't really a friend.
> A "friend" is not a game you play in a group. It is an
>individual one-to-one human relationship which exists independently of
>any other person or thing.
{{It doesn't exist independently of anything. Some friends are based
on location, some friends are based on hobbies.}}
*Part* of a friendship is based on something specific such as a
location or hobby etc. But if that's as far as it goes, it's not a real
friendship. If the **only* place the person wants to see you is in the
therapy group, *never* anywhere else, *never* just the two of you
hanging out together, if you two *never* have any private
conversations, only public discussions in the group, you are fellow
group members, not friends. You may be fellow group members and also
friends, if you talk with everyone in the group but also get together
just the two of you at other times.
>Someone on whom you can burden your problems.
{{Within reason.}}
Yes. This is just one small part of a friendship, listed in this large
set of desiderata. Some friendships involve major amounts of sharing
problems and offering support, whereas other friendships involve only a
little bit of that. But if your so-called "friend" *never* wants to
hear any of your problems, and rejects you if you ever mention anything
bad that happened to you, that's not a real friend. For example, a
certain person told me he doesn't want to hear about anything bad that
happened to me. So I don't consider him a potential friend, even though
he's otherwise a nice guy, he just doesn't offer me friendship.
>Someone who likes you, and whom you like, and who knows so much about
>you that he can almost begin to understand some tiny part of you.
{{You don't have to be friends to understand someone.}}
True. Some other kinds of relationships also involve understanding a
little about somebody, for example a therapist is supposed to
understand his patient, and members in a group get to understand a
little bit about each other. Again, this is just one part of a
friendship. If somebody refuses to ever learn anything about you, that
person isn't your friend. You (Suzanne) are such a non-friend to me.
>Somebody who has known me for at least one year and be willing to be
>listed as a personal reference when I'm applying for a job.
{{I can't realistically see someone refering you for a job.}}
That's because you've refused to look at any of the work I've done, so
you aren't qualified to evaluate my ability to do useful work, and
because you've refused to try to understand me, preferring to make up
sick fantasies about me and then use those fantasies as justification
for badmounthing me without end, and because when you lived nearby and
had a chance to meet me in person and find out what I'm really like
in-person you made up excuses not to meet me, such as your agoraphobia,
and your mis-reading of what I wrote to you. If anyone really knew me
and my work, that person would be qualified to recommend me for a job.
{{Introductions are not going to lead to friendships, not even casual
friendships.}}
Why not?? I'm not saying *every* introduction leads to a relationship
(friendship, acquaintance, buddy-ship, whatever), but why would they
*never*? Without being introduced by some third-party they both trust,
how are two people to meet each other and feel safe? If you just meet a
total stranger, that person could be anyone, a convicted felon planning
use you as an accomplice in another crime, an illegal alien hiding from
INS and trying to use your residence as a place to hide, a con artist
who might steal everything you own, or worse. But if you are
introduced, then you have some trusted information about each other,
and don't have to worry about those horrible possibilities.
>Somebody who tries my latest computer software and tells me how he
>likes it and suggests how to make it even better.
{{So now you are looking for an ego boost, not a friendship. A friend
doesn't just parrot what you want to hear.}}
Um, did you miss the part about trying my software, not just taking my
word for its quality? Did you miss the part about saying how he likes
it, not saying how I claim he'll like it? Did you miss the part about
considering it not yet the best it could be and suggesting how to make
it better? Is there *anything* that I said that you didn't miss? Did
you understand anything I ever said? Or did you distort everything I
said into what you thought I would say, not bothering to read what I
actually said? How exactly would a "parrot" try my software and tell me
anything about its quality??
{{the interviewer says, "Why can't this guy talk for himself?"}}
Because talking for oneself favors the liar who isn't of any value but
who can talk up a storm, and disfavors the honest shy person who has
been taught not to toot his own horn, that excellence will be seen by
others and others will then speak to that excellence. Why do you think
employers ask for references, people who aren't related to the
prospective employee, but have known the person for at least one year
and are familiar with that person's previous work? Why don't employers
just trust everything in the resume and hire the person on the spot
without bothering with interview or references? Because the liar can
come up with the best resume ever written, but only the honest worker,
with the not-as-good resume, gets his fine work recognized by others
who can recommend him to the employer.
Unfortunately I don't have any friends or acquaintances to evaluate my
past work and relate their evaluations to somebody who might hire me,
and I don't know how to meet anyone.
Trpcdream
existed that thought this way...wow