: Terms of friendship
I have this friend who is not really a best friend but not a total acquaintance, a fairly good friend, someone I would invite to my wedding and someone I respect, someone who seems very empathetic and always devotes one hundred percent of her attention to any conversation she comes to and is very reflective and is in therapy and doing the work, someone who is a good person in an objective sense but raises questions about what makes a good friend in the relative sense BECAUSE:
She only calls me a few times a year. Maybe that’s just what friendship is when you get old; I have friends who are definitely good friends who are like that, but it’s not just that.
She always calls me when she’s having boy trouble. And it’s usually similar boy trouble. Usually: I opened myself up too quickly to this boy and he turned out to be a fuckboy. My default response is compassion, because lord knows I have opened myself up too quickly to women before and been badly hurt for it. I don’t require her to solve all her problems overnight or become some kind of master at dating who never gets into trouble, but.
But in between these hourslong phone calls that we have every six to nine months when she has acquired a boy problem, I reach out here and there, with diminishing frequency, just checking in to see how things are going, just reaching out to say merry christmas, just wanted to let you know I’m moving cities, something exciting happens—and every time: crickets. She just ignores me. To the point that I start to wonder if she hates me or I said something offensive on the last phone call or what.
But then a text message always comes, eventually, usually something cryptic and philosophical. Is it ever possible to truly know a person, is there such a thing as a “green flag,” shit like that. And I’ll respond with a paragraph of thought as I am wont to. And then she’ll call, and we’ll hash it out, and then she’ll give me a turn for life updates. Sometimes there will be two or three follow-up calls on the same issue, and lots of texting in philosophizing, and then begins again the gradual fade.
I would say something about it if I thought I deserved any better, lol. Anyway here’s wonderwall