Our Friends - Finding, Keeping, and Losing Them.

Who was your first best friend, how did you find each other, and are they still?

Dear Reader,

This week I’m moved to think about friends, how we first find them, can it be accidental, how we maintain friendships, and how sometimes we don’t. What happens when we fall out, and sadly when a friend dies.

The subject is important but also enormous, and I don’t claim to cover every aspect here, just enough to stimulate your thoughts and maybe for you Dear Reader to share your experiences with everyone else reading this Post.

There have been two triggers for my musings about friendship this week. First, in a couple of hours I’m off with Mel, my wife, to a gathering of friends and their offspring. This will be a joyous event, with one newish arrival (18 months) and one on the way. Grandparents, parents, and ‘Odd’ parents (Us). We’re meeting because of Steve’s 72nd birthday. The oldies were all friends of Mel’s before we were ever a thing. They all met at college and have been mates ever since, some 48 years.

The second trigger for my Post is the fact that, I have no friends remaining from before I met Mel in 1981. I had friends but until very recently they were all ghosts in my history. One guy, I re-connected with recently, or I should say he re-connected with me via Facebook, have had a couple of dinner get togethers. He calls me when he’s working near where I live. I doubt it will develop into more than that, but our “dates” are very enjoyable, he’s an archaeologist and I’m a nerd. But I’m getting ahead of myself. How do we meet our first “Bestie”, the one we never had to work at being a friend, it developed organically.

First Best Friends

Typically, we meet our first best friend either as a neighbour or school. It might be earlier, as is the case with my daughter, who met hers at the post-natal group. Not that she had much choice. They still meet up as much as they can twenty-eight years later.

I was four when I tried the ‘neighbour’ approach a couple of days after we moved into our new house in the southern outskirts of Derby. I’d noticed a couple of young boys lived opposite us across our suburban road. One was my age and the other his younger brother. When I noticed the elder brother hanging over the wooden double gates of his driveway, I plucked up the courage to go over and say hello. As I did so, he hit me across my right shoulder with a wooden cricket stump (Too long a story to explain cricket to my non-British readers). It hurt like hell, and I retreated. I told my big brother but asked him not to intervene. This developed into a long and often torrid low-grade street warfare, not helped by the fact we were in all the same classes as we progress through infant and junior school!

I had much better luck with Kevin. He lived in a house about fifty metres away from me at the corner of an avenue that peeled off from my street. I can’t remember how we met but it wasn’t at school, because he was a year older. We seemed to like doing the same things, mostly our adventures in the abandoned allotments, pig farm and army base behind his house. The best was playing on the abandoned concrete anti-aircraft gun emplacements and inside the deep bomb shelters. There was a very different attitude to health and safety back then. Our imaginations knew no boundaries. During the school holidays we would head out after breakfast and not get home again until dinner time. Whether our parents worried or not we never knew. They certainly didn’t pass on their anxiety if they di.

Where I was sporty, Kevin pursued other pastimes. He introduced me to air rifle target shooting and fishing. He also introduced me to his big sister Janice, but she was way out of my league being a whole four years older.

We were the closest of friends, never really arguing, sharing our uncertainties and our ambitions. It all changed at the age of eleven, when Kevin went to our local grammar school. We worked at our friendship as best we could, but we suddenly lived in different worlds. Even when the next year I moved to the same school, he couldn’t be seen to mix with me, his peers would tease him. We didn’t fall out, out friendship simply lost the energy required to keep it going and we were both seduced by different interests. It was my first, loss.

I believe I’m lucky in that my first solid friend came to me early. I know of people who don’t discover theirs until much later. Sadly, circumstances may mean they never find a bosom pal.

My Best Friend is my wife

I should tell you the story of how I met Mel and how we first became friends, then lovers and finally we married. It’s romantic on her side, me not so much, but I like to think I’ve improved with age!

I’d come to a job interview in London. At the time, in 1981, I lived in Newcastle and was ending a two-year research Assistant post in the University. I was also, trying to find a way to exit what had become a mutually toxic, though not violent, relationship. I was offered the post of Research Technician at St George’s Medical School. My new boss Tony took me around the introducing me to dozens of people. We ended up at the Head of Department’s office where I was greeted by two delightful young women, Mel and her best friend Celia. Mel was his PA and Celia his Personal Technician. I said hello but was distracted by the thought of my trip back North and the conversation I would have with my girlfriend.

I started work three months later and Mel and I struck up a lighthearted friendship. She was patient and caring, knew everyone and it was clear everyone held her in high esteem. Friendship became romance and eighteen months later we were married; we remain so forty-two years later. We’re still best friends!

Sometime after we married, Celia took me to one side at a social event and said, “Gary, you know you never had a choice but to marry Mel.” I replied, “I beg your pardon?” “Yes, the moment you left her office after your interview, she turned to me and said, ‘That’s the man I’m going to marry!’”

Marriage is a contract, but our friendship is a gift based on trust and gifted latitude. Mel brings out the best in me and has also been my saviour, standing by me in my desperate times. I try my best, to be there for her. Which brings me to maintaining friendships.

Friendship energy

I’d like you to think about your best friend, current or past. What is it that holds, or held, your friendship together, is it a mutual interest, or something less tangible that you ‘ve never tried to identify. Whatever it may be, it takes attention and emotional energy to maintain your relationship. Sometimes this is intentional, whilst for others it’s unconscious. We may have friends who require huge input to support the link, whilst for others it feels almost effortless.

I’m very much an ‘in the moment’ person. If we see each other often or we communicate regularly I can maintain a friendship, but as with almost everything else, I have trouble maintaining friendships if we are separated for very long, either by geography or circumstance. I’m not fickle per se, I just need sustained connection to retain enough energy to keep my side of things going. I used to agonise over this but after identifying very late in life as neurodivergent I understand it’s how my brain operates naturally. I need constant stimulation to maintain an ‘obsession’ with anything, including friendship.

If we’ve been friends, in the past and we reconnect, like with Ian, it feels like an old door has opened and I’m instantly in the moment with them. Memories flood back and I recall why we were friends. It’s odd that Ian and I were classmates in Junior School, but I would never say we were best friends. In fact, I didn’t have any other, than Kevin.

I’ve come to the conclusion, that keeping friends either comes easily or it requires effort, and without constant input from both friends, there’s a natural drift. Once the time gap stretches to a point where connection is challenged, we may reinvigorate the relationship, or we unconsciously withdraw. We may say later, “I must get in touch with Mary or Bill”, but we’re too distracted by life to find the energy.

Losing Friends

They say you can choose your friends but not your family, and to an extent, this is true. Familial friendship is always there, a fact of birth. We’re obliged to love our family, whether we like them of not. I love my brother, but I don’t always like the things he does. For many years our relationship was distant. Thankfully we have rekindled our familial friendship over the last decade or so.

Friendship is still based on love and an informal contract, but this time the relationship is more dynamic, and as is the input required. Often, how we meet a new friend is serendipity, an accident of circumstance. We say something in a café as we pass the sugar to a person sitting at the adjacent table, that develops into a little bit more. Subconsciously, you both sense common ground and the conversation elaborates. One of you moves to the other’s table. Time passes, more time than you realise. You part having exchanged phone numbers or emails. Thirty years later you’re still friends, sharing a love of books, music, food, or fast cars. You’re enough for each other. Each of you is there when the other needs support. Equal energy is invested in the relationship with no expectation of a reward in return. And then something happens to crash the relationship

Falling out with Friends

I can’t think of any of my friendships that have ended in an argument, so I’m no expert on the subject. I’ve seen it happen for other people, and of course on television and in the movies, but I’ve no experience of what must a be a terrible experience. Maybe someone reading this post can, after anonymising your story if you wish, tell us about that intense feeling off loss?

A Friend Dies

A very good friend of mine Bob died three years ago. It wasn’t altogether unexpected as his health was brittle all the time I knew him, but nevertheless his death came as an awful shock. I met Bob at a business networking group perhaps eight years ago. He wasn’t very good as a businessman. He was more of a creative and cared deeply about the welfare of other people. He spent much of his earlier career working with troubled teenagers in secure units, helping them to overcome many of their mental health challenges.

Bob gave my daughter her first break in the theatre. He was a talented musician and a director of a local amateur dramatic society. He took on Phoebe as his assistant on a new musical. It was an amazing experience that led to her current career in London’s West End, in the wardrobe departments of major musicals and plays. Bob asked for nothing in return. He revelled in her success, and that for him was enough.

We gravitated to each other and spent as much time as we could together; our friendship maturing and deepening. Then when he realised his photography business, yes, he was also a very talented photographer, wasn’t making enough money, he moved from London to Newark over hundred miles north of me. We visited him and Anne is wife, several times. Then came the news he’d died. To give you an idea of how close we’d become, his is one of very few voices of people I’ve lost, that I can still conjure in my mind when I think of him. Even though he’s gone, Bob remains to this day a great friend. I think of him often and listen to his sage advice.

Conclusions

Friendships are like farming. We sow a seed, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes one drops from a hole in our pocket to be picked up by someone else. In any case, a small plant germinates and with care and nurturing it can grow into a statuesque tree lasting more than a lifetime.

Friendship can also end sooner, again by accident or design. We may realise the relationship is one-sided, and we’re no longer enriched by it. We only prosper with supportive people around us, and by people who value our support for them. Sometimes the relationship is more like a weed than a tree and it must be pulled up for us to thrive. There’s nothing amiss with short relationships, if we see them as well-intentioned life experiments that bare inconvenient results. Step away from personal judgement as it won’t serve you well in the end.

I invite you to pay attention to your friendships, and like a high-yield bank investment, keep depositing into it. You’ll be rewarded with riches beyond your need.

Mel and Me

We began as friends and long after the passion may diminish, we will remain friends, always. This gives me immense pleasure and reassurance.

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Your stories of Friendship - Please leave a comment.

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Featured Guest Writer

Next Tuesday’s Featured Guest is Abbey Wade Her post is entitled “Moving Closer Towards Myself - It's a compliment if someone doesn't recognize you cut your hair”

At first glance her Featured Guest Post is about hair, and if you weren’t paying attention you would miss the depth of her story. I feel it’s about parental and societal programming and how Abbey escaped it to find herself.

Please don’t miss this from Abbey.

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And Finally

Have the very best of weeks. So, until next Sunday

Best Wishes

Gary