What is a friend?
 

We have friends from all walks of life. Some seem to understand our very soul. Some are just fun to hang out with.

A friend will help you move, a good friend will help you move the body.

Friends are flowers in the garden of life.

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

I have all the friends I need right now, but if anyone dies I'll call you.

OK, some of the tripe is out of the way.

What IS a friend? I think a friend loves you no matter what you do. I don't think a friend enables behaviors that hurt you. A friend will tell you what you don't want to hear. A friend will risk that, because a friend loves you and wants what is best for you.

An acquaintance will typically not get involved. An acquaintance will coo at all the right times. An acquaintance is fun to go to a movie with, or have a drink with. One does not expect an acquaintance to delve into your very soul looking for all your faults and finer points; if they do, they may indeed become a friend.

You will have fallouts with friends that you will patch up. You will have fallouts with acquaintances where you may or may not patch things up.

A friend tells you when you have a booger hanging out of your nose. A friend will fall into the watery ditch with you so that you don't have to tell the track coach you peed your pants on the five mile road run, instead 'we both went into the ditch' (true story, JrHi, I was the friend.)

An acquaintance will be slightly embarrassed by you if you fart in public. An acquaintance may do your hair and your make-up for you, but it never looks as good as when your friend does, because your friend knows 'you.'

A friend loves you when you can't get out of bed for three days and you stink. A friend will drag you to the shower to get you moving. A friend will figuratively bash you upside the head with tough love and tell you to get your shit together. Because a friend loves you. A friend wants what is best for you.

Rare and brilliant, a real friend is hard to find, but not hard to hold. A friend will knock the crap out of that wall you've built. Persistently, not always gently, sometimes to your greatest annoyance. Acquaintances, bless them, are easy to find but harder to hold...but that's OK. Acquaintances might get sick of your crap and walk away, and that's OK too.

I am lucky to have some lovely acquaintances, a few amazing cow orkers, a wonderful family, and a handful of the best friends I could ever ask for.

a tourmaline, an amethyst, a few rubies (one even on Tuesday!) a diamond, an aquamarine, a tanzanite, an opal, and some hammered silver shimmering like stars. The hammer was Thor's not Jack's. :)

eta: actually, with this particular bunch, the hammer was BOTH Thor's and Jack's!

A friend is someone who notices odd behaviour and asks you about it before judging.
A friend is someone who remembers your shared history and doesn't assume you must be in the wrong.
A friend sticks by for a while because everybody hurts, sometimes.

Okay, Michael Stipe gave me the last line.

are you even paying attention to me Sundae?????

A friend is many things. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them provide the honesty you need, when you need it. Others provide the salve you need when you need it, and still others are ready to whisk you off to a nightclub to get leathered when you get dumped.

Some are all of the above. And some are some of the above.

Sometimes a friend is just someone with enough shared history to know the song and care about the ending.

Sometimes they're just a fellow traveller for a portion of the journey. I've had friendships that ran deep but lasted a short time before life took us in different directions. And others who have remained friends for years, without ever really sharing anything of value except a little time and commonality.

Some friendships run deep and are also long lasting.

(I wonder what the Willises be talkin' 'bout in my musings on my friends?)

Dana, love it. I wanna be your friend 'cause I need whisked off to the nightclub, fer sure! :)

MOAR QUOTES fer frenz:

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Silence make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.”
― Margaret Lee Runbeck

No.
Because you are not my friend.
Not now not ever.
























Of course I don't mean it,
Here.

but- the hair loss? I guess I need to brush up on my liver A&P.


sheesh.

I'm not drinking either, Sundae. I DID have a whopper a week back. a WHOPPPER. a fifth a day for four days. Quit. I never give up and I know you won't either. As long as I can I'll keep getting back up.

XO

Imma drink my face off tonight. Oh crud I am here until 7.

Remember darling, you got The Liver of the Gods.
I just got the whole gamut of symptoms.

Serves me right for being so smug in my late 20s-early 30s.

Meant for Bri but counts for both of you!

My liver's gonna pop out of my arse one day. I treat it like crap.

There was a show, where there was a song...my friend used to sing it. Something about "I've got a liver the size of a coconut..."

Anyone remember that? A cartoon with Jon Lovitz, maybe?

All I know is the old East End ditty, "I got a luvverly buncha coconuts.."
I know a lot of them.
Some more potent than others - Grandad used to sing this to us (being fairly innocuous)

Merv Griffin's version.
Blimey he sounds posh!

My favourite went:

All of a sudden
A dirty great pudding
Went flying through the air
Aimed at my brother
It hit my poor mother
And knocked her off the chair

Now

Ain't it a pity
She's only one titty to bash against the wall...?

Was possibly a parody or a rude song to a common tune.
In later years it reminded me of the songs the proles sang in 1984. I can't help but wonder if Orwell based them on those.

ETA - Added second song before I read IM's reply.

Yeah, it was a take on that song. I just can't remember where exactly the spoof came from. No time to look I'm with students. It would have been early 90s probably.

I've been having trouble with this since someone I considered a friend, with whom I share a forty year history, sometimes inseparable, sometimes more distant, sometimes like sisters, sometimes hurting each other, moved away about six months ago without telling me. I don't know where she is for the first time in forty years and it hurts like hell.

Sent by thought transference.

Sorry, limey... that's painful. Hard to know, sometimes ... my best friend from the time we were 7 years old drifted away a bit as we got into our 20s, and then got married without telling me or inviting me (she was my maid of honor). She had two friends stand up for her - friends I'd introduced her to. They didn't tell me, either. I've never known what that was all about - yet since my diagnosis she has come back, written me twice a week and made surprise phone calls (she lives 12 hours away). So I'm grateful that the pendulum has swung back. I hope it will for you, too, in time.

I missed all that stuff about your liver Sundae. I guess the doc has told you by now that you can fix a damaged liver, as long as it's not diseased. Your liver is pretty much the only internal organ that can regenerate so to speak. I had some liver troubles myself some time back, but things are back to normal now. I just had to eat better and stay off the booze more or less. Basically give it a chance to fix itself, and it did in due course.

I hope you are as lucky. xx

About the OP. I think friends come and go sometimes. Other times they stay. I have come to believe that you don't have to know someone intimately to have them be a friend to you.

I think a common mistake most of us make is thinking that because a friendship drifts apart or even seems to end abruptly, that someone has done something wrong or something. I've come to have a more fatalistic view of friendship over the last couple of years, and I now believe that a friend is anyone who wants to help you even with something small, and someone who you feel good about having in your life, and like all other facets of life, it's best to enjoy it when you have it and cherish the memories you create.

I just think life is not meant to be a one track thing. We all change (hopefully mostly for the better as we get older and wiser) and sometimes we need different things from our friends and what was once important maybe loses some significance, through no fault of anyone other than the changing nature of our lives.

Don't be sad when the boundaries of a friendship change. Instead, anticipate the arrival of another special person who may be just around the corner. So many times we close ourselves off to new 'friends' because we're too smug about the friendships we already have.

Those are the things I've learned up till now. We'll see what happens down the track though. ;)

Thanks to Dana for turning me on to Richard Herring

Speaking about Friends:

Sigh... I really don't have any friends. I was very close to my officers when I was chief, but once I was gone they just drifted away. I think I bonded more with my soldiers on deployments than anyone. You could open up and share with them. Strange as it might seem, they know more about me than my brother or father.

To sift through this, it seems I can only form friendships based upon common/shared emotional experiences. I guess I'm pretty messed up. It is so sad when you realize that you'll spend your golden years alone. Well, I guess I won't always be alone. I'll have the ghosts of certain troops with me. They visit me in my dreams almost every night

Sorry for being such a bummer. This time of year is always hard on me unless I am deployed

Sarge, you know that's not true. You have a number of very real friends here and you know it. Stop forgetting.

Sarge---you know you have friends here. Cyberspace is a bit different, yes, but we ARE here.

When I was a teen and in my 20's I had loads of friends ---- so many I couldn't properly attend to all of them. One year I went to six different christmas parties; now I go to zero. I think it's a combination of age, time and the nature of people. I've always admired people who had friends since childhood but my two best buds moved away and I changed schools so many times....and I was clinically depressed and stoned in HS so you can imagine the 'friends' I made there. Nobody really lasting; they're either dead, in jail or going to AA three times a day. I called one of my very best buds up about three months ago and the woman HUNG UP ON ME. I hadn't talked to her for ages so I don't know what I did; people change. Then you pretend the people you work with are friends---and maybe some of them really ARE---but usually it's work that glues you together and if you change jobs or shifts--poof! they are gone. Not b/c they don't like you it's just that everyone is so busy busy busy it's hard to take time to actually BE with somebody. I learned a hard lesson. A girl i worked with whom I thought of as a friend told me, "People you work with aren't your friend; they're your co-workers," and bazinga. It hit me.

There are some people (two? three?) I can go to with my sob stories and first world problems, but I'll never have the closeness I used to feel when I was younger and the world was a lot shinier. Maybe, someday, I will, like the women on Who the Fuck did I Marry? find a real man to have a real relationship with.

But i'm not betting on it.

this IS a rough time of year---I hated Christmas for a long time; alone in my one bedroom walkup, working 11-7am, my boys gone, my drugs the only comfort I had. I would sit and listen to the clock tick and think of killing myself. It was horrible. I was sooooooooo lonely and sad. I shot demerol so I would be unconscious.

but you know what? Slowly, very slowly, it got a bit better. Things got a little less painful (and things were pretty painful --- even the air motes hurt my skin) and I couldn't off myself b/c of the boys.

People are in our lives for a reason or a season and then they move on and other people take their place; better people usually, more enlightened people to help show us the way...and then THEY leave but OTHERS come....unclench your fist to accept the new thing.

Hugs to you Sarge. You're a good guy.

I go between thinking I am blessed with friends, and thinking that people don't like me and why would they...I've been told that if people really knew me they wouldn't like me. But my few IRL friends really know me, and seem to like me.

I have a good friend who I used to work with. We meet up every now and then and talk shop, talk life, talk men, talk jokes...everything. I've admired her since I met her (when we interviewed her lo those many years ago.) She's beautiful beyond belief, but is absolutely oblivious to that fact. She is in a committed relationship and they love each other very much. She and he don't really argue, they're both so even keel. She had a very rough childhood and yet she and her sisters have all done really well with their lives. They take care of their younger brother who is a bit on the slow side, but a really sweet guy. They are, for all intents and purposes, the parents to their parents. She is much younger than I am, but it's not like I'm playing the Wise Old Sage (though, surprisingly enough, she does ask me for advice on some issues. Me? Advice?)

I know that if you have a handful of really close friends you are lucky. I'm not easy to be friends with at times, when I'm isolating because I don't believe I have a damn thing to offer the event to which I am invited.

Tril, you're right about the holidays. I seem to be getting worse. I have my family, but I feel more and more like the black sheep. I know that this will pass. It always does. But as I get older I worry that I'm going to be some sort of recluse. In fact, sometimes I want that. My brother says 'no, you need people' and I wonder if I do.

I have not yet learned in any significant way that many people, as a general rule, will stab you in the back, lie to you, use you, and hurt you. I have not yet been able to recognize that from the get-go.

Anyway, just some semi-depressed ramblings.

Just, lonely peoples, we never know what can happen. We never know who can come into our lives...be it friends or something more. So we can only keep offering ourselves up on the sacrificial altar and know we'll probably fall off, but hoping that we might just have found the right mix.

may I ask---who told you 'if people really knew you they wouldn't like you' --?

being alone and happy= Merry Recluse

being alone and isolating=depression of some sort; rumination; fear; or, for me -- sometimes it's pure laziness. People can be so exhausting; even people I really like drain me.

I'm a sponge and I soak up other people's vibes and feelings but I'm learning how NOT to do that so much and eventually will stop altogether.

We've all been hurt in some way. You have to KEEP GETTING BACK UP. And if nothing changes, nothing changes. Force yourself to do one thing you don't want to do, just for exercise----go to the family gathering; go to the workplace lunch; go to the mall with someone....little by little things will get better. but it's a process----not an event!

I used to want Goddess to come to me in burning bush (ok, opened myself up for lots of jokes there) and Speak to Me. Well, turns out, she speaks thru others so I have to be around others-----but I DON"T have to be around others who suck. I choose warm and fuzzy.

I had a sponsor who was ex-military and schooled in interrogation techniques. She's a lawyer AND an RN. She takes on cases for state foster children and sees more shit in a day than I do in a year. She's a good woman, but she's not warm and fuzzy. I need warm and fuzzy; so, she's no longer my sponsor. I have a really super SWEET woman now. A lot of it is just KNOWING what you NEED. warm and fuzzy is okay. so is Drill Sargant----just not for me.

My ex. You know, the person who I loved more than anyone. The one who I told early on that he put me on a pedestal and I was bound to fall off (but he said he would catch me and not let me fall) and the person I trusted more than anyone else on earth.

It was just a small part of a multi-level style of abuse. And I've never gotten over it, really. I've forgiven him, but I don't think the damage caused will ever go away. And it affects me. In way too many ways. I was sensitive to start with, but arent' we the kinds who typically become the target?

Dazza is pretty anri social. I keep telling him hes asd, and he keeps on just doing the same thing. Anyway, i was going to say that he came home a few nights ago complaining about secret santa atwork and how he was going to get out of it. He was told the next day that theres no escaping it. lol. So anyway, i sent him to work with a gift for some fitness freak type chick.

I digress.

My point is, you can be perfectly happy and still want to avoid people. Poor Dazza married me, so hes shit outta luck in that department, but one day he might kill me off and go live on some deserted beach.

Ah, the ex.

You recognize that he was an abuser on 'mulit-levels' - right?

his being an abuser invalidates anything he said. HE was damaged; not you. having lived with an extremely emotionally abusive father i have come to KNOW in my bones (and after 6 years of CBT) that it's not me, it's HIM.

It really really is HIM. He's damaged, he's jealous, he's mean, he's miserly, he's socially ignorant and proud to be, he's a bully-------not me. He didn't like me from the day I first drew breath. I am healing. You can, too.

and both my ex's think I'm crazy. One of them thinks I'm damaged b/c I was born onn Leap Year! LOL! Now that is crazy!!!

Oh, Sarge. This is a shit time of year for stuff like that.

I don't have a huge number of friends. A few close friends, and a number of less close friends. I'm in on and off contact with one of my oldest friends from school. We speak to each other maybe once or twice a year. See each other once or twice a decade :p We lost touch for a while, but fb put us back in contact. I'm glad of that contact, because we were so close. But when we meet up there isn't the same sense of connection (naturally). I think we both like to keep tabs on each other and know where each other is and that's enough.

I am a bit anti-social really. I don't like going out. I like being in my house with my dog. I like people (family or close mates) coming round for a visit. As much as I intend to get over to one of their houses at some point, it just never happens. Unless one of them comes and gets me in their car and forcibly (;p) drives me to their house for sunday lunch.

I find being sociable tiring sometimes. I like it, once I'm in a social situation and I get very into the conversation and banter, but then my brain starts to shut down and I have to be alone to recharge. And chances are after any social event, no matter how nice a time I may have had, and no matter how lovely it was, that evening will be spent with random, toe curling moments of embarassment popping into my head as I wonder if I was laughing too raucously, or why did I say that? or was I just grinning inanely, bet I looked a right wazzock...etc etc.

I've got quite good over the years at shoving those thoughts away.

@ Infi: that feeling of not having anything worthwhile to contribute sucks. I still occasionally feel surprised and pleased that anybody actually seeks out my company. Don't know whether it comes from years in school being an outsider looking in, or the years of being a baby sister desperately wanting to tag along with her brother and his mates...but the idea that someone might actively want my inclusion or involvement in stuff always takes me aback.

As long as I have that handful of close people I'm happy and pretty self-contained in my life. I worry what my life will be like when I eventually lose Mum. Because she's the one I am closest to in this world. She's effectively my best friend on a day to day basis. Movies and shared books and dogs and a smoke and a natter etc. It worries me sometimes that I rely so much on that friendship really.

I was lonely in a relationship that didn't work. I am alone now, but not lonely.

^wssx2^

Tis the season to be depress, huh? I'm feeling a bit sad too, and I don't even celebrate Christmas. LoL I used to want to be around people, now I don't care anymore. I just want to stay home, eat and watch something on the computer, and go to sleep. Maybe because I'm just tired of being around people who don't really care nor like me.

Sarge, don't worry, dear. You aren't the only one. I too don't really have any friends. I refer people as "my friend" for namesake. Easier to write a story about. True friends? None.

:lol: "Life's a beach; then, you marry one." Apparently, Dazza's found a way to reverse the process!

It's not like I'm against living at the beach. We actually only live a couple of hundred metres away from the coastline anyway. It's just that if he killed me off, he'd get insurance money to pay off the house and stuff. Then he'd be all set.

Of course, the opposite is true too and in fact, I'd have more than enough to live pretty comfortably for the rest of my life if I invest wisely blah blah...if Dazza should happen to...fall off a boat or something...

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. I've got some other stuff going on and I am letting it get to me. Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning. I was at the VA today and I believe the only way I can be happy is to deploy again.

LB - I hear you girl. I feel like a kindred soul

I had friends, but most of them died... which scared the rest away.:smack:

Sarge ... you have friends here, please don't ever doubt that. I'm sorry you're having to deal with a lot right now. Don't be too hard on yourself.

listen. I'm not scared of you, your dead friends, or your jokes. ok, most of your jokes.

I'll be your friend. I have a very long life line, so I'll stick around. :D

So yeah, a friend of mine, whom you all know, has thrown in the towel in his marriage. He's now running down the clock until things are settled. In the interim he's set up an eHarmony account. I'm not sure what advice to give him and was wondering if you all think this is premature. He seems to think it gives him hope that there is a future with an SO who would be fun and nice and like to have sex more than once a year and who doesn't get angry all the fucking time about nothing. And who doesn't nag or criticize.

Maybe he is living in a fantasy world.

eHarmony told me I had no matches. :(

Having never been in your *friend's* shoes, I have no advice other than to take it easy. Many people I know have gotten in to crazy rebound relationships because they got so caught up in that butterfly feeling that hadn't been in their lives in so long.

A woman who doesn't nag or criticize? Now that's a fantasy. :lol:

www.mutechicks.com

For this friend, I suggest a holiday romance. Some loving would do him good, but without the longer term emotional investment. Can he find some suitable woman in a suitably distant city, who is looking for same?


ETA I'm disappointed to learn that isn't a real website.

Here, lookie!

http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/10-m...164400962.html

There are other sites you could try. My ex signed up for match.com after we broke up. A woman contacted him right away, they clicked, and got married within a year. Success story for match.com.

Good luck to your friend, Squirrel.

Oh squirrel, my advice to your friend is: way too soon. This is just my opinion. A friend of mine met a good woman not long after his, and her, divorce and they've been happily married for years. No dating site...i have no opinion on that...but i think they were very lucky that it worked.

There is no hurry. I think people need time by themselves. That's my take, and your friend's mileage may vary.

What do i know? I don't expect i will ever get married again.

Find happiness i guess is all i know. It doesn't always come from an SO...but it helps it along for sure.

But, let the body cool down, maybe?

I criticize myself all the time. However, perhaps i should have nagged for some respect, in my relationships. Not being a nag scores no long-term points...but i attracted guys who liked to take advantage of that about me. ;)

Woman, that's one thing you need to do less of. ;)

So i've been told. I agree.

Working on it...then criticizing myself for not being a better person faster. :)

eHarmony is not supposed to let you on if you are still married.

OKCupid is where all the cool people are

MarryACanadian is where it's at.

Depicted in the film Blue State. Not real as far as i know. Too bad, too.

That's where I found Kitsune back in the day!

I'll tell my friend. That's all good advice.

He definitely needs to let the body cool down. Maybe a cold shower or pictures of old nuns.

eta, I mean Squirell Nutkin will tell his friend. That's it.

:lol:

Squirell's friend will be A-OK. Humor helps overcome many difficulties.

I can see the value of taking time to become content on one's own, refocusing on what's important to you as an individual. Values and goals that don't match are more of a problem between partners than interests that don't align.

That said, the loneliness in a long-term dying relationship is hard to bear, and it's very hard to resist falling into a rebound relationship.

eta - pictures of old nuns :lol:
that would cool anybody down!

The Loneliness of the Long Dying Relationship, that's on the shelf right after The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, isn't it?

I know. I wanted to ease years of pain, but i found i needed to ease it myself. No sex, or fluttery butterflies, or words of undying affection spoken by men who really just wanted to get into my pants, was going to do the healing for me. It's how i got into the messy relationships to begin with.
I know from loneliness. It's my constant companion.

Yep, that's the one. Amazon sells it along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a combo deal.

I love that BB King song How Blue Can You Get? (it was also sampled in Primitive Radio Gods standing outside a broken phonebooth)

"I've been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met, ever since the day we met."

eta: laff @ ortho

Here for ya! (I couldn't let myself posting real nuns' pictures. It would be wrong to use their pix in a joke since they devoted their lives to their faith. :p: )

Thanks, Lola. You're a pal; always looking out for me. I appreciate that.

Deer Squrl. Go to local bars and get sum. Dont haf to be meeningful. And sumtimes rebounders do wurk.

If'n it's a good idea (which it may be...not judgin') y u 2 ashamed to post it as whoever you are? ;)