she keeps her love away

...I'm learning how to love from watching you."

A friend of mine said that to me last night ~ or something along those lines. Rendered me absolutely speechless. Seriously, how do you respond to something like that?

I'm still trying to figure out completely what she meant by that. I mean, she DOES know how to love. She and her husband are about as cute as they can be and clearly love each other. He's such a sweetheart, incidentally. He's my new "big brother" and it's fun having one after all these years.

I know she meant it as a compliment. And it is. It just made me think...

How do we learn to love? I know I got lucky. I did sort of win the "good family" lottery in what I have. My parents have been married for almost 41 years. I've got a younger sister who I love now ~ it took a while for us to get there, but we made it. We've never really had any major problems. So I don't really know how else to exist.

Maybe that's part of what my friend meant... I know our backgrounds are really different. REALLY different. But somehow that doesn't stand in our way of being friends. It's like it doesn't really matter...we work through it. I think she's learned a lot from her husband too...I don't know him as well, but I get the impression my background is closer to his.

Or maybe it's how I've handled a potentially, well not potentially, a very sticky situation with someone else. The way she put it a few weeks ago when things were really difficult was "You don't have to apologize. We're all learning how to be in this crazy mixed-up family we have here."

I don't know... But it made me think in a good way. I'll probably come back to it at some point when my brain and my heart have worked through it a little more.

I know I love my friends and they love me. And sometimes that's all that really matters in the end.

So I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately. Lots of drama has gone on in lots of areas of my life, and it's just had me thinking about friendship ~ what it is, what it isn't, what makes people friends, why friendships end, etc.

I figured a good place to start would be a definition. So I went to trusty old dictionary.com to find something "official". Here is what I found:

noun
1. a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
2. a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter
3. a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile
4. a member of the same nation, party, etc.
5. ( initial capital letter ) a member of the Religious Society of Friends; a Quaker.

For what I'm thinking about right now, definitions 1 and 3 seem to be what I'm grappling with. So a friend is a person who is attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard, or a person who is on good terms with another, not hostile. There. Friendship defined. Easy, right?

Not so fast. Exactly how far do those feelings of affection or personal regard have to go to cross the line from acquaintance to "friend"? And who determines that? What determines that? And what sustains a friendship once it's formed?

Obviously, or at least in my experience, there has to be some commonality that led you and this person who may or may not be a friend to meet and begin talking. Usually it's a common interest, but it could also be a common friend. I know a common friend doesn't mean you have to be friends with the other person, but sometimes you get along and a friendship can develop. But just one commonality...is that enough to sustain a friendship?

Long term... I don't know. For me, there has to be more than one thing in common to sustain a friendship. It may not be evident at the beginning of getting to know someone, especially if you met through a group or something, but as the relationship evolves you discover more things in common or that you can discuss and at least be ok with differing about.

I don't do well with friendships where there is an uneven balance of power...or...not power...I'm not sure what the word is. I guess when one person feels they're better than their so-called friend. For example, I've had "friendships" where we had one major thing in common, but eventually every single conversation would turn into my "friend" asking me to help with something and then when I said I wasn't comfortable, the conversation turned into a critique of me. Like the person wanted to feel better, so they would put me down. How could I be so stupid financially? How could I be so naive to think that this other person really was my friend? Basically stuff that just made me feel bad about myself. I realized that I didn't need that in my life and called an end to that friendship. It wasn't fair for me to keep feeling bad just to be in a "friendship" with that person.

And of course hypocrisy always enters into these kind of discussions. You know how it is... Someone says that they can't abide something like jealousy in a friend of theirs, yet as soon as something positive happens for or is said about that friend, all of a sudden the original person is exploding at the friend in anger. It's pretty easy to see that pattern in a friendship I had that's ended. Everything was fine and wonderful, we had celebrated something for a couple of nights, she came out to see how I was after a completely shitty day I'd had, and all was well. Until someone else said something positive about me and I got the first of some angry emails. Repeat the scene but with even more venom the next time something positive happened for me regarding a mutual friend. She tried to tell me stuff she claimed I didn't see in myself, when I wanted to scream at her that she was projecting her own insecurities onto me. I know I'm not perfect, but I did nothing to deserve the rants aimed at me. I can only wonder what she's spewed at mutual friends about me. And then you hope those mutual friends trust that you are the person they have gotten to know and love ~ or at least like... That they trust their own experiences with you rather than what someone else is claiming.

It can be so complicated.

I take people at their word. If they call me their friend, then I go along with that. I usually let them use the word first. Sort of like the whole thing about "I love you" in romantic relationships. They seem genuine when they say it. And they seem to like being with me and doing stuff together. But am I just being stupid? Too trusting? And yeah... The things I talked about above contribute to those insecure feelings. That doubt.

Or sometimes it's not even that subtle. Sometimes someone else will say it. And that just adds to the confusion and hurt. It's just... I don't know...

It's not to say I don't have any friends. I do. And a couple of them have been wonderful in helping me deal with some of this other stuff going on. Others have been, but apparently we're not "really" friends but acquaintances or something like that. Still others I haven't even told about it. I just...

I am this weird contradictory mess. I sometimes trust people too easily, but at the same time I'm afraid to trust. I've been hurt too much. Starting when I was young and my best friend got sick and died. I made a new friend the next year, and then just a year or so later, I essentially lost her to another girl ~ a girl who seemed determined to take everything from me that year...everything from a lead role in our kindergarten play to my best friend. And we won't even get into the hell that was high school. So while I want friendships, I'm skittish of them as well, and it's just a hard place to be in. Usually I pull away first... But lately it's felt more the other way.

Sometimes it just seems easier to isolate. If you don't get close, you can't get hurt. But I can't live like that. I can't not have friends. And so I keep reaching out, hoping that the friendships I make will be genuine and lasting; that they won't crumble at the slightest wind, or be torn down by someone else.

Do those kind of friendships even exist?