Tag Archives: good friends in bad times

angry beaver

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I went to a very fun Christmas party a few days ago. This the  kind of party you could stay at for a couple of days-everyone alive and sparling like little ornaments on a Christmas tree. Dancing, carousing, telling secrets, stepping outside of themselves through a combination of the goodness of the holidays looming  and potent crantinis being poured with seasonal recklessness.

So many interesting people filled the room. Years of asking how people are when you see them makes you want to really listen to the answer. Few people have the courage, especially at this time of the year, to answer honestly.

We want to be seen a certain way; happy, engaged, beautiful, alive, successful, wanted. All of  it. Married people have a pressure too- only it is different. I am not sure that  they have to defy gravity, accounting and age the way us single folk do.

Anyway I was catching up with a divorced  friend I rarely see and I was asking her how she was. Really.

She said

” I am ok.”

So honest.

I looked at the expression on her face. Okay was clearly a euphemism for being dragged behind  an SUV on a gravel road.

I said “Tell me”

She told me of her difficulties. She said “you know, I want to answer honestly and quite frankly I am not sure I could fake the emotions of these days, but at the same time I really don’t want to be seen  as the angry beaver.

 Oh yes, we all know if we let the angry beaver out of the cage she may take over.

Brilliant. (Funny). Honest. Raw.

I toast you. You know who you are.

It will get better. xxx

So what happens on a first date? I find almost without exception the man will spill the beans and tell you every single unsavoury or imperfect thing about himself . I mean you are not asking it just comes pouring out- click here to read spilling the beans

my kindhearted friend

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A good friend and my new running partner (even this sounds funny when I say it outloud), recently sent me a link to a video I want to share with you. With it she said “this youtube video made me think of you, my very kindhearted friend… it reflects just the kind of thing that you might have thought and stopped to do.”

After I watched it I thought about the great friends I have and how they really see me better than I really am and  see me the way I want to be seen. It is this way that our closest friends see us that make us try harder to live up to the notions they have of us.

I have had  a few  friends and boyfriends in my life, who saw me worse than I think I am and I could not continue those friendships. I realized somehow being with them would bring me down and I might get stuck there. The world is tough and can be cold- we have to surround ourselves with warm  people  who see us as wonderful and unique and  let us be everything we can be.

About 30 years ago I had a  friend/colleague and we were talking about this very high profile person who worked in Italy in our head office. She was older, unique, handsome, with a fiery temper and odd interests. I turned to my friend and said ” Oh I would just love to have dinner with her” and she said to me ” what on  earth would you possibly have to say to her?”

wow.

She was my friend and I liked her so much but I did not like the way she saw me.

I realize that those things are often said more as a reflection of how that person views themselves- but nonetheless,  it stuck out.

We want to come up to how we are seen not down.

I have some dirty little secrets to share with you this morning- click here and share yours too if you dare….

monkey see, monkey do?

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According to a recent study, divorce is contagious. A  University of California study  illuminates the  apparent infectiousness of  divorce, stating that if you have a divorced friend you are 150 times more likely to go that way yourself. Great, just when we finally convinced everyone that we pose no threat- we are about  to go the way of the common cold. No one  will want us around for fear we are catching.

It reminds me of when I first separated and I was  forming a support group  as I could not find anyone who felt and sounded like me out there and because all my friends were married. A close friend asked if she could join, because it sounded so cool. I said ‘ummmm, don’t think so, you are happily married’ and she said ‘yeah, I know, but it sounds like fun’.

Once a neighbour said I should have another baby because everyone else was. I found that preposterous and said so- “Buy a pair of boots that everyone has if you want because they are in style, but a baby? I think that one needs to come from me.” Same thing for divorce- this study does not give any of us much benefit of the doubt-you don’t do it because it is in style.

However,  the idea that separating will not occur to us in a busy life if it is not mentioned or available as example has some merit. If we are unhappily married and all of our friends are married, we might suck it up a little more. If people around us who are unhappy are splitting, it might give us permission. Or we might see the light at the end of the tunnel through their pioneering. It is the brave one who is the first on the block and the first in their circle of friends to leave when there is no way to make it work.

While there may be a serious honeymoon period following a split (after the sadness has subsided ) it is more about coming back into happiness than absolute glee around being alone and unmarried. I don’t suspect people who are happily split ever try to convert happily married people either. Also,  they would get nowhere. A very good marriage is a thing to covet, admire and support in every way. Even envy.

I know because I saw one once.

read what some 21st Century business strategies and raising teenagers have in common on my other blog Flying Solo– the one you also have to read if you want to be my friend