Maintaining close bonds over time certainly requires sacrifice and a shared worldview. That level of intimacy can create an insular "bubble" that offers belonging but risks becoming exclusionary.
I relate to the fierceness of loyalty you describe, but I question whether framing friendship in oppositional "us vs. them" terms is necessary or healthy. Can't we go to bat for our ride-or-dies without making so many enemies in the process?
You're right that friendship requires vulnerability, and that opening ourselves up comes with inherent risks. But it's in that space of trust and interdependence that the deepest connections are forged.
Your piece got me thinking about balancing depth and breadth in my social connections. Is it better to go all-in on a tight-knit circle, or maintain a larger network of casual ties? I suspect the sweet spot lies somewhere in between - being intentional about who we let into our inmost lives while remaining open to new people and experiences.
How do you approach that balance yourself? Have you found your social priorities shifting as you've gotten older? I'm curious to hear more about how you cultivate both intimacy and resiliency in your friendships.
why do i need a romantic relationship when all my platonic relationships give me all the love i could ever need. a shoulder to cry on, the tightest hugs, rides to and from the airport, sleepovers on a tuesday night, doing the dishes while the other is cooking, them sending you a song bc it reminded them of you, handwritten cards, 4 hour phone calls, pep talks, celebrations......i have never felt less of a void of romantic relationships than i do now because of the friends i have.
I relate to this so profoundly. The grudges against people who’ve been rude to my friends! How dare you take a wonderful creature for granted! Who raised you. Where is your mind.
It’s bittersweet for me bc platonic intimacy was something I always wanted, esp as someone brainy and distractible and strange. I was a v lonely child, and honestly you sometimes gotta hand it to Freud — the lack of care I received from my mother has expressed itself in all kinds of ways, but a nourishing constancy, of being seen, is the thing I most yearn for. For a long time I thought it was impossible for me.
Then I built a real, true friendship in college. We went through some wild shit together (we both fell in love with an extremely manipulative person) and from that shared foxhole we built platonic intimacy for just over a decade, being there for one another, seeing (SEEING) one another, supporting one another. My left arm is a tattooed sleeve of her paintings. Even when we lived in different cities, we got together on the anniversary of our first meeting.
Then she ghosted me, or perhaps ghosted the world. What can be said? I still love her so much that I’m skeptical of that framing — as though whatever happened with her was meant to hurt me — but it’s what it felt like.
It became clear to me that my friend had come to represent, for me, my growth away from that boy who felt made of loneliness, hated the idea of growing into a ghost or Henry Darger and wanted death instead. I knew that put too much on her, and the idea that maybe she knew it, and could no longer take it, brought back a lot of that self-hatred.
I remember hanging out once, alone, with the liar we’d both adored (and who had, before my friend, represented the the same growth in me). She kept an open house — she attracted people — and there was one guy, born with a neurological condition, visibly disabled. He hung around talking to her sometimes. He’d just left and I asked the liar, how did you meet? And she said, oh, I can’t recall, I don’t know why he’s here but he keeps coming around and he’s sweet, I just try to make him feel welcome.
His love and gratitude for her was incandescent. The disparity of love, and the shame he’d feel if he ever knew how little he was valued, shocked and haunted me.
So when my friend vanished I wondered if over those ten years she’d had been doing something similar, exerting herself to spare me some wretched embarrassment. If she had let indulgence spiral out into an Atlas weight. If she had to gas herself up before our anniversary meals, and came home drained from performance. If she argued with partner(s) who felt she put herself through grief on my account. If she put herself through grief on my account.
I wondered if I’d trapped her and taken ten years or her life, and if the profound pain I now felt was concomitant with a new freedom in her life, new opportunities for happiness without the weight of me. I look back on our time, our nights out, and it seems impossible that I didn’t belong. But even if I was steadfastly committed to platonic love, I was *in* love with her — how could I possibly have avoided it, having forgiven her for the things she hated abt herself — and I think she knew it. She’s the only person I could write real poetry about. And for her, maybe for most women, isn’t an admirer a weight?
But I think that’s more self-pity. It would be worse if she loves me too and, for reasons I’ll never know, has to mourn me as I mourn her. It would be worse if her love pains her.
Last week I had a dream of her, and it was the kind you wake from with your heart still half-sunken into it. I messaged her, after a few years of the ghosting (once or twice a year I tried to reach out, to no avail) and though she always knew, I reiterated how much her friendship meant to me. I told her I loved her but that I had to accept we would never meet again, that I had to let her go. I wished her every happiness.
After all those years, of course she hearted the message, only for a few seconds — I tapped through the notification and the reaction was already gone. I wanted so so badly to plead with her to talk to me. But I kept to my word. It’s time I took a hint.
And here I am now, adoring again. I love you, wild woman. I wish I could still bask in the warmth you infuse in everything around you. I wish I could still bear witness for you and provide canopy against your shame. I wish, selfishly, that I’d not turned my face — just slightly, just to the left — that night when we’d drunk too much. I wish that I was good for you and didn’t need you so. I wish I could take all your pain away from you. I keep using the word love but in truth it is a bottleneck, it pales to what it’s meant to represent. I love you truly, you miracle, you miracle.
I sincerely love this. You have such a beautiful way with words, and friendships are something that I have been thinking about (probably overthinking) ever since I graduated college and everyone is on a different path.
I've always thought of friends as the family that we choose. t's about commitment, shared philosophies, and having each other's backs through thick and thin. And hey, more crying and fiercely defending friends? Count me in!
“Friends don’t exist just to make you feel like you have friends when you need them. There’s the work of maintenance” LOVE. THEY SHOULD TEACH THIS IN SCHOOL CURRICULUM
I love the unexpected truth and authenticity of this line: "If I had to advocate for the benefits of friendship, I would say: you get to cry more, and you get to have more enemies." Thank you - it's already making me think more about the difference between 'now friends' and 'forever friends'. It's often too easy to spend time with 'now friends' and much harder, but perhaps much more important, to keep up our commitments to our forever friends.
Maintaining close bonds over time certainly requires sacrifice and a shared worldview. That level of intimacy can create an insular "bubble" that offers belonging but risks becoming exclusionary.
I relate to the fierceness of loyalty you describe, but I question whether framing friendship in oppositional "us vs. them" terms is necessary or healthy. Can't we go to bat for our ride-or-dies without making so many enemies in the process?
You're right that friendship requires vulnerability, and that opening ourselves up comes with inherent risks. But it's in that space of trust and interdependence that the deepest connections are forged.
Your piece got me thinking about balancing depth and breadth in my social connections. Is it better to go all-in on a tight-knit circle, or maintain a larger network of casual ties? I suspect the sweet spot lies somewhere in between - being intentional about who we let into our inmost lives while remaining open to new people and experiences.
How do you approach that balance yourself? Have you found your social priorities shifting as you've gotten older? I'm curious to hear more about how you cultivate both intimacy and resiliency in your friendships.
i love love love this and it's so validating to read that friendship should be romantic and caring and time intensive. thank you <3
this is so so so beautiful it made me tear up and made me realise how much i miss my friends that i used to see everyday 🥹
why do i need a romantic relationship when all my platonic relationships give me all the love i could ever need. a shoulder to cry on, the tightest hugs, rides to and from the airport, sleepovers on a tuesday night, doing the dishes while the other is cooking, them sending you a song bc it reminded them of you, handwritten cards, 4 hour phone calls, pep talks, celebrations......i have never felt less of a void of romantic relationships than i do now because of the friends i have.
I relate to this so profoundly. The grudges against people who’ve been rude to my friends! How dare you take a wonderful creature for granted! Who raised you. Where is your mind.
It’s bittersweet for me bc platonic intimacy was something I always wanted, esp as someone brainy and distractible and strange. I was a v lonely child, and honestly you sometimes gotta hand it to Freud — the lack of care I received from my mother has expressed itself in all kinds of ways, but a nourishing constancy, of being seen, is the thing I most yearn for. For a long time I thought it was impossible for me.
Then I built a real, true friendship in college. We went through some wild shit together (we both fell in love with an extremely manipulative person) and from that shared foxhole we built platonic intimacy for just over a decade, being there for one another, seeing (SEEING) one another, supporting one another. My left arm is a tattooed sleeve of her paintings. Even when we lived in different cities, we got together on the anniversary of our first meeting.
Then she ghosted me, or perhaps ghosted the world. What can be said? I still love her so much that I’m skeptical of that framing — as though whatever happened with her was meant to hurt me — but it’s what it felt like.
It became clear to me that my friend had come to represent, for me, my growth away from that boy who felt made of loneliness, hated the idea of growing into a ghost or Henry Darger and wanted death instead. I knew that put too much on her, and the idea that maybe she knew it, and could no longer take it, brought back a lot of that self-hatred.
I remember hanging out once, alone, with the liar we’d both adored (and who had, before my friend, represented the the same growth in me). She kept an open house — she attracted people — and there was one guy, born with a neurological condition, visibly disabled. He hung around talking to her sometimes. He’d just left and I asked the liar, how did you meet? And she said, oh, I can’t recall, I don’t know why he’s here but he keeps coming around and he’s sweet, I just try to make him feel welcome.
His love and gratitude for her was incandescent. The disparity of love, and the shame he’d feel if he ever knew how little he was valued, shocked and haunted me.
So when my friend vanished I wondered if over those ten years she’d had been doing something similar, exerting herself to spare me some wretched embarrassment. If she had let indulgence spiral out into an Atlas weight. If she had to gas herself up before our anniversary meals, and came home drained from performance. If she argued with partner(s) who felt she put herself through grief on my account. If she put herself through grief on my account.
I wondered if I’d trapped her and taken ten years or her life, and if the profound pain I now felt was concomitant with a new freedom in her life, new opportunities for happiness without the weight of me. I look back on our time, our nights out, and it seems impossible that I didn’t belong. But even if I was steadfastly committed to platonic love, I was *in* love with her — how could I possibly have avoided it, having forgiven her for the things she hated abt herself — and I think she knew it. She’s the only person I could write real poetry about. And for her, maybe for most women, isn’t an admirer a weight?
But I think that’s more self-pity. It would be worse if she loves me too and, for reasons I’ll never know, has to mourn me as I mourn her. It would be worse if her love pains her.
Last week I had a dream of her, and it was the kind you wake from with your heart still half-sunken into it. I messaged her, after a few years of the ghosting (once or twice a year I tried to reach out, to no avail) and though she always knew, I reiterated how much her friendship meant to me. I told her I loved her but that I had to accept we would never meet again, that I had to let her go. I wished her every happiness.
After all those years, of course she hearted the message, only for a few seconds — I tapped through the notification and the reaction was already gone. I wanted so so badly to plead with her to talk to me. But I kept to my word. It’s time I took a hint.
And here I am now, adoring again. I love you, wild woman. I wish I could still bask in the warmth you infuse in everything around you. I wish I could still bear witness for you and provide canopy against your shame. I wish, selfishly, that I’d not turned my face — just slightly, just to the left — that night when we’d drunk too much. I wish that I was good for you and didn’t need you so. I wish I could take all your pain away from you. I keep using the word love but in truth it is a bottleneck, it pales to what it’s meant to represent. I love you truly, you miracle, you miracle.
I sincerely love this. You have such a beautiful way with words, and friendships are something that I have been thinking about (probably overthinking) ever since I graduated college and everyone is on a different path.
What a birthday bash!
I've always thought of friends as the family that we choose. t's about commitment, shared philosophies, and having each other's backs through thick and thin. And hey, more crying and fiercely defending friends? Count me in!
“Friends don’t exist just to make you feel like you have friends when you need them. There’s the work of maintenance” LOVE. THEY SHOULD TEACH THIS IN SCHOOL CURRICULUM
I absolutely love this ❤️❤️ friendship truly encompasses the most beautiful parts of all types of relationships
Nothing. One should expect nothing.
Such a beautiful portrayal of friendship! Just what I needed today.
Man...this really resonated. Friendship *is* romantic. The last two paragraphs were especially moving🥲
Friendship can add so much to one's life. I am so thankful for my friends, even though it can feel difficult to maintain those friendships, at times.
I love the unexpected truth and authenticity of this line: "If I had to advocate for the benefits of friendship, I would say: you get to cry more, and you get to have more enemies." Thank you - it's already making me think more about the difference between 'now friends' and 'forever friends'. It's often too easy to spend time with 'now friends' and much harder, but perhaps much more important, to keep up our commitments to our forever friends.
Friendship to me is recieving a message saying, "Hey, want to do this crazy thing today?"
This was a great post. It made me feel good about all those weird and whacky people that have formed my bubble.
It's always hard for me to make friends. But when I do, I cherish them.