On Friendship
“A man of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
-Proverbs 18:24
“A friend loves at all times.”
-Proverbs 17:17a
“Greater love has no man than this,
that he lay down his life for his friends.”
-John 15:13
One of the things I struggle with the most at the close of a romantic relationship is this question: “So, can we be friends?”
*cue le sigh heard round the world*
Depending on the nature of the break, I may be in a space immediately after where friendship is something that I am willing to consider. But there is a caveat: the concept of friendship has a real meaning and weight to me. In general, with men seeking my friendship after the end of a romantic connection, I often hear the request as some variation of this instead: ‘Can I maintain access to you and your life for an indefinite period of time even though I’m unwilling/unable/unqualified to do the work of being involved in your life in a more meaningful way?‘
Y’all. A truth life has gifted me (and one I have internalized) over the past several years is the realization that not everyone who walks alongside me is my friend. Additionally, not everyone who says they want to be my friend deserves to be, and I say that without any malice or shade. Being a friend is a damn tall order. The Bible says that a friend “sticks closer than a brother,” “loves at all times,” and “lay[s] down his life for his friends.” I almost want to ask these men… yo, are you sure you even know what you’re asking me for? Cause I kind of feel like… you don’t.
Though I think the question “Can we be friends?” can be (and often) is asked sincerely, I take the prospect of new friendships quite seriously. And to keep it 100 with you, most of the time, my answer is a quiet no. Exactly how that no manifests depends completely on who is making the request, but with all kindness, I’ve already got friends. And they love me, at all times. Just like I have non-negotiable standards for what I seek in a romantic partner, I also have a very clear, well-defined sense of what friendship means to me. Most often, I quietly recognize that, if we didn’t suit as partners, it was probably at least in part because we also didn’t make very good friends. Not every ending is a failure; not every letting go is a loss. I’m intentional about the people I let have access to me, and I make no apologies for that. I have to protect my energy.
A large part of my problem with post-breakup requests for friendship is the frustration I feel with my overwhelming sense of lacking a shared lexicon. In my humble opinion, the English language, does not offer nearly enough categories to describe the people with whom I journey. I certainly have many acquaintances, people I like and think well of, people who are part of my (outer) circle, people whose company I sincerely enjoy (and me being a strong introvert, that’s saying something), people I work with, etc. But I define my friends as the people who would lay down their lives for me (John 15:13).
I love this phrasing from the Bible because I think that laying down one’s life is something that happens every single day. We set down our lives and pick up someone else’s. For me, laying down my life means giving the trusted, chosen few members of my inner circle access to one of my most precious, irreplaceable resources: time. And true friendship reciprocates. My friends are the ones who will say to me, as soon as they intuit something is wrong with me, ‘You know what, what I’m working on can wait. Are you sure you’re okay?’ As someone who often struggles to reach out when I am going through something, I appreciate this insistence on caring for me maybe more than my friends even know. To me, sacrificing one’s life for a friend need not look like a dramatic fling in front of someone’s path to save them from imminent death. It can also look like prioritizing the people we hold dear over anything else. Holding space for them and truly listening. Making sacrifices of time and energy. Keeping people’s confidences, never betraying their trust. I’ve always understood this definition of friendship to be more about the smaller, daily instances of giving life to others, rather than a single, timebound encounter that takes life away.
For me, another crucial characteristic of friendship is what Brene Brown calls “earning the right to hear my story,” something she considers a key component of vulnerability. Simply put, there are people who have proven themselves, time and time again, to be worthy of walking by my side. These are no fair-weather friends. They know that this journey of life is full of ups, downs, and everything in between, and they expect to be there for all of it. They are equally ready to hold my joys with me as they are to hold me when my shoulders are shaking with sobs. My friends have shown up for me in truly magnificent ways, from making me homemade chicken soup from scratch when I was ill, hosting a sleepover to help me get over a breakup, or dropping everything to be by my side in times of crisis. They understand that the road of life is marked with joy, yes, but they do not run from the suffering either. Those who stick with me, good times or bad, are the people who I feel comfortable saying that I am truly doing this thing called life with. These are my people; these are my friends.
On Valentine’s Day this year, I posted in my home the reminder that: “Love comes in many forms.” I think American culture has a tendency to overprivilege romantic love and overemphasize the role that romantic partnership with one single human being can have. While partnership can certainly be a blessing and wonderful added benefit to life, my core inner circle of friends are the people I am blessed enough to be journeying with right now, and for that, I am immensely grateful. Singleness, of course. comes with some loneliness, but in the main, it has been a season of gratitude for the sense of deep rootedness I feel within my community and my circle of friends. My life is not always a walk in the park on a sunshiny day, but my friends come prepared with umbrellas.
In her beautiful poem “Paul Robeson,” Gwendolyn Brooks phrased it this way:
“…we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.”
That is what friendship looks like to me. A collective sense of shared responsibility for the people with whom we do life. We ARE our brother’s keeper. We ARE our sister’s keeper. We are each other’s harvest, business, magnitude, and bond. We keep each other going. In this way, we become each other’s reward.
So there it is. Sorry, gentlemen. Unless your definition of friendship looks like that, consider me squarely Team #NoNewFriends.