Chapter 14: Being a Friend – Understanding the Nature of Friendship
JoJo taught me a lot about friendship. He wasn’t my dog. He was an elderly collie with long black hair, some brown patches of fur and white paws. He had deep brown eyes and the kindest face I had ever seen on an animal before or since. He lived near me and spent a lot of time around the five houses where I live. I named him ‘JoJo’ because his owner was called Jo. I had no idea what his name was, but he answered to ‘JoJo’. For the first few years I lived here in Connemara, I never let him in the house, as was the custom in Connemara. Then one day, when it was raining (I’m in Ireland – pick any day of the year) he looked so forlorn outside that I let him in. I dried him with a towel and he lay gratefully at my feet and went to sleep. The next time it rained he barked outside to let me know he was there and when I appeared with a towel, he lifted up his paws to be dried.
Whichever room I was in he followed me to lie at my feet. When he wanted some affection he sat by me with his paw on my knee or rubbed his head on my hand. I never fed him and he refused water. When I was going to bed I called him to the back door and he stood still while I hugged him and said goodnight then he went out he went into the night – who knows where.
He was the perfect dog.
I think he had a number of other houses on his circuit, and some of them did feed him, so he was well-loved and well-looked-after.
Whenever I went for a walk he popped up from wherever he was and joined me. As he rushed towards me to greet me I swear he would be smiling. We walked down the lane to the new pier and when we came back, he sat on the wall at the end of the entrance to the houses where I live for me to hold him and cuddle him. I think, actually, he thought he was fulfilling a need of mine – and maybe he was right.
But here are the things I learned from JoJo:
- If I didn’t want to let him in when he barked he just went away. And if I appeared 10 minutes later to go for a walk he would still run to me, delighted to see me. No grudges. No, ‘Why didn’t you let me in?’ Just delight that I was there.
- He had no loyalty to me. When the occupants of a small cottage returned for a visit, I didn’t see JoJo for days. He had no obligations. He went where he pleased and where he was welcomed. And he was welcomed everywhere.
- And he spontaneously gave and received affection.
I think of my people friends and how I am in relationship with them. I used to always be the one to contact people (‘you’re so good at keeping in touch’, they’d say). I decided a few years ago I wouldn’t contact people anymore and would wait for them to contact me. I waited six months and no one contacted me! I missed them. I had a choice to make. Should I go on resenting that it’s always me who reaches out and making an issue of it when I spoke to them again?
Or should I just delight in the friendship without counting who contacts whom?
Of course, I contacted them and they were delighted to hear from me and, without fail, always apologised for not being in touch.
JoJo demonstrated what unconditional love looks like. I didn’t have any expectations of him and he certainly didn’t have any of me. And because of that, spontaneous affection could be given and received freely. I think all emotional pain is caused by expectations not being met. We have a need and expect others to meet that need and we judge them when they don’t and make them the cause of our pain. Intimate relationships are different in that there is usually a contract of some kind that both people agree to and are constantly re-negotiating. But we don’t have contracts with friends do we? Or do we? It’s hard not to have expectations.
There was a time when I thought I had no expectations of my women friends – then I hit a crisis. It was many years ago when I had just set up my business. My girls were very young, and my mother-in-law was living with us for six months until she died. She saw me as her main carer, even though her husband was in that role. I was very stressed and wondered where all my friends were who I had supported over the years. My situation was inherently stressful and I expected them to reach out and support me, but they didn’t. Sometime afterwards, I spoke to them about this and they said things like, “But you were coping so well,” and, “But you seemed so strong,” closely followed by, “And by the way, why didn’t you ask for help?” Why indeed?
I had expected them to notice and to realise.
I learned right then that friends are there and it’s okay to ask them for help instead of being proud and stressed.
I have one particular friend I feel very close to. I know how dear I am to her, yet I also know that she has absolutely no need for other people. If she were transported to an island and never saw people again it would probably be her idea of Heaven, although as she is a Buddhist, she has no notion of Heaven. She told me once that she had a very good friend who was continually upset with her because, to quote the friend, ‘you don’t act like a proper friend’. The friend wanted to see her regularly, speak regularly, do ‘friend things’ together. Ultimately, this other friend let the friendship go because she was continually feeling hurt. I could see exactly what she meant. When you feel close to someone and they don’t seem too bothered about you it’s easy to feel hurt. But this friend is too precious to me, so I decided to deal with my own issues of attachment rather than let the friendship go.
It is said that we have different friends for different purposes – a friend to laugh with, a friend to go shopping with, a friend to cry with, a friend you can ask for advice from. And some friends belong to the different stages in your life – your student days, for example, or they can be linked to a particular job, or the early days of being a mum.
I realised early on that it was really important just to have a friend. When I was 11 years old and in my first lesson in the grammar school, I had asked Jennifer Moore to be my best friend for no other reason than she was sitting behind me. I was keen to just get a friend quickly. That friendship lasted about two days. I had had a friend at the Junior School, Marion Barton, who used to be bussed into the Catholic school. She was bubbly, with a round red face and brown straight bobbed hair. She was always smiling. But she didn’t pass the 11+ (I remember her crying in class when the results came out but guess I felt too delighted in my own success to care much). I went to the Grammar School and she went to the Secondary Modern School.
“Poor Marion,” my mother said. “She isn’t clever enough to go to the grammar school.”
How easily and quickly intellectual superiority settles into your bones.
I only saw her once after that. It was too difficult with her living in the next town. I’m sure my mother wouldn’t have encouraged it. I still remember her birthday – October 16th – and think about her every year on that date, even though I haven’t seen her for 60 years.
Once at the grammar school, I became particularly close to Theresa. Theresa’s parents had paid for her to go to the kindergarten of the grammar school from when she was five and Mrs Deane, who lived in my street, right next to the school, would collect Theresa and look after her until her mother collected her. When Mrs Deane, Theresa’s mother, and my mother realised that I would also be going to the grammar school, they introduced us.
Theresa was blonde, with a long face and high cheek bones. She didn’t speak with a pronounced Northern accent like me and had a high laugh that sounded very false when she was nervous. Her natural shyness meant that she would never be the first to speak in any exchange, so people thought her stand-offish and snobby. I was always telling people, “She’s not like that, really.” I saw Theresa every day at school and spoke to her on the phone every night, and even went on holiday with her family, but never mixed with her socially. I was chief bridesmaid at her wedding but always felt out of place among her ‘posh’ friends.
Theresa and her parents were always really nice to me and, although they took me on holiday with them, I always felt out of my depth.
I didn’t move in money circles and didn’t have easy social skills.
Once, I was invited to a dinner dance because someone’s girlfriend was ill. Theresa’s mother lent me a ball gown – green satin with a large black velvet collar – and I had my hair put up in curls and piled on my head. I was 17 and looked about 35. My ‘date’ was lovely. I knew him and his girlfriend slightly from being on holiday with Theresa. All Theresa’s ‘set’ would be there, but Jonathan and Cathy always chatted to me – unlike some of the others who would ignore me. That night at the dinner he did his best to put me at my ease but must have noticed my face. When we sat down, I looked at the array of cutlery and glasses and had no idea which to touch first. My discomfort must have been plain to him but he was gracious and able to put me at my ease.
I went to ballroom dance classes as part of my mother’s strategy to make me into a lady. Theresa and a lot of her friends also went but they were never really interested in talking to me. One time, there was a ball in the town that everyone was going to. I wanted to go too. I had nothing to wear, so Mum got her sister-in-law in Canada to send over a dress which was pink and frothy with a big pink sash round the middle. It was much too small so had to be altered for me.
I felt like a Christmas fairy without a tree.
When I got to the ball, I saw that all the other girls were: 1) a lot prettier than me, 2) had modern dresses and looked sleek and, 3) had lots of friends and lots of dances. I felt completely stupid and ugly and hated my mother for even thinking that that dress would be okay. I hardly danced, hardly spoke to anyone and went home early.
The next day my mother asked me if I had enjoyed it.
“No,” I said, “I hated it.”
“Well, never mind,” she said brightly. “I hated my first ball too.”
And that was that. It was also my last ball. And the last time I ever consulted my mother about dress.
But, in spite of my misgivings about her friends, mine and Theresa’s friendship has endured and we have followed each other’s careers and families throughout the years. I am godmother to her oldest son but have neglected my duties shamefully. And whenever I visit Bolton, Theresa and I always meet up for a lunch.
There is a special quality about longevity in friendship.
To still care about someone after 60 years who you have known since you were eight years old and who still cares about you, is precious indeed. Once a connection is made, even though it was made at a particular time in your life, it’s the connection that endures even though lives drift apart and physical distance separates. There are a handful of friends I have (all women) each of whom I have known for over 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or even 60 years and all of them are very special to me.
These friends and the ones currently in my life, actually serve only one purpose – they hold my story. They see me in my entirety in my story.
Our stories are containers for our friendships and it’s always comforting to meet my friends there.
No matter what the story, the container is solid. There is a comfort in revisiting the container and seeing our friends there who love us, no matter what the story. And there is a definite comfort in connecting with someone who knows the family you were brought up in and who has seen you change over the years.
I am likely to be closest to the friends who I feel aligned to on all levels, including the spiritual level. They are the ones who see me without mask or pretension. We all long to be seen – to be really seen – and our friends see us. They are also the truest mirror to reflect our own souls. Soul connection is really about soul recognition. Once there has been soul recognition and a soul connection has been made, the friendship can be maintained across miles and across years. My friends are the ones who supported me in the tough times I have had as an adult and who continue to support me because they see my struggles and know how to comfort me. When I was going through my marriage break up, which lasted five years, my best friend Mary in the US held the whole story for me. Things were changing by the day so I would write to her at the end of the day and when I got up the next morning there would be a response from her.
I was trying to deal with the situation from an unconditional love perspective, which led me to make some less than wise choices.
She knew how and why I was acting like I did and she counselled me from there – not from the perspective of what she would do. Her support sustained me throughout the breakup.
And what of friendship break-ups? Of course, some friendships just die away slowly – people move, they have different priorities, and the friendship just fizzles out naturally. But I was devastated when one particular friendship was broken.
It was some years ago that there was an acrimonious split with my co-director, Cath. Acrimonious in that she just left, suddenly, and wanted to sever the friendship as well as the business relationship. I had no idea why the business partnership wasn’t working and absolutely no idea why the friendship had to go too. As the families were very close – she had three girls, I had two – that meant that a lot of our social life was wrecked as the two families used to spend weekends, Christmases and summer holidays together.
I was angry for a long time (about 18 months) and would go over and over conversations in my head – what I did say, what I should have said – all usually ending with the wail, How could she?
As it was a small town and we both used to travel on the early train to London, I would arrive on the station and look round nervously. If she is there, will I speak to her? Will I ignore her? Will I tell her I’m not speaking to her? Will I shout at her? Then I would see that she wasn’t there and would breathe a sigh of relief.
I read books on forgiveness so I could forgive her. All of them began, “First you have to forgive yourself.” I would throw the book down in exasperation – it wasn’t me who did it!
About 18 months later, I was on a workshop and the facilitator said in passing, “Of course, if you remain angry at someone it is you the anger eats away at – they are carrying on with their life. It is your life that is affected.” Finally, I saw the light. I went home and sat on my own, picked up that book on forgiveness again and said, “For whatever I did to help to create the pattern of relationship between us such that the only thing she felt she could do was to leave like she did, I truly forgive myself.” My anger stopped that day and the next week I saw her twice on that train to London. We spoke about the children and family and stayed away from any mention of work. It was a start.
Now I realise what had been wrong – two things in fact.
Firstly, it took me a long time to accept my responsibility in creating the relationship between us that ultimately led to her needing to break free of it in a dramatic fashion.
Secondly, while we continue to try and forgive someone, our emphasis will be on the other person – what they said, or what they did. We have to change the emphasis and look at what we need to do to regain our state of peace. Who knows why people say and do things? And, of course, we initially react from an emotional level and we can be upset, hurt, angry, furious, distraught. And these feelings need to be expressed. And sometimes, they can take hold of me in a flash with one thought. But my job is to keep open the connection to my soul and the soul is not concerned with such emotions.
Whenever I find myself on that level, what draws me out of it is realising I cannot allow someone else to have control over my soul connection and my peace of mind and heart. As such, the need for forgiveness is superfluous. We can replace forgiveness with the understanding that people do the only thing they can do in that moment, coupled with the acceptance that it takes two people to create a dynamic in the relationship – but only one person to change it.
And my friend? I realised that I really missed her friendship. She knew me so well and we had shared so much. We laughed at the same things. We had great discussions about books we were reading. We came from the same backgrounds. I had no energy to rehash everything before we could be friends again just to make myself right, so – ten years after the breakup, we began again – and the friendship is now as strong as ever.
The people I count as my friends have all ‘held the story’ for me at various points in my life and for varying periods. They all allow me to reveal myself to them.
They all see me, know me and accept and love me anyway.
Finally, I wonder how many of us let our friends know how important they are to us? I am always struck by how people at funerals tell stories about how wonderful the deceased was and how important they were to them. I wonder if they bothered to tell the person that when they were alive. Some years ago, I decided I would let my friends know exactly how I felt about them. I wrote a letter to a friend I have known since I was 10 years old – she is in her 80s now. I told her what I loved about her and about the impact she had had on me. We are living in different countries now, so I hand-wrote the letter and posted it to her. I didn’t hear from her for three weeks and wondered if my letter had arrived. I phoned her and she said she hadn’t responded because she didn’t know what to say! She was so moved by the letter. I realise now that I only did this exercise once but I try to remember to tell my closest friends why I love them and how important they are to me. I think I need to write some more letters…
Photo
My friend JoJo the dog.
Questions For Reflection
How important are your friends to you? Do different friends serve different purposes? How many friends would you describe as really close? How do you support your friends and how do they support you?
A Blessing While You Reflect
“ May you be blessed with good friends,
And learn to be a good friend to yourself,
Journeying to that place in your soul where
There is love, warmth and feeling,
May this change you.”
From John O’Donohue: Benedictus
