What to do when you must part

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Imagine this scenario:


You have a friend who enjoys your company. You have a number of common interests and you get along pretty well. You have a couple other friends and he has a number, but you are probably on his top five friends list. Now, it is to be expected that he will do things with his other friends, sometimes with you and sometimes without you. Even though you have common interests, he is interested in thing that you are not and it takes up a lot of his time on some days. While you can do things with other friends, and most of the time you do, it doesn't give you as much fulfillment as being with this particular friend. What do you do to satisfy your desire to be spend time with the aforementioned friend?

Here is a concrete case that I foresee happening in the near future: He is very much interested in sports. I try getting interested, but it just doesn't work. Superbowl Sunday is coming up and I can imagine a party lasting most of the day and much talk before and after. Not only will the friend that I am most concerned with be at this party, but all of my other friends as well. I should point out that we all go to a boarding school so it's not like I can go somewhere else. Advise?

Hi ad2009,

I read your other post as well. And the “bromance” comment made me literacy LOL. I got side tracked half way through the reply, so never posted it. I think we have allot in common when it comes to how we perceive best friends. I’d like to share some lessons I’ve learned about being best friends that will hopefully help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made.

I started to realize as I got older that finding a mate to live happily ever after with may not be in the cards for me. As I got older and failed to establish romantic relationships I started seeking a best friend in place of a romantic partner. So the energy most people would devote to trying to find and secure a romantic partner was instead spent on trying to find and secure a best friend for life. Someone to spend holidays with after my parents pass away.

I was very competitive. I wanted to be my best friends #1 person. Any time something was happening in my friend’s life that didn’t involve me I had issues. I’d see every little thing as a sign that we were growing apart. I thought I was losing the one person that “got me” and I was going to just be sad and lonely because nobody else would see through my barriers like my current favorite had and still like me.

At the same time, I totally neglected the other friends I had. To date, I’ve had three best friends. I would always have one favorite friend that I desperately wanted to be bromantic with. I had almost no interest in spending time with anyone else. I’ve gotten better about this. Luckily I’m still friendly with all three. Though there was some work required to make up with friends that I completely ditched when I found a new favorite. I have about 5 friends in total. These friends are my family.

So, that’s a little bit about my history and why I think I behaved the way I did towards my best friends. Now, here’s a few things I learned along the way.

1. Most people only want to get so close to or even have a hetero life partner. Most people only desire being extremely close to a romantic partner. I think this has something to do with social programming in movies. I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen a guy cast as being bad for wanting to spend time with his friends instead of his girlfriend or wife. According to the movies, you’re a jerk if you don’t devote 100% of yourself and 100% of your time to the potential mate. So wanting to spend time with a best friend you’ve had for 10 years is considered bad and you should spent that time with the chick you’ve been dating for two months instead. At least this is how I see things in the movies.

2. Just because someone is your #1 favorite person in the world, it doesn’t mean you are theirs. You are actually out of line for getting upset with a friend for not seeing you as their #1 favorite person. It’s selfish because you are only considering your own feelings and agenda. Yes, I’m guilty of this. And yes, it’s hard to not get upset when someone doesn’t love you as much as you love them. Do your best to consider the other persons feelings and don’t get crabby if their interests shift to someone or something else.

3. Don’t ditch your friends because you’ve found a new favorite friend. If you grow apart from or lose the new friend, then you find yourself very alone and friendless because you didn’t maintain the other relationships.

4. Try not to be too needy of your friend. We all need some support from our friends at time. But don’t intellectually invent reasons to get attention or sympathy.

Try to keep those things in mind. It may help you avoid some blunders that can damage your friendship. Other than that, just try to keep a shared interest that you can both enjoy together and have fun talking about.

I hope that’s helpful. And I wish you the best of luck. Really good friends are hard to find and worth the effort and sometimes frustrations to keep.

Josh

Thanks for the tips. I might again add that we are students at an all male school so dating really issue at the moment. Others, please comment.

Come on people. Nearly 140 views and only one reply from someone other than me. Surely someone has something to add.