FRIENDSHIP

When I hear people say ‘my husband/wife/partner is my best friend’, I don’t know whether to be envious and reassess my own life, sympathise, or just vomit.  For though my husband and I love each other and have done for over 40 years, I would not call him my Best Friend.  We enjoy some of the same things, have some friends in common and agree on many things – but disagree on many more.  We respect and admire each other and love our large extended family. But we each have our own Best Friends.

To me a Best Friend, known these days as a Bestie, is someone you can trust with all your secrets; who you can moan to about your Other Half, and anything else come to that,  You can laugh, cry, swear, drink tea/wine/G&T together, and never run out of things to talk about. You can be silly, funny, grouchy and scruffy, and Bestie will understand and react appropriately. You would struggle to cope without Bestie.

Some Very Good Friends you will have known since schooldays or even early childhood, done all that crazy teenage stuff together, but maybe drifted apart as you made your own families, though you kept in touch, Birthdays and Christmas mostly. But on the rare occasions you do meet, albeit at intervals of years, it’s as it you never went away; just take up where you left off.  Having grown up together, you still share the same values and sense of humour, and even if your lives are worlds apart now, you know so much about each other you can discuss current issues knowing this pal will understand exactly where you are coming from, maybe on an even deeper level than a Bestie who you met at the school gates with your own children.  You know this friend will always be in your life one way or another. Emails and social media have helped a great deal in maintaining and nurturing such friendships, and for this I for one am grateful. They keep you grounded, so you can never forget where you came from.

Then there are the Social Media Friends you have never actually met or spoken to, but who support and advise and sympathise with you via Facebook etc. God bless them they are a valuable addition to my life at any rate. You need never be lonely with FB.

And there are others we may think of and refer to as friends; colleagues perhaps, neighbours or just people you know a little and quite like.  You may call them friends, but they are really better described as acquaintances; would you share your innermost thoughts with them?

So what of one’s partner?  We hopefully love, support and trust them, but do we really want them to know everything about us? Where’s the fun in that?  I want my partner to be a good parent to our children, a thoughtful friend and confidante (when called upon) to me, and I to him; but let’s maintain the mystique and wonder of a full romantic and physical relationship.  Old age creeps up on us soon enough when we all have to bear certain physical indignities, and may have to re-evaluate our relationships, but let’s enjoy each other in body and mind for as long as possible; keep them guessing, not bore them to death. I want us to be ourselves , with our own private thoughts and lives, and the trust between us to maintain our own space and not to suspect anything untoward is going on, when it is not. We should be Lovers, not Best Friends.

Ask my Bestie. She knows.