Friendship is not a thing

I had an epiphany last Friday night. And I'm going to share it with you, whether you like it or not.

OK, I kind of took the thrill out of it by writing that title, but here you go:

Friendship is a social construct, and it doesn't really work. Theoretically speaking it makes sense and it is beautiful, but in real life it barely exists. Let me explain.

First of all, I want you to know that this is not a whiny, cynical post about how I thought I had friends but it was all a lie and the world is such a cruel place and my life sucks and boohoo. I have what the dictionary considers friends and I love them very much, thank you. So if you are an edgy teenager looking for poorly created poetry to feed your hunger for drama, you better head off to one of those cheesy inspirational Tumblr accounts, because this post won't give you what you want. 

Friendship doesn't exist. Not in the pure, eternal way we have learnt to respect. Sure you can have a loving relationship with a person that will help you through hard times and go out and have fun with you and listen to you and call on you when they have a problem, but that doesn't last forever. And if it doesn't last forever, I am sorry to tell you this, it is not friendship. And now let's go for the cannot-be-unseen bit:

Most of the acts you have observed throughout your life that you thought were fueled by fraternity and comradeship were not such. They were powered by kindness, not friendship.

Again, let me explain this further; remember that time your dog Poncho was run over by a truck and you thought you were going to die of despair? Remember how you told your friend Jessica, or Adam, or whoever the hell your best friend is, and they spent four hours straight talking about what had happened even though they had an exam in three days, and  how they then called you every day after that for a month to see how you were doing, and hung out with you all the time to keep you distracted?

That had to be friendship, right?

Sorry, love. That wasn't friendship. That was kindness. They would have done it for anybody.

You think I'm bullshitting you, don't you. Let's see it this way:

Imagine someone else's Poncho had kicked the bucket. Someone that is not you had a terrible neighbour with an awful, noisy truck and now they hate the world and want to kill themselves, or everyone in their building, or whatever. Imagine they call Jessica. Adam. Whoever. And I mean the same Jessica we were talking about a few lines above. They are not the closest people in the world, but they get along. They don't know who else to call and they just pick up the phone and call them. Do you think your best friend would hung up on them? Do you think they would let this person, who is calling for help, deal with this situation on their own? No, they would not. They would just spend those four freaking annoying hours talking about how no one will ever replace Poncho but how things will get better. Sure, they won't be as happy to do it as they were with you, because this other person is not their friend and you are. Sure they won't be calling every day for a month to see how things are going, but they will call or text for the following week. Wanna know why?

Because they are good people. And that makes them look like they are good friends.

What we detect as friendship is nothing more than very nice people being particularly fond of someone.

There are, of course, some -usually fleeting- exceptions to this. There is always this guy who is a total asshole but will bring you the moon if you are their friend. That can happen, but usually the day things go wrong and the asshole gets angry at you for whatever reason, you are screwed. Let me illustrate this with an example:

My -a long time ago- friend Mary was super BFFs with this awful girl, Shel. Shel was a terrible person. She would make fun of everyone, she was manipulative and would try to take advantage of you at the first opportunity. She tried to kick me out of our group of friends because the guy she fancied had a crush on me. That kind of person. Well, Mary and her were as close as it gets and shared secrets and all that crap that comes with teenage friendships. It lasted for a while, and then, to nobody's surprise, Shel screwed Mary over. I don't even remember what happened, she just behaved like the little bitch she was and Mary started seeing who the real person she was dealing with was.

Well, as soon as Mary realised she had been wasting her time and how big a skunk her so-called friend was, it took her like five minutes to start telling every secret she knew, every fear, every skeleton in Shel's closet she could think of.

So I want to know. Do you think Mary was ever Shel's friend?

I know she wasn't. And deep down, you know it, too.

If the quality of a relationship can get crushed the second one of the two members gets angry, that quality is as good as non-existent. If all your secrets are one dispute away from getting shouted to the world, then that is not friendship.

And you may be thinking, "But she was a bitch, you said it yourself! She does deserve to be treated like that, she shouldn't get to enjoy the perks of true friendship once she has behaved like a jerk!"

And you may be right, I don't really know. The problem here is, who decides whether a behaviour is bad enough that you should stop being friends? I mean, what if I tell you my deepest fears and we are the best friends in the world and then something awful happens, like, whatever, your boyfriend falls in love with me? You have a boyfriend, you love him very much, and he decides to break things up because he wants to be with me instead. Even if I refuse, you still lost your boyfriend because of my existence, and that, even if maybe not your particular case, is enough to trigger nearly anybody. A million different people would start hating me in that situation, probably finding some kind of excuse to make it look like it was all my fault and therefore having what they think is a legitimate reason to hate me and screw me over with the tons of information they have on me.

That is not friendship. That is a short-term contract for having fun and not being lonely.

"But Jacky and I had been BFFs since we were 8 and when I slept with her boyfriend in college at her birthday party she stopped being friends with me but never used anything she knew against me! That was real friendship, right?! RIGHT???"

First of all, you slut, I hope you get cheated on in every relationship you have. Second, that was real friendship (one way, though) only because Jacky is a good person. She was capable of ending things and move on without going after you. This comes more of being a decent human being than a good friend. And just to clarify, in this case maybe you deserved to have all your secrets told because you were such a crappy friend to Jackie, I don't really know. This area has more shades of grey than that cheesy trilogy of books, but my point here is that deciding what is punishable and what is not is such a subjective matter and the borders are so blurry and difficult to define, that you cannot have the survival of your relationships depend on that. Even if the person did something atrocious, you can never know if it was a misunderstanding, or if someone made it up, or any other possibility. Secrecy and trust given during a period of time should never be broken just because in another period things are not working as nicely.

The problem is, this goes wildly against human nature. You have been screwed, you want to screw back. If you are capable of not taking revenge on someone for the simple fact that you once were friends, that probably means you are a balanced, mature person, with tons of empathy and a heart the size of a bulldozer.

So, basically, what I am saying here is that good person overrides good friend. Every good person is intrinsically a good friend, and to be a good friend you need to be a good person. Therefore there is no such thing as good friend -a bad friend or a meh friend is not a friend-, so there is no such thing as friends. Or if you prefer it, let's say the concept of friend is just not necessary, since it can be covered with other aspects of human behaviour. Friendships that last for decades and that work are just very very good people who like each other very much.

Or, to put it in another way, the foundation of friendship is not the connection between two people, but how those people are separately. Mutual affection is little more than a detail, not the basis. Two beautiful people that cross paths will most likely end up being friends, because they both have what they need to be so. They just have to like each other.

And I said this was an epiphany because, as I said earlier, I consider myself to have friends. I think I am very lucky indeed. So noticing this has put my world upside down. It has forced me to think about each one of my friends and about how much I trust them, and I have noticed two different things:

1) Most of my friends are not. We have a lovely relationship, I trust them for tons of things, but I am aware that I don't own the whole package. Our love and trust is not unconditional. A lot of my close friends are guys, and a lot of those relationships go down the drain as soon as one of the two get a partner. Me getting a boyfriend has made some of the relationships weird enough not to be sustainable anymore. Them getting a girlfriend has made them disappear -in some cases this would have happened regardless my and their gender, though. Some people just vanish when they get a significant other-. A lot of others were amazing in person but are not willing to make the effort necessary to keep things going now that we live in different cities. Or maybe the simple fact that there has to be an effort is proof enough that the relationship is not as strong as we thought it was.

This doesn't mean I don't appreciate them or that I don't want them in my life, though; I'm just saying that we don't share that super absolute gorgeous relationship in which you can call on each other if you need to hide a body. It doesn't mean I don't think they're great. Just for the record.

2) The friends I do trust for nearly everything, the people in my life who I consider are and will probably always be my friends, are extraordinarily, and I mean extraordinarily good people.

For this second point, I need you to understand how extremely objective I am trying to be with this. I am not saying they are wonderful because they are my friends. It's the other way round. The few people I can think of that I believe won't desert me come what may are these little shiny creatures from books who are nearly incapable of lying -about subjects that matter- and who have a genuine hard time when they see others suffering. They have their own lives and won't hop on a plane to go help the first person who is throwing a tantrum over something stupid, but they will go to huge extents to help you out if you are worth it and you need it.

This gives me a headache. Do I really have any friends? Or would they do anything for just anybody who is nice and a good person? And if I have to choose, which option is better? Do you love your friends because they would take you out of a building on fire, or do you love them precisely because they would take anybody out of a building on fire?

Well, I choose to pick as friends those people who would save anyone. I just think and hope that the day something happens, this friendship thing people keep talking about will make them choose to save me first.