Friendship

[yrieithydd]

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about friendship again. Hopefully this post won't be as depressed and self-centred as my previous one about reciprocity in friendships.* This is the result of weeks of thinking and whilst to an extent precipated by my friendships, it is more out of the positives of those friendships rather than being written at 2am when I couldn't sleep because my paranoia that nobody really liked me and were just pretending to be my friend out of politeness was on overdrive and I needed to get it out of my system.



The basic point then was that a difficulty arose between friends when there was a great disparity between the importance each one placed on the friendship. I explored this with reference to one particular friendship I had had as an undergraduate where I wanted to much closer to one girl than she wanted to be towards me (as much because she had other established close friendship as anything else).

In recent months, it is another aspect, albeit a linked one, of friendship that has been the focus of my thinking. This is to do with the strength and weakness of the two people involvement. Much of this is stuff I have discussed with naomir but it was further clarified when explaining this to caliston on Wednesday evening when I found terminology to express the difference I had been seeing.

Another thing which can make a friendship unbalanced is if one of the people involved is vulnerable for whatever reason and so the other person's role is to be strong for them. Now in an equal relationship, because everyone has vulnerabilities, there would be times when person A is strong for person B because B is having a particularly hard time for some reason and equally times when B is able to be strong for A because A is the one feeling particularly vulnerable.

However, there are some relationships where the situation is that A is the strong one and B the vulnerable one and that is how it works. There is not anything wrong in that situation and it can be very helpful for us to have a relationship where we can go when we are vulnerable and know that this person will be strong for us. This can often be the case in ministry, the priest is the strong one and there to listen to the other. Similarly in counselling. It can also happen in everyday life where someone needs much support and so cannot take being strong with that person. The danger here lies more for the Strong person than the vulnerable. If all of your relationships are of this variety and so you have always to be the strong one, then where do you go when you are vulnerable? This is what I like about the idea of having a Spiritual Director. There, as I see it, you have a relationship where you are the vulnerable one; in turn one hopes that one's Spiritual Director has a Spiritual Director themselves. This enables you to be vulnerable without worrying whether you ought to be being strong for the other. This is particularly useful if, like me, you find being vulnerable difficult because then it is tempting to remain in strong mode. This is why I prefer the idea of Spiritual Direction to that of having an `Accountability Relationship' as was enjoined upon us in Aber. This seemed to be an attempt to fulfil the same function as Spiritual Direction (helping us stay honest in our walk with God/spiritual life/whatever you want to call it) but to be a reciprocal not a one way relationship. When I saw the Diocesan Spirituality Advisor about finding a new Spiritual Director, one of the questions he asked was whether I wanted the relationship to be one or two way and I very definitely wanted it to be one way; I know myself well enough that if it were two way I would avoid being vulnerable which defeats the object.

This imbalance can become unhealthy however and the dynamic slip over into what I decided while talking to caliston to call the powerful/weak dynamic. These are a distortion of the strong/vulnerable type into an unhealthy dependence of one on the other. This can be a result, I think, of imbalance in the reciprocity of the friendship but also can arise from other factors. It is unhealthy for the weak person because they are seeking approval and validation in this unbalanced relationship and it can give the powerful one to much dominance and influence over that person's life. I think this is something which Susan Howatch explores, particularly in A Question of Integrity/The Wonder Worker.**

There are also some friendships which appear to be equal, but in fact work by both parties being Strong. This is not unhealthy in itself but it is non-ideal and the relationship would be deepened by them being able to open up to each other. But, I suppose the danger is that, if one party decides to risk being open to the other, the dynamic will change from equality to a one-sided vulnerability. This is perhaps particularly the case where both people are good at being the strong one in a friendship. The fear is that not only would it become a strong/vulnerable friendship but that it would go even further and become a powerful/weak one. Maybe that is the fear which stops those of us who tend to being Strong being vulnerable.

*I'm afraid that this is locked to close friends only. It was the post which made me wary about changing my policy from friends being people I knew IRL to a wider selection of people who'd friended me for various reasons. It's tagged like this one, but I won't actually do the link.

**For some reason the (British) publishers decided to reject Howatch's preferred title and published it as A Question of Integrity. On its own the title makes sense, but given its sequels are The High Flyer and The Heartbreaker Howatch's original title (which was used in the States) makes more sense and indeed it has been republished over here under that title.



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