A few thoughts on friendship

Much as my socially-extroverted side has tended to fight it since sixth grade, I have always agreed with the maxim that it’s better to have a few good friends than a lot of not-quite-good friends. In those years, there were times when I would try to tell myself otherwise, when I would put myself out there and be socially exuberant and broaden my base of friends. And inevitably, those plans would stall, and I would come again to realize the value of true friends: not the ones that got me into new cliques, or made me more popular, or invited me to more places, but the ones with whom I could have true, meaningful fun, and in whom I could place the sparing amounts of trust I allow to be given to others.

In the movie Meet the Parents, Ben Stiller’s fiancé’s dad talks about a circle of trust. You’re either inside the circle, or outside it. Trust works similarly for me, but what I want to talk about here—and what also fits into the analogy—is friendship.

Friendship, for me, is like a series of concentric circles. At the very center is the core group of people in whom I place complete confidence and the maximum amount of trust I’m able to give. They are the people for whom I’d take a bullet, the ones I’m unwaveringly devoted to, the ones who I am unquestionably loyal to and who, basically, would have my full backing if a fight broke out on the street. Very few people will enter this innermost circle, and few have. They are the few that have shown they can live up to my high standards, and I reward them with what I hope is reciprocal behavior. These are the relationships that define true friendship for me, and I hold them incredibly close.

(Family does not necessarily fall into the circle, but if I were to think analogously, I would say they are probably the nucleus at the center of the circle, around which all other things revolve. They have my unquestioning loyalty, and I offer to them my unwavering protection and fierce devotion. In short, I would take many bullets for them.)

The circles radiate outwards, each one encompassing more people than the last, but lacking certain qualities of closeness, trust, and so on that circles closer to the center exhibit. There are probably many circles and they are obviously too broad to easily and accurately define (and obviously, they’re much too abstract to realistically lend themselves to reification). But in general, trust decreases as you get further from the core, my level of openness will decrease, the loyalty I will offer you will be less, and so on. There are probably various circles of friends; maybe “good friends,” “friends,” and “close acquaintances.”

Outside of that, there are the irregulars: the acquaintances, the people I know through networking, those people I’ve met once or who I’m only tangentially knowledgeable about, and so forth.

And finally, outside the circles, there are people. A kind of limbo category now exists for many people from my pre-Wes life—those people who I don’t actively dislike, but who (probably wrongly) have come to be associated, in my mind, with the general negativity of the social relations (to put it broadly) that characterized high school and small-town life. Then there are those people who I actively dislike—a very small category, to be sure, but as I’m one to hold a grudge until someone apologizes (or I die, I suppose), those in this category are pretty much bound to stay there. Finally, outside of this system, are those who I have yet to meet.

Much of me will never be revealed to people—some things, probably not even to those in the innermost circle. There will always be a mystery about me by virtue of the fact that I am an intensely independent person, and exposing the entirety of myself to others would, I feel, surrender my ability to conceive of myself as fully independent. When part of my being resides in someone else, I have lost that independence, that hardened yet happy sense that rightfully lives inside of only me. (This is a complicated concept and one certainly not fully-formed here, but it makes sense in my head.)

You’re probably wondering why these categories of friendship even exist. I think a lot of it comes from my propensity to demand high standards not only from myself, but also from those with whom I choose to associate myself. The standards for entering that inner circle are high—objectively, probably ridiculously so. I demand a lot of my friends: not, I hope, in a needy sense, but in the sense that I hold them to high moral standards and expect them to give me a return equal to what I provide them with in terms of camaraderie. I don’t think I ask for much in terms of material or temporal demands; I don’t usually ask for favors that might require an undue amount of sacrifice, for example. Actually, I think I probably don’t ask anyone to do anything that might be too far out of their way. But when I am willing to entrust you with the contents of my soul, I expect that you’ll not only give me the amount of respect such trust demands, but also repay me with equal confidence, compassion, and care. My conception of friendship is as a system of reciprocal duties and responsibilities, although I am very willing to go far above the level of reciprocity for those I care about.

I demand a lot, and the barrier of entry into higher circles is necessarily high. It takes a lot to move up (though consequently, it usually takes a lot to move down). I don’t think that being selective makes me necessarily exclusive, though. I try to remain open to those who, by virtue of their actions, should be moved more closely toward the center. And to those who are willing to apologize for past transgressions (a sincere apology, no matter how severe the transgression, never fails to move someone into the circle). And to those who aren’t on the map yet, because I have yet to meet them.

And so it is sad when someone comes into my life, and we establish a friendship, and this person moves in out of the darkness that is the world outside the circle; when I allow this person closer to the center and this person shows to me that he/she is worthy of my close friendship. It is sad when that person, for reasons not clear to me, decides to withdraw from that progress. It is a loss I feel deeply, a connection that I did not want to see severed.

Once someone is inside, they mean so much to me, no matter what artificial and abstract “circle” they’re in. Losses such as these—made worse by the fact that they are unexplained and feel unjustified to me—make me quite sad. They’re like a flower that is about to bloom, but gets ripped out of the ground by an ignorant child. The relationship dies. Needless to say, I don’t like people packing up and leaving the circle. I strive to give people reasons to stay, reasons for them to be proud, or at least content, that they consider me a friend.

For someone to leave—or reject entry into the circle altogether—strikes me as a personal fault (of mine); it shows me that someone either found me unappealing enough to separate themselves from me, or that I have not lived up to their demands, or the reciprocal demands that we are to expect from those engaged in friendship. Some, I suppose, may simply not like me, or may leave out of uninterestedness. But leaving the circle (and in the case of certain Wesleying/ACB readers, not even giving me the chance to show them what being somewhere in the circle is like) more often than not, for me, reflects badly on myself, as a failure to clear the bar, so to speak.

Recent events involving girls—and to some lesser (and probably more subconscious) extent, Wesleying—have led me to reexamine exactly how I’m acting towards people within the circle, as well as those without. I know I am by no means a perfect human, and not even a perfect friend. Despite my best intentions, and highest personal standards, I slip sometimes, too. And these slips hurt both me and the people about whom I care.

I don’t know who exactly reads this blog (much less who made it to the end of this lengthy and unusually-open entry), but I want you to know that if you’re in the circle, I care about you a lot, and I don’t want you to leave. If you’ve left, I want you to come back. And if you’re willing, I always love being able to bring people closer in, or into the circle in the first place. I want to be your friend, your ally, your loyal supporter, and your confidant. I want to live up to your standards and prove that I’m worthy of being your friend. I am trying, and I will continue to try.

I know all my actions are representative of who I am; just like everyone else, my character is on display in everything I do and say, everywhere I go. Judge me by those actions, those things I do and say: I hope they will give you good cause to call me your friend.

NOTE: I have refrained from discussing names in this entry for what I hope are obvious reasons.