On not being a 'good' friend

Jen at Gingerella wrote something about friendship a while ago that I related to so much.  She opened with the line, "I'm probably not a very good friend," and went on to talk about not subscribing to some of the usual friendship rituals expected of women (it's an ace post, do read it).  And all the while I was reading it, I was thinking, "Oh my gosh!  There's someone else like me out there, I am not completely abnormal!".

Because I, too, am probably not a very good friend.  I've been told as much, by different women, a few times.  I've had numerous close friendships end, some with animosity and some with merely a slow fizzling out.  And the reason for that, I think, is largely because I too don't really understand, and as a result don't follow, 'normal' friendship rituals.

The image of female friendships that we are fed via mainstream media is one of intense closeness, of shopping trips and long lunches, of spilling woes over a bottle of wine; a post-Sex & The City oversharing of every small detail.  All of that runs completely counter to my own personality.  I have always been something of a lone wolf, happiest in my own company and ferociously independent, but childhood and teenage bullying certainly exacerbated these instincts.  I've been told I'm too self-possessed, that I keep other people at arms length, that I don't share my feelings enough, that I don't let people in.  And that's all true.

Unfortunately, some people tend to think that my reluctance to open up is a personal slight on them, when in fact it's entirely about me.  But when even the people I am closest to (my mum, my boyfriend and my brother) find me annoyingly reticent at times, it seriously has nothing to do with the friend and everything to do with who I am.  I find it incredibly difficult to open up and admit to what I, in my slightly twisted way, think of as weakness.  I'm not one for sharing my worries over a bottle of wine, and I won't be talking about my feelings any time soon.  I am never going to be that person. 

When people expect me to be able to change my personality to suit their own ideas of what a friend should be (which yes, has happened), I find it a bit insulting.  It can seem as if, rather than accepting me for who I am (sometimes withdrawn and quiet, yes, but also - I hope! - with many qualities that make me a good friend), they want to mould me into someone different.  This doesn't, as you can imagine, do great things for my self-esteem.

What it comes down to is that I don't, at the heart of it, believe that people would actually choose to spend time with me.   I find the notion that people actually like me so bafflingly against reason that I am constantly surprised by any show of friendship.  Having this weird view of myself (again, a result of my experiences in childhood) means that it becomes easy to lose contact with people.  Why would they want or need to hear from me, goes my thinking?  Meanwhile, my mates are probably wondering why I don't value our friendship enough to get in touch with them.  And if I do contact someone about spending time together and they can't make it, I'm less likely to try again because I often read it as a rebuff. When you think about it, this is a horribly egotistical way to view the world, making everything (even someone else's busy weekend) about me. 

I don't know how much it helps to have identified the ways in which my own patterns of behaviour affect my friendships.  It doesn't make the pain of losing friends any less, and it doesn't make me feel any less guilty for inadvertently hurting people.  But I repeat again, I don't think I will ever be the person that some of those friends wanted me to be.  I may slowly be getting better about accepting that maybe, just maybe, some of the lovely people in my life are there because they choose to be. But silencing the little voice, product of my childhood, that says, "Don't trust anyone, they're sure to use it against you," can be an uphill battle.