[18] You, As My Friend?

An Op-Ed exploring what I expect from my friends — positing the role that vulnerability should play in a friendship, reflecting on how select friends have affected my expression, and looking to my tendency to push people away (in retaliation).

The ten days of this past Thanksgiving break were much needed, not only because I was burned out from continuous work since junior spring but because I needed to get away from people. I had initially assumed that “getting away from people” was a desire to be isolated due to extrovert exhaustion (you know, when you feel tired after having spent too much time living an exaggeratedly social version of yourself). 

But I don’t think that’s quite it. The desire to get away from people exposes the difficulty I’ve faced in the last few months with confidently expressing my thoughts AND the tendency I’ve exhibited in the last few years to push people away. 

1 BEING VULNERABLE. 

It’s simply not worth lying. I mean, do you really want to lie to those closest to you, thus compromising your integrity? If, somehow, your answer is yes, have you ever experienced how unnecessarily distressing it is to try to keep a lie alive? Having had poor experiences with lying (damage controlling my own lies AND recovering from the lies of others), I’ve been compelled to abstain from it. This preference happens to mesh nicely with my desire to be vulnerable with those close to me. 

Vulnerability positions itself nigh opposite to lying because to be vulnerable requires one to afford oneself the uncomfortable truth, potential embarrassment, and humble acceptance of failure in front of someone else without fear of judgment. 

Vulnerability definitely isn’t something that you can allot to everyone. I had long seen vulnerability as a metric for how close you are to someone. And so, when I imposed my vulnerability onto others, I felt somewhat disappointed when select friends wouldn’t reciprocate this vulnerability. 

My vulnerability was something that I prided about my capability to be a friend because the transaction of vulnerability is founded on absolute trust. And so, when my friends weren’t completely transparent with me (whether it was holding fickle secrets or hiding fragments of their reasoning), I felt as though a bare minimum expectation of a “close friendship” was unmet. There’s a level of objective truth in my answer — if a friend fails to reciprocate compassion towards your vulnerability, that says a lot about their character. Then again, I’ll admit that I’m not sure vulnerability is an accurate metric of your closeness, nor is it something that should be expected of your friendships. I say the latter with caution. 

This metric is the product of me trying to plaster logical reasoning onto the incomprehensible emotions that I feel through social interaction. Vulnerability shouldn’t be something that I impose on all friendships in an attempt to tick off some arbitrary checklist — if I had to mend my metric for closeness, you could probably tell if a friend is close to you based on how comfortable you WOULD feel if you chose to open up. You don’t HAVE to open up to them, but when shit hits the fan, if you know that they would embrace you with open-arms, then that’s a pretty darn good friend. 

2 THIS OR THAT?

So, what do I mean by “something that shouldn’t be expected of your friendships?” Going forward, I’ll aim to detract from pressuring all my relationships to embody vulnerability (out of realistic expectations from someone else, but also to preserve myself). Then again, But man, I’ve recently become disillusioned with a slew of my friendships because, in preestablished friendships where vulnerability was already the standard, it felt as though a handful of my friends would no longer afford me that aforementioned embrace. 

In part, I felt this way because it seemed that these friends had placed me in a significantly (and relatively) lower position on their list of priorities. These peers were the types with whom I would go to Lanphi together, only for them to leave me while they sat with the group of friends that just walked in.  

In tandem with feeling as if I had been substituted by some separate priority (a budding romance or an extracurricular interest or a scheduling conflict), I’ve had multiple instances in which I felt as though my vulnerability was unappreciated and/or unwanted — an honest attempt to align one back to their ideologies was met with them pushing me away, a desire to make time and show care was met with taunting ridicule, a tendency to be analytical for delayed gratification was met with guilt-inducing faux sadness, a plea for compassion was met with a selfishly-timed breakdown. 

Perhaps, the worst of all, is that these friends made it difficult for me to be vulnerable to those I cared about — group hangouts with select friends felt awkward in their (somehow) personality-repressing smog, pleas for genuine advice were quickly stifled by a fear of judgment or indifference, and the desire to assign parts of my schedule for us-time became nonexistent as I didn't want to succumb myself to some second-priority quota.

On one hand, I wondered whether I really deserved all this. Though I had acted according to standards that I believed would make me a good friend, it’s possible that I had failed to fulfill such a role — this was especially scary because, if I truly had been a bad friend, I wasn’t exactly sure what I could do to remedy the problem. I had done my best to consider the perspectives of others amidst conflict, to take accountability to draft thoughtful apologies, to offer myself as a resource of console and care, and to provide an interesting and genuine dynamic to the conversation. 

On the other hand, it was possible that (despite how pretentious it sounds) some people have neither the skillset nor the desire to hold long-term friendships. And if others simply lacked the desire to have good friends, the conclusion I drew was not a lesson that I wanted to learn: I needed to reduce the expectations I wanted to believe they could satisfy, reduce the love I wanted to show them, reduce the time I wanted to allot to them, and reduce the compassion I wanted to receive from them. 

Unfortunately (and honestly), I think it’s the latter. I don’t think it’s absurd to presume that the social problems in which I’ve found myself manifested from the opposing party who simply lacked the faculties to be good friends themselves. On my end,  I’ve had friends that I’ve been able to keep amidst conflict and geographic isolation. Yet, it always seems that certain friends seem disinterested in meeting my investments in the friendship. Whereas I’d heed all criticism, strive for continued memorymaking, work to save their precious time, ensure that their emotions are cared for, and show them my repeated gratitude — some friends just fail to meet those standards. I’d tell them about how I feel, but oftentimes not much happens other than a half-assed apology and an unsatisfactory return to the status quo. Problems are ignored and, subsequently, my needs are ignored. I don’t deserve that negligence. 

And while this revelation relieves the mental toll of not having been a good friend, it is nonetheless terrifying. I have yet to come up with a system to determine who is and who isn’t compatible with what I want from a friend, I have yet to prepare instructions for what to do the next time such a conundrum arises, and I have yet to feel comfortable making any concrete decision on how to move forward with these friends. And so, the next time I meet a potential close friend candidate, I’ll still be as clueless as I was before the most recent problematic friendship as I gamble my emotional well-being on whether or not this relationship will last. 

3 I COULD NEVER TAKE THE (LACK OF) INTIMACY

But this wouldn’t be a Chopinions article without a little self-reflection. I realize that this isn’t my first time being unhappy with friends. In fact, I’ve noticed that, when in situations such as these, I tend to push people away. 

Yeah, that’s what Thanksgiving break was — an excuse to push everyone away. It’s comfortable to be vulnerable, but it’s even more comfortable being alone. Whenever I feel as though someone has betrayed or belittled my vulnerability, I remove myself from them. And now, in fear that my vulnerability will once be hurt by those I considered close to me, I’ve begun pre-emptively pushing people away when they enter relationships or invest in other priorities. 

But solitude is not a comfort I want to get used to. And when the solitude is self-imposed, it feels as though I may be dramatizing certain problems as an excuse to feel sorry for myself. 

4 WITH THE KNOWLEDGE

But, as always, things aren’t ever black-and-white — my social conflicts don’t arise if I was a bad friend or because my friend was bad, but rather because the feeling wasn’t right. 

Given the clarity on my stance on vulnerability, as well as the decreased expectations that I hold for others (wow, that sounds bleak. Trust me, this is supposed to be mostly optimistic), the only two things left on my behalf are to ensure that I’m always vulnerable with myself and that I make it easier for people to reach out to me (instead of making it my burden to crave the company of others all the time).