One gloomy night not long ago, a husband and wife lay in bed rehearsing the many close friends who had passed out of their lives over the years to the present. The husband said, “I have not taken anyone under my wings like I did that man. I set aside time to meet with him once a week to talk, share laughs, have coffee, and pray with him.”
The wife said, her voice cracking, “When I greet her these days, she acts like she doesn’t hear me. In fact, she started taking her break at a different time just to avoid seeing me at work. The other day I saw her at she and another lady talking and when I got closer they stopped talking, I felt that they were talking about me, in short, it’s okay, I’ll keep loving her, talking to her even if she doesn’t answer me, that’s right. all I can do. Love her.”
“Every time one more friendship goes to waste, I feel like someone who rescues and raises a tiger only to be attacked by that tiger when it’s grown. You know, honey, I don’t know what will happen before you.” and I finally learn my lesson and stop pouring so much of ourselves into friendships that are going nowhere, ”the husband replied with a lot of apathy in his tone. “We’ve been let down so many times. It may be that it’s something with us. It may be that we just don’t understand this culture, even though we’ve been in this country for over a decade.”
The wife said, “At home, once you find a friend, you have a friend, but here it’s like it’s no big deal. They just broke up, and you have no idea why.”
Her husband interrupts, “Honey, you know something, I’m in my late forties and when it comes to friends, I only have two right now: Amy and Rick.”
Amy is his wife’s name and Rick is his friend since high school.
After a few more lines of conversation punctuated by periods of silence, the couple linked hands and quietly ended the day, much-needed sleep slowly overwhelming their weary bodies and weary minds. Not a great way to end a day, but…
Like many people who value the human experience known as friendship, this couple needs to learn that there are two very unpredictable things in life: the stock market and people. Of the two, you can make a living forecasting the market. As for predicting people, well, it’s a loser’s race.
We can all take something from the sting of dead-end relationships and shattered friendships once we understand that not all friendships are created equal. Looking back at the friendships of my own life, I can say with some degree of certainty that friends come in five basic types: casual, temporary, seasonal, intermittent, and permanent.
1. Casual Friend: That’s your touch-and-go friendship. The hello-hi type, just one step beyond stranger or acquaintance. They exchange smiles from time to time when their paths cross, but that’s about it with casual friendship.
2. Temporary friend: As you can guess, this type of friendship is short-lived. It starts over with nothing special and ends that way, in a relatively short period of time, though “temporarily” could be a year or more before one or both friends call it quits.
3. Seasonal Friend: This is a friendship that was likely triggered by a special event, crisis point, or transition in the life of at least one of the two people involved. It can be the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a natural disaster, a flat tire on the road, or any other event that marks a crisis or transition in one’s life. A seasonal friendship tends to end when one or both people get past that transition period. Friendship has served its purpose, and it only makes sense to draw the curtain. If you try to force such a friendship to continue, you may actually push the relationship beyond the pain of a broken friendship; you could turn your old friend into an enemy. It’s better to let it go.
What hurts the most about temporary and seasonal friendships is how abrupt they usually end. Often the person just hangs up without warning or explanation. You ask the person, “What happened? What did I do wrong? How can we fix this?” And he or she says, “Nothing. There’s nothing to talk about. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s time we parted ways.”
And you want to say, “What? After everything we’ve been through? After all these years and all the time we’ve put into this relationship? Is this it? Is this how it ends? Don’t you remember?” Have you forgotten?”
Sometimes it’s much worse than that. Your once-good friend may start slandering you, starting and spreading the nastiest kinds of gossip and rumors about your character, saying rude and cruel things about you. How bearable would it be if the ex-friend told you why the relationship ended. But you have to guess from the clues given here, there and there. You must get used to not waiting or receiving explanations. This world can be a jungle, and the people can be the beasts.
The amazing thing to me, knowing anything about human nature, is that we are often surprised when a friendship we thought would last forever suddenly comes to a halt. Look at it like this: if the seed from your loins, the embryo from your womb can come into this world, eat your food, sleep under your roof and in your bed, play with the toys you bought or made, go to school on your penny or in your car, accept and enjoy your birthday gifts and graduation gifts over the years etc, and grow into adulthood only to abandon it and remove it from your life, as if he/she has never known you since Adam, why be at all shocked when a friend with whom you shared no blood ties suddenly or gradually walks out of your life? Welcome to the real world. Get used to it, my friend of now.
4. Intermittent Friend: “Intermittent” describes something that starts and stops at intervals. “Intermittent” means periodic. It means “on and off.”
Our family enjoys an on-off friendship with one lady in particular. Let’s call her Mrs. She is the godmother of our daughter. We may meet her at the store or at a community meeting. My wife and I sometimes express our mutual guilt for not keeping in touch with this dear lady more often. But she rarely plays with us either. Recently, I surprised Lady with a visit to her house; we talked and laughed for hours.
There is one time in the year when our family can bet to see Lady at our house: the night before our daughter’s birthday (which is also our son’s birthday). Her tradition in recent years has been to come with an envelope containing a birthday card, which has money in it, the amount equivalent to the age of her goddaughter. (She brings one for our son, too.) Every time we meet Lady, whether it’s on our doorstep, at her house, or somewhere in the community, it’s like we’ve become friends with her again. This intermittent friendship is one of the most precious relationships we know. Yes, it’s intermittent, but we know it’s still there, and every time we meet Lady, the meeting proves that our friendship with her is still alive and well.
The really good, or perhaps strange, thing about this relationship is that neither Harriet (who is my wife) nor I can exclusively claim Lady as “my friend.” It is not strange? Lady is friends with both of them, Harriet and me. She is “our friend”, our intermittent friend.
5. Lifelong Friend: Hardly life is better than a lasting, lifelong relationship with a true friend, who you’re in contact with on a regular, almost weekly basis, if not more regularly.
A lifelong friendship can begin while two students are in elementary school. The journey never ends. One is there when the other gets his first job. One serves as the bridesmaid or best man at the other’s wedding. When one moves into an apartment or own house, the other is right there, or knows the day and time of the big move. Thus this rare brand of friendship continues until the ‘ship’ turns around a hospital or some other sick bed, and finally arrives at the port of a funeral home. From there, a friend who is still faithful, although fragile, follows his friend to say a last goodbye in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city.
Blessed is the soul that has a jewel of a friend, a permanent friend, especially if that golden friend is someone outside the family circle. But if you find a family member as a permanent friend, you better take them with you. Life doesn’t produce much of that brand anymore.