People let me tell you 'bout my best friend...

I don't have a "best" friend, but there is certain people I consdier very, very, good friends. I either grew up with them, or met them around college years. I think it was definitely meeting friends like that when I was younger...I probably haven't made good friends with many people since college.

I don't know what bonds me, but one thing I'm pretty good at is keeping in touch with people. One thing I've definitely noticed is my group of good female friends has dwindled. Once they get involved with someone, they don't really call or email as much. Really, there's only one left I still hang out with fairly often, even though she's got a boyfriend she's good at keeping in touch.

I actually lied about not having a best friend. I sure do have a best friend, and that friend is named "amputee porn."

It is always like a lovely little gift when you post a serious answer, Slappy!

It is interesting that it seems like college is when I gave up on best friendship. When I went to the University I had many friends but once I went to art school.... jeez..... I don't know. It is so damn competitive that it really doesn't allow for friendship.

Damn, Slappy. Just when I thought there was nowhere left to go with hilarious porn genres...

Good ****.

i'm much more an accquaintance guy then a friend guy

but i hav e acouple of good friends, we don't see each other much, but we can pick up conversations pretty quickly whenever we get together

College, yeah.

My best friend is currently in Africa. I met her when we were both freshmen -- we were also both very heavily involved with boyfriends (met the boyfriends before we met each other, me by a matter of weeks and her by a year or so I think). We instantly took a liking to each other but were both kind of completely wrapped up with the boyfriends, social-life-wise (or lack thereof). Then a couple of years later, I broke up with my boyfriend, and she broke up with hers several months after that (maybe even a year, I'm not sure) -- at any rate, I'd gotten over it and hers was fresh and she couldn't imagine getting over it and she knew we'd had similar experiences. So we talked for hours and hours and figured out that we really liked each other for a lot of different reasons, and the boyfriends receded into the past.

We get each other on a lot of levels, especially in the balance of being very close but having our own space. We both had limited patience for the kind of friend that has lots of demands on time and emotions -- we'd go for a while without seeing each other, then connect again, then spend every day of a week together (but doing our own thing within that time too, reading our own books while sitting on the Terrace [in Madison], etc.). We both have been called masculine in our thinking and way of interacting, but we're also both very girly when it comes to fashion and design.

She is the person I've been closest to for the longest time aside from my husband, and is the repository of all of these details that I have forgotten.

She's a deeply good person, full of thoughtful gestures and amazing gifts. She's working on some things now in Africa that I hope turn out really well for her -- things have been sort of in limbo for her for too long, I hope this will vault her into the next stage of her life, and that it'll be a good stage.

bm

Doesn't seem to be any particular time of life, for me. Like cats and women, best friends just seem to happen.

Gargamel Sissypants Miller! You are SO grounded. (I only punish you because I love you, you know that.)

djjd - you sound a lot like Mr. B. He draws that distinction between friends and acquaintences as well.

I guess I'm kind of a "stranger" person. I can talk to a stranger for hours and learn insanely intimate and interesting details about their lives. I think a lot of this comes from having to create instant intimacy at my job.

Maybe it is my job that has trained me not to invest too much in the people I meet though.....

Hmmmm......

I am not surprised that anyone who would earn the tag of soz's "best friend" would be up to something interesting.

I think with girls that sharing something that hits close to your heart is what can vault someone into best friendism.

Another hummmm.....

Yep..... big hummmm......

Interesting roger, can you elaborate?

Can't. Not really. You don't go looking for them; they just, well, happen. At unpredictible intervals, by the way.

I actually have two best friends. Alicia and I met while Juniors in high school. We ate lunch together every single day in our last year. She came out of the closet, to me, when we were twenty and eventually moved away but we maintained our friendship throughout the years and I ended up moving to 'her" city seventeen years later. That was thirteen years ago. She and I are like sisters. My husband is her brother-in-law. Her wife is my sister-in-law. We have very little in common, there are no real similarities between us but we have history and an undying devotion to one another.

Patty and I came together as daily passengers on a commuter train. We had an admiration for one another's fashion sense and checked each other out every morning. We eventually began to chat and a friendship grew. This was twenty-two years ago. We've been through nightmare relationships and career upheavals, family madness and a few burials. She's a message therapist, very calm and centered, interested in different religions and spiritual expressions and I admire her drive and get-up-and-do-it attitude. Again, we don't have alot in common either but she's got my back and I've got hers until the end and beyond.

I consider myself quite blessed.

Hmmmmm........I seem gradually to pass through best friends.....over decades sometimes. It is as if I pass through a complex web of molecules, bonding to various of them at greater or lesser intensity, while some of them are already bonded, or also bond, to each other.


Then some bonds remain while others slowly lose their strength, and are replaced by others.

But.....I think I generally see less of people, and am less highly attached as I get older. Partly this is the work/too tired/too busy thing.....which I hope changes again as people come to work less intensely.


I feel a gap right now, having left an intensely attached and enormously convivial work group, and finding it strange to have to work up those relationships in a new place.

I also have a few friend relationships that were important to me that have ceased within the last few years, and I find that hard.

But, I have a couple of close friends whom I have had for 46 and 31 years respectively, and a number whom I have had for 10 to 25 years.


I will, I have no doubt, continue to form deep attachments to new friends.....but I think, given that we socialise less frenetically as we get older, that it is a slower process....unless it happens through work, in the trenches as it were.

I think people also become more protective of their time. In college, people have much more time to just hang out and socialize in an open-ended way, and deeper connections may or may not be forged. One thing I have hated most about moving (three times since I was 26) is that from that age on, people tend to already be established. They have their circle of friends, and don't really want to take the time and energy necessary to admit someone else to that circle. Typically the best friendships I have made have been at work, with people who also moved to the area at about the same time, and (after sozlet), with other parents.

Even that last one is getting harder, though -- it seemed like people re-assessed after they had their first child, and old friendships (especially if those friends didn't have kids) tended to change or cease. But then by the time the kid is five or so, they've had plenty of time to re-acclimate and build up new circles of friends.

The last time I had a best friend was in middle school. At that time I think it was a matter of social survival and interdependence. I had no social skills. She did. We both had a wicked nasty sense of humor and we were both smart but trying to pretend we weren't so the boys would like us. In high school she had a baby and we diverged from there to where I no longer know where she lives. We haven't been in touch in probably 8 or 10 years.

I'm not a very good friend. I get on pretty well with most people and make friends fairly easily on a shallow level, and every now and again I make a really good friend. The problem is that I'm terrible at maintaining relationships. My current closest friend is in the town I used to live in. We had a lot in common but she was a different enough from me that we had really good exchanges of ideas. We both have young kids and we agree on all things to do with child rearing, so it was a natural and easy friendship when we lived near each other. But now, I don't keep in touch so much. It's like I'm lazy and can only maintain a friendship when it's easy.

I think I'm somewhat reluctant to be my natural self with people, and that is a barrier to lasting friendships.

I have the same 3 friends I had when I was at school.
One of them went away for years but she met up with us when she came back and it was like she'd never gone away.
I feel awful saying this but I do have one best freind out of the 3.I get on with them all but in different ways.
The one person I think of as my best friend is my best friend because she makes me laugh, we are on the same wavelength.Plain and simple.
We get on but I know Im not her best friend.

I agree, once people start getting partners and move in with each other things change.
As you get older its more tough to meet people.

And why is it seem women have a harder time maintaining friendships? They hold grudges and get pissed at each other for the stupidest reasons. Seems like guys let things slide easier.

Not speaking for all women, but my problem is one of laziness, not of getting pissed or holding grudges. None of my good friends have ever done me wrong. And I'm too lazy to hold grudges.

I am not a good friend. I don't keep in touch and I am crap at remembering birthdays. I break dates and tend to only do things I want to do. I have had friends along the way - in school, at work, neighbors, etc., but I am lazy and don't maintain them.

My first best friend was at school and we were very close, always together. After she got a boyfriend, who she later married, I was pretty much dropped.

At secondary school I met another friend who I was very close to for years, but while I matured and moved onto the working world, she tried to hold onto her 'individuality' and not work, continue to do drugs and hang out with losers, so the friendship fizzled out.

At my second job, I met a free-spirit. She was the total opposite to me and, looking from the outside in, no-one would have bet we would get along at all. We were like ying and yang. She lavished attention on me and dragged me out of myself (I was shy back then). She made me laugh and had so much energy I had to get off my ass and make an effort. She never took no for an answer and frankly I didn't want her to. She lives in Ireland and while we are thousands of miles apart, and we don't call each other regularly or anything, when I go back to visit it's like we've never been apart. She is exactly the same person she has always been and I feel like me when I'm with her.

At the same time I met her, I also met another girl who lived near me and we became friends quite fast. She is also lively and funny and while it was like a close closeness for several years and I still love her to pieces, I am not completely me with her. I try to fit her life and 'keep up with her' when I'm with her, so we are not as close as we used to be. I hate to say it but I think she wants me to move back to live near her but I don't want to. I can't quite hurt her by being completely honest.

Here in America I haven't found that closeness in a friend. I have friends-light, meaning I socialise but tend to keep them at a distance. I have actually pushed a friend away (mainly because I was having health problems and her high-maintenance personality was stressing me out). Surprisingly this doesn't bother me. I don't feel the need to have lots and lots of people around me at all times. Quite frankly I don't particularly like people! But when I do meet and like you, I am a good pal. And if I love you, I will go to the ends of the earth for you.

My very best friend, and I think she knows it, is my younger sister. We are 7 years apart and she is the smartest, nicest person I know. Of course I beat the crap out of her when we were kids, but having grown up over the years (her, not me!) we have gelled. I want to go on vacations with her. I once worked with her (went extremely well). I would live with her in a heartbeat. I talk to her - phone, text, email - a couple of times a week. We share books, recipies, talk about anything and everything under the sun (she's very smart) and solve all of lifes problems when we get together. I am completely myself with her. I've noticed I've always put on a 'face' around other people, even my parents and other siblings, but never around her. If she told me she was dying and needed a heart transplant, I'd give her mine.

This topic has come at a good time.

I recently sent a long note to my best friend (well, my best friend other than RP). V___ and I have known each other since 8th grade which is, yes, over 30 years. She recently moved to a different state and I wonder how she's doing re making friends. When you know almost no one, it's hard.

One of the reasons I wrote her a long email is because RP and I were recently at a funeral, and one of the eulogies was from a man who'd known the deceased for over 50 years. Amazing. They had been friends from college, there had been three of them, and now only S___ is left. The cars turned to rust and the poker chips were long ago lost and the girlfriends turned into wives and through it all, there was a friendship. S___ was, of course, a pallbearer. In the end, I think that's one of the last gestures of friendship, along with embracing and accepting and helping the bereft family. No one can ask for more.