Friendship

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 05 February 2003 13:19:00

These days, I'm reading Elaine Storkey's "The Search for Intimacy". I've just started the chapter on friendship, and found the first section quite challenging. I suppose that everybody's different. Elaine Storkey looks back, and indicates how a number of friendships over a considerable period of time have enriched her life. If I am honest, perhaps being over-critical, I could say that the only person in my life who measures up to the definition of friend, is my wife. I vaguely remember that in another chapter of the book, Ms Storkey comments that, when surveyed, quite a number of men claimed that their wife was their only friend. Women, on the other hand, would say that they had several good friends. Ms Storkey related this information to the observation that women are better at communicating emotion than men are.

Of course, in the present context, I must hurriedly say that I regard a number of people with whom my only contact is via the Internet as friends. I'm not sure whether Ms Storkey would agree with me. There is a time dimension to consider, of course. One of the most challenging aspects of Ms Storkey's discourse was the fact that many of these friendships appear to have lasted many years. I have to say that I find it incredibly difficult to maintain friendships when the circumstances of the formation of that friendship have passed. Recently, in the shopping centre which is a few hundred yards away from this campus, I chanced to meet someone whom I knew when we were both students. Our conversation moved to the question of how our contemporaries were doing, and I had to confess that I had lost touch with most of them.

So, my friends (and, as I have already said, I do regard you as my friends), is the Internet a medium for the formation of friendships that will last? It does provide an opportunity for the sharing of some pretty deep thoughts. The links which are forged do not depend on geographical location. I am not good at making friends. Perhaps, for me, one of the attractions of the Internet is that I can 'meet' people in a way that simply doesn't happen in ordinary life.