Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 March 2004 11:07:28
As you get older, if you are still single, 50% of friendships are ruled out.
Even though there's a value in a male-female friendship. I mean, I have always had one or two men amongst my closest friends, apart from the years from the age of 11 to 16 when my friendship circle was entirely female by coincidence rather than by choice.
But as you get older, it doesn't work, however much you want it to. If he's single, you're battling against the assumption that you want more than just friendship. If he's in a relationship apparently you become an even greater risk because you're battling against the assumption that you're trying to break up that relationship. I have just the one friend where that is happily not true and who's there as a friend with no other undertones or overtones or battles. One to whom I can confidently say anything because I know he won't take it the wrong way, and nor will his wife. We've been friends a long time and his meeting S didn't change things because the friendship was established and we each know where the other is coming from - indeed we were both able to relax and be closer friends because we knew that the friendship was safe from gossip once S was on the scene. But on the whole, I suppose, it just doesn't work. And I'm now one friend less.
The other frustrating thing about the male-female friendship business - apparently if you say you're interested only in friendship just the once, you're not giving a clear enough message. If you say it several times, you're obviously covering up your real feelings. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much". Funny, in this day and age, that female-female friendships don't come under the same umbrella really. So how do you say "I want to be friends. don't read anything more into our friendship, but understand that I value it greatly" so that people know you're sincere and read everything else in the light of that statement?
Thank God it isn't like that with God. That love is unconditional. And it isn't like that with women either. I'm off out to lunch with a friend - two for the price of one, no strings attached.