Friendships: Silver and Gold…Really?

If you were a Girl Scout, perhaps, you remember this friendship song. In my troop, we usually sang it right before we joined hands and wound ourselves into a cinnamon roll hug.

Anyway, this song has been imbedded in my head ever since. As I’m typing, I’m humming it. And, in recent days, it’s prompted a challenge to that friendship ideal...

“Make new friends, but keep the old,

One is silver and the other gold.”

Really? Should we focus on that? Accumulating- hoarding- friends?

Popular culture is all aglow with Marie Kondo and her art of tidying. She encourages each of us to get rid ourselves of whatever doesn’t “spark joy” in our lives, while we roll our socks and t-shirts. An anti-clutter principle is employed in her method: if it no longer fits your current life and you don’t want to carry it into your future, release it.

Therefore, I started thinking about “Kondo-ing” my relationships, a very anti-Girl Scout friendship song thing to do.

I had expelled bags, boxes, papers, clothes and material clutter. I felt better, having done so. However, I was still overwhelmed, distracted and drained. Why? Look at my sock drawer! Look at my closet! Look at the freer, emptier space in my home! Surely, new, fresh air was circulating, right?

Not quite. I heard the song again.

“Make new friends, but keep the old,

One is silver and the other gold.”

Hello, Clutter of my unprofitable relationships. Relationships akin to that fluorescent green crop top I purchased, believing with complete confidence, I’d wear it real life. Or that jaunty hat. I tend to look like I’m doing a bad impression of Diane Keaton in the movie, “Annie Hall.”

Still, it could not be denied. My so-called friendships were taking up space…and mocking me in the process.

So, why do I keep these relationships around? Well, like the stuff of clutter, I found there to be similar excuses, pleading for their right to exist.

1)      “I might need this someday.”

It’s that dress, the one that does not fit. The “go-to,” even though I haven’t gone there in years. But I hang onto it because “it’s always been there.” Familiar. Comforting. A safety hatch.

I had a once-close friend that fit that bill. I thought we were inseparable. We shared eerie similarities, both coming from an “only child” world view. And those suckers have been hard to come by for me.

Anyway, I moved away years ago and we stayed in touch by phone for a while. And then, things trailed off. The calls lessened. Even Facebook messaging screeched to a halt. No “explanation.” After attempts by phone, email and social media, I got the message. The two of us “once-close” friends…weren’t. No explosive argument. Just life moving on. Time to let go.

Most of us women live and die by our relationships. It starts early. How many best girlfriends did you go through by the time you reached the third grade? How many times do we proclaim, “Friends forever?”

“People come into your life for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime.”

I usually roll my eyes whenever that gets quoted. But sometimes, it’s dead-on. I struggled to hang onto a temporary “seasonal” person, trying to make then a “forever” variety. It doesn’t work that way. The incessant attempts to stay connected frustrated, drained and blocked me.

Indeed, for each person you and I cling to, who is not a willing party, we say no to someone who is an enthusiastic candidate.

We need to admit truth. The “we” that represents us plus them has changed. And we cannot change it back.

2)      It’s not that bad; I can still get some use out this.

I had a purse that was kept together by safety pins. But I was convinced I could still use it. Straps would give way in public. I’d scoop the purse up and once home, try to repair it with still more safety pins. The thing was still falling apart.

In one friendship, I was free counseling. Repeatedly, I chose to be on the listening end of the latest tale of woe, a bad divorce and other assorted drama. Yet, whenever I managed to slip in an issue or two of my own, all of a sudden, she “had to go.” Until the next crisis. She had a wicked sense of humor and whenever it wasn’t about the crisis du jour, we could have some great back and forth. But alas, the lion’s share of our discussion was me as a sounding board, her as a patient.

I stayed connected to her for those few fleeting good conversations. I convinced myself, “If I can just get through this hump, it’s all good. Just hang on.”

It was not about devotion. It was about some sick need that gets met from the dysfunction.

And it wasn’t just my friend’s needs. No, I got my need met from the crisis-heavy discussions. I was the comfortable therapist, nonchalantly peering in on someone’s problems. I was safely at a distance. My issues must not have been “that bad,” because I never felt an urgency to plead for them to be heard.

But that became more difficult to maintain after my Breast cancer diagnosis. Now I needed to be heard and the status quo, one-way therapy did not work. After fifteen years, it was time to end things.

3)      It over-promises, yet under-delivers.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

Years ago, I bought some high heels with leopard print all over them. They were fabulous and hobbled me every single time I tried walking in them. I was Bambi struggling on the frozen pond.

But I believed they were a staple; animal print, after all, is a neutral. They’ll never go out of style. I can always count on them.

I had a twenty- year friendship with someone who I thought was a supportive person.

Yet, once again, I placed myself in a situation to chase someone who really wasn’t interested in being caught. I tried to reach her by phone. She was always “busy,” “en route to a conference,” “in a meeting.” When I finally got ahold of her, voice- to- voice, the obligatory “what’s going on with you” question surfaced. And I finally had the chance to tell her about my Breast cancer diagnosis. She was shocked, asking why she never heard about it.

I had posted about my diagnosis on social media. We were also Facebook friends. I was not hiding.

After that voice- to- voice recap, I tried, again, to reach her by phone, to no avail. We kept setting up times to speak. She kept cancelling, again, citing “busy.”

I heard- and felt- something different. I was not a priority relationship in her life.

I get it. Busy.

We’re all busy. Life is busy. But come on, somehow, in life, you and I find the time, make the time for who and what are truly important to us. Once is an event, perhaps. Twice, a coincidence. But if a behavior keeps happening, that is a pattern; that is a habit. Actions do speak louder than words.

Clutter, here in this kind of relationship dynamic is represented by the accumulation of experiences in which we are not treated as an important priority. I believe that too often, “busy” is code for “I’m not interested in you.”

Again, does it keep happening? When you walk away from this person-or this attempt at connecting with this person- how do you feel?

Pay attention to that and declutter, if necessary.

4)      I don’t know. (Is ambivalence the silver or the gold? I can never keep it straight).

Once, upon receiving an online clothes order, the company threw in a gardener’s bag for free. For customer appreciation. The bag was yellow and came with a set of tools, to boot. I hate gardening. But, don’t look a gift-bag in the mouth, right? So, I added it to my closet. And never once used it. It didn’t spark joy. It was just there. Mocking me with its abundance of pockets, just perfect for holding the gardening tools.

Social media gives us the illusion of “friends,” from different eras, from different walks of life and from different locations. But how many are exactly that? Friends? Maybe counted on one hand, maybe even two?

I have accumulated clutter on social media. I’m guilty of allowing this relationship hoard to exist. I’m in the process of culling my list of individuals “following” me. Because, let’s face it, there’s no following going on with some of them. I have gotten rid of many “people of my past:” theatre comrades from my college days that I’ve never met for coffee, a few stray acquaintances from a passing interest like axe throwing (don’t judge, please).

And, yes, unfortunately, some of my supposedly true-blue friendships have also gone by the wayside because, apart from the internet, there is no evidence of the two of us in each other’s lives.

Does this sound like I’m an impossible person to know, let alone, befriend? Perhaps. I’m working on my internal, emotional clutter.

But I think there’s a bigger issue we all share. Some people just need to exit our lives. No yelling, no fighting, no crying jags need to always occur. Sometimes, things just end.

Instead of singing the Girl Scouts’ friendship song, maybe we should start singing “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen” (Yes, I know, it’s an insufferable earwig. Many of you have probably heard a toddler belt in out at high volume in your minivan. Sorry).

Still relationship endings can be okay. When we end a friendship, another will surface in its place, sooner or later. And, in the meantime, we can clean ourselves up a bit. We can address why we’ve gotten comfortable allowing this clutter to exist in the first place.

What need or excuse does this person fill?

What is comfortable about him/her?

What is masochistic about this dynamic?

How are we the sadist in the relationship?

Clutter obscures everything.

It could be possible that the true, meaningful relationships are from people we deemed least likely. Or, maybe they are people we have yet to meet. Regardless, we have a difficult time seeing anything silver or gold in its quality, if distracting quantity is all around us.

So, we need to ask…

Does this person truly “spark joy?” How?

Are they interacting, supportive and healthfully involved in my life?

Do they still fit in my life?

Why is this person still here?

Is this relationship silver? Is this relationship gold?

That is the song we need to sing.

Copyright © 2020 by Sheryle Cruse