My last essay on long time friends sparked a lot of discussion, mostly in our home. Trish and I had some long discussions on friendships. I found it very illuminating because she has approached friendships very differently from me over the years and I find myself benefiting immensely from her perspective. Ruminating on these ideas, I kept finding myself coming back to a certain type of relationship. Since the thoughts won’t leave me, I must write them down to make room for more random thoughts. So, you now get to hear me pontificate on Refrigerator Rights.

A person is granted Refrigerator Rights only within certain relationships. RR, as we will now call them since I don’t feel like typing “Refrigerator Rights” over and over, exist when you are comfortable enough with someone that you can just go help yourself to whatever you want from the frig. You don’t need to ask. You don’t need to wait to be offered. You are not just ALLOWED to get whatever you want, you are EXPECTED to go get whatever you want. “I’m not serving you. Get it yourself.”

My earliest memories of RR are related to my neighborhood friends. When I was a kid growing up in the 1960’s and ‘70s, I would just leave the house and “go play”. Sometimes it was with the kid next door. Sometimes the kid across the street. Sometimes a few kids up the hill. We just went out and came back when we felt like it or were expected to be home. As far as I remember, there was no planning by our parents. In fact, I don’t really remember planning between us kids. There was just a knock on the door and off we went. I had RR at each of these houses. The moms were too busy to serve us and we were expected to just help ourselves. Being the consummate rule follower, I only helped myself to what I knew I was allowed to have. I’m sure there was ample opportunity to get in trouble and plenty of kids did. That was just not me (at least until I went away to college). I took RR for granted back then. It just was what you did.

As an adult, RR took on new meaning. I certainly always had RR with my immediate family and I have it now with my in-laws. But I learned that being granted RR by friends was a significant milestone in the evolution of our friendship. In fact, the whole concept of RR had to explained to me by a friend one day when she got tired of the charades I would play around wanting something to drink. Too nervous to ask, I would mime thirst or some such desire. Trish calls this “passive aggressive behavior.” I call it “deep seated insecurity.” Trish will just wrinkle her nose and say, “I don’t care about the source of the behavior, just the behavior itself.” Have I noted how good this relationship has been for me?

Anyway, reaching the point of RR in a friendship is an expression of trust. It’s evidence that you have moved into one of the inner concentric circles of the relationship model. It means there is an understood level of comfort between you and the owner of said refrigerator. Some people are very relaxed and grant RR right away. I envy admire those people. They are people who are easy to get to know because they have no fear. They can be an open book because they don’t fear rejection. “You don’t like me because of this one thing? Fine. Just go help yourself to a drink.” They do not fear getting taken advantage of because they are good at setting boundaries. “Go get a snack out of that cupboard, but don’t eat the last cookie or I will throw you out.” (OK, so that one was Trish the first time I ever came to her house.) They are very comfortable in their skin and don’t concern themselves with other people’s tendency to judge. They might feel badly that there is not something you like in the fridge because they want to be a good host, but they don’t see it as an existential failing on their part.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Making new friends has always been a bit difficult for me. That’s probably going to be my next essay since it should flow nicely from this one. Not to spoil the plot (especially since my long time readers already know this about me), but I’m always afraid of “not knowing what I don’t know” about people’s opinions of me. I try to not assume too much, even when people show me extraordinary kindness. It makes me come off as a bit aloof, I know, but I’m really just protecting myself. To counter that, I’m trying hard to develop a willingness to grant RR, both literally and in the abstract, more readily. It will still take me a while to let go of the paranoia but, as they say, you gotta fake it until you make it.

If you grant me Refrigerator Rights, know that I don’t take that lightly. I will assume you granting me RR means that you feel comfortable with me, trust me, and want me to feel the same about you. (But if you have Diet Dr. Pepper or Diet Cream Soda in there that you don’t want touched you had better tell me!) I will see it as a vote of confidence in our friendship and a willingness to get to know each other even better over time. Building lasting relationships is all about a foundation of trust, anyway. So, go help yourself to whatever you’d like! Just not the last cookie.