I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships lately. What spurred me to write this essay is a particular type of relationship. You know those people. You smile when you think about them. You can go months or years without seeing or talking, yet as soon as you are together again you pick up right where you left off; people you love unconditionally, yet you will not let them get away with any bullshit.
But first, a little of my general musing about relationships. I’m talking all kinds of relationships: family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances. How people interact with each other has always fascinated me—remember, I’m an amateur social scientist. In the workplace, it was all about influence: how can I convince someone to do what I would like them to do, be that a customer buying what my company is selling or another employee “buying” what I am trying to “sell” them about a project or other initiative. In my personal life, it has often been around the question of how “out” do I really need to be: does the cashier at the grocery store really need to know that Trish is my wife? Do I care that she or he may assume something totally different about who I am? With family and friends, I am often thinking about communication. I’ve written before about my Theory of the Half Life of Effective Communication and On Resolving Conflict.
One of the companies that I worked for was a highly distributed, global organization, with 30,000+ employees around the globe but rarely more than 200 in the same location (most had staffs of less than 50). The development of effective relationships and communication norms was critical for these micro universes. I wrote a “white paper” about this topic for a corporate Executive Leadership Program. It went over like a lead balloon, but I still like the premise. I asked people to think about relationships (and this holds for the work environment as well as your personal life) as a series of concentric circles—hence the visual that I posted with this essay.
In your personal life, that innermost circle is a very few people. Your spouse, children, maybe siblings, maybe parents and a few cousins. If you are lucky like me, your BFF is in that circle. These are the people that are just IN your life daily and always at the front of your mind. You know what they are doing and they know what you are doing—almost everything.
In that second circle, you have your posse. The friends (and family members) that you generally interact with regularly. Successive circles outward include acquaintances that you run into every now and then. You usually remember their names and faces. Farther out are those transactional relationships—cashiers, service people, the person you sit next to on a transnational flight. How you communicate with people in those circle differs, as does the work you must put into developing communication norms.
What I want to talk about, though, is a special category in that second circle: those people who aren’t necessarily in your everyday life, but with whom you have a deep bond. This is a bond that time and life changes don’t affect; a bond that may form under a particular circumstance but that grows past that initial basis. That’s the group of friends I just spent 4 days with in Miami Beach.
We are a circle of seven women who went through school together at Goucher College, Class of 1984. The group is not all equal in “closeness”. Some subgroupings have stayed deeply involved in each other’s lives continuously since graduation. Some are very close with one or two people yet less close with others. The closeness has ebbed and flowed over the years. And some, like me, dropped out of sight for a good part of the 35 years since graduation while I was trying to figure out my own life. That took about all the energy I had and, since I really hate talking on the phone, I fell out of touch with them. (Social media, the perfect work around for phone-phobes like me, is a comparatively recent development.) However, we ALL always came back for the 5 year interval reunions and we slid right back into the easy rapport which was always there. At our 35 year reunion last year, we decided to make our own “off” year reunion—hello, South Beach in February!
The hotel staff were increasingly amused as an ever-larger “Greeting Committee” would wander down to the lobby as each person arrived. Rooming arrangements were negotiated prior through some sort of organic process. I, one of the most introverted in the group, roomed with the most extroverted in the group. It worked because we have a strong basis of mutual love and respect. And that underpinned being able to say whatever we needed to say to each other. I could say, “Stop talking. I want to go to sleep.” And she could say, “No, you’re not going to sleep yet.” (I can hear the gasps of those who know me after reading that line!)
That balance extended to the wider group. Imagine trying to coordinate four days of activities, meals, whatever with six of your friends. What made it work was the comfort level of knowing that no one was going to dominate, that no one was going to be voiceless, that if anyone tried to push something that the consensus was uncomfortable with that they would be called on it (mostly). These are the kind of people who won’t hesitate to tell you there is spinach in your teeth or a booger hanging out of your nose. We split each check evenly seven ways. If I got an expensive entree one meal, they knew it would balance out another time. If some drank water and others had three drinks, we didn’t care. We trusted each other and wanted each other to have a good time. This sort of deep caring is rare.
There were beach groups and pool groups; power walkers and strollers; chatter and companionable silence times. The last night we were all together, we took over the pool bar for a rather loud game of Farkle. It’s a dice game that involves equal parts strategy and accounting, and us “Goucher Women of Promise” quickly picked it up. True to form, we kept helpfully adding up everyone’s score for them each roll. It just worked and was so comfortable! I think what I liked the most is that while we did a little reminiscing about our college years, 95% of the conversation was about our lives since then. Our years at Goucher, struggling through classes together and learning to be adults, formed the basis of our friendship. But it has been what we have navigated through in the decades since, and how we have shared it and grown with it that have formed the ties that bind us. You know, I don’t even remember ever officially coming out to this group. I don’t think I came out to anyone while we were in school. But they all knew and that part of my life just fit into the rest of our relationship. This is the ONLY group with which that process has happened!
We have continued the group text that started as we prepared to travel down to Miami, sharing more of our daily lives with the group. We have penciled in a week for next year to get together again. Shout out to Goucher, since 6 of the 7 of us have retired (or essentially so) by 57 years of age, so this is more do-able for us now. Trish and I are talking about some travel that will include stops to see some of the group. (This was a spouse-less trip, so Trish missed out.) Realistically, I know life will get in the way a bit and this tight communication will fade. But I also know that when we do get together again, hopefully next year, we’ll pick up right where we left off, Farkle and all. I treasure these friendships and these women. I hope you all are lucky enough to have friends like this in your lives.