being a super cheesy pants, i often reflect on my amazing friends and marvel at how we met. i’ll think to myself, “it was DESTINY that we ____ (insert: “took that class together!” or “were in the same orientation group!” or “worked in that office together!”).
for example, i justify the two miserable years at my last job because it gave me the chance to meet meredith. i think back to 1996 and wonder about the odds of amber being placed in my “get to know you” group. i give myself a hearty pat on the back for participating in the will rice one-act plays so that i could meet mark and kendall. i drink margaritas with my friend jordan p. and thank my lucky stars that i hired him at ktru.
and the list goes on and on.
well, apparently, i’m a romantic (surprise!), because scientists have just proven that it’s not, as i choose to believe, destiny. no, it’s something much more mundane: proximity. from the press release:
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The actor Sir Peter Ustinov once famously said “Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who get their first.” Psychologists now believe there is some truth to this argument. Rather than picking our friends based on intentional choice and common values and interests, our friendships may be based on more superficial factors like proximity (think neighbors) or group assignments (your department at work).
Mitja Back, Stefan Schmukle, and Boris Egloff of the University of Leipzig sought to test the notion that random proximity and random group assignment at zero acquaintance would foster friendship in the long run. The researchers investigated 54 college freshmen upon encountering one another for the first time at the beginning of a one-off introductory session and randomly assigned them a seat number in a group of chairs organized in rows.
As reported in a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, sitting in neighboring seats as a result of randomly assigned seat numbers when meeting for the first time led to higher ratings of friendship intensity one year later. The same was true even if participants were merely in the same row.
The counterintuitive finding suggests that friendships may not be as deliberate we think. “In a nutshell,” write the authors, “people may become friends simply because they drew the right random number.”
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ok, so most of this is what i call “big duh science.” i mean, of COURSE you’re gonna make friends with people that you see every day, esp. during a time like college, when everyone is searching for a kindred spirit and it’s easier to talk to the person sitting next to you then it is to cross the cafeteria and randomly introduce yrself to a stranger.
also? this study doesn’t seem that scientific to me, but maybe it’s just cos this is a press release and not the actual report about the experiment.
anyway, i’m not really interested in a battle between destiny and proximity, but i am AM interested in what makes friendships last, esp. when people no longer attend the same classes or live in the same cities. this wondering coincides nicely with the fact that i saw the SATC movie last night (i enjoyed the pants out of it, btw), which of course made me think about female friendships.
as a side note, henri wants to know how the SATC ladies met, cos the show never addresses it, which is really a shame. this study makes me think that maybe at one point they used the same nail salon or were regulars at the same bar for cocktail hour.
so in the movie (no spoilers, i promise) the ladies have all moved on with their lives, husbands, kids, etc. but they remain good friends. samantha even lives on the west coast but flies to NYC constantly cos she is totally $$$$. and even though i love the idea that they are as close as ever, i’m not sure if it’s realistic?
i mean, it is totally possible to get married and have kids and still maintain close friendships. on the other hand, we all change as we get older, whether it’s because of married life or a shift in interests or a consuming career. and while i will always share a bond with my best friends from college, i no longer feel as connected to many of them, esp. when we no longer live in the same place. ah, proximity!
then again, there *are* friends that feel just as real, just as close as the days when we lived and played and worked together.
so what is the secret?
is it about being a good email pants? if i know what’s going on in someone’s life, i feel closer to them. if i have no idea what someone is up to, does that make our friendship less real? or just *feel* less real, until we see each other again?
is it about living near each other? i have friends who are far away, but when i see them, i know instantly that we are still kindred spirits. then again, do we really share life *together* when great distances lie between us?
is it about having the same kind of lifestyle? some of my friendships have weakened simply due to life circumstances. can i be on the same page with someone who just had a baby or who is married, if i haven’t experienced these things for myself?
is it about sharing mutual passions that never burn out, even with age?
in spite of the science, i can’t help but wonder, is it just destiny?
what do you guys think? how have you met yr closest friends, and how do you keep those two jagged heart pieces together?
regardless of this study, i believe friendship is too magical of a creature for hard science. perhaps we’re better off without the ability to predict who we will meet or how our relationships will evolve.
i prefer a life when i never know who will be around the corner, whether it’s a stranger who just happens to love “you’ve got mail” as much as i do, or an old friend with a smile my heart will always recognize, no matter the distance.
LINKS
oooh wanna read about what COULD have been in the SATC movie?!!! my first reaction is to never, ever forgive them for cutting aidan… and then i think about how painful it would’ve been to see him again, and i’ve decided that they made the right choice. cos i probably would have cried even more than i already did.
jezebel celebrates the positive things about hilary on the eve (i guess?) of her departure from the presidential race.
cakespy just introduced me to this generation’s thiebaud: nancy bea miller. cos my apartment needs more baked goods art, obviously.
another reality show that i think looks awesome but will never watch– check out these CRAYZEE older ladies trying to be models. my favorite is totally eleanor, “no cosmetic surgery!”
YES! another reason to drink read wine. ha, like i needed one.
in the SATC movie, jennifer hudson talks about renting designer purses… then today i read about zilok, which allows you to rent, well, anything. but can you rent puppies, i ask?!!!!!
See, that’s funny, science, cause my friendships have formed in the exact opposite way. The way I know I’m friends with someone is when I seek them out, despite not being in the same office/class/town/country as them. Because, I’ll be honest, I don’t like 90% of the people I meet. (Which is not to say that I DISKLIKE them; I just have no desire to know them further.) And being in close proximity with a person I am ambivalent towards does not make me warm to them, particularly; usually I spend my time wondering when I’ll be able to depart their company. (This is also why I don’t date very often.) So my strongest friendships have usually formed when I didn’t have to see the person all the time, and could thus treasure the little time we spent together - and then not be annoyed by them all the rest of the time.
This is making me sound awful bitchy! But really I’m just not very social. It’s hard work, making conversation. I’d rather just watch tv!
All that said, my BFF in the whole world is someone I’ve known since I was 4. We have absolutely nothing in common and since we graduated high school, we’ve not spent more than a day (at one time) in each other’s company. She’s married and has a kid and one on the way and is generally a responsible, grounded adult, whereas I can’t tie my shoes correctly most days. Yet there’s no one in the world except her that I know I could turn to at any time, for any reason, and know she’d be there to help me. And I like to think she feels the same, despite my unfortunate tendencies to be flighty and irresponsible. And that’s lovely, and reassuring, to think that with so little effort on either of our parts, our friendship can continue to thrive. Our friendship is totally like ivy. It’s almost unkillable.
That said, I’ve killed ivy before, so.
As for my other good friends, I would say it’s almost always the High Fidelity effect - we befriend each other based on what we like, rather than what we’re like. Or maybe our likes feed into our personalities; I’m not sure. But I wouldn’t trade them for the world, because knowing them makes me a much better person. Thanks, friends!
i think relationships work primarily because of choice. i think about some current relationships that, initially, i didn’t want or wasn’t interested in, but i decided to give them a chance. and now i am developing actual friendships with these people and finding common ground.
i think about some relationships that i’ve lost because one or the other didn’t choose to make it work, for whatever reason; maybe it wasn’t viable at that moment in time. others did work, like with my two college girl friends, who sometimes disappear from my life for months at a time, but who i know will always re-emerge, because i have evidence in my life that suggests that we choose each other.
and i think about romantic relationships, which spend a great deal of time in “choice” mode. lots of choosing what will be sacrificed/compromised, what the boundaries will be, what the “status” of the relationship is.
we choose the people who will and will not be part of our lives, they choose back… and sometimes those choices just boil down to being open to different kinds of people and experiences. some of my most interesting relationships have been with people who shared no common interests with me, and some of my closest ones are so complex that it has very little to do with our common interests. i think some of the qualities we tick off when we think of a Good Friend, though, are all about the choices they’ve made concerning us, the receiver of the friendship–honesty, loyalty, insight into who we are.
btw, i think carrie touches on her history with a few of the others in an episode. i remember something about miranda knowing carrie since they were kids or something… it might have just been her history with one of the others. anyway, i think it is buried in an episode somewhere, a shadow of it…?
Obviously, my friends from junior high and high school are a product of proximity… Come on, how many people were in our graduating class that we never even knew because we had classes with only the top 100? That being said, it was proximity and shared interests (and maybe some inside jokes)…
College, I could see proximity. Anna and Alyson were both in my core group so most of my freshman courses were with them, and I met Phillip at work my freshman year. Even though we don’t see or speak to each other often, those friendships are so special that I know I can call them whenever I need something. They all live out of state and all 3 flew to Texas for our wedding, and Phillip came in even though his second son had been born only a week earlier. Phillip and I can go for months without talking and then he’ll call me up and say “What are you doing May 17th? I’m coming to visit” and it is like no time has passed at all. It is the same with his entire family. He’s my older brother.
Now days it is definitely proximity. All of our friends that we have made since I have moved back to Texas are through work, and I am closer to the ones that I have more in common with. Seriously, coming to a party at our house and not being a teacher means that you will probably feel out of place.
The people who I make the most effort to hang out with are usually people who also want to hang out with me. Duh, right? But in high school I used to want to be friends with the cool kids. I totally ignored the nerds and social outcasts who would have willingly been better friends with me than any of the popular kids could have been. It sucked.
Now I just try to hang out with whoever wants to, and if I feel good about it, I try to encourage the relationship by inviting them to do stuff, too. If a friendship isn’t going to work, I never want it to be because I mistreated or ignored the other person. I try very hard to keep political, spiritual, mental, and whatever other kinds of views from separating me from people I enjoy. After all, people are people, and they’re entitled to live the way they want and believe the things they want, right? Still, what can you do. Friends don’t let friends self-destruct, and sometimes being a friend means doing something out of love that results in the friendship coming to an end.
Also, sometimes I look for people who really need friends and I make an effort to hang out with them, because I have been in that situation so many times. It hurts to be lonely. It might be lame hanging out with a lonely person at first, but if you give it a chance, sometimes it can turn into something cool.
I think actually my best friends are people I kind of hated at first, and/or people I thought I had nothing in common with. Honestly, there are the good examples of later best friends who I literally hated at first (we’ll call her M), and she hated me. Then there was someone I felt threatened by (L). And lots and lots of examples of people I somehow felt too shy or awkward or young to be friends with at first (my friendship with you, I think, falls into this category? and several others who were 2 years older than me at Rice). It’s kind of my approach to the world, I think: I feel it out, and I watch people, and I figure out what I would want to say to them, and then I make friends with them if I want. I am not initially really gregarious, and so the friends I make at first are often shallow, because I am always still trying out whether I actually want to open up to them at first. Sometimes this figuring-out-if-they-can-be-trusted process takes years (ask my freshman year suitemate, E).
That said, the opposite is true for dating relationships for me. In general I’m kind of “eh” about people I might date, until I meet someone and am immediately infatuated. Luckily if they choose me back, I can stay infatuated really, really long (maybe always, but not sure).
I do think, however, that people you meet first are good people to do stuff with, but I think to answer your more thought-provoking question about friendship-longevity is really a matter more complex. First off, this study is only about within the college context, and only 1 year later. I have a couple people I thought I was BFF with in college (where you don’t change your context often) that I don’t communicate with at all except for occasional Facebook stalking.
I think to get through various life stages with someone (friend, partner, etc.) takes a special connection and/or serious commitment. This “three types of friends” thing that Aristotle said is quoted often on blogs, so it sounds cliche, but he divides it into friends for utility, pleasure and good (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics#Books_8_and_9:_Friendship). I think the friendships they studied that lasted 1 year may have been (although not necessarily) more of the first type?
interesting thoughts. my therapist and i will speculate. the best part of this blog though, is that you’re starting to write like Carrie Bradshaw. Is that intentional? Or just too many re-runs getting ready for the big opening? “I can’t help but wonder, blah blah ba blah question mark? Love it.
In general, my friendships are a combination of blessed proximity (which, to me, is the same as “destiny.” Destiny created the proximity so we could be friends!) and my actively seeking someone out who seems cool and deciding that, yes, he/she will be my friend.
Sarah, proximity brought us to the T&D Dept, but watching movie trailers with you in your office or hearing the Reality Bites soundtrack blare from your speakers, in addition to your excellent sock collection, made me decide, “This Sarah chick is cool! I will befriend her!” (although you awesomely made the first move, inviting me to Sin City with you. Best first date ever!). I did the same w/ Henri, I just bullied my way into his heart.
My bestie Jon went to high school with me and was a year younger and an AcaDec champion, and I always thought he seemed funny and brilliant so one day I approached him and made conversation. I immediately liked Matt’s friend Mandy and insisted we go to dollar pint night together and “charmed” her until she was forced to loved me. I’m a very aggressive befriender, and proximity generally introduces me to those I want to befriend. But there have been countless people with whom I’ve been in close proximity that I didn’t decide to befriend. You guys are so lucky!
As far as maintaining those friendships once proximity is no longer assisting you, that takes work. My mom used to say this cheesy (and not entirely grammatically apt) platitude, “Being a friend is a verb, not a noun!” Just as I aggressively befriend people, I aggressively insist on maintaining immensely detailed e-mail relationships with them so we stay in the loop of each other’s lives. And I drive to Austin a lot.
Oh, and Sarah, the other reason it would have been painful for you to see Aidan again (also my #1 SATC crush, swoooon, you can renovate my apartment, baby!), is that he’s now turned into a balding-but-long-haired actor-with-a-band douche. Sigh.
http://www.johncorbettband.com/index.html
I have always had a hard time making and keeping friends because I am so dang independent. I forget that I need people. Luckily I have a couple of good friends who refuse to let me fall off their radar. One lives is this small town in south Texas and the other lives in Florida so we never see each other, but when we do, it’s like no time has passed. I’ve known them since I was 8 years old so they know everything about me and vice versa. There is great comfort in that.
There are some friendships I made in junior high and high school that I still have and I am so grateful because they turned out to be some the most intriguing and interesting people I know.
It is hard to stay friends with people that have gone through life changes that you haven’t (marriage, children). Of my 2 close friends I mentioned before, they are both married, as am I, but one has 3 kids with another on the way, but the other is still kid-free, like me. I must say, I have a closer relationship with my kid-free friend because we are on the same page as far as big life changing decisions are concerned. My friend with all the rugrats pretty much only talks about babies which I don’t have any concept of so it can get a little frustrating at times.
I’m still figuring friendship out though because I forget that friends like it when you call them up and invite them to go do something…or just call them period. I’m working on it.
I remember figuring out the proximity angle back when I was 19 and trying to talk to girls. I was still the shy guy in my friends, and so while the others were all fine with walking across the south mall to talk to the cute girl sitting by herself, I never had the nerve to know what to say (”Hi” just didn’t even spring into my mind, somehow). But I realized that if I could just work up the nerve to sit next to the girl I found interesting in a class where we didn’t have assigned seats, then time would provide some sort of event where we’d have the chance to actually meet. From the meeting, of course, background and shared interests obviously matter.
But yeah, as in all things, my faith is in the science with this one: initially, it’s all about proximity (but Internet Proximity is changing that, hence Erin’s friendship worlds and the community of this blog). The good thing about the science winning out over romantic concepts like destiny, though, is that you can do something about it. Want to meet new friends? Just go where they are.
Last night, for instance, I was stupid tired after finishing the export for the Monster Rock Sing-Along. It was 2am when I was leaving the office, and I wanted to get to bed so I could start my day today early. But I’ve also been thinking that I want to have more of a real connection with the staff so I don’t feel so weird when they all know my name and I don’t know anything about them. So when I saw a small group of them hanging out and having a last beer, I decided to just sit there too, and even though I didn’t get up as early as I wanted to this morning, putting myself in that situation still feels like the right choice, and meeting the people that work with me in a closer context feels like it can only help me with my myriad projects.
So I say Destiny is a lot like Luck. To get Lucky, you’ve got to prepare and practice and work your ass off. Then when there’s a random Opportunity, you can get lucky. Destiny, I think, isn’t a force guiding us into the future, but a road we can look back on. It doesn’t push us around one curve or another, but once things have happened we can look back and see how they *had* to happen that way, because without taking that left turn back in Albuquerque, we couldn’t be here now. That’s true, of course, but we would’ve still been somewhere else that would have seemed just as inevitable. It’s nice to look back and see the twists that brought us to this destiny, though.
And I agree with Ann - this blog post is totally your Carrie post, Sarah. The sentence, “in spite of the science, i can’t help but wonder, is it just destiny?” sounds like it was ripped out of one of voice overs word for word.
But I also think it makes sense, and that this post kind of crystallizes the essence of this whole PoshDeluxe thing. Because whereas Carrie writes about men and that kind of relationship and whether it can exist and how it could exist and all of that, all of your posts, in some way or another, are really about friendships and how they can exist and where the magic is in them and how it all works. Even when you’re just writing about adventures we’ve had over the weekend, the focus is generally on the friends we were with or the ones we met. And then the interviews are obviously all about friends as opposed to trying to interview the typical movers and shakers…
nd of course Carrie’s world is all about how to meet one special man in the throngs of people in her immediate proximity, while yours is more about how to keep your friends when they’re no longer in your immediate proximities. From now on, therefore, I’m going to refer to this blog as Platonics and the Cities.
gah, ann, you are right. i had no idea how carrie bradshaw i was sounding… not necessarily a *good* thing, but a girl can’t help it when she’s spent the last few months watching the entire SATC series.
and can i just say how much i am enjoying everyone’s beautifully thoughtful and extremely articulate responses? comments like these explain why i think so much about friendship– cos i have amazing friends!
I remember reading another psychological study about friendships and that we tend to cling to friends who offer us something we need. You will get closer to someone who will do favors for you. For instance what made me stop and realize my friend Bobb was good people was when I was going to go to the airport on my own and he offered to take me to the airport without me even asking. We’ve been good friends ever since.
As for the history of the SATC characters I see a prequel possibility. Think about it. Scarlett Johanneson as Samantha, Anne Hathaway as Charlotte, Lauren Ambrose as Miranda, and last but not least Kristen Bell as Carrie Bradshaw. Think about it. It’s a gold mine waiting to be escavated!
Oh my god, that would be soooo much gold, Moody!
uh, moody, you better copyright that idea now cos it is HIGHLY STEALABLE AND AWESOME. yr choices in casting? purrrfect.
I did cast Christian Bale in Batman long before they announced making Batman Begins.
I love this blog, especially since I moved away from my awesome friends and have since moved back, I have had to think about relationships a lot lately. I think Jessica is right, it is a lot about choice, but I also think proximity plays a part since some of us (ahem: me) are not good on the phone, texting or emailing. So all my close friends live near me. I also agree with Moody, it’s the people you do things for without thinking about it and knowing, somewhere in the back of your mind, that you can call on them for a favor.
It’s also about adaptability too, which goes along with choice. There are just going to be some friends who are not at the same place you are in life, who are not near you, who you never hang out with, but you are still friends nonetheless. You both make that effort.
And, yeah, good blog and comments everyone! Well done.
Excellent post on friendship! It’s something I frequently mull over myself.
Hey, you cannot even imagine how intensely flattered I am by your calling me “…this generation’s Wayne Thiebaud”. Wow! He is one of my Gods. Thank you so much!