More than love: how we meet and why we part

It would seem that today social networks connect us in seconds, and the absence of rigid boundaries in network communication allows you to quickly establish contact with any stranger even on the edge of the earth. But the search for a truly close friend remains an acute problem, which can only be solved by personal contact. Why it happens?

At the beginning of the journey

When we are born, we do our best not to be alone. After all, for a baby, this is tantamount to death: he is helpless, and the world is dangerous … Of course, a symbiotic relationship with a mother, whom we crave in the first year of life, bears little resemblance to friendship. And the grandfather, showing the “goat” to his grandson, builds a completely different relationship with him than a neighbor in the sandbox.

Relatives, unlike future friends, love us just because we are. But these very first contacts with loved ones largely determine how we will be friends when we grow up.

“The foundations of personality, behavior style, habits depend on how our communication with significant adults developed in childhood,” explains the clinical psychologist, TFP therapist¹ Anna Afanasyeva. “And then we can look for friendships that allow us to play out familiar relationship scenarios or serve as an arena for playing out early emotional trauma.” Thus, the child of a rejecting mother runs the risk of forever playing the role of “second violin.”

And the one who was brought up by loving, sympathetic relatives is unlikely to agree to a subordinate position.

Find your flock

If in early childhood, the relationship with our parents is most important for us, in adolescence, priorities become different.

“At this time, the task of conscious separation from parents, the creation of a system of one’s own values ​​as opposed to family ones, comes to the fore,” says psychotherapist Anton Nesvitsky. “But at the same time, a teenager is still dependent on others, he needs his own group, subculture, a space where he could both feel separate from his parents and get the support of his kind.”

A company of teenagers is a kind of flock in which everyone goes through a stage of formation.

“My first real friends are my classmates,” says 30-year-old Pavel. – We put together a school “gang”, created our own circle, games, laws. Too bad we don’t talk much now. From a large company, where there were twenty people, there were a couple of friends whom I see once a year at most.

Perhaps friendship during puberty should fulfill its role and either die off or develop into something bigger, deeper.

There is an opinion that if we did not make friends at a young age, then it is useless to try to find them later.

“This statement belongs to those who have remained at the teenage level in their development,” explains Anton Nesvitsky. And for them, to a certain extent, this is true. It is really difficult for those who agree with these words to find new friends: they continue to depend on public opinion, on the assessment of their actions by a familiar group. They hardly trust new acquaintances, constantly doubt themselves and compete with others, as they did during puberty.

Mutual Aid Effect

In the post-adolescent period, our own support group still matters to us, but its functions are changing. We know ourselves better and need not just a company, but like-minded people.

“Youthful friendship strengthens our identity,” explains Anna Afanasyeva. — Friends often play the role of mirrors, peering into which we try to understand where our “I” ends and the Other begins. So we know our own and others’ boundaries. In addition, friends are a sensitive audience, in front of which our life passes.

Sometimes they remember those events and those of our thoughts that we even forgot ourselves, and help to see where we are changing and where we are not.

The group supports young people taking their first steps into adulthood.

“During this period, interpersonal connections solve the problem of socialization,” says Anton Nesvitsky. – Developing communication skills, becoming a professional, finding your own guidelines in your personal life – all this is difficult to do without an appropriate environment. At the same time, in both early adolescent and later groups, interaction often has the character of friendly competition.

Acceptance age

“We met my best friend Elena when I was 32 and she was 34,” says 43-year-old Polina. – From the very first meeting, we realized that a lot connects us: favorite places, books, films, common views on certain situations. I like to communicate with someone who shares my interests, and not just happened to be there.

The nature of friendships changes markedly at a more mature age. Now we are looking not so much for support, but for the depth of relationships with close friends. After thirty, the unity of values ​​finally comes to the fore. It is at this time that we may find that the friendship that seemed immutable from the school or student’s bench has exhausted itself.

Is it worth keeping in touch with another purely out of habit, based on the fact that we once had something to talk about? Can we be truly close if today there is nothing in common between us, except for pleasant memories?

“Demands for depth of communication and similarity of values ​​may grow. And so there is a need to find new people, – continues Anton Nesvitsky. – Now we especially appreciate the support, which is based on the acceptance of the other. Rivalry, characteristic of friendships in youth, in adulthood gives way to openness and trust.

The coincidence of the pace of development with childhood friends is rather an exception to the rule, and this rarely happens. The social field has already been mastered, we feel quite confident in the profession, we have decided on priorities in our personal lives.

And in friendship, we are now looking for an opportunity to more deeply reveal feelings and thoughts, to do interesting things together, says Anton Nesvitsky: “At this time, connections are based on a conscious choice and the desire to negotiate. They will be much stronger than children’s and youth.” Those who have a tendency to conscious communication will keep it until old age.

My family

For 30-year-old Ilya and Alina, a friendly company is a second family. “We used to treat friends almost like brothers and sisters. We have been friends for many years, we communicate with relatives much less often than with them. For us, friends are a family circle that we have chosen and created ourselves, and therefore the relationship in it is much kinder and stronger.”

It is natural to see “kindred spirits” in friends, to become attached to them, but still experts do not advise confusing family and friendship relations. In friendship, we have fewer obligations and more personal freedom: after all, friends do not depend on us like relatives. But we cannot always count on them, because we are not their only priority.

“It happens that personal life or relationships with relatives do not go well, and then we transfer our need for a family to friends,” notes Anton Nesvitsky, “but in this case we risk: friends can go into their own family life, causing jealousy.”

For those who had many problems in the parental family, it is sometimes difficult to build equal friendships: they become addicted and begin to “strangle” potential friends with intimacy, forcing the latter to distance themselves.

goodbye time

The loss of a friend is a tragedy that we perceive only more acutely with age. “Most often, the reason for the termination of relations is different vectors, levels and rates of development,” says Anton Nesvitsky. – Over time, each of us forms a picture of the world, values, views on life. We gain personal experience, and often it is very different from the experience of friends. And what can be friendship with different worldviews? None anymore.”

Surviving a collision with a changed vision of reality, both your own and a friend’s, is not easy. But everyone has the right to live as he sees fit.

“Friendship is interrupted for various reasons, but we can only lose what we have,” says Anna Afanasyeva. “Others are not our property, they cannot be possessed. We just keep in touch with them for a long time or a short time. We are changing, identifying ourselves with other, different from yesterday’s ideas. The trajectories of our life paths converge and diverge, temporarily or forever. This does not devalue what once connected us with friends. Most likely, at certain moments it was very important for us.”

And this remains: as an experience, a memory, as a guide for future relationships, although, perhaps already with other people.

In a changing world

Today, young people are increasingly turning to psychologists to understand what kind of relationship they have with others, notes Anna Afanasyeva. Perhaps the reason for this is the world of high technologies that we have not fully settled down and the accelerating rhythm of life?

“In our day, to navigate life, we need to know much more than our predecessors. We spend a lot of effort to find what we need in a huge information flow. At the same time, we have to defend ourselves against this flow,” says Anton Nesvitsky. Therefore, communication often becomes superficial. But even in such conditions, there are many who find it more important to feel the depth in contact with loved ones, and not to consume an extra gigabyte of information.”

On the other hand, the Internet gives us the opportunity to find like-minded people. Forums of fishermen and vegans, groups of anime and macrame lovers bring together those who would hardly have met in real life. And yet sometimes it seems that finding the perfect friend is even more difficult than true love.

“The idea that true friendship exists is a reflection of our yearning for an impossible, ideal merging with another,” explains Anna Afanasyeva. “And yet everyone, I think, has relationships that we consider true. In this case, we are devoted to friends, sincerely interested in them. They are so important to us that we are ready to make sacrifices for them.”

¹ TPP therapy is transference focused psychotherapy.