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Fellow comrades are the pillars of our lives, to a much greater extent than we realize. They participate in building our identities, accompany us at important stages of life, and help us overcome neuroses. These connections are worth cherishing and honoring.
Dmitry and Anton are 32 years old, they have known each other since school. “Dima is groovy, he participated in everything from fights to theatrical productions,” says Anton, “and I am quiet, I don’t like noise. But one day our class announced a subbotnik, to which no one came except the two of us, so we started talking. And the conversation continues to this day!
But a completely different story of the meeting: “Five years ago I went to Italy with a group, one woman argued with the guides all the time, and I became curious who she was,” recalls 79-year-old Galina. – It turned out that he was an art critic, and I adore painting. I did not think that at my age it was possible to make a new friendship, especially since Marisha is almost 30 years younger! But even on our return, we called up, met, went to exhibitions. Now I would say that Marisha is definitely a person close to me, maybe the closest.
Friendship is incredibly diverse and eludes definitions. It connects two or whole companies, implies the similarity of thoughts and aspirations, but sometimes it occurs between completely different people, it flares up for one evening or lasts for many years.
We can’t always explain what it is, but we feel that it provides something of value. “The sun, it seems to me, is removed from the world by those who remove friendship from life; after all, nothing better, nothing more pleasant than friendship, we did not receive from the immortal gods, ”wrote Cicero1 in 44 BC.
Friends instead of husband
All eras, all cultures recognize the value of friendship. Achilles and Patroclus, Herzen and Ogarev, Freud and Fliss… For a long time only male friendship, romantic and chivalrous, attracted the interest of historians. But today we are talking about female friendship. Evidence of this is such a modern art form as TV shows: “Friends” tells about a company that includes both men and women. And “Sex and the City” says about the relationship of four girlfriends almost more than actually about sex.
If men change too quickly, it is not surprising that those relationships that are more stable come to the fore. “Many women really rely on their friends more than on a partner, such is the reality,” says psychodramatherapist Irina Pervushina. – In an intimate pair relationship, we want to “powder”, to make amends for our shortcomings. And about friends, we know that they will accept us as we are, with a pimple on our nose, with bad habits and quirks. Therefore, even in illness, it is easier for some to open up to friends than to lovers: in these relationships there are fewer expectations and fears.
Protecting the peace of partners (as well as the stability of our couple), we do not always tell them about our worries, doubts
Girlfriends do not try to make us better, in addition, they know how to fade into the background when we have other hobbies. “I was the first of our friendly circle to get married and give birth,” says 36-year-old Alla. – Girlfriends will come to visit, and I have a baby, where can I talk. They were not offended, but still moved away. And now everyone’s children have grown up, and again we not only correspond, but also see each other all the time – and I understand how much I missed this!
Protecting the peace of partners (as well as the stability of our couple), we do not always tell them about our worries, doubts, we are silent about some hobbies and desires. And with friends you can talk about everything that worries us in other areas of life, ask for advice and not feel embarrassed without following it, laugh at it, support each other.
Support and comfort
Nowadays it is considered good form to prove that this or that is good for health. An experiment was set up in Canada2to measure the effect of friendship on the well-being of lyceum students. The result did not come as a surprise: those children who have good friends are better able to tolerate comments from teachers, squabbles in the school yard, and bad grades. They have lower stress as measured by their cortisol levels.
Another study compared two groups of women suffering from depression – in one women were treated with antidepressants, in the other, volunteers came every day to talk and provide moral support to the participants. Everyone recovered at the same time, thus proving that participation has the same therapeutic effect as medication (at least when it comes to depression)3.
“We are supported not only by friendship itself, but even by the thought of it,” Irina Pervushina notes. She talks about a client of hers who faced the difficult decision to change jobs. He could not find support from his relatives, because the main value for them was peace and stability. The memory of a friend he had in the past helped: he would have approved, he would have said: “do it so that you feel good.”
tell me who i am
When we have friends, it enhances the sense of belonging, the feeling that we do not live in vain, reinforces self-esteem, trust in others, in short, makes us happier. The reverse is also true: most of those who are weary of their lives experience feelings of rejection, incomprehension, injustice, depreciation, and very rarely have good friends.
“Everything that we know about ourselves grew in relationships and was named by one of the significant others,” emphasizes Irina Pervushina. – And friendship creates a space in which we at any age rediscover ourselves, find out what we are. Sometimes I suggest to those I work with: ask your friends about your strengths. And surprisingly – often friends call exactly what my interlocutor considered a deficit. For example, “I lack creative courage,” and friends tell him how he inspired them. Thanks to friends, we realize and appropriate our valuable qualities, with which we can then go into the world. We are internally becoming as if more.
Finding contradictions in views, we are faced with a choice: part with a friend or learn to stand up for his point of view.
For the same reason, when we lose a friend, we seem to lose a part of ourselves. This pain is a feeling that is not very common to discuss. As if we think that friends are easy to find and replace, although we know that this is not the case. This was felt by many Russians when the political divisions of 2014 forced us to rethink our relationship. Long and seemingly strong ties collapsed.
“Finding contradictions in our views, we are faced with a choice: to part with a friend or to learn, at least for a while, to stand on his point of view, to become more flexible and tolerant,” says the psychodramatherapist. “Fanaticism is incompatible with friendship, which implies the possibility of contradictions within a person and a dyad, creates a space of freedom.”
We choose
We would like to believe that friendship is not predetermined by anything, it is a matter of meeting, personality, magic. But while we freely choose friends, friendships obey social laws, sociologist Claire Bidard notes: We are more likely to be friends with those who are on the same level of the social hierarchy as we are – tenants with tenants, landlords with landlords. In the underprivileged, the network of friends is maintained longer and people tend to gather with friends in a company. In the middle and upper classes, friends prefer to meet in twos and form new friendships more often.
There is a possibility that friendship, like love, is linked to heredity: according to some studies, we share 1% of common genes with friends (the same as with fourth cousins). Family history also interferes with the course of things. Psychoanalyst Daniel Bran argues that friendship is based on forgotten early experiences: the first care of a child, the first idealized figures, the first rivalry, the first excitement.
Unconsciously, we feel the same pain points and aspirations in our alter egos. With them we return to our past and settle scores with it. Sorrows, oppressions, disappointments – all this can be overcome, corrected, experienced thanks to the meeting of two souls that understand each other.
Your boyfriend
The choice of friends is influenced by our history, their qualities, as well as needs. Despite the fact that today it is unlikely that anyone will dare to seriously argue that friendship between a man and a woman is impossible, nevertheless, according to sociologists, in 75% of cases we choose people of our gender as friends.4. Why? Polls have revealed the following arguments: a sense of security, greater mutual understanding … It seems that in friendship the similarity is stronger than the difference due to the fact that the difference is considered more threatening. Or less friendly.
At the beginning, it is almost always the same story: friendship is born as a result of striving for another, whose personal qualities we tend to idealize. “It looks like the beginning of love, but the period of idealization ends faster,” Irina Pervushina notes. There is a second significant difference: we trustfully share everything with a friend, while avoiding seduction. In fact, “the platonic nature of the relationship required for friendship involves the suppression of sexual desire,” explains psychoanalyst Sarah Stern. Sigmund Freud has repeatedly mentioned the erotic tendencies of friendship since 1911.5.
Discussions, exchange of opinions, correspondence… This is how sublimation manifests itself, and in friendship it is the greatest pleasure.
But then what happens to the carnal instincts of two people of the same sex who have recently become friends or girlfriends? “We can safely say that these instincts will very quickly take on other forms and turn into something else,” continues the psychoanalyst. “It doesn’t matter if we are talking about women or men, we decide to keep the libido under control, most often sublimating it in one way or another.”
Discussions, exchange of opinions, correspondence… This is how sublimation manifests itself, and in friendship it is the greatest pleasure. As Sarah Stern suggests, “All these intellectual pursuits are so pleasurable precisely because the sex drive is redirected.” Sublimated sexuality, which underlies any relationship, becomes curiosity, interest, tenderness … And even if it has a very chaste character, we find it all very pleasant.
Friendship Helps You Pass the Marshmallow Test
Children are more likely to control their desires if they are introduced to other children before the test.
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany) studied the ability of children to delay gratification. In a classic experiment (1970), children could eat marshmallows placed on the table immediately or wait until the experimenter returned from the room and then receive a second portion. About a third of the children were able to wait 15 minutes.
The new study brought together more than 200 children aged 5-6 and invited them to play a game with balls. Some were then placed in separate rooms one at a time, while others were in the company of playmates. In the second case, they were more likely to put off eating sweets.
Researchers explain this by the fact that children from an early age have a sense of responsibility towards social partners: “They felt that they should not let their partner down.”
1 On friendship in the book: Mark Tullius Cicero “Moral Reflections” (Ripol Classic, 2018).
2 Psychological Development, November 2011
3 Psychology Today November-December 1999
4 Sciences humaines, September-November 2013
5 “Schreber’s case” in the book: Sigmund Freud “Famous Cases from Practice” (Cogito Center, 2007).