Do you spend a lot of time looking for the perfect partner or friend, one who really meets your needs or shares your interests? Does that work? There’s a prevalent mythology that we connect with people by having mutual interests, mutual sense of humor, etc., and there’s some truth to that but it’s not the whole story.
My experience tells me that the main way I become close with anyone is by spending time with them. To paraphrase Al Franken on parenting, “Forget quality time, try good ol’ stinkin’ quantity time.”
Who are my friends, really? They are: the people I was in plays with in high school, the people I roomed with in college, the people I drank with in law school, the people I worked hand-in-glove with in any job, the people I live and work with in my cohousing community, and the people in my spiritual communities. In other words, they are people I was thrown together with by chance. We have some things in common, but that’s not what binds us.
Some of my friends do not share my political beliefs, my taste in novels, or my deep-abiding use of sarcasm (if you knew my upbringing you’d marvel at how sincere some of my besties are now), yet, we may be quite close.
Could it be that the adage, “to know someone is to love them” is the truest? Perversely, it also seems that “familiarity breeds contempt.” The cycle is like this for me:
Phase 1: Meet someone, like them or not, and form an opinion, a judgment of them.
Phase 2: Get to know them a bit and discover that my opinion or judgment was wrong (so, if I thought they were tiresome and boring, I learn that they can be interesting or fun and if I thought they were flawless and brilliant, I learn that they make mistakes and can be dumb). No one is consistent except in that they are always themselves.
Phase 3: Push through the disappointment aspect of phase 2 to move to real friendship–only sheer time allows me to learn to love them as a three-dimensional whole person.
I can honestly say that in my intentional community of 25 households, I love every person here. There isn’t anyone here that I wouldn’t go to lengths for. And no, they aren’t all my friends; some I love but don’t like particularly. Yet, those who are my friends I might well not have been friends with had I been trolling for them on the internet. Their personal ad might not have attracted me.
I wonder, could the same be said, at the end of the day, for lovers?
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