Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate. Dorothy Rowe
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Название: Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate

Автор: Dorothy Rowe

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Общая психология

Серия:

isbn: 9780007466368

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      • ‘I can easily strike up a conversation with perfect strangers and form a relationship leading to a friendship. I think if you can communicate and make an opening for the other person to interact you have the makings of a friendship. You then have to learn the skill of maintaining that friendship.’

      • ‘I find it difficult to talk to and “read” people.’

      • ‘I have a talent for getting along with people and so I think this helps in making friends. But I only have a few close friends.’

      • ‘Once someone has become my friend I try always to be there for them and enjoy making a fuss of them on their birthdays. I feel I’ve got a lot of love to give.’

      In two other workshops I asked the participants to answer the question: ‘How easy or difficult do you find the whole business of being friends with people?’ using a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 was ‘easy – like breathing – you don’t have to think about it – just natural, no problems’ and 7 ‘difficult – where everything in friendships is difficult, a hassle, a burden, painful, something you can’t manage, something always goes wrong no matter how much you try’. After they had answered this question I asked them if they would have answered the question differently when they were younger and, if so, why.

      The people in both these workshops were not strangers to the experience of reflecting on what one does and why. The participants in one workshop were women, each of whom was, in her own way, pursuing enlightenment, while the other workshop was for an international group of high-flying managers who were well aware of the necessity of self-knowledge for a successful career. In both groups the ratings generally hovered about four. Friendship was both hard and easy. However, their comments were more revealing of how hard they found friendship to be.

      The comments from the women included:

      • ‘I find the initial art of making friends the most difficult. When it’s made it’s the problem of keeping in contact. I find this is often down to me.’

      • ‘When I was younger I was much more judgemental of who was right to be a friend. Now I’m more expansive and relaxed.’

      • ‘Friendship was easier when I was younger. I was more blithe, less enquiring. I felt life was full of opportunity to make friends. Now it seems more complex. Now I’m friendly but I’m more self-conscious, more inhibited.’

      • ‘I never know if people feel the same about friendship and often get it wrong; thinking that people are closer than they are, or thinking that people don’t want to get close to me when they do.’

      • ‘Friendship was easier when I was younger. I’ve had hurtful relationships. Now I’m more picky.’

      • ‘Being friends is much more difficult than making friends. I am easier in friendships which are not too demanding. Then they become like relatives and I tend to draw back. I can give a lot to friends who don’t ask too much.’

      • ‘I found friendships much harder when I was younger and more judgemental. For me the key is acceptance and trying to see the wider picture. If I rejected the people who behaved in a way I didn’t like I would be very lonely.’

      • ‘I find as I get older it is harder to meet people and make friends. As people get older they become more inhibited, myself also.’

      Here are some of the answers from the men:

      • ‘It is difficult to have too many friends but often after the selection process is over I normally go to any length to maintain that friendship even if it means a lot of sacrifice.’

      • ‘When I was younger I was less concerned with rejection. It did not register as an issue.’

      • ‘I used to be able to find common interests much more easily as a child because children spend a lot of time with each other. They’ve pretty much no barriers. They’re open to each other to begin with. Whereas as an adult, I didn’t have much time or sufficient time to make friends. I must admit I have developed some barriers. Also I have to make commitment and effort to maintain it.’

      • ‘I am a very social person who needs to feel needed and accepted. I think that I tried to work hard at developing and maintaining friendships when I was younger.’

      • ‘As we grow in age experience catches up with us and we tend to be more suspecting, rather cautious of relationships. A friend in need is a friend indeed. The older you get the more relevant this adage gets.’

      • ‘I would have answered a little differently when I was younger. I have forgotten so much about sharing, having become guarded by my experience and somewhat unable to give and receive trust on fresh ground.’

      • ‘I grew up in many different places and tended to be careful about not being too friendly with too many people I knew I’d leave behind. The modern marriage makes it difficult for men to maintain friendships. Non-work time must be devoted to the family.’

      • ‘As I get older I find it easier to make friends. I believe it’s the result of greater self-confidence and a reduced fear of rejection.’

      • ‘When I was younger I was less flexible with family. There has to be certain coordination with my wife. She might not feel the same for a person. Female friends are less likely to happen now. There’s too little time for developing friendships. I stick to (prioritize) a few.’

      Only one of the women had rated friendship as completely easy, but she had written, ‘I seem to offer and receive a very durable and rewarding level of friendship, but I do screen people out if I don’t take to them.’ Only one man had rated friendship completely easy, but in the two days I was with the workshop group I saw how he worked ceaselessly to make and to maintain friendships. I could see why when he told me of one of the worst experiences of his life when, in his last year at school, all his friends left and he was completely alone facing what he felt was his annihilation as a person. He now put a great deal of highly skilled work into making sure that that never happened again.

      Creating and maintaining friendships and overcoming enmities are not easy tasks. Ed Cairns, a psychologist who had studied the effects the Troubles in Northern Ireland had had on the people there and who was an elder of the Presbyterian Church, told me, ‘I think that for us to move on, all that we have to do in Northern Ireland is to learn to tolerate each other at some level; we don’t actually have to learn to love each other; we don’t have to learn to forgive each other. It would be nice if these things come about, but I think in the first instance we just have to tolerate each other, which people are often not prepared to do at the moment.’

      My friend Judy told me, ‘I’m prepared to put in the work it takes to become friends with people. It takes work, it takes a while, doesn’t it? You can’t just walk into a party and pick up four people, it takes a whole lot of work. You say, well, come over and have a coffee, and you find out if you’ve got anything in common or not, and vice versa, and maybe you never see them again. And if you’ve got something, great, and it goes on from there. It’s a sort of commitment.’

      With her lifelong devotion to friends and friendship Judy would see much truth in what Andrew Sullivan said of that which is central to the experience of gay men: friendship. He wrote, ‘It is a form of union which is truer than love, stabler than sex, deeper than politics and more moral than the family.’15

      However, СКАЧАТЬ