How do you relate to other members of your own gender? Do you have a best friend? Do you have a core group of close friends, one best friend, a large, loose-knit group, or just your significant other and a bunch of acquaintances?

Have you ever had to break up with a friend? Have you noticed unhealthy patterns in your friendships? Are you still friends with the same people you were friends with when you were much younger?

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Answers

I think I relate pretty well with other women. I do have a best friend, and also a larger group of which my friend and I are a part. I think of them as "the girls", and we generally do something every weekend together, like go dancing, or go for gelato or not- coffee (none of us actually drink it, but we gather in a coffee shop, so...).

Many of my friends now are people I wasn't friends with a year or two ago, but my three closest friends I've been close friends with since birth (my sister), and junior high in one case and senior high in the other. The friends I had in elementary are all gone, I think because I moved in grade five.

I've had to break up with a friend, but as he was a guy, I don't think this is quite what you're getting at. My friendships that haven't lasted have largely just drifted apart as we move to different cities, or went away to university, or got involved in different things. I think my core three friends I'll always be friends with, no matter what.

Joanne (Parietal Pericardium)

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Most of my really good friends have been around since I was in my last year of school. Because I live on the other side of the world from all of them our relationships are necessarily low-maintenence - it's one thing I hate about being in the UK - being so far away from my friends.

But when I see them it's great. They were all at my wedding last year, and when I go home in a couple of weeks I'm catching up with pretty much everybody by having about four lunches a day. I think I'll be friends with most of these people for the rest of my life now.

I had to trash a friendship last year, after I just couldn't take the negativity coming from one girl I'd known for about eight years. She was always seeing the bad side of anything that happened to me. The turning point was when I heard she'd been fairly rude about my wedding to a mutual friend. I know why she was like that - she has not had a happy life, and despite being married herself and supposedly doing what she wants, things don't get better for her.

So I wrote to her and laid it on the line - I tried to be the adult and tell her what problems I was having with her attitude, and how upset I'd been about her behaviour towards me. I said I wanted to sort it out with her and help her if she was unhappy, but didn't feel I was being a true friend if I continued to seethe in pissed-off frustration at her behaviour.

I never heard back from her.

Anyway, I've been feeling like a dreadful friend recently, as one of my best friends from home emailed a couple of weeks ago to tell me what's been going on with her - she has had a series of personal dramas culminating in an abortion, and I wasn't there to support her.

Sometimes I really hate being away.

It's sad that it becomes more difficult to make close friendships as you get older - Tristan and I have loads of 'let's go out to dinner' friends, but neither of us have best mates over here. Which is why we value each other so highly.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Oy, this is such a loaded question for me right now.

I have alot of friends - REAL friends, not acquaintances - and it's about a fity/fifty split between men and women. I find that my male and female friends fulfill different needs in my life, but I value their friendships equally. I have friends I've known since grade school, and friends I've known for less than a year. I work very hard to maintain the relationships in my life because I don't have much of a family and thus look to my friends to provide support when I need it.

I have recently gone through a "break up" with a friend I've known for years. Sadly, this is not the first time in my life that I've had a problem of this sort, and I'm just now trying to sort out how much of it is me, and how much of it is the people that I choose to let into my life.

For some reason, I seem to attract emotionally unstable people (in both friendships AND relationships). My problem is that I think I can "fix" them, and this leads to all sorts of complications. I am outspoken, opinionated and honest - and not everyone appreciates these qualities.

I have great disdain for women who feel that they cannot be honest with the men in their lives for fear of losing them. I have seen so many female friends undergo personality "transplants" when they meet a new man, and this saddens me. Relationships are not a game. While it is not always prudent to share every bit of your personal history with a new boyfriend (or a new friend either), I do believe that it is important to be honest about who you are and what you believe, and to be true to yourself at any cost.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I met Melanie when I was ten years old. For the next ten years, we were inseparable. We went through junior high school, high school, and the first half of college as the closest of friends.

Melanie lied. She had tantrums. She was the most self-centered, selfish, and jealous person I've ever known. She was bulimic and brilliant and her problems were the center of every universe. She was incapable of accepting criticism in any form, and she lacked the ability to be happy for someone who achieved something she failed to do.

In many ways, we were kindred spirits. We were both readers and writers and dreamers. But as I grew up, I realized that I spent more time assuaging her and smoothing her constantly traumatized feathers than I did tending to my own happiness. At around the age of 20, I decided that to retain my own emotional health, I had to make a choice. I had to choose her or me. At the risk of sounding like Kelly Taylor, I chose me.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I'm not sure either of us will ever quite get over it. It's been five years, and I miss her wit and her energy and her fierce intelligence and the silly, crazy fun we had, but I don't miss the screaming and the fights and the tears. She's currently working on her PhD in clinical psychology, and I sincerely hope that her studies have helped her to cure some of her own demons.

And I'm suddenly so glad that it's Friday, because thinking about this depresses me enough that I think I'll head to Happy Hour after work and get pissed enough to forget about it.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

This is a sensitive issue for me. What I prefer to have in my life is a best friend/SO, a few other best friends, and a big gang of friends to hang out with otherwise. Which is what I had last year and was very happy with.

In my life I've gone from the one best friend/gang of other friends to having very few friends period (ugh), to where I am now with the big casual gang, but only still close with maybe one of my best friends from last year (but she's got a boyfriend and is very busy). One has basically drifted off (still talks to me occasionally, but is kinda distant from most people right now, and I think she's fed up with living with me), one outright dumped me because I remind her of her ex (see previous forum post), and my boyfriend dumped me in the relationship and more recently in the friendship. He's talking to me again and being pretty friendly at times (we had a conversation going last night and he sent me some URL's he knew I'd like), but I know better now than to try and consider him a friend now. I'm afraid if I push too much or be too nice he'll flip out again and start claiming I'm trying to get him back again.

Everyone breaks up with me, not me with them, obviously...I think I drive people insane =( That's mainly what I see as "unhealthy" right now is that I seem to only keep friends if I do not let myself become close to them. Whatever I"m doing is apparently wrong. Nobody wants to be close to me any more (even the ex, who used to declare vociferously that he still wanted to be close to me even if we couldn't have a relationship). A shrink I saw temporarily said I shouldn't talk to my friends when I have problems and want to talk or I'll only drive them away. (Which kinda leads me to the question of "ok, if I can't have a regular shrink for the next few months, and I can't talk to my friends, who the fuck do I talk to?" He didn't answer that.)

It's fun to be surrounded by shallow people, I guess...I'm wondering what my odds are of finding people who want closeness, and they don't sound like they'll get higher in the next few years.

And in case you couldn't guess, I don't have much in the way of long- term friendships. I end up with a whole new crowd of friends every few years. I'm still friends with two friends from high school, that's about it.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

In high school I was also best friends with someone I really didn't like. We started off enemies and should have kept it that way, but high school is a strange world. A couple of years after I graduated I saw her again, and she wanted to pick up our friendship, but I just kind of dodged her and didn't return any of her phone calls.

I've had to cut a few "friends" off, but I don't subscribe to the rampant school of thinking that women can't be tight. Like others have said, I too have very close male AND female relationships. I live with two of my best friends in the world, who happen to be men, but don't know what I'd do if I didn't have my girls around. I find it hard to understand a woman who doesn't have ANY female friends.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I saw a lot of myself in your post today, Beth. Or at least how I used to be.

I have trouble with friendships with women. They feel awkward for me, in a lot of ways. I've never had a gang of gal pals that I hung around with.

I've also had a lot of those friendships where a bossy woman decides I'm her new best friend and she's going to make me over. Usually this person is very lonely because they've driven eveyrone else away. And then I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to extricate myself without hurting her feelings, until I finally blow up and then we hate each other.

My mom was very bossy and controlling, why do you ask?

However, I've changed, and I haven't had a friendship like this in quite a while now. I'm very glad.

I have three women who I think of as my best friends. I'm lazy about contacting them (one lives on the East Coast) because of what I think of as a complicated bunch of conflicting feelings about how much I need them and how much I can ask from them. We seem to re-connect emotionally when we do hook up.

I have one friend, male, from when I was a teenager. I don't have any long term female friends - with each it feels like we changed and went in separate directions.

I don't think I'm a good friend, so it isn't surprising that I don't have many friends.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Let's talk about our definitions for a moment, here.

Acceptable topics of conversation for friends, as opposed to less- than-friends: serious beliefs about religion, gender issues (serious or not), how I feel about current girlfriend/wife. In general, any discussion of my feelings seems to be the big defining line between friends and acquaintances.

Given that, I've never had a male friend. I've only had one or two female friends at a time, and they were almost always girlfriends at the time. Currently I have one, my wife, and there are some things that I won't discuss, even with her.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

It took me so long to make my first real friends that I'm still worried I don't know how to do it and I'm not good enough, so I do occasionally accumulate friends I don't want. The bossy, bullying ones who decide they're my friend and no arguments will be accepted. The ones who decide on the basis of surface demographic factors that we are really alike, almost sisters, and then freak every time I express disagreement about that or anything else. And the nosy ones who are hooked on Girl Talk. Girl Talk is nice sometimes but it's not enough of a basis for a friendship with me - we have to have more in common. I can always tell when they're pretending to go along with my wish to talk about the new metro line, but actually marking time until they can turn the conversation to men and start accumulating gossip units.

And I think Beth's analysis of why it happens - that some of these people have become so desensitized that they mistake civility for warmth - is spot on.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I have a really hard time making and maintaining friendships outside the construct of school or work. It seems to me that every awesome friend I've ever had, we became so close because we were constantly around each other: at school, or at work. If you meet someone once through someone else, and get their phone number to hang out, it seems like it takes SO much work and effort to make any friendship steps, and for me it hardly ever happens. The only friend I ever made randomly was in 6th grade when I was at the beach putting seaweed in my hair and another little girl came over and we started playing together. We're still friends. But other than that, eek! All friends from school.

That said, I moved to Boston last September, and I have friendly acquaintances and a fair number of people that seem to really like me, but we never hang out. Anyone have any tips for taking the next step in friendship? Part of the problem has been that my boyfriend and I are so close and spend so much time together, I suppose.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Oh yeah, and I'm not in school anymore (graduated a year ago from college), so I am truly at a loss of how to make friends in this new city. HELP, anyone!

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Hoo boy, does this topic resonate with me. I'm having big problems with one of my friends right now and it's very frustrating to me. She and I have been friends since the ninth grade (gad, nearly 14 years now) and at different times we've been closer than others.

She never went to college, and I did. I made A LOT of friends, and I still have a lot of them. I met one woman who I consider my bestest friend in the whole world. The friend in question is threatened by both of these things.

I'm starting to see her for who she really is -- self-centered, passive aggressive, and childish -- and I don't much like it. She's always got some drama going on in her life and the conversaions always have to be about her. Things are coming to a head over my wedding and it's really getting me down.

The thing is, I'm still willing to be friends with her (god knows why), but on a much more limited basis. She's fun to go and do things with, but I can't include her when I'm including my other friends. She gets pouty and child-like.

I'm really not sure where the friendship is going to go at this point. I'm not willing to put up with her bullshit and she's not going to change.

My other friends though, I'm severely lucky. I have a couple of women who I consider my closest and dearest friends and then I have a whole bunch of other people that I truly care about and think I'd be closer to if the circumstances were different (i.e., we lived closer and saw more of each other). I've got some friends online who I wouldn't trade for the world and my man is my greatest friend. The only thing I'm lacking is the "go out to dinner" kind of couple friends. Dave and I just moved to our area a year ago and we don't really know anyone to hang around with. We know our neighbors, but they both have kids and are far to busy for 'hanging around' time.

So that's my question, how do you meet this 'hanging around' type of friends when you live in a new area?

Colleen Alone in a Crowd

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

Clementine: I grew up in Boston, so I have a few tips for making friends there or anywhere.

Volunteer. I worked as a volunteer at AIDS Action Committee for a while and not only did I get the opportunity to aid an organization I care about, but I met amazing, like-minded people.

Take a class. Whether it's a pottery class out of an artists home, or a summer course at UMass Boston. You'll be learning something new and interesting and meeting people.

Get a part-part time job. There are places that need someone to fill in maybe one afternoon or evening a week. I used to work at Urban Outfitters when I was in high school (that was so long ag, they only had five stores nation-wide), and they give amazing discounts to employees. I made great friends there too, and I got paid for it. If I were to go that route again, I'd apply to Oona's, Berk's, Army/Navy Surplus Store(all in Harvard Sq.) or the Garment District (Kendall Sq.) All offer substantial discounts on their clothes, and I've always run into friendly, cool people whenever I've shopped there.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I need to make more friends, too, but for me the dilemma is how to get from meeting these people at classes or whatever to seeing them outside the class and getting to be friends. It feels so awkward to ask them if they want to do something or come over or something. I'd much rather ask a guy out, at least there everyone understands what's up.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I have a few friends that I've known for 20 years or so. These are people that I see only rarely, but we write e-mail and letters to keep in touch, and when I do see them, it feels as though we've only been apart for days instead of years.

I am not easy to get to know. I'm a wall builder and am uncomfortable with people knowing a lot about me. I'm much worse than I used to be in that respect, so I have fewer really close friends than I did when I was in school. The people who are close friends, though, are folks that I would walk through fire for, and they would do the same for me.

If there's an unhealthy pattern (apart from the standoffisness thing mentioned above), it's that if I don't have daily contact, I tend to let a friendship go.

I have had one unhealthy friendship in my life. My college roommate was what I term an emotional vampire. She created situtations that people reacted to, and then she fed off the emotion she had created. I had a lot invested in the relationship. I trusted her before I figured out that it wasn't a good thing to do so. So I was reluctant to let it go. We wrote a lot, and spoke on the phone, but I let long silences grow. She wrote to me once that she had finally realized just how important I was in her life, and she wanted to make amends for things she had done, but it was too little too late for me. I don't wish her ill or anything, but I don't want to give her the opportunity to shake up my life anymore. I do a good enough job of that on my own.

I've been broken up with once, and I still don't understand what happened. I went into this friendship with my eyes open, knowing that this person had rather strict rules about what she could or could not accept in a friend. I disappointed her somehow, and she told me that she thought I wasn't interested in our friendship anymore, and that was it. It made me wonder just how good the friendship had been to start out with, if it could end with a whimper like that. It does still hurt, though.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I tend to relate better to women, since I spent a large portion of my life actively afraid of boys.

In fact, I spent most of my adolescence terrifed of boys. Don't get my wrong, I was still _interested_ in guys -- i.e. I wanted to fall in love and have someone fall in love with me, but I didn't trust boys further than I could throw them. I was sure I was going to wind up a rape victim, so I kept a very, very large space cushion between myself and members of the opposite sex.

The pattern in my friendships has usually fallen out thusly: 1 best friend, someone who is _very_ close to me, like a sister (or brother in one case) and a core group of other friends, of varying closeness, some of which are shared with the best friend and/or significant other.

In college, I was a part of a tight group of four, with a periphery of other friends and my boyfriend. My boyfriend was in the "best friend" slot during my first year, though I later wound up with a female best friend who was not in the four-group and was again as close to me as a sister.

One thing I've noticed is that I tend to develop very strong attachments to my friends, I am always more than willing to make my friends into a sort of large extended family that, at this point spans the globe.

This is both a strength and a flaw, since it means that parting from friends is often quite painful, but the relationships are often more rewarding as well.

As for unhealthiness in friendships, this ties into the above -- in the past when developing very close friendships, those friendships have sometimes developed into co-dependencies of frightful proportions. Like, try "Heavenly Creatures" without the murder.

And yes, that did in fact lead to a break-up of sorts ... although since then we've re-established a different kind of friendship, tempered by time and maturity.

I am still friends with some people from when I was younger, or at least friendly with them. My best friend from pre-school for example, came to the US for college, not far from where my parents live and we got together a few times while she was around.

I am also still friends with folks from my early adolescence, and for a long time I exchanged letters with my friends from elementary school. But when you move across the Atlantic twice, that often has a deleterious effect on maintaining childhood friendships.

I don't let go of friendships easily -- unfortunately, this often means that I'm the one holding up the friendship, sending all the letters, emails and making the phone calls, hoping for a response.

Sometimes that gets tiring ... but I guess that's just one of the hardships of not living in the same city, state or country as your friends.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I have a core group of 4 friends that I have been friends with forever. My best friend, other than my husband, is a man though. I have other friends that I met through my old job, that I see on ocassion, but talk to a lot.

My core group I've been friends with since I was about 11 years old. We've been friends through middle school, high school, relationships, marriages, (now one divorce) and children. I wouldn't trade any of them for the world.

When I was younger I had a large group I partied with, went to bars with, and nothing deeper. After I met my husband, I slowly moved away from the bar scene, and lost touch with those friends. I don't see that as a loss though, because most of them weren't true friends.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I can really relate to Jackie C on the whole trauma of living on the other side of the world from your friends. When my best friend was here a few weeks ago, the happiness of being with her was almost constantly shadowed by the knowledge that it was only for a week, and that we don't know when we'll see each other again. She and I talked about this several times, and it always ended in tears. Talking to her on the phone several times a week is great, but not the same as being able to shoot the shit face to face, or going out together and playing Fashion Police.

I have to say, though, I'm quite looking forward to when Jackie Collins and I get together in London to spend some quality time gossiping about all y'all and getting just that bit shit-faced.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000

I tend to have more acquaintances than friends and so I try and maintain what friendships I have, as they come less easily than acquaintances. But I've broken up a couple of friendships, including one very long-standing one you may wish to click here for the sad details, otherwise I'll be here all day talking about it. But my bestest ever friend was a dude called Adrian, who I've now known for something like twelve years, met him in my second year of high school. He's quite possibly one of the most vexing characters I've ever met, too, to the point where once I did think we were never going to speak again after a fairly horrendous trip through the Australian outback that we undertook together but we managed to patch that up within two weeks and were better than ever.

I think he and I got on so well cos we could speak to each other about absolutely anything, any topic under the sun and we could just bullshit our way through it. This is something I can't really do with my other friends; I can talk to them about a number of things, but with some of them there's things you just can't talk about cos they're not interested in it. And this is why I miss no longer having the guy around, cos he moved to the US about six months ago. He proved a vexatious swine to the end, and so I saw him off with decidedly mixed feelings partly sadness to see him go but also partly relief to see the back of him, too. And yet when I got a call from him a couple of months back to say he'd be here again for a couple of weeks in October, my day was absolutely made and now I can't wait for October. Cos as self-centred and tiresome and inconsiderate as he could so often be, we saw each other through some terrible shit at times and that's not the sort of friendship you want to lose if you can help it. Wouldn't swap that for anything.

-- Anonymous, May 20, 2000

re: how to meet friends in a new city, in this case Boston.

the part-time jobs thing is right-on. jobs that you wouldn't want to stay in for long cuz they don't pay and aren't fulfilling but are great for meeting folks (especially if you can get and give discounts)== cafes, art supply stores. in Boston: Pearl Art and Craft, cafe 1369 or Ras Cafe in Central Square, Curious Liquids at Park street, or the Harvest food coop in JP or Central Sq., where you get a discount on grocesries for a few hours/week of work.. food coops are good in any city.

-- Anonymous, May 20, 2000

I used to run with a large group of friends and acquaintances with a shared hobby. To make a long and painful story short, my ex got custody of them.

Because I work alone, don't take classes, don't sing in choirs anymore, my circle has shrunk considerably. But I still have my two very best friends. One's a man, one's a woman. Funny thing is that they know all about each other (hell, they both read my journal) but rarely meet...

I love them both dearly and hope that we'll be friends forever. We can and do talk about anything at all. Time flies by. There's no judging.

Sometimes I wish my social life was more populous, but truth is... quality beats quantity. Better the treasure of these two only, then a whole posse of sort-ofs.

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2000

i used to not like women at all. all male friends, constant string of boyfriends, that sort of thing. i basically got stabbed in the back by women too many times to trust them.

and then i got to college. i'd have to say that my friends at school are even, 50 - 50 men and women. i tend to have an SO, several close friends who i confide in, and a huge gang to party with or work in the theater with. and my closest friends right now are split even, too - my roommate (female), my future roommate (female), two of of my summer stock company members (both male, and both named chris, ironically) and my high school ex (male). it's nice, because i didn't have a whole lot of friends in high school, and at carleton i have a huge group of people who like me and who i like - some for casual dinner table conversation and some for revealing your heart to late at night. and when you share a lot of common friends, it's hard to fight - you end up solving conflicts like real people.

it's kind of nice, though i still don't trust a lot of women. before this year, i tended to attract pushy, insecure women like beth talked about, who wanted to run my life and got angry when i wouldn't let them. two women like that are really the only friends i've ever had to dump, and my life is better for it.

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2000

I'd honestly have to say that chicks bug me. Period. I mean, yeah, I'm a chick.. so ultimatley I bug myself.. but I don't like chicks. Ok, that's going a bit far.. their are a few I don't mind to converse with but they are so bitchy half the time, am I right?

My best friend is my boyfriend. I can and do tell him everything.. he's a shoulder to cry on and a whole lot more.

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2000

Sometimes I feel like I'm a magnet for overbearing hard luck cases. There have been loads of them over the years, but there were two 'best friends' who really tried to run my life and nearly got away with it. I still talk to one of them occasionally - he keeps moaning about the girlfriend who left him in 1992, which is a bore, but his heart is in the right place - but I've banished the other one from my life completely. The guy was slowly but surely turning me into a nervous wreck and in the end I had to take action to protect my sanity, not to mention my physical well-being. To put a finer point to it - he was the most subtle stalker I've ever met.

I met him in 1988 when we were both in college, and although we were very different in lots of ways, we did seem to connect on some levels. We were both playing in bands (he was a singer, I played the drums), we had more or less the same tastes in music, literature and movies and every now and then we could have one of those deep talks. Then again, sometimes we would just hang out and have some mindless fun. It seemed like the perfect friendship. I say again, it seemed like the perfect friendship.

During the following years, we grew closer. He started participating in some of the student activities I was involved in, we did some one-off musical projects together, and when I suddenly found myself in desperate need of a new place to live he graciously invited me to move in with him. His girlfriend had just left him anyway, so he could use a roommate.

After that, it all turned sour. It happened at a snail's pace so for the longest time I didn't even realize what was going on, but eventually it all started to make more and more sense. He was claiming my personal belongings as his own - one cd, one book and one item of clothing at a time - and he was gossiping to all his acquaintances about the most intimate details of my personal life. Imagine my surprise when people I'd never even met started pumping me for information about my failed marriage, my children and even my sexual preferences - things I had only told him in the strictest confidence. And when I confronted him about it, he always got all defensive and said it was for my own good. He did it all in the name of honesty, or so he said.

Things started going downhill fast when we both got jobs at the same company, mainly because he didn't bother to hide his true nature anymore. The gossip continued and before long several colleagues were treating me like something they had accidentally stepped in. Fortunately for me, his overbearing nature eventually got the worst of him. He started acting out his control fantasies on more and more people, both regarding business personal matters, and it started pissing people off. Then, in february 1998, it all blew up in his face. It happened during a department meeting - he had a disagreement with the rest of the department, including me, which he couldn't solve with rational arguments, and he got more pissed off by the second. In the end he decided on some desperate measures: he picked up his coffee mug and smashed it on the table right in front of me, showering me with tiny shards of glass, hundreds of them (one of them got im my left eye, causing severe trouble for the best part of the following year). Then he stormed out, slamming the door so hard it fell right out of the frame. Needless to say, he got fired on the spot

To me, it was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. For ten years I had been letting this possessive s.o.b. control a steadily expanding part of my life, all the while foolishly believing that he was acting out of friendship. The coffee mug finally made me see him for what he really was, and I broke off this sorry excuse for a friendship right there and then. He has been trying to weasel his way back into my life ever since - using flattery, threats and everything else he can come up with - but no dice. I'd rather have a close encounter with a black mamba.

-- Anonymous, May 22, 2000

I had a close friend, growing up. We fished and spearfished together.

He didn't play sports, wasn't in the band, didn't take art classes, wasn't a reader.

Still, we had fishing in common, and spearfishing. Hunting and camping.

When I went in the service I moved away, and when I moved back, I still saw him, but all we had in common then was drinking.

I had friends in the band squadron, in the Air Force, but they reclassified me, broke the band up, and shipped my friends out. I didn't have friends in the Navigator Training Squadron.

Overseas, I ate every meal alone for 18 months. I read, went to the base movie, and drank.

I saw other people at work, and in the barracks, but I didn't really have friends.

Same way at junior college and my second hitch. Although I made friends with Jack Neff the year I lived at home and drove to Palm Beach Junior College. He and I corresponded my whole first hitch in the service.

That year at home, I watched TV with Jack and his wife, on Friday nights, and Jack and I would Sunday-paint, on Sundays. My second hitch, we corresponded again.

When he got married his wife was my friend. When I got married my wife was his friend. Our wives were friends.

The four of us lived together, at Penland, but that arrangement foundered, over lack of income.

Some time later, when I was working as a janitor in a department store, because I couldn't make a living writing, and he was painting, instead of throwing pots, and fooling around on his wife, who had two kids by then, he told me I was an artist, and should be making art. Not wasting my life working at a menial job.

That put a strain on our friendship. I didn't tell him he should be supporting his family, by working at a menial job, until he could make a living as a painter.

When we moved back to Florida and I got a job as a technical writer, I made friends with an engineer I showed my writing to. He liked to fish, to drink, to listen to bluegrass music, and to restore and drive Harley Davidson motorcycles. And to read avant-garde fiction.

Not a typical engineer.

I'd have to say my closest friends in Northwest Florida were my wife's brother, Potter, and his inamorata, Suzette. Even after I quit drinking.

We spent many weekends cooking, eating, and telling stories. They helped raise Owen and Balder, keeping them, in the summers. Balder is at Suzette's now, this summer, in fact. Working as a sous-chef and hanging sheetrock in Suzette's house.

Now, most of my frienda are Brenda's relatives and picker friends we see at bluegrass festivals. We have watched these friends get married, have children, their children get married. As they have watched us do the same.

I'm friendly with my co-workers at work, but don't have any real friends there. I'm older in some ways, younger in others.

My closest friend now is Brenda, followed by Owen and Balder. We do things together. We have a history. We like each other. We catch each other's jokes, in a way that straight people don't seem to.

Swiss Family Paranoia Critical.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2000

Hard to be coherent here. As a child, I could not accept a person as a friend who tried to be the leader (boss) or controller. I was Me then and I still am.

In my experience it turns out this way, I have a few very good and close friends many acquaintances and some that I can accept because they don't try to run anybody.

Relationships with unpleasant people I handle like my response to telephone sales people, my first response is courteous, becoming increasingly discourteous as they refuse to take no for an answer - - - - and finally just slamming the phone down.

I am a very fortunate person, having been an only child desparately wishing and hoping for siblings, to have met and married a girl who had all kinds of relatives (friendly) brothers and sisters. When we married it seemed as if I was a blood relative to all of them, I was enfolded into the family.

So my in-laws are in he absolute best friends group. I am open and friendly but do not like to be around contentious people (some who you meet in forums) who seem to enjoy stirring up a hullabaloo and just antagonizing everyone.

I admire you, Beth, for the way you handle your forum. Even handed, patient, courteous unless you have been provoked repeatedly. My admiration for you became greater when you asked some posters to not post in your forum again. Joining the discussions frequently with pertinent observations.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2000

Hard to be coherent here. As a child, I could not accept a person as a friend who tried to be the leader (boss) or controller. I was Me then and I still am.

In my experience it turns out this way, I have a few very good and close friends many acquaintances and some that I can accept because they don't try to run anybody.

Relationships with unpleasant people I handle like my response to telephone sales people, my first response is courteous, becoming increasingly discourteous as they refuse to take no for an answer - - - - and finally just slamming the phone down.

I am a very fortunate person, having been an only child desparately wishing and hoping for siblings, to have met and married a girl who had all kinds of relatives (friendly) brothers and sisters. When we married it seemed as if I was a blood relative to all of them, I was enfolded into the family.

So my in-laws are in he absolute best friends group. I am open and friendly but do not like to be around contentious people (some who you meet in forums) who seem to enjoy stirring up a hullabaloo and just antagonizing everyone.

I admire you, Beth, for the way you handle your forum. Even handed, patient, courteous unless you have been provoked repeatedly. My admiration for you became greater when you asked some posters to not post in your forum again. Joining the discussions frequently with pertinent observations.

No, I am not applying for a job here but just mulling the whole thing over in my own mind.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2000

Wow - - - - how do those double entries happen ? I only pushed enter only once ?

In my posting I didn't make a gender statement - No mistake by me. When I reached the stage of being able to see and understand the implications of stereotyping, I began to feel on an equal level with male or female.

It's not the partitioned boxes called male and female with me. It is what I perceive each person to be inside by my personal observation of them and their actions and reactions to things.

I think that almost anything that is posed as, "all women this and all men that" can be disproved in one's mind by thinking of people known by one and their exihibition of traits that "always this / that," are combined in the same person.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2000

I have three close friends who I would give my life for if it came down to it. I also have a lot of people that I know on a business level and sometimes we do associate on a personal level, but not often. Most people like me once they get to know me, but I can come across as a real bitch beforehand. I'm not sure why.

I had a friendship with another person when we were little girls, then as teens, then as young adults. As soon as we hit the high school time in our lives, she turned kind of strange on me so I told her to hit the road. She was upset with me and it was one of the hardest things I've had to do with a friendship/relationship in my entire life, but it was for the best. We still talk to each other when we see each other around town, but we're not friends. Both of us got to the point of outgrowing our relationships, I believe. I matured. She didn't.

One unhealthy pattern in relationships that I have noticed is being around the kinds of people who always correct you everytime you open your mouth, the ones who think they are the smartest people in the entire universe, or the people who put you down everytime you turn around. That pisses me off to no end.

But the friends that I do have are wonderful. I love them dearly and would do anything for them.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2000

I've had the same close male friend since we were six-- in second grade. Of course, it's a "male" friendship, based on competition and repartee more than anything else.

You don't make friends-- male friends --after you're twenty-five or so. By thirty, the social assumption is that everyone is married/paired off, so there's less social space to go and do things with friends.

And there's the homophobia thing. Having a close male friend at forty is a neon sign that allows folks to assume you must be gay.

Having female friends is easier in that it doesn't have the competition and staus-hierarchy thing going on. But it has the problem of potential sexual feelings.

It's a lot easier to just stay home with my small stuffed pony (always loyal and steadfast and kind) and watch videos.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2000