Relying on our friends
Will they be at your next doctor's appointment?
When I was in college, one of my roommates went through a rough breakup. She went from being the house mom to a slug. She sprawled on the couch in her pajamas. Her dishes piled up in the sink. The other roommates and I agreed that she needed some sort of loving nudge that it was time to put pants on and move on. For reasons that made perfect sense at the time, we decided the way to convey this message was by surprising her with a penis piñata. You know, so she could work through her anger at her ex-boyfriend, get a treat, and know that we were concerned about her. We spent a week crafting papier-mâché, painting it, and trimming another roommate's curls to complete the details.
Another friend from high school was the first of us to get an actual apartment, something that wasn’t a dorm. Only he never really moved into the apartment. For months the centerpiece of his room was a pile of unpacked boxes. So, one day we showed up, unpacked his things, and decorated his room. Of course, we went full leopard print for our sweet, shy friend. It stayed that way until he met his now-wife.
Now that most of us are married, we have new limits with our friends. If someone is refusing to get out of bed, it's their spouse's job to figure out how to lure them out. If someone says they've got things under control, we're supposed to respect that boundary. Only, sometimes the thing that makes us family is the sense of permission and obligation to sometimes push past a boundary. Being family means knowing when us swooping in to take care of a chore will feel like a relief and when it will be a violation.
In the Myth of the Loneliness Epidemic, Claude S. Fischer points out how most friendships in history were different because people's social circles were different. When you live in a small town, the people you rely on and spend your time with aren't necessarily people you choose. You learn to love people (or coexist with them) because there aren't other options.
I don’t live in a small town. My friends are people who I have to go out of my way to see. We aren’t friends because we know each other; we know each other because we’re friends. We choose whether or not to rely on each other and many friends, when given the chance, choose not to.
Some do, though. For every friendship that's limited to happy hour drinks, there's another friendship that involves a level of interdependence. Reading Rhaina Cohen's The Other Significant Others, I loved the stories of friends prioritizing each other in their lives. Friendships deepen when we take on shared responsibilities and rely on each other in times of illness.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has popularized the creation of care webs as a way for people with care needs to get those needs met through their community. Like accessing local services and community organizing, it's really hard to build a care web unless you're already part of a community. This is a huge hurdle for many people, because their instinct is to keep their health and care needs private. Privacy requires independence. When we instinctively turn inward during a crisis, we cut ourselves off from certain kinds of support.
This isn’t a shift we can make on our own. In Brooklyn, my friends were focused on other priorities, which meant people came and went from my life. It made it easier for me to leave the city, too. In Toronto, I had an easier time finding friends who were open to the sort of interdependence I longed for. I spent half as much time in Toronto, but I have friends I can truly rely on in a way I never had in Brooklyn. There are a lot of factors that can make it difficult to support each other, even when everyone involved is willing.
Traveling brings me into other people’s homes. It’s such a privilege to see so many different ways to interact with neighbors and friends. Do they have a key to your house? Do they call before they come or walk in without knocking? Have you lost track of who bought which tools and children's toys? The most fascinating part of it is the way almost everyone views their way of relating to friends as simply the way it is. They either can't imagine not assuming their friends would pick them up from the airport or can't imagine asking in the first place.
Some people only want family to help them. Others are more comfortable with a stranger they're paying. Some people are comfortable relying on their friends. Most of us rely on a mix of these types of support.
How do we shift our friendships into interdependence?
Talk about what’s really going on, including things you could use help with
Invite friends come to your home to hang out, even if it’s messy and you’re just heating up frozen lasagna
Offer to help in a way that would be easy for you to do
Ask for help with something small
Invite friends to join whatever you’re doing, including going to the park on the corner or running errands
Start a group chat for local friends to facilitate last minute plans, borrowing things, and offering a hand
Start a neighborhood whatsapp group to help with packages, rides, and little things
Fantastic post!