Friends in Spots

These voluntary relationships began with absolute love, trust, and investment. They included identical tastes, passions, and goals. Friends were friends because they fit this model. Growing up means giving this up.

Now friendships contain ambivalence. envy. love. competition. sexual tensions. disagreements.

1. Convenience Friends- Relationships that result from routine intersection of daily life. They

are co-workers, neighbors, and the like.
2. Special Interest Friends- A shared interest, sport, craft, philosophy, or the like brings us

together. We enjoy doing together, not being together.
3. Historical Friends- Friends from grade school, high school, college. These relationships can

go dormant for years at a time; we see them when in town. We exchange holiday cards,

marriage and birth announcements. They knew us way back when.
4. Close Friends- Emotionally intimate relationships which transcend physical distance. Sharing

our inner selves, wishes, hopes, fears, and dreams. Feeling safe enough to acknowledge our

faults knowing we will still be loved.

Acceptance of the shifts in friendships is a natural, developmental, life task.

But sometimes I long for those days of innocent absolutes when it was all for one, one for all, and a partridge in a pear tree.
-Inspired by Judith Viorst’s
Necessary Losses