Rubin, L. B. (1985). Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives. New York: Harper and Row.
Friendship is a non-event – a relationship that jus t becomes, that grows, develops, wanes, wanes and, too often perhaps, ends, all without ceremony or ritual to give evidence of it existence. (Rubin, 1985:5)
Our language offers few possibilities for distinguishing among friendships, the word “friend” being used to refer to a wide range of relationships with varying degrees of closeness and distance. (Rubin, 1985:5)
We have friends, and we have “just” friends; we have good friends, and we have best friends. Yet such is the elusiveness of the idea of “friend” that not even the people involved can always say which is which. (Rubin, 1985:7)
Throughout our lives, then, we have friends and “just” friends, old friends and new friends, good friends and best friends – each relationship meeting some part of ourselves that cries out for ex
[for the question “what is a friend?”] we’re more likely to respond from the wish than from the reality. (Rubin, 1985:7)
What does it mean, then, when friends are described as “like family”? Clearly the metaphor is meant to suggest something about the importance of the relationship – an intensity of connection, a sense of belonging, of continuity, of security. (Rubin, 1985:18)
Friends choose to do what kin are obliged to do. With friends, we must earn the rights and privileges that with family usually come just for being part of the collectivity. Thus kin still seem to most of us to offer a safe retreat, an anchor in an uncertain and unsteady world – the people who can be counted on when need is most urgent. (Rubin, 1985:22)
To be able to choose is to be free; to be chosen is to feel loved and admired. But in this, as in other arenas of living, freedom exacts its price in our sense of certainty and security. (Rubin, 1985:23)
Unlike with kin, however, who our friends are and what kinds of relationships we have with them are dramatically affected by the turning points along the way of life. (Rubin, 1985:34)
[friendships of men] But boding is not intimacy. Intimacy requires some greater shared ex
Not everyone has a best friend or wants one. People make best friends and lose them for the same variety of reasons that all friendships are made and broken – time, distance, unresolved conflicts, changes in one or both friends that make the friendship untenable. (Rubin, 1985:176)
Sometimes, however, friendships from afar serve a need for attachment and a level of intimacy that a person finds more difficult to sustain with someone who lives nearby. The distance itself ensures a certain emotional safety, allowing for much more control than is possible with a friend who is close at hand. (Rubin, 1985:177)
Contact that takes place largely by telephone and letter allows for a peculiar kind of intimacy in that we can speak or write about deeply felt matters while we are also protected from the unexpected or unplanned messages conveyed in a face-to-face encounter. (Rubin, 1985:177)
Such long-distance best friendships share some of the qualities of therapist-patient relationship. Both permit intimacy while, at the same time, preserving distance; both allow discretion in what is revealed, how much and when; both promise safety from well-meaning but unwanted intrusions. (Rubin, 1985:177)
For best friendships to survive, the friends must learn to meet today’s needs rather than yesterday’s, must find ways to reorder the relationship so that it is built on reality rather than illusion. They must be able tolerate the strain of the changes that inevitably will occur, indeed must welcome them as part of their growth and development, even when they generate some internal conflicts. (Rubin, 1985:190)
Best friends must be able to endure the waxing and waning the oscillating between periods of closeness and those that are more distant, that is so much a fact of emotional life in intimate relationships. … The person who needs some periodic distance will feel overwhelmed by the demands for constant intimacy, while the one who wants always to be close will feel betrayed and abandoned by a friend’s wish to take a step away. (Rubin, 1985:191)
Unlike a marriage, however, friendship, in our society, is secured by an emotional bond alone. With no social compact, no ritual moment, no pledge of loyalty and constancy to hold a friendship in place, it becomes not only he most neglected social relationship of our time but, all too often, our most fragile one as well. (Rubin, 1985:191)
Yet at least some friendships, whether best friend or not, are “for life” – a commitment that grows and develops out of the relationship itself, out of a friendship that withstands the test of time, of separation, of togetherness, of uneven levels of development, of uncertain steps toward change, of growth that crawls one moment and gallops the next. (Rubin, 1985:191)
留言列表
