love your friends this much and they'll love each other too
Friendship Field Notes #2: Calling Carlyn
This is part 2 in my ongoing Friendship research project. Follow along, or reach out if you have any thoughts of your own about the role friendship plays in your life.
So, we're kind of newer friends. Gosh, maybe only a year and a half. We met as roommates and even though we haven't known each other that long, I feel like I know you so well. You have a great ability to connect with people very quickly.
Being roommates puts you on a fast track to being good friends with people, if conditions are right, just because you're in each other's space so often.
Do you feel like there was a turning point? Because friends and roommates—they're both intimate relationships, but they're not always the same thing.
At some point when you've been sharing space with someone, going through everyday life with each other and chatting about your day and what's going on, I feel like the closeness comes from that. You'll touch on things that are bothering you or on your mind and those can be opportunities to connect with someone and give or receive support.
Is that supportive quality critical to you?
It lays a foundation for a friendship where you do truly get to know each other on a deeper level. Like, similarly to roommates, I've made really, really wonderful friendships with people in my graduate program. You're navigating this complicated environment together, so closeness comes from that as well.
And then I have friends I've had since high school. And those friendships are really, really special because you have this understanding of who a person has been in different parts of their life, and how they've grown into the person they are.
And I've seen through living with you how you'll bring these people into your current life so well.
One thing I truly love is introducing my friends to my other friends. I tend to be pretty picky with the people I'm close with, and I'm friends with them because I just love them to pieces. It makes me so happy to have met these awesome people in different corners of my life and to be able to bring them together and have them get along.
Do you ever have friends not get along when you introduce them?
I don't think so. There's definitely times when I've felt slightly socially anxious because I want everyone involved to feel really comfortable. I'm the common link between these people, so it's my job to try to help everyone feel comfortable. But for the most part, everyone just kind of gets along on their own terms and of their own power.
You mentioned earlier that you're picky with friends, so what are you looking for? Like in your graduate program—what separates a colleague from a friend?
The biggest one is overall kindness. Thinking someone is an empathetic, compassionate person is huge for me. But that's not necessarily something you can gauge right away. So in a first impression, humor is a big way I relate to people. Just finding people I can laugh and be silly with. There's a disarming quality to it, and that creates space for more of a friendship to grow.
I'm seeing a kind of symmetry with what you mentioned earlier about friends who can sit in the harder moments with you. I feel like laughter's almost the flip side of crying with someone. Like a really good belly laugh suggests you might be able to dive deeper into the harder, negative stuff too.
It's going through the highs and lows of life with someone, experiencing that full range of human emotion. But there are definitely friends that are laughter friendships but not crying friendships. And that's okay; they're all different ways of relating to people.
In my experience of you as a friend, you're very generous in letting people in on the harder moments in your life.
I think part of that comfort comes from being picky with the people I do let in. But also, with building trust in a friendship, there's a certain degree of yourself being vulnerable to create that space for mutual sharing. Like ideally, a friendship will go both ways. But the piece I have control over is how vulnerable I'm willing to be with my friends.
What feels hard to you in a friendship?
I think even in the really meaningful, wonderful friendships, I can still get in my head about upsetting people unintentionally. That can feel hard: valuing my friendships as much as I do, I want to do right by those friends and want to not upset anyone. But sometimes, in the complexity of life, that is difficult. So yeah, it's trusting the friendship and knowing that, even if I do accidentally do something that upsets a friend or hurts their feelings, I would hope they would bring that to me so we can talk about it because we both mean a lot to each other.
It reminds me of one of our first experiences—when I was first moving into the house, and I caused water damage my first night there.
SO brutal.
I was installing the bidet and... well, I'm not a plumber. And the rest of the house figured that out at 2am while I was asleep, so y'all had to stay up and fix it and troubleshoot.
From my perspective, it felt hugely vulnerable. Like oh fuck, they're gonna hate me for a year. But everyone, you included, handled it with so much grace. It was never a mystery how anyone was feeling about the situation. It was like yeah, fix it, we're not gonna pretend it's not a problem. But it was something we could move on from.
That is such a funny thing to have happen to you right upon moving into the house, and that must have been so tremendously stressful.
It was horrifying. I didn't know any of you guys. I was like, they are never going to talk to me again.
You poor thing! That's so, so brutal. Which, you know, would never have happened.
I remember you and I had a couple discussions about it in the kitchen. And it can be awkward, navigating these things. But I remember perspective-taking for you and feeling like, Oh, this poor girl. On my side, I recognized the accountability you took, and how action-oriented you were about solving the problem. So it never felt like a difficult thing to navigate necessarily. We just addressed it.
I do think, generally speaking, it gets a lot more difficult when there are hurt feelings involved. Whereas the situation with the bidet is like, ok now we have this thing to deal with. But emotionally no one was hurt by that. Those are a lot more challenging. I try as much as I can to avoid situations where feelings do get hurt. But you think of a friendship that lasts years or decades, and inevitably, there will be times when you are at odds or someone feels hurt. It's about just being willing to forgive each other for things. Having good faith and making sure everyone feels seen and valued.
Why does friendship feel so meaningful to you?
I feel like friendship is one of the most wonderful parts of being a person. I feel so lucky to have the friends that I do, and a lot of people that I'm very close with I also feel very personally inspired by. It brings so much value to my life, getting to spend part of it with them.
It's feeling really seen and appreciated and valued by my friends, and then trying to see and appreciate and value them in the same way. It's such a beautiful part of friendship to get to mutually let each other into your world and go through life together.
Thanks for letting me be part of your little world, Carlyn!
Thanks for being my friend, girl! I love ya to pieces.
The first time I met Carlyn, our roommate interview turned into a 3 hour yap session in a boba shop. Don’t think we’ve stopped talking since. Carlyn is a friend who’s shown me how critical an even give-and-take is in building closeness: she is as ready to offer herself to you as she is to receive whatever you share back. Being friends with her has made me a braver person in the face of vulnerability.
Love this series, Athena!