I thought friendship has a hierarchy. In the beginning, you meet a familiar face. It turns into an acquaintance, then a good friend, a best friend, then a soul mate.
When I was nine, I marked the progress of friendships by telling my friends my deepest secret. “My mum died the day after I was born,” I whispered to my target. Some got confused, and some gave me candies the next day. By this standard, you are my good friend now.
Later on, my concept of friendship changes (thankfully). Friendship becomes a means to an end. The end can be something good, like finishing a group project or getting fluent in Japanese together.
They call this “friendship of utility”, where the relationship occurs as a byproduct of happenings in life.
Some of my friendships, however, graduate to something different. They are not bound by the context in which they started. When you move from primary to senior high school, a few special friendships might stay even if you are no longer studying together.
They call this “friendship of virtue”. Something else other than events binds you to this other person, something of value. Perhaps the two of you fulfil each other’s needs for exploration or making each other feels seen and heard.
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These two types of friendship: the friendship of utility and the friendship of virtue, can spread through formal and informal relationships. People who get married to have kids are committing themselves based on a situation they both desire, but they don’t necessarily have the same value system. For them, it’s what the marriage allows them to do but not what the union means.
Getting married to avoid the fear of being lonely is another example of utility. Fear of something is not a virtue. Loneliness, and its better sister: solitude is what you get as an outgrowth of freedom.
If you want to be in control of your life, then you get both freedom and solitude — two for the price of one. Marriage or friendship will not make you less lonely, but it may provide a space for you to be more comfortable being on your own.
On the other hand, being comfortable on your own is a virtue. It’s a form of deep introspection compounded as self-knowledge through years of analysing your own suffering and joy. Friendships based on this virtue can last a long time because it can weather the cycle of connections and disconnections while getting more steady every time the cycle repeats.
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An act of connection typically starts with the first “hi”, the first eye contact or a handshake. Almost immediately, disconnection in the form of the end of a conversation follows. It gives space to each party to maintain the status quo to de-risk the relationship.
The next time you see the same person, it’s easier to connect, because you know a little bit more of them. Also, you choose to connect, knowing what you already know about them.
A solid reconnection is only possible because of the in-between disconnection that happens.
A relationship that starts on lust breaks this model of healthy disconnections. In light of following a romantic illusionary model of a loving relationship, two people hope to merge their identity into one, never to be separated again, but they will fail because disconnection is a natural part of relationships. The lust ends and the illusion is shattered.
Disconnection, at its simplest form, is a moment of silence within a conversation. Silence marks the end of a dialogue. It opens another avenue of topics to discuss, interests to discover and identities to explore.
It’s hard to have silence in a conversation. I used to fear that I am a “boring” person in silence. I still sometimes feel it. It comes from the first fear we have as babies, the fear of abandonment. When you were a newborn, this is a real fear since babies are so vulnerable, but as you grow older, it loses its value.
Sometimes the disconnection is years long, but it doesn’t matter, because the quality of the disconnection is what does. I still remember fondly of my interactions with a high school friend from Sydney who moved to Perth. I haven’t talked to her for a decade, but I’m pretty sure we’ll reconnect pretty well when the time is right. We separated in good terms.
Disconnection is also the right way moving forward when you’ve lost track of why the friendship is there in the first place. Most of the time, people do this naturally without analysis of what has happened. They say “life happens” and then quietly exit. The problem is that the unhealthy parting will repeat itself if you’re not careful since you’re in half of the picture.
I was fortunate to experience many cycles of disconnection. One friendship that I had almost ended via a misplaced expectation on my end (“I thought you wouldn’t fly out of the country in a pandemic!"), caused me to ruminate for months.
When I told my friend about how we have different values, she listened very closely without any defensive posture. I was so relieved to find that although the initial virtue was not a match (high-risk aversion in Covid times), we shared other values (being a good listener) that I appreciate even more.
Another friendship I have is a long-running train wreck. After four years of many happenings including several changes of jobs and a divorce, the friendship never really graduated to a friendship of virtue.
I satisfy myself for giving much advice to her that seems to be useful, and she returns in-kind with appreciation. As her life gets better and more stable, the engine of chaotic events that power the weekly conversations disappear, only to reveal that we share very little common values.
How many relationships end like this? And how to end it well? I still don’t really know.
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A musician turned a writer Derek Sivers wisely said that friendships could be an end on itself. It means that friendships don’t have to produce anything — every conversation is already a fruit of the relationship. It means you make friends for the very act of connection and disconnection. Every phone call, every discussion tangent and every silence are their own rewards.
I feel so lucky to have met another friend years ago. I waved to him in an algebra class and he smiled back. We weren’t very good friends when we started dating. I was not able to see myself as my own friend and neither was he.
When we tried to combine our lives, the same fear of loneliness appeared, and both of us had to sort that out in our own time. Together, we made so many mistakes that led us to painful, unhealthy disconnections.
One time, I forced him to sleep outside the bedroom in response to his workaholic tendencies (“Go sleep with your laptop outside!”). At another time, he barred me from going out of the house (“It’s illogical to think shopping is necessary. What are you going to do if you get Covid?"). I was on the verge of going mental after not leaving home for two months.
The disconnections are what makes friendships worth connecting again. I love hearing my friend talk to other people. It’s like uncovering a side of him that I will never have access to. I get pleasantly surprised every time I find out a new factoid about his life I didn’t know.
He is constantly changing. I am constantly changing. We all are full of mysteries even to ourselves, and friendships can be kept fresh by talking about changes: where you were before, and where you are now.
From this one model friendship, I started building all of my other friendships to be alive and deeply meaningful — happy 15 years of friendship, my dear Min’an. I love you.
Our friendship in 2005
Thanks to Manas Sahoo and Blanca Garcia-Gil for reading and discussing drafts of this.