We met recently with a new client and their spouse for a casual dinner designed to help them get comfortable quickly in their new city. The client had just been named CEO of a technology company, and our mission was to help both people begin the process of navigating Silicon Valley, a place that scrutinizes all newcomers particularly closely. The Valley can feel extremely closed and tough to break into from the outside and, in that world, relationships matter. When we asked if the move had been difficult and if they had left good friends behind, our client said (in the most matter-of-fact way), "Oh, I don't have time for friends."
We know from our practice that supportive networks make or break leaders. Isolationists don't survive. In our client work, we probe early on to understand the nature of our clients' support systems and find a disturbing trend: fewer and fewer make time for friends. In fact, the American Sociological Review reports that 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two. Why is this alarming? We know from research that friendships serve to buffer stress and reduce depression in both men and women.
Digging a bit deeper, we learn that gender is the main determinant of the presence and role of friends. My wise partner, Bob Mintz, an expert in our life stories and what they mean, reminds me that women, generally, create climates with friends in which self-disclosure, acceptance, and real closeness are expected. Men, largely, have drinking buddies, activity buddies or mentor friends where one party helps another. Men share activities; women more openly share opinions, emotions, and advice. Women naturally create vibrant support networks of people who are there for them when trouble hits. Men too often view friends as unnecessary until the unexpected happens and they find themselves suffering alone.
I am alive and well because of my friends. After my wife's sudden death a year and a half ago, my despair could have trapped me in a spiral but for the grace, grit and persistence of wonderful friends. They were there for me when I needed support, but they also were wise enough to know how to offer care without suffocating a process of grief that I needed to allow in order to discover what I am still becoming today. Because of wonderful friends (and children), I am recovering and becoming a solo act, the fifth man at table, a man with more compassion and appreciation for the moments of my life.
Sometimes we pay an excessively high price for wisdom. I would surrender anything to have her back.
These friends left footprints in my heart, but because of them, I will never again take friendship for granted. And, I will be a better friend. Instead of collecting friends, enjoying that successive choir of pals and partners as part of the landscape of my life, I instead choose those that I can befriend and be part of their journey. I try to earn my friends, those special people who challenge, even dare me, to be fully myself. Especially, as I still grope to accept and understand the solo act that is me.
I have come to deeply understand that the only real way to have a friend, is to be one. But we may be losing or marginalizing our definition of a friend.
Last year our web designers pushed me to join Facebook and Twitter shortly after we completed a redesign of our website. Because of our amazing clients, I have been exposed to the social networking environment, from MySpace to Ning, and I was intrigued to understand how I could dip in and learn.
Today, after months of responding to more and more requests to be "a friend", I have over 2200 Facebook friends. It's rather like dropping into a virtual Second Life reality to sample the postings of so many people you don't know at all.
And I am not alone. The Financial Times noted this week that Facebook is more popular than Google!
While there are perhaps 250 Facebook friends I really know, what have I done by agreeing or inviting so many people to my consciousness? (Twitter still seems like cyber-CN radio to me, with thousands of bursts and burps. I don't tweet any more.)
Social psychologists warn that our definitions of connection, and certainly friendship, are blurring in the digital age. Professor Tom Tyler of New York University sees more positive than negative rewards when he notes "there are suggestions that the Internet may be a new way for people to do old things... that may (lead) to changes in patterns of life." His research confirms that our digital relationships may diminish our need for face-to-face connection, and the explosive growth of online communications for all ages confirms that we are rapidly accepting the intimacy of digital friendships as real as live pals.
Women have much to teach men about the healthy benefits of deep friendship. Men need to check their stereotypes of female friendships as trivial. Research shows us that real friends make us healthier and more resilient. Who has time for friends? Who will stand with you when real life collides with your plans?
I need friends that I can "scratch and sniff" and share, in the moment, with strong coffee, good wine, deep laughter and shared memories. That's probably the stuff of being 69, but I think it means that I need up close and personal pals.
I recently discovered writer A.E. Hotchner's wonderful new book on his 53 year friendship with actor Paul Newman, Paul and Me, published two years after Newman's death at age 83. Together the pals, partners in mischief, created a line of food products that grew from a prank to a charity that has given away $300 million since 1982. Hotchner's touching recollections of an enduring friendship reminds us to choose our friends with care, and invest our lives and truths with them.
When they are gone, their loss is incalculable. Hotchner reflects on the storm damage in his yard, a "mass grave" of trees, as he calls them: "Some of them were here when I bought the house. They were like old friends. And it's always hard to lose old friends."
Indeed.