One of the smartest things I ever did was to just sort of quietly quit putting so much effort into pleasing all the people I used to depend on to reinforce my self-esteem or sense-of-self or whatever-it-is. I kind of died, and was reborn as myself. It's way better. But the self I am is much smaller than the one I wished I was or thought I could be or whatever... the one I conceived of. (There is no limit to what we can conceive of, so it's not super impressive to dream up a big version of yourself. Just be who you are and forgive yourself for not being the outsized caricature.)
The emptiness in your life will never go away. The error lies in thinking there ought to be more. More more more, it ought to ring a bell, and be recognized as a form of greed. Trying to fill the hole with friends is just as bad as filling it with drugs or booze or work. Just let it be empty. What's the big deal? It's empty, so what? Don't dwell on it, because that's the same thing, except you're trying to fill the emptiness up with an obsession about the emptiness itself. That isn't going to work, the emptiness will just grow to accommodate itself and eventually swallow you too. Get back to work. It's the one thing everyone has to do to survive, even if you're rich and it's just the work of showering once in a while. But don't try to fill the emptiness with work either. Just be like an animal (the animal you actually are). Get a dog if it helps you remember.
my dogs gave me much needed contrast to compare my outsized ego against. made me realize how insignificant my struggle was to the lightness of what I imagine it is to live in the moment like dogs/cats (animals).
loved every sentence of what you wrote on embracing emptiness. thanks for sharing.
I don't think there is an error thinking there ought to be more. I think we need to find what fills that emptiness. Something that gives life, your life, a sense of purpose and meaning. For me, it's knowing that I chose to come to this planet. It's knowing why I choose to come, what I'm supposed to do while I am here. And when I do what I know is right, I feel the emptiness fill up and I become much more than I could ever alone.
There certainly are constructive responses to it, nothing wrong with that. For me, I'm just a little wary of letting the need take over. I try to reduce the sense of need so that the stuff you're talking about ends up coming from a sense of play, not from need. Like a good analogy would be enjoying every job interview for the conversation because you don't happen to need the job.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” -- C.S. Lewis
What happens when the dog dies? If a pet is giving you the only love you know, it's going to destroy you to watch it pass. I'm saying that from experience.
And we're very unlike animals too. Intelligence is unlike any other force in nature. We're the only thing that can drastically and intentionally shape the world around us, find and preserve knowledge for thousands of years. Even language itself is incredible, and nothing like what we see with animals.
You're not wrong about shallow relationships and striving for approval being a trap though. But there is an alternative to being swallowed by emptiness. It's not the most popular thing to talk about, but when people refer to "saving faith", that emptiness you describe, is what they are saved from.
No emptiness to report over here, people will suck you dry until you are empty with their insatiable desires for novelty, entertainment and financial assistance. Being alone is more sustainable for me.
This just gave me a newfound perspective about myself that I had been trying to find for so long. Ever since I started my job and COVID started weakening, I realised that I don’t need a lot of people I thought I did. Spending more time with the people I actually like was far more enjoyable than distributing it among all the people I expected to stay friend with.
I had a friend who put it best once when someone got mad at her for always going hiking/climbing/etc instead of hanging out - “I only have so much free time so if I can spend it doing something I enjoy AND hangout with friends of course I’m going to tend towards that vs just sitting around chatting”
And it’s true, most my good friendships are built around activities (even ones like cook dinner and watch a movie) as it’s an easy way to sustain them
I was going to say, same here, I have my spouse, my hobbies, my friends, work I like, what's there to be empty about?
Which country do you live in, by the way?
EDIT: After some light stalking, you aren't in the US. I wonder if life in the US is more alienating, that's certainly what I hear from lots of friends who moved there.
I used to feel like this, that I just had to put up with my constant feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness and that all these activities I saw other people doing and supposedly enjoying were just futile attempts to get away from their own emptiness or pain.
Then I figured out that I have "complex PTSD" from being abandoned and mistreated as a child. My feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness were my mind blocking out more painful feelings of fear and anger which came from my early childhood. After working on this for some years I now feel much more emotionally whole and basically relaxed.
I can't articulate why at the moment, but your second paragraph gives me the same feeling as I had when I first heard of the story about the Feynman interpretation of QM. When asked what the meaning of the spin tensors (or whatever) was and how much underlying reality there was behind the theory, Feynman replied, "shut up and calculate".
Actually, let me amend the previous statement. It's the Feynman interpretation of QM combined with the adage "there are exactly two mandatory activities in a life: taking your first breath and taking your last breath. Everything in between is optional"
One of the things that I noticed that when I lived in India and England, I never felt lonely . It was more walkable and there was less of a comparing salaries and lifestyles and more of hanging out and ‘chilling’. Maybe I was younger . But moving to the US has been bad because how isolating it is - cannot get out of the house and walk to a place or a market or bar except NYC . Most social connections are around an activity like playing board games or running . No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries. People from different classes and jobs and lifestyles rarely mix . I do regret moving to the US from a social and friends perspective.
I moved to a mid-seized US city 6 months ago for grad school and I wholeheartedly agree with you.
The bit about hanging out in particular surprised me. I live in such a beautiful neighborhood, yet I almost never see any people outside. People are either walking their dogs or going from their door to car. I never saw a group of child randomly running around, teenagers doing teenager things, or bunch of old people just hanging about- sights I'm so used to. It's even more weird because these people are so friendly when you do get to interact with them.
How many children live where you live? I think there may be major difference between countries for this, but also, when I lived in an inner ring suburb in the US, there would be kids running all over the neighborhood every day, playing catch across every front lawn on the block, no worries about whose property was what, but then I moved into the city proper I never see them outside of school grounds. But it's pretty easy to deduce why, I have met every person on my block, none has a child older than 3 or younger than 16. I suspect there are lots of interesting patterns emerging if you mapped presence of children house by house in a metro area. Not sure what it would look like, but it feels like it oscillates.
Supposedly, Marshall McLuhan said that North Americans may well be the only people who go outside to be alone and inside to be together. There does seem to be some truth to that, though one should remember that McLuhan was Canadian, and the weather there can limit one's outdoor socializing for much of the year.
I see a fair bit of my neighbors, because I like walking around the neighborhood. Of course, I saw more of them during the pandemic, when I was working from home. It is true that I see less of them in colder weather.
Since you’re in grad school perhaps it’s because you are living in an American college town? Where I spent my pre-college school years we would run around pretty frequently.
> Most social connections are around an activity like playing board games or running . No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries.
Think in major cities like NYC, LA, San Fran, London are like this. In some places in Seattle and Portland in some groups you will find more people like that ones your were hanging out in India. However, this is one of biggest problem of USA. People live to work, where else in Europe (or in India it seems also), people work to live. Think what you find in India is also true in many places in Europe. Especially in smaller cities.
Don't think that's true. I lived in the PNW and people are even colder than the east coast. I remember in college the first time I invited friends over for my bday, people started asking me what we'd be doing. I was like wdym, it's a party, we're going to hang out, talk, drink, etc. anyway...
After living in the US for 35 years (my whole life) I finally live in an area where I can walk for 98% percent of my needs including markets, bars, restaurants, book shops, some good little museums, libraries and even a little indie video game store. For whatever its worth its Sacramento and the only other remotely walkable city I lived in was New Haven.
I didn't find New York, LA or SF very walkable at all. But I was super poor when I lived there.
Writing this I realize that homelessness has been most problematic in the walkble cities I've lived in. Maybe it's obvious but I'm wondering if theres a more complex connection there.
And weirdly I've had kind of a hard time adapting to having no meditative reflection time during long commutes. Not that I would ever go back to that insanity.
What a strange irony. I spent my teen years in the suburbs of Sacramento, and hated that place for its car-focused sprawl. It is a quarter-century later but I still feel some revulsion. I suppose you are living in Midtown? It didn't really exist until recently, but I must confess I enjoyed cruising around on jump-bikes and not really driving much when I visited last. I can see how one could have a good life there, now.
Things have changed so much in the past 25 years. The music industry use to drive a vibrant social scene revolving around art, music, dance, theater. All of that is just a shell of what it was two decades ago.
Every city use to have a Village Voice free paper knock off that would list all kinds of social events going on. In my city, they don't bother with the paper anymore. Now it is all online with no social events and just political ranting opinion pieces.
Anything left was killed by Covid. If I was young, I would find a new country.
People are basically content at this point at the average to leave their home as little as possible.
> No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries. People from different classes and jobs and lifestyles rarely mix . I do regret moving to the US from a social and friends perspective.
Interesting. I just ask my friends to hang out and they say yes, with no specific activity in mind. They're also all I vastly different jobs and classes. Maybe it's just a case of YMMV.
I can't stand how USA is built, with the exception of few cities (nyc, boston, philly, dc....) rest is horribly desolated place where to do anything you sit in isolated in cars and only human contact is around commercial areas.
Take for example a middle-east or european town/city. Lot of housing/buildings built side by side or so close only a person can walk through, within these narrow streets you have also got all sorts of shops (small grocery store, pharmacy, printing shop, laundry, accountant, cafe, ice-cream shop....) and then there are "car" streets, where you park and drive the car through to the "road".
Kids play in these streets without worrying about cars ever coming in, you can walk to most shops in less than 3 mins, people can sit outside of their house and talk to neighbors, go to cafe at the corner to eat with friends, and more.
I once had to go to suburbs for the job, and everything you do, even buying a gallon of milk required 8+ mile drive to walmart. No parks, no pavements, no sense of community, no shops, just drive drive drive... Literally felt like i was stuck in some sort of weird space ship waiting for the landing to destination and had to endure sitting in my seat for meanwhile.
The sad thing is, city design and housing like this affects, mental health, economical mobility, social life, and everything else..
But on the flip side, i can walk to a bubbling stream that's right in my back yard. I have never gotten mugged, never had to worry about shitty neighbors yelling loud enough to hear through the walls of my house, never needed to thread my way through panhandlers or beggars, never had shit stolen from me, and can see deer and wildlife sometimes even walk through the streets at night.
People seem to think a lack of privacy, quiet, and safety is this massive benefit.
That's a cultural difference that makes it hard for me to like certain areas of the US (L.A. and Silicon Valley specifically, can't say if the whole US is like that). Lot's of the people I talk there feel very shallow, measuring each other by what they did and who they know (Silicon Valley people love name dropping so much!). In contrast in most of Latin America or Europe I feel there is a more deep interaction between people. Conversations seem more real and people seem much more interesting.
My guess is that in these cities people (generally) feel the need to create and cultivate a fictitious persona and hide their idiosyncrasies to meet the cookie-cuter expectations of a successful human being (which must be very tiring).
I think it may be better in the middle of the country among blue collar folks. That probably has its own set of problems though. On the coasts I definitely feel that people constantly size you up and try to find out how successful you are. It makes socializing way less fun.
I'm 64 and I've only kept one life long friendship going on 30 years. All the others are gone and don't want to haven anything to do with me. Thinking about it now, I've kept the one friendship for a few reasons. 1) He hasn't changed much in 30 years. He's a remarkably stable individual 2) The interests that are the bedrock of our friendship are still there 3) our opinions about various controversial topics still match up 4) He's a remarkably tolerant individual of my many flaws
The reasons I've lost the others include
- They became fanatics about a topic that didn't interest me. For example, a person got really into Non Violent Communication and wanted me too as well, implying my communication was violent
- They became an author with a fan club and our adventures in the past would embarrass them if they came to light
- They went into the oil industry and became a climate change denier
- They became wealthy and high status and my adventures on the wild side of life were embarrassing to them (I've led a Jack Kerouac kind of life, except one that straightened up)
- He became a woman and in her case (not all cases) became less interesting to me
- And of course the recent tragic one: Politics
Some people believe that "people don't change" but I disagree with that. People do change and it's rare to keep a friend for the long term
This article annoyed me with its focus on the pair of women who message each other like Tumblr pals and apparently find themselves the most interesting people on the planet.
But it grew on me, if only through the gravity of schadenfreude, and I read the whole thing.
What stood out to me the most was this:
> as American life reconfigures itself, we may find ourselves rethinking whether our spouses and children are the only ones who deserve our binding commitments
This brought to mind a pair of entertainers[] who:
* Have been close friends since 1st grade
* Are now in their 40s
* Have been creative partners for about 2 decades
* Have been business partners for over a decade
* When they were teenagers, performed an actual blood oath (cut themselves and mingled their blood) promising that they would create something great together
* Now have dozens of employees and a loyal following of millions
* Alternately describe their friendship as a brotherhood and as a "second marriage".
I am deeply inspired by and jealous of their relationship, and think that this "friendship as commitment" model is dreadfully important.
We might benefit from formalization of this type of relationship through institutions (think fraternal organizations--but instead, "philial organizations").
You can find it in religion. The men in the church from 18 to 108 :) all form a quorum, united in belief and brotherhood, finding ways to serve each other and others outside the organization.
I find the relationship/friendship with my wife most enriching in my life. And when SHTF (as it does in any relationship), she stood by my side, my greatest ally, and champion.
I think we in the West have basically sabotaged the social structure that happened post 30 for most people. We should be looking to each other for wisdom and understanding since we are not kids anymore, and not protected from life's frailties. It seems like we have so much access to information through technological means that we totally neglect the personal means that support us emotionally.
I don't think it is a coincidence that the decline of Americans attending churches (any church) corresponds with increased feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety. The positive outcomes of the social networks of religion are not easily replaced with virtual hangouts and social media posts.
There was something about people being able to transition seamlessly between these groups in different cities, wasn't there? So if you uprooted, you found good soil to plant in. Is there something wrong with the soil?
I have been struggling with terms like friend, close friends and ‘people I know’ for a long time now. I have all of those for my definitions but the definitions for these are wildly different for different people. Like ‘I invited my closest 1000 friends to my wedding’ to ‘I don’t have 1 close friend’. In both camps I have seen that in the former people have 3-5 close friends, 10-20 friends and the rest are acquaintances if using my definitions; in the latter exactly the same when using my definitions. I have been wondering for decades what makes you happiest; my current definitions make me happy and both other ways would make me unhappy but I find the subject matter interesting, also because I am apparently an exception who makes new ‘best’ friends after 40 and removes others because circumstances changed.
"It gets harder to keep friends as you get older."
I find that curious. When I was in my 20s we all bounced around, and there were no social networks, so there was no easy way to stay in touch. A lot of people were my best friends for 2 years, and then they were gone and I never heard from them again. Adults make more of an effort to hang onto their friends. My friendships have become more stable with age, and I assume this will remain true till old age starts killing them off.
That was true for me during my 30s, but people have a way of disappearing after they reproduce. I'm 45 now, and my community of friends has collapsed; people are still around, but they don't seem to do very much anymore, and it is therefore difficult to keep in touch with them, as a group.
Keeping up with a few individual friends is still possible, but it's a much lonelier existence.
I've started losing friends to marriage and children. We used to make time to visit each other at least once a year, but then they go and make finding love their #1 priority over their old friendships and disappear off this planet.
It's not impossible to schedule a visit one-on-one, but getting the whole group together for a weekend to pretend we're all still in college just doesn't happen. The peripheral friendships in that college dynamic were what made it truly special instead of merely having a collection of 5 close friends. It was those 5 close friends plus two dozen friendly hangers-on.
One thing I discovered about friendship is that it is a total illusion. Go inside any jail or prison and talk to the inmates. Anyone who has been incarcerated will tell you that 99.9% of your so-called dearest friends will immediately disappear and never call, write or put money onto your commissary account.
Then as soon as you get out they want to be friends again as if nothing happened and you weren't missing for years.
I know of the hundreds of friends I had, only one contacted me in the eight years I was locked up for being poor. Several of them even had the money to have me released on day one.
Friendship is not what you think it is. It is depressingly fickle. Friendship seems to be based entirely around what you can do for the other person, and once you're incarcerated it is clear you are of no social value. It sounds like I'm being hypercynical, but that's the reality of it.
Two months ago, a homeless guy I have never met in my life, driving from Florida to Ohio, with a beater car, a mutt, and $300 to his name runs out of gas in Alabama. Walking in the dark with a gas can, the cops stop him, call an ambulance, and have the guy taken to the hospital for a psyche evaluation. He ends up in the hospital for 3 days. Car is impounded (he doesn't know where), dog taken to a shelter (he doesn't know where). While trying to find his car and dog, gets the cheapest hotel
(in my town) he can find while he tries to sort out the mess he's in. To help with the dwindling cash flow, he gets a job at Waffle House near the hotel. Come to find out, Waffle House wants him to start at their other location, some 7.6 miles in a neighboring town. He gets walking, where my wife, who has never picked up a stranger in her life, feels like helping, getting the guy to his job. Next night, while about to sit down to the juicy porkchop I have ever grilled, sidelined by creamy mash potatoes, my wife gets a text from this guy saying he's found his dog and would I please give him a ride across town to get Stevia back. I knew nothing about this guy, his life, his character, and so I hit my knees and asked God if I should help him. And I didn't get an answer from God. I didn't get a 'yes, go help' and I didn't get a 'no, don't go.' And when I don't get a clear answer from God, I know its Him saying essentially, 'it's your choice' So I chose to help (the porkchop could wait). I went and picked up this complete stranger and gave him a ride to the animal shelter, where he signed a promissory note to take his dog back into his care. He shed tears of joy and that puppy's tail was wagging like a Cessna propeller. The next day I help the guy go get his car from the impound. I say all of this not to boast of myself. I tell you this because there are other people out there in the world like me, and we love other people and love to have meaningful relationships.
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The emptiness in your life will never go away. The error lies in thinking there ought to be more. More more more, it ought to ring a bell, and be recognized as a form of greed. Trying to fill the hole with friends is just as bad as filling it with drugs or booze or work. Just let it be empty. What's the big deal? It's empty, so what? Don't dwell on it, because that's the same thing, except you're trying to fill the emptiness up with an obsession about the emptiness itself. That isn't going to work, the emptiness will just grow to accommodate itself and eventually swallow you too. Get back to work. It's the one thing everyone has to do to survive, even if you're rich and it's just the work of showering once in a while. But don't try to fill the emptiness with work either. Just be like an animal (the animal you actually are). Get a dog if it helps you remember.
my dogs gave me much needed contrast to compare my outsized ego against. made me realize how insignificant my struggle was to the lightness of what I imagine it is to live in the moment like dogs/cats (animals).
loved every sentence of what you wrote on embracing emptiness. thanks for sharing.
Out of curiosity, what other planet(s) would you have chosen if earth had been unavailable?
And we're very unlike animals too. Intelligence is unlike any other force in nature. We're the only thing that can drastically and intentionally shape the world around us, find and preserve knowledge for thousands of years. Even language itself is incredible, and nothing like what we see with animals.
You're not wrong about shallow relationships and striving for approval being a trap though. But there is an alternative to being swallowed by emptiness. It's not the most popular thing to talk about, but when people refer to "saving faith", that emptiness you describe, is what they are saved from.
And it’s true, most my good friendships are built around activities (even ones like cook dinner and watch a movie) as it’s an easy way to sustain them
Are you going through a depression?
Which country do you live in, by the way?
EDIT: After some light stalking, you aren't in the US. I wonder if life in the US is more alienating, that's certainly what I hear from lots of friends who moved there.
Get a cat. Be kind to your future self.
I used to feel like this, that I just had to put up with my constant feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness and that all these activities I saw other people doing and supposedly enjoying were just futile attempts to get away from their own emptiness or pain.
Then I figured out that I have "complex PTSD" from being abandoned and mistreated as a child. My feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness were my mind blocking out more painful feelings of fear and anger which came from my early childhood. After working on this for some years I now feel much more emotionally whole and basically relaxed.
Actually, let me amend the previous statement. It's the Feynman interpretation of QM combined with the adage "there are exactly two mandatory activities in a life: taking your first breath and taking your last breath. Everything in between is optional"
The bit about hanging out in particular surprised me. I live in such a beautiful neighborhood, yet I almost never see any people outside. People are either walking their dogs or going from their door to car. I never saw a group of child randomly running around, teenagers doing teenager things, or bunch of old people just hanging about- sights I'm so used to. It's even more weird because these people are so friendly when you do get to interact with them.
I see a fair bit of my neighbors, because I like walking around the neighborhood. Of course, I saw more of them during the pandemic, when I was working from home. It is true that I see less of them in colder weather.
Think in major cities like NYC, LA, San Fran, London are like this. In some places in Seattle and Portland in some groups you will find more people like that ones your were hanging out in India. However, this is one of biggest problem of USA. People live to work, where else in Europe (or in India it seems also), people work to live. Think what you find in India is also true in many places in Europe. Especially in smaller cities.
I didn't find New York, LA or SF very walkable at all. But I was super poor when I lived there.
Writing this I realize that homelessness has been most problematic in the walkble cities I've lived in. Maybe it's obvious but I'm wondering if theres a more complex connection there.
And weirdly I've had kind of a hard time adapting to having no meditative reflection time during long commutes. Not that I would ever go back to that insanity.
Car dependence is a much more palatable strategy than police violence for keeping things “nice.”
Every city use to have a Village Voice free paper knock off that would list all kinds of social events going on. In my city, they don't bother with the paper anymore. Now it is all online with no social events and just political ranting opinion pieces.
Anything left was killed by Covid. If I was young, I would find a new country.
People are basically content at this point at the average to leave their home as little as possible.
Interesting. I just ask my friends to hang out and they say yes, with no specific activity in mind. They're also all I vastly different jobs and classes. Maybe it's just a case of YMMV.
Take for example a middle-east or european town/city. Lot of housing/buildings built side by side or so close only a person can walk through, within these narrow streets you have also got all sorts of shops (small grocery store, pharmacy, printing shop, laundry, accountant, cafe, ice-cream shop....) and then there are "car" streets, where you park and drive the car through to the "road".
Kids play in these streets without worrying about cars ever coming in, you can walk to most shops in less than 3 mins, people can sit outside of their house and talk to neighbors, go to cafe at the corner to eat with friends, and more.
I once had to go to suburbs for the job, and everything you do, even buying a gallon of milk required 8+ mile drive to walmart. No parks, no pavements, no sense of community, no shops, just drive drive drive... Literally felt like i was stuck in some sort of weird space ship waiting for the landing to destination and had to endure sitting in my seat for meanwhile.
The sad thing is, city design and housing like this affects, mental health, economical mobility, social life, and everything else..
To contrast what I said
How usually the cities are: https://earth.google.com/web/@41.39383041,2.16478558,31.9819...
How most of USA is: https://www.google.com/maps/@27.9718179,-82.4868834,3a,75y,1...
People seem to think a lack of privacy, quiet, and safety is this massive benefit.
Deleted Comment
I'm 64 and I've only kept one life long friendship going on 30 years. All the others are gone and don't want to haven anything to do with me. Thinking about it now, I've kept the one friendship for a few reasons. 1) He hasn't changed much in 30 years. He's a remarkably stable individual 2) The interests that are the bedrock of our friendship are still there 3) our opinions about various controversial topics still match up 4) He's a remarkably tolerant individual of my many flaws
The reasons I've lost the others include
- They became fanatics about a topic that didn't interest me. For example, a person got really into Non Violent Communication and wanted me too as well, implying my communication was violent
- They became an author with a fan club and our adventures in the past would embarrass them if they came to light
- They went into the oil industry and became a climate change denier
- They became wealthy and high status and my adventures on the wild side of life were embarrassing to them (I've led a Jack Kerouac kind of life, except one that straightened up)
- He became a woman and in her case (not all cases) became less interesting to me
- And of course the recent tragic one: Politics
Some people believe that "people don't change" but I disagree with that. People do change and it's rare to keep a friend for the long term
But it grew on me, if only through the gravity of schadenfreude, and I read the whole thing.
What stood out to me the most was this:
> as American life reconfigures itself, we may find ourselves rethinking whether our spouses and children are the only ones who deserve our binding commitments
This brought to mind a pair of entertainers[] who:
* Have been close friends since 1st grade
* Are now in their 40s
* Have been creative partners for about 2 decades
* Have been business partners for over a decade
* When they were teenagers, performed an actual blood oath (cut themselves and mingled their blood) promising that they would create something great together
* Now have dozens of employees and a loyal following of millions
* Alternately describe their friendship as a brotherhood and as a "second marriage".
I am deeply inspired by and jealous of their relationship, and think that this "friendship as commitment" model is dreadfully important.
We might benefit from formalization of this type of relationship through institutions (think fraternal organizations--but instead, "philial organizations").
[] Rhett & Link https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DNxju3SrXATFdhd1SzH1A
I find the relationship/friendship with my wife most enriching in my life. And when SHTF (as it does in any relationship), she stood by my side, my greatest ally, and champion.
Interestingly, although they have now come out as non-Christian, religion factored heavily into the first 2 decades of Rhett & Link's relationship.
Not sure where this is coming from.
> who treat extended family as important
I'm glad for you if you have an extended family whom you can be close with.
> or base their personal decisions on relationships
This is compatible with what I am advocating for.
Outside of the 18-35 mainstream culture demographic, it feels like there’s a gap.
I find that curious. When I was in my 20s we all bounced around, and there were no social networks, so there was no easy way to stay in touch. A lot of people were my best friends for 2 years, and then they were gone and I never heard from them again. Adults make more of an effort to hang onto their friends. My friendships have become more stable with age, and I assume this will remain true till old age starts killing them off.
Keeping up with a few individual friends is still possible, but it's a much lonelier existence.
It's not impossible to schedule a visit one-on-one, but getting the whole group together for a weekend to pretend we're all still in college just doesn't happen. The peripheral friendships in that college dynamic were what made it truly special instead of merely having a collection of 5 close friends. It was those 5 close friends plus two dozen friendly hangers-on.
Then as soon as you get out they want to be friends again as if nothing happened and you weren't missing for years.
I know of the hundreds of friends I had, only one contacted me in the eight years I was locked up for being poor. Several of them even had the money to have me released on day one.
Friendship is not what you think it is. It is depressingly fickle. Friendship seems to be based entirely around what you can do for the other person, and once you're incarcerated it is clear you are of no social value. It sounds like I'm being hypercynical, but that's the reality of it.