The Friend Attraction

I had a conversation with my wife about friends this morning, based on my Facebook status, which said, “The best relationships begin unexpectedly.” While she has a tendency to disagree with me when it comes to my Facebook statuses (it’s okay, I’m a big boy, I can take it), she was totally on board with this one and even threw a different wrinkle into the conversation too. Why, out of all the people we come in contact with on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, do we come across some who appear just like the others but that we somehow mesh with on a deeper level? And how do we find those needles in the proverbial haystack?

So, I decided to do a review of my oldest friends to see if we met unexpectedly. I will talk about my more recent friends later, but I thought to start I would focus on the oldest ones because it means we have had longevity. *Names are changed to protect their anonymity.

Ted

Perhaps one of the most unexpected friends ever, and yet Ted remains easily one my oldest guy friends, one of the few males I can actually call my friend and mean it. We first met through an internet mailing list for the band Live (incidentally the same list from which I met my wife), and found out we had been going to the same college for the past year without meeting. We soon met, and proceeded to go to a series of concerts together, to hang out outside of concerts, and to become good friends that remain to this day. What was it about him that drew us together? We’re basically opposites. I am loud and boisterous, and he is quiet and soft spoken. As an example, we went to see a Pearl Jam concert together, and he immediately found the stands and sat down to enjoy his music from afar. I waded into the biggest mosh pit near the stage and got half-trampled in the process. We both had a blast. Perhaps there is something to be said about opposites attracting, because you would think we don’t have much in common, but we always have a good time when we get together. Now, we do get together rarely since I’ve moved away, but each time we do it’s as if no time has elapsed.

Serena

Serena actually started off as one of my teachers in college, but I was 24 at the time, and she was 30, so the age difference wasn’t as large as you would think. The one thing I noticed about her was that she had a tendency to doubt herself. Pretty much every phrase out of her mouth was tentative, and you know I’m outgoing, so the course of our friendship has been me pressing her to have more self-confidence. Our friendship started because of this dearth of self-confidence when she stopped me after class one day and asked me if it seemed like people were learning, if she was a good teacher. I felt for her, and that started our friendship, but it hasn’t been about what I could give to her. It is give and take, and she helps me see things I never saw before in myself too. Don’t the best of friendships do that? We lost touch for a couple of years, but we reconnected two years ago and things have been just the same between us.

Kelly

What can I say about Kelly? It’s one of the strangest stories about how we became friends. You see, we went to high school together for the first two years, but we hardly ever had a conversation. In fact, I didn’t even know if she knew my name, or who I was. I’ll admit it, I was pretty much of a loner in high school, one of those nerds you saw but didn’t see. You know? And Kelly, she was one of those good girls (at least I thought she was). We went to a private boarding school so it was hard not to notice everyone, but somehow I thought I was pretty much invisible. It turns out I wasn’t, though, because while Kelly and I lost touch right after I left (at the end of sophomore year), she found me again on Facebook. Yes, she found me again, not the other way around. That she remembered me at all was amazing, but come to find out she had wondered what happened to me. She actually missed me when I was gone, and that almost brought me to tears. So, we talked on the phone for hours, literally hours that first time since reconnecting, and it was like we had been best friends forever. Weird how you can connect with someone like that when you thought they didn’t even know you existed. We seem to touch more people’s lives than we realize at the time.

The Newbies

More recently, there have been several other people who I’ve become friends with who for some reason stood out from all the others, but it wasn’t just that. For some reason, I stood out for them too, and that’s where it really meshes. That’s when it really becomes a friendship, because it takes two to tango, as the saying goes. Of those new friends, all of them fit the title of “misfit,” and I use that term lovingly because I also fit that paradigm. For some reason, they are a bit quirky in their ideas, in the way they express their ideas, and in other areas of their personalities too. I am attracted to that type of personality, and they seem to be as well. And while we may not have the same quirks (that’s the key), they can appreciate mine while I appreciate theirs.

To answer my wife’s question, I think we are attracted to some instead of others because there is something about those individuals that fills a need we have in our lives, whether we know it or not. There is just something about certain people that click and connect with you, and it’s a wonderful thing when you can see that you do the same for them. It is this mutual appreciation and understanding that forges and maintains friendships through the years. This attraction that keeps it going, and I’m grateful for it.

Sam

The Friendship Archive