Decoding the Friend Crush

I noticed her right away. She was sitting next to me in our first-year biology class with a ratty notebook filled with loose-leaf paper and a yellow Papermate Sharpwriter pencil, the kind with the red eraser built into the top. We were learning about the structure of leaves and her sheet of paper was filled with perfect replicas of leaves, delicately shaded undersides, vivid cross-sections with neatly labeled parts, and in the margins of her paper, doodles of female faces with big eyes and crazy hairstyles.

She was wearing an unwarranted amount of clothing for that hot August day in Iowa: a pair of colorful pants, a batik wrap skirt, a bright tank top over another t-shirt, rings on every finger, one chunky stone necklace and one long skinny gold one. Her hair was long and braided into two pigtails that made her hawkish nose seem more prominent on her long face. In my jeans and navy blue Gap t-shirt, I looked like I was trying to blend into a suburban high school, the very environment I had just left. Where had she grown up, I thought, that she dressed liked that?

Two weeks later, we were partners for an ecology lab at a field station in the middle of the Iowa prairie. We had been told to dress in old clothes for the day. I had dutifully put on hiking boots, a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee, a white t-shirt with my high school mascot in burgundy and green, and knotted a burgundy and green plaid flannel shirt around my waist, just in case. She came down to get me in my dorm room from hers one floor above and stared at me. “Those are your old clothes?” she asked, incredulous.

I stared back at her. “Those are yours?” I asked. She was wearing a pair of paint-smeared, baggy, polyester pants that had worn thin in the seat and knees revealing patches of lighter fabric that showed the white lining underneath. Her t-shirt was also covered with paint splotches and filled with holes: the one under her right arm was so big it revealed the dingy blue tank top she was wearing underneath. She was carrying an old sweater that had moth-eaten holes in the armpits.

The only article of clothing we had in common was our hiking boots.

She was from Philadelphia, the city proper, instead of a quiet suburb of Denver, like me. I thought she was bizarre and crazy and urban and fun and brand new. She thought I was strange and well-adjusted and suburban and fun and brand new. We went out to parties together, giggled our way to kegs, bumped on makeshift dance floors, and walked to the gas station in the middle of town to buy frozen pizza at the end of the night. We ate meals in the dining hall together and talked late at night in our rooms, sharing hot chocolate and cookies and stories about our lives. We couldn’t get enough of each other.

It would be later that I would learn the term for what she and I had: friend crush.

Friend crushes, I’ve learned, are not unique to girls. Male friends have agreed the feeling is genderless: you want to be around your friend crush all the time. You never get sick of their company. You are each other’s go-to for advice and fun and a random Tuesday night outing to the movies. You spend your weekends together. You stop feeling so alone in the world.

Eventually, though, the friend crush fades, leaving behind a friendship whose strength you must now test with a more jaded view of your friend, without your intoxicating-yet-often-misleading first impressions. For us, the fabric of our friendship disintegrated after college, slowly at first so we didn’t really notice the tears, finally culminating in an explosive fight that left it ripped and tattered.

We didn’t talk for a year after that fight and have only talked a handful of times since then.

Now, three and a half years later, I am sitting here at my “grown-up” job thinking of her. I am getting married next year to a man she has never met. I live in an apartment she has never seen. I have gone back to school and finished a master’s degree in the time we’ve been apart. I have no idea what changes and successes she’s had in the last few years.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever feel that way about a friend again. I have had friend crushes since her, but none as strong, as evidenced by the fact that I have stayed friends or acquaintances with the others. Will anyone ever be as intoxicating and as life-changing? Do we outgrow that type of friendship as we get older in same way we outgrew playing pretend and dressing our Barbies?

Case Study of a Good Girl (GG) in a State of Trauma

Background: S is a woman in her mid-20s. Her family is intact and stable, and she appears to have a strong relationship with all members, traveling home to visit them (in another state) every four to six weeks. S’s voice and manner are typically pleasant, although often punctuated with comments and complaints about any given situation. S seems happy with her employment, and has recently gotten married to her boyfriend of three years.

Presenting Problem: Recently, I had dinner with S. S was four weeks post-wedding, and appeared to be in a fragile state. Gamely, I took her proffered pictures, smiled at her breathless “these aren’t the real ones, just some my friend took” apologies, and slowly perused each picture before handing them to the other woman at the table. S looked beautiful and happy. The photographs of the tables at the reception featured huge white stargazer lilies. “Those are gorgeous!” I exclaimed, truthfully. “I love tall arrangements!”

The other woman agreed. “I love white flowers,” she said sincerely.

Then it happened.

A verbal dam broke. “OH!” S exclaimed. “You should have seen the room! It was SO AMAZING. We had these round tables with these tall arrangements, and then these square tables with a smaller arrangement,” S paused to flip though the pictures frantically. “I don’t have the pictures here, but there were these boxes and the flowers were sort of bending toward the boxes. It was incredible. We had draped the walls of the room and the rabbi actually thanked us at the end because we had shown everyone how beautiful the room could look. And trust me, it wasn’t beautiful before. We were there the night before for…”

This went on for two hours, or 120 minutes, or 7,200 seconds, all of which I cannot get back. Two hours WITHOUT A PAUSE. A short list of topics covered (in between breathless bouts of “I’m not boring you, am I?”):
• Food at the wedding (“Everyone said it was the best food they’d ever had”).
• Mistakes that were made and detailed instructions of what would be done differently given the chance.
• The “amazing energy” that surrounds the day (there were tears during this part).
• Trials of dealing with her in-laws (“They all hate me” and “They think my parents’ house is too big”).
• Adventures her and her husband (“I LOVE saying my husband!”) had experienced since the big day, including moving in together for the first time.
• Lack of contact with friends post-wedding (“I haven’t talked to ANYONE since the wedding. It’s been all about me and my husband!”)

Diagnosis and Analysis: S is a “Good Jewish Girl,” which is similar to a “Good Indian Girl,” or a “Good Christian Girl,” or any other “Good (INSERT HERE) Girl.” A typical Good Girl (GG) has probably reached her mid-20s with the following: very little boozing or drugging or whoring, a whole lot of parental control (either by choice or overbearing parents), and limited contact with friends outside of her race, social class, or sexual orientation. A GG will almost surely experience a surprisingly sharp rise in sexual proclivity post-engagement or nuptials.

We all know a GG or two: They are kind of boring but nice enough, a little plain but pretty enough, smart enough but not intimidating. They don’t bother with “What does it all mean?” or “Why am I here?” types of questions, and will instead get fixated on a character from a television show, or maybe a friend whose behavior is shockingly un-GG (boozing/whoring/drugging), or most likely, on the latest irritations due to a boyfriend/fiancé/husband.

The latter is what separates the GG from the rest of us: the GG always has a committed guy in her life. And she won’t shut up about him. A typical conversation may look something like this:
You: How are you doing today?
GG: Oh fine, but you’ll never believe what happened with [INSERT NAME OF BOYFRIEND/FIANCE/HUSBAND HERE]! He was at work, totally normal day, and then the mail guy delivered his mail to the WRONG office! And he almost missed a really important letter! It was horrible!
You: (stunned silence at this unexpected non sequitur, then slowly) Oh…wow, that sucks…(voice trails off).
GG: (oblivious) I know! Can you believe it? I mean, really, I don’t know who they think they are messing with his mail like that? Seriously? The mail guy should be FIRED. [BOYFRIEND/FIANCE/HUSBAND] was so stressed out that he went out and had drinks with his coworkers and they all decided they were going to talk to their boss about getting the mail guy fired. I mean, isn’t that awful?!?
You: (wondering if it’s possible for a stiff gin and tonic to be willed into your bloodstream to dull this experience) Yeah…(glancing around casually for instruments of self-harm)…mail guys can be rough to deal with.

Key features of a conversation with a GG include:
• Inability to separate self from partner, as evidenced by answering questions about her with information about her partner. Also evidenced by overuse of the plural “we” in answer to questions about her (i.e. “WE enjoyed the movie” or “That is one of OUR favorite restaurants.”)
• Decrease in interest when asked about topics other than partner, as noted by glazed eyes, silence punctuated with a half-smile, absent nodding)
• Failure to relate to any aspect of life that does not have to do directly with her or her partner. Thus, you may tell no stories about boozy mistakes, cute outfits found cheap, your volunteer work with homeless teens, Hillary/Barack showdowns, that dumb Miss Teen South Carolina, the person you’re dating, etc.)

Treatment: There is no treatment for a GG. They prefer to remain in the company of either their partners or other GGs. Those who do not fall into either category should steer clear of this type.

A Mission Statement

Like so many aspiring writers, I can tell you that I have always been drawn to writing. Again, not unlike many of my fellow wordsmiths, from a young age, I have written stories, poems, and kept prolific journals (in my case, the latter only in spurts of a few months at a time), hoping to gain some sort of understanding about my world from my scribbled thoughts. And although a deeper comprehension about my place in the remains somewhat elusive, writing can still calm me better than a great conversation with a trusted friend, or even a good long rant or cry.

Yet even though I love putting “pen to paper,” I have always been uncharacteristically wary about sharing my work with the wider world. I will be honest here: though I love to write, I do not consider myself a particularly gifted or talented writer. I have been blessed with teachers and professors who have pushed me to develop the confidence to try publishing, but I am painfully aware of my own shortcomings: my tendency to use the passive voice, or my overuse of adverbs and adjectives stick out as evidence of how much I still have to learn. I do not want to be another crappy wannabe writer.

Complicating matters, I am simultaneously amazed and irritated by the proliferation of poorly written material that floats around the Internet these days. I am fascinated by the self-serving, narcissistic quality of blogs, and I have been surprised by my feelings of admiration or affection or hatred for these anonymous voices, known to me only by the words they self-publish. It boggles my mind to think that a person’s diary, or hastily typed comments that accompany a photo journal of shoes worn each day can turn into years' worth of written material.

In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote a blog for a short time while I was completing a practicum requirement for my master’s degree in public health. I was working in India, and maintained the blog during the time I was away in order to keep in touch with my family and friends. Again, being perfectly honest, I felt somehow that keeping this blog was an acceptable form of communication, rather than another nobody oversharing intimate details of their lives.

And though I shared details about my life, I still loved writing every word on that blog. I waited eagerly to read comments on my work, glowed when it was positive, and was shocked by how angry I felt when an anonymous reader left condescending comments about a few of my posts. It was a skin thickening, self-esteem boosting, and wholly rewarding experience.

While I wanted to keep writing the blog when I returned from India, I felt funny transitioning the blog from a travelogue into one that fit into my daily life. I can’t quite explain this except to say that I didn’t want to be another outlet for ritual navel-gazing or a mundane recitation of my day’s events, though I had indulged in both of those while writing the India blog. I wanted to write SOMETHING MAJOR, which is as asinine and pretentious as it looks written here.

So in the interest of pursuing my own ridiculous quest for literary perfection, I’ve kept silent and not shared my writing for two years(!). During that time, I’ve become an avid reader of many blogs, both group-written and individually-penned, both sparkling with witty originality, and riddled with clichéd turns of phrase and stock observations. Though I read everything, I comment rarely, and this makes me a “lurker” in blogging parlance, which is a word that is completely the opposite of my real-life personality.

However, rather than being a sign of how coolly detached I am about the world around me, I’ve realized lurking is a sign that I am growing slowly complacent, and less likely to engage with people and ideas. This is unacceptable to me: I don’t want to be a consumer of someone else’s thoughts. I want to produce my own ideas. To be as melodramatic as humanly possible, I am afraid that I am wasting away slowly, watching my brain grow sluggish with each day that passes without my expending any real creative effort.

Continuing the melodrama: I am 29 years old and completely afraid of becoming dead inside.

So I’m throwing a lifeline out into the world in the form of another unneeded blog. In academics, we would call this an independent directed study. The topics are varied, the observations and thoughts are all mine, and your comments, be they constructively critical or laudatory, are welcome.

Let my education begin again.