Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate

• ‘I do not see all members of my family as friends but maybe members of the same tribe. Some are friends: all are friendly.’

• ‘Blood’s bloodier than water.’

Andrew Sullivan considered the question of friends and family:

Families and marriages fail too often because they are trying to answer too many human needs. A spouse is required to be a lover, a friend, a mother, a father, a soulmate, a co-worker, and so on. Few people can be all these things for one person. And when the demands are set too high, disappointment can only follow. If husbands and wives have deeper and stronger friendships outside the marital unit, the marriage has more space to breathe and fewer burdens to bear. Likewise, a lack of true family can, I think, impinge on friendship. If we have many friends and no real family, we tend to demand things of friends which are equally inappropriate. The two relationships, then, family and friendship, are surely rivals, but they are also complements to one another. There is no reason why most human lives should not have a deep experience of both.

(#litres_trial_promo)

That is a wonderful aspiration, but many of us fail to achieve it. I used to think that some people have a talent for friendship but now I am not so sure. I have learned that when people speak of the wonders of universal love, or of spirituality, or of caring for others, or of friendship I should look at what these people actually do. I have worked as a visiting lecturer for far too many charity, psychotherapy and counselling groups where all the talk was of how much they care about other people but where that ‘other people’ did not include me. In their eyes I had no needs like being fed, being protected from importunate members of the audience, assisted with transport or simply given a glass of water. The world is full of people who believe that to say you do something is the same as doing it. St Paul did say that the thought is the same as the deed, which probably explains why I have found so many Christians prone to such oversights.

Even when someone does show all the behaviours we might associate with having a talent for friendship I have found it necessary to ask the person whether that is so.

My friend Una seemed to me to have a talent for friendship. She had retired from a long and distinguished academic career in psychology. I doubt that there would be many of her erstwhile students who did not consider her to be a friend, while in the often bitchy world of professional psychology in Australia she had no enemies and masses of friends.

Una remembered and kept up with the events in her friends’ lives. She always kept a photographic record of us, pictures which she kept in albums on the coffee table beside the couch where she read her beloved newspapers. Her passion was current affairs. She told me, ‘A lot of my friendship is carried on in my head. I think about you a lot, and I think about Patricia sitting in her London house. I’ve got pictures of all of you here. There’s Polly in Scotland. I think of you all living your lives as I know them now.’

What Una liked about friendship was the conversation, exploring a topic together. She was conversing most of the time, directly with friends and neighbours, and her cat, or indirectly by telephone and letters. Yet, when I said to her that she had a talent for friendship she denied it.

She said, ‘I have a talent for friendship like when the plumber came today. I can talk like that very easily. I can get on with working men in pubs in England as very few people can. And there are certain people in shops I can talk to, and my neighbours, but I have been living here for twenty years so that’s not surprising. We have over-the-fence chats to each other but we have got absolutely nothing in common except neighbourliness. When I go into groups with my peers I’m one of the less comfortable ones. I think people like me and they look to me for certain things. I do have close friendships but they took a long time to build up and they’re often quite ambivalent. At a distance I can be friendly and helpful, but I find it hard to cope with intimacy. That’s why I live on my own, I suppose. I find it hard to tell people, “I like you. Can I see you again?” Maintaining a friendship is a problem with me. I am grieving over several lost friendships where we have just drifted apart. And that’s hard. My friend Belinda, we shared flats together and so on, and even after she married and had a kid we saw each other quite frequently. Now she no longer rings me. I ring her and keep in contact. But she has got grandchildren and her husband has retired, and it’s very rare that she gives me a thought, I think, and I find that hard.’

I asked my workshop group if there was a talent for friendship and, if so, whether it was innate or learned. They answered:

• ‘I have learned to respect others through therapy. I learned from appropriate modelling of others who have been through similar processes.’

• ‘I haven’t a talent for friendship. I think friendship is learnt; by giving friendship to others one receives friendship back and people benefit and grow.’

• ‘No talent. I was brought up by a puritanical grandmother who allowed no one into the house. No child was quite good enough for me to play with.’

• ‘In the main, we learn how to make friends by observing others, initially our parents and siblings and, as we get older, our peers and work colleagues. To observe the making of a friendship by others teaches us to behave in a fashion to create our own.’

• ‘I grew up with no social skills apart from being polite. My best friend grew up with good social skills and she became my role model.’

• ‘I think I have a talent for friendship because I am open and honest and I have a great faith in people. Unfortunately this sometimes leads to my downfall because other people then hurt me.’

• ‘I value friendships highly. Because I think friendships are important I think I make a good friend.’

• ‘I think that I probably choose not to develop any talent I may have for friendship as I do not feel the need for many friends, although I do like other people to accept me in a friendly way as a friendly person.’

Underlying these answers and indeed the words of everyone quoted here is a division which runs like a great fault-line across the world of friendship. It is the line which divides us all into one of two groups, according to how we experience our sense of existence. These groups I have called extraverts and introverts. In my earlier books and especially in The Successful Self I have looked at how this division affects our relationships. What I have said has arisen out of extensive research. I now know that whenever I talk or write about this matter some people, usually those I call introverts, will say, ‘Yes, I recognize myself in what you say,’ and some people, usually those I call extraverts, will not recognize what I say and instead be puzzled or insist that they are a bit of both, no matter how much I explain that it is not a matter of what you do but why you do it. However, it is not surprising that such a difference arises because introverts turn inwards to their internal reality of thoughts and feelings, and thus are likely to be aware of why they do what they do, while extraverts turn outwards to their external reality, where they are more interested in doing than in examining the reasons why.

Other people are of enormous importance to extraverts because extraverts experience their sense of existence in relationship to other people. Lesley, an extravert, explained this. ‘If you are an extravert who feels in danger of disappearing, friends are vital landmarks on your map who need to be kept in place at all costs. Without them there is the feeling that you don’t exist because you can only get some sense of yourself if it is reflected back at you. It is as though the reflection is real and exists but you do not exist without the mirror of people relating to you. If you feel like that any expenditure of effort on friends is worthwhile.’

The writer Fay Weldon told me, ‘I had the art of placating and always had fans, even as quite a small child. I would always have a little group of supporters who would fight my corner for me with teachers. I just like friends. I just like talking to people, I enjoy conversation. I just went to school because I liked my friends.’ It has always amazed me that Fay ever gets any writing done because her home is always full of people, but she explained, ‘I’ve rather cunningly always surrounded myself with children, which is another way of creating your own world downwards because there isn’t anything particularly solid behind you. So now there are children, and grandchildren, and Nick has three boys – one, fifteen years old, lives with us and the other two visit. I just think I was born sociable and gregarious.’

Extraverts often envy introverts for having – or appearing to have – a deep, still centre, but Lesley clearly does not envy introverts. She wrote,

Then there are those strange people called introverts. I have the feeling that many of these characters are so bound up with what they are doing or thinking and are so happily and securely independent that they don’t realize that extravert partners may feel shut out and neglected. I misunderstood my introvert ex-husband, because he was much more bound up in his medical practice than in what I and the children were doing or feeling. I reached the perfectly logical conclusion that he didn’t care about us. In fact he did and does, but he doesn’t want his family to take up much of his valuable time.

What Lesley was describing here was how introverts experience their sense of existence through a sense of achievement, organization and control. They often lack the social skills which extraverts acquire so easily.

Some introverts do learn the art of being sociable. Irene described her progress to me: ‘Control is important to me. Wild emotion and a lot of impinging of emotion I can’t deal with. Sex drives I could understand, but I could never understand why people were dependent on one another. Even as a child I couldn’t. There was all that marvellous, exciting world out there, and so many things to see and do. I resent people who try and restrict me from being myself, from doing what I want to do. It took me a long time to be part of a group. Right up until I was fifty I hated groups, but gradually I’ve learned to cope. I’ve done it, I feel, successfully, and it’s been a great help in my life. I remember talking to you years ago – I’d just turned thirty-six, I think, and I said to you, I just suddenly felt that everybody else felt the same sort of inadequacies, fear and anxiety as I did. I didn’t feel isolated any more. Because that’s what I felt before, that I felt this and everybody else was going along having a great time. I think that gradually in the eighties – it was doing those various personal development courses and group activities – I realized more fully that everybody’s much the same. It was good to learn to work with a group and accept a role in that group, and usually, if I’m not the leader, I’m close to the leader. I would hate to be without friends. The fact that they exist and are part of the circle that I can relate to is very comforting to me. I haven’t got perfect friends, but I’m not a perfect friend either. I can be happily occupied by myself, fiddling around with paints and looking at things, but friendships are part of the pattern of my life.’

Extraverts, as Lesley described, need other people to maintain their sense of existence, and introverts, as Irene mentioned, need other people to reduce their sense of isolation, but for extraverts relationships with other people are their top priority while for introverts the top priority is a sense of achievement. Of course, everyone wants both – good relationships and a sense of achievement – but often life forces us to choose between them. If we are wise we know what our top priority is and we make sure we fulfil it in some way. No matter how vast Fay’s work commitments are she always surrounds herself with family and friends. When Irene was diagnosed with lung cancer she chose not to go immediately into treatment. Instead she flew to Paris from Sydney to spend two weeks touring the art galleries. What mattered most to her was exploring ‘that marvellous, exciting world out there’.

Opposites, so they say, attract, and where love and sex are concerned a couple is always a pairing of an introvert and an extravert. We see in the other something we do not have. The central character in Tim Lott’s White City Blue is Frankie, an estate agent and an extravert. He says of himself,

I’ve always liked to be liked. Everyone does, I suppose. I’m just prepared to admit it. It’s more of a naked need than a desire for me. I hate it if someone doesn’t like me. And so a job which seemed to turn so much on making people like you, on making them trust you, appealed to me. And you don’t have the effort afterwards of maintaining a friendship. If you sell their flat at a good price, or find them a nice one, they love you. I get kissed, hugged, praised, thanked. It’s terrific for self-esteem. Then it’s goodbye and on to the next person to woo.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Frankie’s affairs are as transient as his customers. Then he meets Veronica. He does not understand her, but he recognizes that she has something he does not have.

As I chatted to her, I realized with a certain amount of surprise that I actually did like her – not only her looks but the way she kept herself apart from herself. There was – how can I put this – a decent gap between when she thought and when she spoke, there was consideration. It was a mark of self-possession, something I find greatly attractive for that reason. Perhaps because it’s the quality I’ve always lacked. Events sweep me up, clean my clock, leave me gasping.

(#litres_trial_promo)

We might not always be what we appear to be. A couple might appear to be two extraverts, but one of them is a socially skilled introvert; or two introverts, but one of them is a shy extravert. Where friendship is concerned, introverts can be friends with introverts and extraverts with extraverts, but often a lengthy friendship, one that withstands the changes that life brings, is between an extravert and an introvert. One of the reasons that the friendship John McCarthy and Brian Keenan formed when they were hostages together in Beirut was so strong was because John was the extravert and Brian the introvert, and each was prepared to supply what the other lacked.

However, misunderstandings and enmities can arise because one person does not understand or will not accept that the other has a different priority. Only now does Lesley see how she, the extravert, misunderstood her introvert husband. Often such misunderstandings turn into intolerance. To an extravert the introvert’s refusal to display emotion can seem to betray a complete lack of feeling, while an introvert can despise the way in which an extravert puts relationships above principle. When I was in Greece I met a designer, a woman in her fifties from New York, who told me how she had lost a friend.

She said, ‘I was invited to submit a design for a particular project. I was interested in doing this because it was something I hadn’t attempted before and it was a chance to try out some ideas, but I wasn’t passionately wedded to the design I developed. I’m too long in the tooth now to get overinvolved in the work I do, but it was interesting and I wanted feedback from the man who’d commissioned it. Well, this person was someone I’d known for years. I knew him socially as well as through work, and I thought of us as being friends, not close friends, but friends. One thing I knew about him was that he really liked to be liked. I never saw this as a problem because he’s a really likeable guy. Everybody likes him. I never thought this would take precedence over the work. Yet this is just what happened. He couldn’t bring himself to say he didn’t like my work because he thought that would mean I wouldn’t like him. That was just ridiculous. It never crossed my mind that his opinion about this piece of work would cause me to dislike him. I never think about whether I like or dislike people because on the whole I really like people. I can think of only one person I actually dislike, and that’s very personal. A lot of people I judge very harshly but I don’t dislike them. It mightn’t always be liking but I guess I feel sorry for people. Everyone gets a rotten deal one way or another. Anyway, what happened was that there was a big performance in which he talked to other people but he didn’t talk to me. The first I knew of it was when a mutual friend – you know the sort of friend who can’t get to you quick enough with bad news – rang me to say he’d spoken to her husband and of course her husband had told her. He should have just given me his opinion straight but he didn’t. It really wasn’t any big deal but at the time I thought it was important. I came to feel that he’d acted in bad faith. That’s a harsh judgement but that’s me. I think that worrying about whether people like you is a weakness.’

The lack of understanding and tolerance between an introvert and an extravert can become the basis for enmity.

Perhaps the greatest contrast between friendship and enmity is that friendships are often difficult to establish and always hard to maintain, while enmities are easy to establish and simple to maintain. Friendships always involve trying to understand another person and, in opening yourself to that person, making yourself vulnerable. Enmity always involves turning the enemy into an object which requires no understanding and, in closing yourself off from the other person, making yourself aggressive and strong. Enmity always makes us less of a human being and friendship makes us more. To achieve that more is not easy.

I have been asking people whether they find friendship easy. The consensus of opinion is that friendship is demanding and difficult.

When I asked Miles if he found it easy to make friends he said, ‘It is quite hard.’ I asked him what he found hard about it and he said, ‘Well, if there’s someone new the teachers want you to be nice to her and if you really don’t like her, or him, at all, it’s very difficult and she can’t be a real friend to you.’

‘When you meet somebody you think you might like, do you find it hard then to be friends?’

‘Sometimes, but sometimes it’s easy.’

‘What makes the difference?’

‘Well, if it’s someone you like but they’re not so keen on you, it’s quite hard. Or if you like one thing and the other person didn’t, and that person hated it and threw it away, then that would be quite hard because you’d be using it and the other person would be wrecking it.’

Miles has spent seven years of his life negotiating his friendships, first with family and family friends, and then with fellow pupils. He is a warm, outgoing boy, keenly interested in other people and in the world around him, he has the unwavering support of his parents, yet he finds friendship far from easy. How much more difficult is friendship for someone who, no matter how warm and friendly they might be, has no secure background.

Diyana was enjoying her life in Sarajevo when the war came and destroyed much of what she held dear. After enduring months of shelling and sniper fire from the Serbs she made a desperate and dangerous journey with her little daughter from Sarajevo to London, where she found asylum. I asked her, ‘How easy are you finding it to meet people here and really make friends?’

She said, ‘It’s easy to meet people, very easy, but it’s very difficult to make a friend and start a real friendship. First of all you don’t understand the people – it’s not just a matter of language, it’s a matter of a different mentality as well. Sometimes you don’t understand somebody who is maybe offering you help, maybe really wants to help you and to make a friendship with you, but you just can’t understand. It can take years and years to get used to English people. I don’t think they’re worse than my people, or that they are any worse than any people in the world, you just need time to get to know the English.’

How many times have I heard an Australian or an American say that about the English! I said, ‘Everyone who comes here says that.’

Diyana went on, ‘I find it very easy to communicate with them because they don’t ask you very much – maybe they don’t want to know much about you. In this situation it’s very good for me not to speak a lot about my past, so if they don’t ask me it’s good. But you can’t start a real relationship with somebody who doesn’t know anything about you and you don’t know anything about them. It’s maybe too idealistic to expect that. You have to ask somebody about their home town, their family, their parents.’