Friendship

I want to write about friendship. I have learned from a very knowledgeable confidant that our friendships are related to our attachment styles. We develop these styles based on our very first attachment, or bond – with our mother – the human being out of which we emerged and upon whom we depended for our very survival.

I never thought much about this first bond, until now. Upon reflection, I realized my mother would take care of me, then withdraw toward her own interests. Mom was a smart woman. The role of a 1950’s housewife left her needing more. She tried the wifely thing, but ultimately enrolled in nursing school, then went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, and a PhD. I admired her guts and independence. Her income from “pushing bedpans” during the night shifts at the hospital put me through college.

I need to be clear; this is not about blaming my mom.  However, based on her nurturing style of ‘in and out’, for a long time, I didn’t believe women could be depended upon. Over the years, I learned to trust and to understand the importance of these friendships. Now, as I age, with both parents and my sister gone, as well as having no children of my own, my women friends have become essential.

Also, as I have grown, I experience my feelings more acutely. No where is it more apparent than in these close relationships.

When friends couldn’t talk about their ‘feelings,’ I thought they were hiding something, and I felt the disconnect.

Or when we would have a time of deep communication and they wouldn’t text or call for a long time, I thought I’d either imagined the close connection or they just didn’t like what I had revealed.

When someone ‘went dark’, I was deeply hurt. If I were to admit it, all of these disconnects would result in me feeling unloved and unlovable. Very much like the way I felt as a child.

As you can see in the above examples, each of these instances reflected an infant’s need for security and bonding. Infants are not verbal.

This search for understanding has come up because of my confusion over my relationships with dear friends, whom I hoped would be with me into my old age.  

I wouldn’t have even understood my confusion without my friend’s guidance about attachment styles.

In the weeks since then, I have understood that my girlfriends have their own attachment styles based upon the way in which they were nurtured, or not, by their mothers. Their responses toward me are not a reflection of my lovability. Each of these friends have shown love to me in different ways, I simply hadn’t understood this as it came in a form that didn’t feel nurturing to my preverbal (unconscious) self.

I now sense a relaxation of my heart as I accept what I was unconsciously motivated by in my relationships. So, in accepting not only myself, but my wonderful friends, life has gotten much easier.

All of these understandings came to me as I walked with this dear friend upon the Tall Grass Prairie in Oklahoma, on the ranch land given to the Nature Conservancy in the 90’s and upon which 200 head of bison were released onto the original Big Bluestem grasses.

I write this with much love and appreciation to my friend and gifted therapist, Lynda Jacobs.