Friendship is... really... Bullshite

One thing stands out very clearly amongst the most intelligent and emotionally-mature individuals I've had the pleasure of interacting with: They keep to themselves.

What does 'keep to themselves' mean?

While maintaining wide networks of trusted co-workers and subordinates, and sometimes even helping acquaintances through difficult personal times, these individuals do not 'hang out' with others. They will say they have friends, but in reality, they are very private individuals.

On a 'real' level, this has puzzled me. How can these people not want friends? As in true friends whom you share anything under the sun with?

Yet, on the instinctive level, I have always felt that this is the right and, most importantly, INEVITABLE way to go. Somehow, I've always known that this thing called 'friendship' is really Utopian.

And recently, the rationale has become even clearer than the hazy instinctive leaning. That I have been asking the wrong questions all this while. I have been asking 'how can anyone not want friends?', when I should have been asking 'Is it possible to find a friend?'.
...............................................................................

I'd always thought I had a good friend in X. I've known him for at least 6 years. I believe we have been sharing thoughts and feelings about most things under the sun.

To me, he is an intelligent individual who can achieve anything in life if he sets his mind to it.

A couple of years after we got to know each other, we each got attached to our partners respectively. Double-dating was something we tried and enjoyed.

Like most people, he has had his fair share of problems. Work, relationship, family, aspirations etc. He tries to manage them through various means... sharing with friends... turning to religion... maintaining work-life balance etc.

In the recent months, X started to bitch an abnormal lot...
At first, it was about this friend he had back in secondary school, who has gone onto living his dream in Australia in terms of lifestyle, career etc... then the focus of the bitchings shifted onto a common friend's partner who is supposedly an intelligent good looker.

X started to fill our MSN chats with pictures from these people's blogs, facebooks, getting me to read about their lives... alot... 'Alot' refers to every MSN conversation, every dinner etc... as if he was sharing with me tidbits and pictures of superstars or some public figures... making comments such as,"It's not easy having a relationship with someone so good-looking."

This persistent behaviour triggered alarm bells in my head. Because obsessing about someone else's partner is definitely not a good sign, I asked X if everything was really fine between his partner and him. He said everything was fine.

Then I asked if X was jealous/envious of our friend's relationship with his good-looker partner and/or his sec school friend's lifestyle which he would like to have. X started to deny everything and blame his job. After that, the conversation went dead.

I tried to revive our conservation a few days later, then a few weeks later... And nothing. I don't even see him on MSN anymore.

Huh? Whatever happened to our 6-year old 'friendship'?
What a perfect waste of a perfectly intelligent brain on a perfect case of self-denial.

What's the moral of the story?

• Loads of people live their lives in denial, and as a 'friend', you should be the last person to point that out.
• That people do not want real friends. 'Friends' do not want your honest opinion to help them improve or solve their problems. They just want someone to complain to.
• The popular definition of 'friendship' is really just as superficial as those people's relationships of which they have previously dismissed disapprovingly.
• Most people are desperate to have friends and so subscribe to these distorted definitions and modes of 'friendships'.
• Hence, the value and nature of what's commonly known as 'friendship' out there... is... really... bullshite.

Or perhaps, Blinkymummy simply sucks at selecting friends.

I should really just take a leaf out of the books of those intelligent and emotionally-mature people, and accept that it is really not possible to connect with another human being in an honest fashion.