musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Troops of friends


“Do you ever have trouble with your friends, G?”

We were walking along the Stanley Park seawall at the time, and I hadn’t expected a question like that from Arvid; we’d been good friends since our university days -we’d even roomed together for a few semesters then to save on expenses. We’d both acted as best man at each other’s weddings, and had continued to support each other through the years -and divorces. Unlike me however, Arvid had always made friends easily; they seemed attracted to him like lint to the screen in a clothes drier. In fact, I sometimes wondered if that had been what led to his divorce -just as my relative lack of friends had contributed to mine.

‘You’re always around nowadays, G,’ my ex used to complain. ‘When you get home from work, you just follow me around the house… Why don’t you go out for a beer with Arvid like you used to? I’m really going to need some time to myself when you’re retired,” she’d add crossly, rolling her eyes and folding her arms impatiently across her chest.

But, I didn’t need other people; Arvid did, though, and he had such a brilliant mind, people liked to hang around with him -including me before I got married.

“Why did you ask about trouble with friends, Arv?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t referring to me. True, even after my divorce, I hadn’t been with with him as much as in the old days; he was often busy whenever I texted him -paths diverge, things are never the same.

He glanced at me, shrugged, and then concentrated on the ships anchored in Burrard Inlet waiting to unload. “I’m beginning to think I have too many, G.”

I had trouble disguising my surprise. “When did you decide that?” I managed to sputter. “Or, rather, why…?

He shrugged and paid my eyes a surprise, although quick, visit. “When it became clear that some friendships are really unequal, lopsided… When I realized that my friends often have completely different expectations of the relationship…” He re-focussed on the faraway ships. “Remember Simone de Beauvoir?” he suddenly asked.

I had to smile at that; Arvid was an even hungrier reader than me, and his books were stacked higgledy-piggledy on shelves, counters, dressers -any surface flat enough to accommodate a pile in his tiny condo. They didn’t seem to be organized by topic, author, or even colour -they just lay wherever he stored them when he’d finished.

“Anyway, I was reading the first part of her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter -the translated version, of course,” he was quick to clarify, although I have no doubt he could have managed it in its original French. “She was writing about her close relationship with Zaza Lacoin, a childhood friend. It was that friendship that caused Beauvoir to reflect on what friendship actually meant. Theirs was somewhat unequal, apparently, and it made her realize that its existence did not constrain either side to feel the same about each other. Indeed, the freedom allowed each side to maintain a degree of agency in their relationship -it’s what fostered its authenticity, she felt.”

I smiled at him again, and rolled my eyes. “Friends are just friends, Arv. They don’t swear oaths like marriage partners; they have no contractual obligations -just loyalty, I suppose. And even that is contingent…”

He shrugged, and tried to stifle a sigh. “Some of them don’t even want to look for the boundaries, G. They confuse their feelings…”

He didn’t elaborate, but I knew a little about De Beauvoir’s Memoir. She, if I remembered correctly, had felt more than friendship for her friend Zaza, and the feelings were not reciprocated in kind, I don’t think. They both loved each other, but in different ways. She alluded to the different types boundaries of friendship in another of her books, The Second Sex as well, I believe. Of all the authors we’d both read, I initially wondered about his choice of de Beauvoir, although I was pretty sure I knew.

“I think friendships are all like that, Arv: thrusts and parries probing the nature of their edges.”

He stared out into the harbour again, as if I’d got it wrong.

“Marriages are certainly like that, anyway,” I pointed out, although needlessly, given our histories.

He retrieved his eyes from the anchored ships in the harbour for a moment, and sent them on a reconnaissance mission to my face again. “But that’s my point, G. Different things are expected of a marriage partner: less freedom, I suppose -less ‘you and me’, and more us -as if the marriage contract stipulated rules that forget that I am an I only for me, and on the other hand, always an object to you. We cannot merge -and indeed if that were even possible, what I would be loving would actually be me…”

He risked another quick survey of my face. “I sometimes wonder whether I should ever have got married, you know…”

Arvid’s thoughts were often similar to how I used to colour when I was a kid: outside the usually accepted lines provided. I joined his eyes staring at the ships bobbing far out in the harbour, not knowing whether or not to say I agreed with him. I knew him too well…

“So…” I paused to gather the words I needed to pretend I didn’t know where he was going with this. “… So, how is this different with friends? Aren’t there still those subject/object constraints? I mean, friend or not, I am still a me only to me…” I felt myself getting confused with all this me/you stuff. He was trying to tell me something, that he felt he couldn’t; it was why he’d used the example of de Beauvoir and her ‘inseparable friend’ Zaza.

At any rate, knowing him as well as I did, I’d long suspected that his marriage would never last; it was just the children that had kept them together.

“But that’s just what I’ve been trying to say, G. If somebody enters a friendship with motives, is it really a friendship, or an opportunity…?” He shook his head as if the answer were obvious to both of us.

I tried to put on a knowing smile, all the while realizing he had thought things through far more thoroughly than me. “I suppose a friend at least adds an outside perspective on things, Arv…”

Arvid sighed and when his eyes finally perched on my cheeks, they looked lost; they felt lost. “But it may not be a perspective I’m happy with, G -it’s usually their own and it’s selfish because they don’t really want to know me.”

I shrugged at that. “Then they’re not really friends are they?”

He shook his head slowly and pretend-punched my shoulder. “Sometimes I think you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had, G,” he said and looked quickly away, embarrassed.

“It’s time for a coffee, don’t you think?” I said, to change the subject for him.

His face relaxed and a smile returned. “I was thinking lunch, actually… it’s your turn to pay, I believe.”

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