October 2024 Diary - Friendship & the Bridesmaid Paradox
What is friendship? No seriously, ask yourself right now who your friends are and howyou know you are friends. I’ll wait.
The older I get, the more I think about this question because friendships don’t just happen anymore. When I was younger, my friendships were largely formed based on proximity. You spend all day with people going through similar life experiences, some of them are bound to click with you. But those friendships were also based on doing things together and relying on each other. We sat on buses to meets or events together, we were bored together, we borrowed books and notes from each other, we gave rides, we went grocery shopping together, we watched TV together, we were simply part of the fabric of each other’s lives.
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Of course, school ends and a couple things change - people don’t live as close together anymore, and we all start making money. Moving away from my friends has had obvious effects on the friendship - you can’t do small tasks or have impromptu hangouts nearly as easily because the transit becomes such a big burden. But money is also a nuanced friendship killer.
Once you have money, it is assumed that you will use that money to pay for services that are effortful or generally not that pleasant or exciting. But if you don’t have money, not only do you need to rely on your community more, your community expects it. And that loop of relying on your friends and allowing them to rely on you creates a flywheel for your friendships to continuously strengthen. If you don’t rely on your friends for anything and you pay for everything you need, then what are your friends really for? You can pay for movers, therapists, drivers, so are your friends just for grabbing an occasional meal?
Friendships can be based on a number of starting circumstances but to maintain them, they require proximity and/or effort. Proximity AND effort are ideal but a great friendship can be maintained with a strong showing in just one of these categories as well. However, proximity is not always guaranteed and effort seems to be steadily declining. We don’t want to do anything for our friends, we don’t want to owe them anything, BUT we still want them in our lives for some reason.
Recently, I was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding and this provided the perfect lens through which to examine this decline in effortful friendships. I’ve seen so much social media content complaining about being a bridesmaid and all the complaints seem to fall into 2 categories that stem from the same issue -
The complaining bridesmaid doesn’t actually like the bride that much (they complain about the wedding, the brides choices, etc.)
OR they don’t feel comfortable setting any boundaries with the bride (talking about money or time they can offer)
Both of these stem from the issue of not having a relationship with the bride that is built on respect and understanding and betray a fundamental lack of willingness to put in a high amount of effort for someone.
I’ve been a bridesmaid 3 times so far and I love it. First, I love being asked. Transparently, having a friend ask you to support her during such an important time is flattering. In the same vein, I like how clear cut it can be. She is specifically asking me to do certain tasks, show up at certain events, and even look a certain way so she can be happy. It’s rare to have this kind of clarity in contributing to someone’s happiness. Even though being a bridesmaid costs me time and money, I never regret it because I know my friend appreciates it so much.
But of course, being a bridesmaid is a one sided deal. For months, your friendship is pretty lopsided. Your interactions are spent talking about wedding planning and prep and much of the actual time you spend together is spent focused on her - wedding dress shopping, bridal shower, bachelorette party, the wedding itself. Even if the bride is as sweet as can be, as a bridesmaid, you are cautious about her happiness during this time and may hold back in order to preserve that for her. So despite spending so much time together, being a bridesmaid can actually make you feel less close to your friend as they might have no idea what is going on with you during this time in all your efforts to make sure their happiness is maintained as much as possible.
This is where the friendship equation can start to go wrong. Being a bridesmaid requires you to give a lot without getting a lot. Usually in a friendship there are a lot more rapid rounds of give and take. But sometimes we go through things that require prolonged asymmetric friendship. People get married, have kids, experience deaths, or have health issues. These tend to change the friendship structure for at least a few months at a time. Of course, no friendship can sustain being one sided indefinitely but part of being a friend is showing up and supporting when it counts. Increasingly, it seems people are resistant to giving too much effort to a friendship. It seems we are afraid to give so much to our friends for too long because we are terrified we will not see that effort returned back to us.
You can attribute this fear to whatever cause you want - over therapization of a generation, social media isolation, and the popularization of the gig economy are the top three social factors that come to mind for me. I could probably write a whole separate post on each of those but this is a rare instance where the cause of the issue and solution are both individual. Personally, I’ve tried to move away from low-touch one-off catchups as much as possible. My absolute favorite way to spend time with friends is to do just that. Spend time together. It’s to hang out and just run errands or help them out with something they have to do that day. I recently was staying with a friend and spent a couple hours stamping envelopes and helping her label file folders for her art shop. At this time of my life, these types of favors and interactions seem to strengthen our bond far more than a monthly brunch.
October Consumption Report
I’ve developed the following rating system, it’s half Michelin inspired and half of my own making.
5/5 - go out of your way to consume this, it is incredible, we will have endless discussions if you do. I’m obsessed.
4/5 - It is good. If you pick it up, I bet you won’t be disappointed
3/5 - Take it or leave it. It didn’t offend nor impress me
2/5 - It maybe has a couple redeemable qualities. Would not consume it knowing what I know now.
1/5 - Avoid at all costs. Go out of your way to avoid it.
Here are October ratings: My media consumption usually starts to suffer from a sharp drop off at this point in the year as the business ramps up but still got to enjoy some gems this month!
Books
Tatami Galaxy - Tomihiko Morimi (3/5
Jade War - Fonda Lee (3/5)
Jade Legacy - Fonda Lee (5/5)
Movies
Inside Out 2 (4/5)
Players (3/5)
Challengers (4/5)
Speak No Evil (4/5)
As Above, So Below (3/5)
TV Shows
Selling Sunset S8 (3/5) - this is my reality TV vice, I cannot get enough of this show
Maid (4/5)
