Frankly Put: Dissecting Adult Friendships
Over the past year, I have consistently been interrogating what it means to be in an adult relationship and all the benefits and challenges that come with it. I have also, on numerous occasions, come to accept that I have used “adulting” as a scapegoat excuse for failing in my friendship with others.
Adulting, as we call it, has been a quiet getaway from situations where in truth there was some level of negligence and fear to truly express self. “Why didn’t you pick up my call?” Adulting — Pronounced as “I really didn’t want to talk to you. “How come we never meet up?” Adulting — Pronounced as “I see no value in this interaction and I would rather let it wither away than outwardly say that it should be cut off. “What have you been up to?” Adulting — Pronounced as “Finding new ways to get quicker solutions to problems I can no longer confide in you about.”
It’s an adult relationship but feels more juvenile than the friendships made on the playground in nursery school. Now don’t get me wrong, when I talk about relationships here, I am referring to the actual interaction between people and not just the romantic sense, though that can also be thrown in for extra credit. Still, why is it that those bonds created in childhood feel deeper and more interconnected than adult ones?
This may only be a relative comparison but lately, the cracks in the wall have formed and they are creeping ever so confidently. I’m sick of covering them up with plaster, lying to myself that the wall is as solid as it used to be. It is not as simple, if I genuinely want to address the problem. Truth is, even if I try to avoid it, fate will bring me back to face it over and over again until there is nothing left but to address it.
One thing that I can say I have picked up by looking through one of the cracks in the wall is the ease of connection. Lately, it hasn’t been quite so easy to interact and feel that connection. There is always this deeper want for more that makes the relationship as is feel superficial. It speaks to a lack of, that takes something so beautiful and places an emptiness to it that feels overwhelmingly loud. No one can be everything to you but everyone can be more than nothing to you and maybe it could be something.
If I could use an analogy to place it correctly in an emotion, I would say it is like having a car radio that has a less than decent antennae. You can catch radiowaves and yes, something will come through the speakers and every so often you can make it out just enough to enjoy it but it is always shrouded by static that makes the music feel irritating to listen to, regardless of how much you turn the volume up or down. Inevitably, you keep changing stations to try and find the cleanest station just to avoid the silence in the car ride. Whatever you feel reading that, is what it feels like.
Second is, there is this lack of comfort that is emotionally indigestible. I have, in a previous reflection, spoken about creating spaces where (at least as a man) you are able to express vulnerability but what happens when it seems like such a space will never exist for you? Like walking in a house of rooms, every door you open has a window for people to look through but you want a fully enclosed room or at the very least some curtains for the window. Unfortunately, some rooms go so far as to lack walls all the same.
What’s worse, is being that very space for people, watching them grow and be better for it and not seeing it for yourself. Like, you can create the space for others without trying but can’t for yourself when trying? That’s bloody weird and off-putting. He says as if he is a third party watching it all happen before him. The possible thought is that there is a case for being incapable but that comfort once existed, so what happened? Adulting.
I always thought adult friendships were just childhood friendships that matured. They were friendships that were found in office spaces and corridors of university. Within them there is maturity. Within them lies the space for opportunities, talks about development, mortgages, stocks and shares. It was so romanticized in my brain that the possibility of there not being such scenarios seemed foreign. Yet here I am.
No one ever really spoke about times when childhood friendships would be just that, never more. That office spaces would be full of corporate laughs, as per last emails and so much boot-licking, there isn’t room for deeply meaningful relationships beyond that 5 pm clock-out. That uni corridors get lonely after a while and graduation makes sure of it. That coming home after moving out isn’t quite the escape, when what greets you are dishes you never got the chance to wash in the morning.
Still, there is a want to find the space where names are spoken in rooms of opportunity. Where there is a comfort that never deteriorates. Where connections feel just as strong as the day they are created. Intentionality creates these spaces but sometimes there is no one to share these spaces with and it sucks. Busy will always be but making time is where it counts. Growing apart but doing it together sounds like the name of the game.
Still, I will hold the spaces, clap for the wins and share the joys, extend the table so more can eat at it and every so often feed that inner child because one day, adult friendships will allow me to feel like a child on the playground. It isn’t the “adult" in the friendship that makes it impure but the inability to undergo metamorphosis.
Maybe one day, it would be enjoyable to find every part of adult friendships in someone that I discovered in its dissection to put it Frankly.
