Friendship In A Time Of Chaos

What makes a good friend? Apart from the obvious things - having interests in common or sharing beliefs or going to the same school or working together - you should feel comfortable with your friends. They should be supportive. They should make you feel good. You should trust them. You should respect them, and they you. They should be accepting of you and your foibles and idiosyncrasies. You should be able to depend on them to have your best interests at heart. They should be empathic and sincere and positive and fun...etc...

Yep. We could all make an 'You Won't Believe These 11 Traits Your Friends Should Have!' list and compare them. Whatever...

What about when you or they or even the entire world is existing in chaos? That could mean a relationship break-up, an affair, a serious illness, being fired from a job, being cancelled on the internet, an addiction, a death, a revolt, a war, the zombie apocalypse...? What do you need from a friend in one of those circumstances?

Loyalty? Sure. Of course. You need to know that if your friend is infected they aren't going to eat your brain and will eat someone else's brain instead... Trustworthiness? Obviously, you don't want them to expose your secret hiding spot to the zombies. Honesty? This is by far the most important thing you need from your friends in all circumstances, but especially within chaos.

I don't mean 'Yea, you do look fat in that. I'M JUST BEING HONEST!!!!' I mean looking you straight in the eye and telling you 'I think you have a drinking problem' or 'Your boyfriend is abusing you and I will help you get out of here' or 'No, you shouldn't have told your boss he's a stupid bald twat! No wonder you got fired' or 'I don't think it's good for your mental health to keep going online to fight with abusive idiots' or 'You're no good with a machete. Use the baseball bat instead. And remember to go for the head.'

Your friends should be able to tell you things you don't necessarily want to hear. Your friends should be telling you what you need to know about your situation from the outside. Your friends shouldn't be enabling your bad behaviour or your destructive mindset.

More importantly than any of that, you should listen to your friends, even if what they have to say makes you uncomfortable.

I'm an obsessive pattern recogniser and have a tendency to ascribe meaning to the 'signals' I see in the noise (hence the name of this newsletter!), but over the past several years I've seen several people in my sphere navigate this whole 'friendship' thing in similar ways that have ultimately proven to be destructive. These 'bad friendship models' operate in the same way strict adherence to your social media algorithms do- reflecting yourself back to you without any new, different, or alternative viewpoints- which we all know can be profoundly destructive to individuals. Here are some of the things I've seen...

1. Fans Are Not Friends

Sometimes people you think are your friends are not friends, they are 'fans'. This is the case for anyone whether they are well-known or not. The difference between 'friend' and 'fan' mightn't be obvious in areas beyond the traditional 'performer/artist and fan' dynamic, but briefly, a friend is interested in You; a fan is only interested in what you do. A friend is someone you are interested in; a fan is someone you expect to endlessly adore you and always be positive about everything you do. This isn't set in stone, obviously. A fan can become a friend, a friend can be a fan of what you do. Some people, however, simply don't want friends, they just want fans. When I've seen these people in my spheres over the past several years, there is a trail of hurt, anger, feelings of betrayal, broken relationships, destroyed careers...

Many years ago, after the end of a "tricky" relationship when I was extremely upset and finding the whole thing difficult to understand, a friend of mine said, "He didn't want a partner, he wanted a fan" and the whole thing fell into place. I was operating under the assumption that we were friends, companions, partners and all that entailed, I hadn't worked out that the only thing that was expected of me was 'adoration'. Therefore any disagreement I may have had about anything- from what to have for dinner to what to watch on tv to when I could and couldn't speak (*sideeye emoji*)- meant that I was breaking the terms that I had unwittingly agreed to in that relationship.

If you expect everyone around to you agree with everything you say and do, to never voice their opinions that might differ from yours, or - in the extreme - you think someone is 'an enemy' because they have questioned something you have said or done, then you do not want friends, you want fans.

Look at the people you've surrounded yourself with and be honest. Do you want to have people in your life that love You for exactly who you are (warts and all) or do you want to surround yourself with people who unquestioningly tell you that you are amazing and enthusiastically express their love for everything you do? If it's the latter, may I suggest therapy?

And if you have a friend who cannot allow you to disagree with them or gets angry with you when you point out that you think differently about something, ditch them. They don't want a friend. They want an acolyte.

Fans will encourage you to walk right to the edge and applaud as you step off into oblivion... and then they'll just move straight onto their next guru. Friends will keep trying to drag you back to safety...

2. Friendship is not a Utopia

Human beings are a big, wet sack of flaws. Expecting perfection from anyone is setting yourself up for disappointment. If you've found yourself thinking or (for fuck's sake) saying that the vast majority of your (ex-) friends, colleagues or partners have been 'unsupportive' 'bitter' 'negative' 'back-stabbers' 'bullies' 'hateful' 'careerist' 'liars' 'bigots' or plain old 'arseholes', then I put it to you that the common denominator isn't that the world is shit and you are Pure and Impeccable and if everyone was exactly like you then the world would be Perfect. No, the common denominator is that you are an idiot. The problem is You.

If you find yourself expecting perfection from everyone around you, you might be seeing the world in black and white, in Good and Evil. In this fantasy world you've created, You are All Good, of course, and it follows that everything you think, say or do is All Good simply because it has come from you. If someone disagrees with or objects to something you have thought, said or did, they necessarily become All Evil in your mind. This is not normal or healthy.

If you have surrounded yourself with people who are black and white thinkers - even if only about certain topics or areas - then you don't have friends, you have fellow 'true believers'. One misstep from one of them and they will join the ranks of all the other 'arseholes' in your life... And if you take one step out of line, you will be chucked out of their world immediately.

This is not a recipe for happiness.

It's OK to wish for a Utopia, as long as you understand that it is never possible to achieve. People are imperfect. Society evolves in a messy way. You are an idiot. So are your friends.

3. 'Friends=Good And Good=Correct Therefore Friends=Correct' Is A Dumb As Fuck Formula

Life isn't maths.

I see this a lot: Someone's friend says something stupid as hell and gets a lot of crap for it. Instead of simply supporting their friend in private or even supporting their friend's 'right' to their own opinions, they (publicly) agree with their friend's stupid as hell pronouncement and decide that anyone who objected to the stupid as hell crap that spewed from their friend's dumb face is Evil.

They seem to be operating under the misapprehension that they must be in total agreement with their 'friend' about absolutely everything. They are either in a situation described under 1 where their 'friend' requires them to be a 'fan' or they have faulty thinking as described in 2 where they've doomed themselves by believing in a Utopia. Maybe both.

I also see this when people behave in a way that is out-of-character and the people (fans) they've surrounded themselves with defend their behaviour. The out-of-character behaviour can be something minorly anti-social - for example, belittling, attacking or shaming someone who really should just be ignored - or it might be something that hints at a potentially serious mental health issue - for example, obsessive angry posting on social media on multiple sites for hours and hours every day. Because they are guilty of confusing friends and fans or are chasing perfection, they believe that anyone pointing out their 'bad behaviour' is 'an enemy'.

I personally know several people like this - if you know me well, I'm sure you can guess at least a couple of them - and when people (including me) who have considered these people friends have expressed concern about their out-of-character behaviour, they were met with huge amounts of aggression. (Ah. OK. They just want 'fans' not friends. Fine. That isn't for me. Bye, dude...) And then they will block anyone who has questioned them and often they will publicly denounce their concerned (now-former) friends as 'traitors' opening the doors to the misbehaver's army of 'fans' who go on to attack the former friends.

It's OK for your friends to say dumb shit sometimes. It's also OK for you to say 'I don't agree with you' to them, or for them to say it you. If none of your friendships are like this right now, you might want to re-think things going forward.

4. Friends Are Not A Magic Money* Tree

* replace with Support/Help/Time/etc as needed.

Everyone has their own shit to deal with, including your friends. We all have a finite amount of energy and time. It's unfair for you to expect others to give you everything you want, when you want it.

If you find yourself thinking about a friend 'they have something I want and they should give it to me', you don't want a friend, you want a benefactor. If you find yourself often asking your friend for advice only to ignore it every time and continue to do dumb shit, you don't want a friend, you need a therapist. If you find yourself getting angry at your friend because they've turned down your invitation to go out again because they are staying in to look after their little kids, you... are just a solipsistic dick.

You don't deserve anything from any of your friends - or anyone else for that matter - simply for existing. I think of it like this: if I was the only person on Earth, I'd be free to do whatever I wanted. I could live where I wanted, eat what I wanted, travel where I wanted, do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I'd be completely free and entirely in control of myself... Does the introduction of other people onto the planet mean that I am entitled to MORE - more of other people's food, other people's money, other people's time, help, support...?

I don't think it does. We're all here trying to get on and get along. You getting angry at friends because they don't spend enough time talking to you, messaging you, doing things for you, going out with you, doing favours for you, giving money to you... is super uncool. They aren't the jerks, you are. I'm not saying we shouldn't look out for each other, not at all. I'm saying that when you start expecting things from your friends and getting angry when they don't give you those things, you are being selfish and anti-social.

5. Friends don't let friends delude themselves.

If you see someone behaving in ways that you think are potentially dangerous, is it OK to tell them that you are concerned about the direction they are heading in and that it would be better for them to stop? How about this: If someone is driving along a road that you know is absolutely packed with zombies ahead, it's perfectly acceptable to try to flag them down and stop them continuing, right? It is. Of course it is… Surely, it should also be OK to do something similar when it comes to a friend heading down a treacherous path when it comes to their health or their mental health (or their career or their relationship...)... but so often for so many it really isn't fine- either on the giving or receiving end.

I know I am wary about giving that kind of advice because of experiences like this, that I wrote about before:

Several years ago, I was friendly with someone who was all 'be kind'. This person had told me about an extremely minor issue they were dealing with. I say 'extremely minor' because the solution to this problem was trivial. It was similar to someone saying "Ugh. All the windows are open, it's winter and my house is FREEZING. It's terrible. I'm so cold. I can't warm up at all. My feet hurt, they're so cold. I feel awful and so upset. I just don't know what to do..." And my reply was the equivalent of "Why not just shut your windows?" This apparently wasn't the 'kind' thing to do. I was simply supposed to offer sympathy, not possible solutions.

I was told I had no empathy.

It's as if saying 'be kind' or repeating the word 'empathy' is magic. That all we need to do is close our eyes, spin around 3 times and repeat 'be kind' over and over and all of the problems in the world will disappear. We don't need to think of practical solutions. We don't need to think of, you know, REALITY. We just need to say that we are feeling 'empathy' and that's good enough. 'Who cares if you have frostbite?? I have an entirely hidden feeling of empathy for you. That's enough...'

But IN THE REAL WORLD, if your windows are open, it's freezing and you are unbearably cold, I don't just say ‘I'm super empathic and I just feel so sad for you that you are cold.’ I CLOSE THE FUCKING WINDOWS...

I have no qualms about saying that I think that person was deluding themselves. The issue they were dealing with wasn't huge or insurmountable. In fact, it was actually less serious than the analogous 'open window' example I gave, but continuing on the path they were on, however, wasn't heading to anywhere good/positive/happy. It was just a lot of needless upset, worry and misery ahead of them. "Shutting the window" would end that misery pretty quickly. It was pretty clear to me what they should have done... but their response showed me that they wanted to remain in their deluded, unhappy state because it was giving them something they needed (ie it showed they were 'a victim').

Look, I'm not interested in colluding with a friend and pretending that they are ill when they are fine, happy when they are in a terrible relationship, doing genius work when they are churning out sub-par 'product', thinking or behaving rationally when it's clear they're eyebrow deep in the crazy weeds... sometimes I'm comfortable telling a friend what I really think... and sometimes I'm not because I know they won't be receptive to it. And when I don't feel I can tell them what I really think, then I find it hard to engage with them at all. I'm not going to lie. And I'm not going to silently prop up their delusion. I'm not prepared to be told (again) that I'm an evil, awful, horrible human being for doing what we should all be doing: looking out for our friends. So sometimes, it seems, we just may have to choose to let go of friends who prefer their delusions to reality... and stick even closer to those who are comfortable continuing to find the light and the hope and the happiness and the good inside the chaos.