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frenemies
October 20, 2009, 1:02 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

I just listened to a podcast exploring ‘frenemies’ – friends who are also enemies, or friends who aren’t really that great friends. It’s on This American Lifewhich I think is one of the best podcasts around.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

Early on it asks the question: why do we keep friendships we don’t actually like? There are two cases I was thinking about in my life while they explored this one. The first was a friend who I basically grew out of and she never grew up and actually she fired me. The cheek! and in the usual way – just faded away so that I wouldn’t have even known if my brother-in-law hadn’t mentioned he was going to her wedding and I didn’t even know about it.

The second was a person I was really there for. Over and over and over again I listened for hours to her problems. But I was never invited to her good times.  After years of this I was exhausted and more than a little pissed off – I faded away.

I thought – as I learned that people have incredible stamina and staying power for lousy friends – I thought what good training for husbands. Because if women (and women are the principal owners of frenemies it turns out) if women learnt to be more disposable and consumer oriented with their friends they wouldn’t last as long with their mates.




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