Forsake Thee All Others--Marriage and Friends

I got rid of a lot of stuff when I cleaned out the attic, but I did keep all the personal phone books I've had over the years. Amazing the people who are in some of those books. In a few cases, okay more then a few, I had to try and place the names with faces; I didn't really know who these people were. In other cases there was a smile as I remembered a long ago friendship, one not around any longer. It got me to thinking very seriously about this thing we call friendship.

When I was in third grade my best friend and I made a pact that we would be together as best friends for ever and always. That almost lasted until high school. My closest friend during high school I have not spoken to in dozens of years. The close friend I made the first night in the college dorm has remained my friend ad hayom. We don't see each other very often and we speak sometimes frequently, sometimes with a few weeks having passed. Neither of us gets insulted when that happens--we both know that "life" sometimes gets in the way of shmoozing.

When we lived in Flatbush my next door neighbor and I were instant "buddies" and we probably speak to each other now about once a year, before Rosh Hashanah. The woman who was my next door neighbor in the country for years was a good friend, both she and her husband and her family with me and my husband and my family. And then we stopped going to the country. And after a while phone calls started getting fewer and farther between and then they stopped altogether.

We have a large group of friends and acquaintances where we live now and around the city. And when my husband and I speak about our eventual retirement outside of New York City, we also speak of the people whom we are definitely going to keep in touch with and those who will inevitably fall by the wayside. There are fewer of the former and lots more of the latter.

When I got married I had a large circle of friends and so did my husband. We also had plenty of brothers and sisters and cousins. Not all of my friends were people my husband liked; not all of his friends were people I liked. Sometimes someone we both liked married someone that one or the other or both of us did not like. As a married couple we had "criteria" for friendship that were different then when we were single. Friendships waxed and waned. As siblings and close cousins got married the family got bigger and so did the various reasons for getting together as a family. And if it came down to attending a social event with a friend or attending a something given by a sibling, the sibling came first.

Some friends became simcha friends; they would be invited to a kiddush, a bar mitzvah or some other similar large occasion but not on a day to day basis. Other friendships simply faded away--some our choice, some their choice.

One thing remained constant: my husband. Did I have regrets about some of the friendships that faded away? Perhaps some, perhaps at the time, not now. I do not regret the journey I have gone on with my husband. I value the friends I do have, but I realize that my best friend, the one who knows me the best in the many ways that count for me, the one who will always be there for me, is my husband. My closest female friend and I have discussed this before. We've come to the conclusion that we have remained so close because neither of us would ever make it a showdown--your husband or me but not both. We both would choose our husbands. That allows us to understand each other much better.

I am very close to my youngest sister. We talk every day, sometimes multiple times. I am also very close to my mother. Between the two there is almost nothing I could not say that would cause them to view me in a funny light. Family also counts as friends.

Marriage does change friendship. There is simply not the same amount of time to spend that was there pre-marriage. Sometimes single friends don't understand this; sometimes they do. Married friends always seem to understand this, as they are going through the same things themselves. Change is an inevitable part of life; sometimes friends are lost because of that change. Sometimes that hurts; sometimes that doesn't.

It is small children who always say "Promise me that nothing will change!" Grownups know that change is a part of life. The longer you live, the more change that will happen. Friendships also are part of that change. I wouldn't want to be 18 again for any amount of money. And if that is the case, then the things I had and admired and needed when I was 18 might not fit me now either, including some friends from that time.

When I meet a friend from the long ago at a simcha we amiably chat and spend a few moments catching up but there are no bold declarations of "we really must get together again" because we know that is not going to happen. Too much water under the bridge.

Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" needs to be looked at in a new light. That choice of "roads" doesn't just happen once in a person's life; it happens many, many times. Sometimes those who travel down those various roads with you remain the same; often they do not. Value your friends while you have them, go ahead and forge those friendships. Some will last; others will not. C'est la vie.