Oh gosh, I think friendships are incredibly complicated even though they seem simple. My closest RL friend and I were just discussing this topic on Sunday.
My mother often chides me that I don't have enough friends. She's a woman who's had two exceptionally close friends from her early childhood that are still with her, though they are across the country. She has other friends she made when I was a child, and those bonds are still active, for the most part. I envy that.
I had a few very close friends in elementary school, but am in sporadic contact with only one of them. The others, I don't even know where they are now. I had 2 close friends in high school... same story. I made a phenomenally good friend in college, and I married him! Since then, my close friendships are often interconnected with his.
I think "friendship", in its purest form is something that we all ascribe to, but rarely achieve. Like all relationships, a friendship needs to be cultivated, fed, sheltered and cared for. This is hard to do in today's world, for a variety of reasons. And no matter how hard we work at a friendship, the liklihood is that it will fade with time. This fade can start with diverging interests, or a change in proximity, circumstance or what have you. I've experienced this so many times before, it's almost routine... and how sad is that?
I find that online friendships are similar to RL ones, but in the majority of cases, their lifespan is considerably shorter. For example, I have 2 cyber-friendships that started on TORn that are still as strong and true 3+ years after they began (here's a hint, one of them is my friendship with you). Others that were formed around the same time were more intense for a period, but faded very, very quickly once interests began to shift. This is most true of the friendships I made when I was writing that collective fiction Elf-Hunt and subsequent works like Elenya.
Does that make a cyber-friendship any less valid than a RL one? It depends on how much significance you attach to a given person, and their place in your life. For example, you and I have made contact with each other outside of fandom. We each have tangible evidence that the other cares about us. We've made the effort to keep our initial acquaintance/friendship growing. That's more than a lot of people do with/for their online connections.
Boy, I can get long-winded. Sorry 'bout that. FWIW, I appreciate you making this post. It's helped me to express a lot of what I was trying to say to my RL friend the other day. I'll leave you with the following quip about friendship:
A friend will come and bail you out of Jail. A true friend will be sitting beside you, saying "Damn, we screwed up."
I think the point you make about friendship needing effort is certainly true, and that the more points of connection there are, the deeper and (probably) longer-lasting a friendship will be. If the only thing that connects two people is just a single shared interest, then as interests change, the connection is almost certain to break. If there are multiple shared interests and affinities and ideas, as one diminishes, others may grow stronger.
Friendships aren't easy... but they are so worthwhile.
My mother often chides me that I don't have enough friends. She's a woman who's had two exceptionally close friends from her early childhood that are still with her, though they are across the country. She has other friends she made when I was a child, and those bonds are still active, for the most part. I envy that.
I had a few very close friends in elementary school, but am in sporadic contact with only one of them. The others, I don't even know where they are now. I had 2 close friends in high school... same story. I made a phenomenally good friend in college, and I married him! Since then, my close friendships are often interconnected with his.
I think "friendship", in its purest form is something that we all ascribe to, but rarely achieve. Like all relationships, a friendship needs to be cultivated, fed, sheltered and cared for. This is hard to do in today's world, for a variety of reasons. And no matter how hard we work at a friendship, the liklihood is that it will fade with time. This fade can start with diverging interests, or a change in proximity, circumstance or what have you. I've experienced this so many times before, it's almost routine... and how sad is that?
I find that online friendships are similar to RL ones, but in the majority of cases, their lifespan is considerably shorter. For example, I have 2 cyber-friendships that started on TORn that are still as strong and true 3+ years after they began (here's a hint, one of them is my friendship with you). Others that were formed around the same time were more intense for a period, but faded very, very quickly once interests began to shift. This is most true of the friendships I made when I was writing that collective fiction Elf-Hunt and subsequent works like Elenya.
Does that make a cyber-friendship any less valid than a RL one? It depends on how much significance you attach to a given person, and their place in your life. For example, you and I have made contact with each other outside of fandom. We each have tangible evidence that the other cares about us. We've made the effort to keep our initial acquaintance/friendship growing. That's more than a lot of people do with/for their online connections.
Boy, I can get long-winded. Sorry 'bout that. FWIW, I appreciate you making this post. It's helped me to express a lot of what I was trying to say to my RL friend the other day. I'll leave you with the following quip about friendship:
A friend will come and bail you out of Jail.
A true friend will be sitting beside you, saying "Damn, we screwed up."
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I think the point you make about friendship needing effort is certainly true, and that the more points of connection there are, the deeper and (probably) longer-lasting a friendship will be. If the only thing that connects two people is just a single shared interest, then as interests change, the connection is almost certain to break. If there are multiple shared interests and affinities and ideas, as one diminishes, others may grow stronger.
Friendships aren't easy... but they are so worthwhile.
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