Teenage dork fest

[neverdoubt]

My mom saw one of my junior high friends the other day. She asked for my e-mail address, my mom gave it to her, and I just got an e-mail from her this afternoon. This is a person I grew up with. We were very close in the fifth through eighth grades, but we lost touch over the years

Comments

Re: one is silver and the other iron pyrite.

[madprophet]

It's tough to maintain friendships with people you don't see (one of the HUGE benefits of LJ), so maybe that accounts for the cycles. As it happens, I still have several close friendships with people I knew in high school, though many of them weren't friends when I knew them in High school.

Here's another contraversial point of cynicism: I believe that I (and probably everyone else) have room for only a certain number of friendships at any given time. This is probably because of the fact that bonds of friendship require energy and maintenance. There is a limit. Which means that since I've held on to so many friendships from the old days, I don't make new friends easily. What makes this theory so contraversial is the extension into family dynamics. You know that trite story about the young child who throws fits because the new baby is getting all the attention? Mom tells him "just because I love the baby doesn't mean I have to love you any less." The whitest of lies. The new baby will cost that child some portion of his mother's love. Not the degree to which she loves him, but the degree to which he will feel her love.

Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say that arithmetic rules apply. A second child does not cut the love in half. But the expressions of love will probably be distributed between the children--and because those gestures take energy, like maintenance of friendships, there is also a limit.

You can't promote something that doesn't exist

[neverdoubt]

I am an only child. That's the problem. :)

I wonder if, when and if I become a parent, the old adage that you love all of your children equally will hold true.

Yes, and I think what we're talking about here has a lot to do with the difference between friends and acquaintances.