The concept of a Best Friend.

In the few days I spent at a friend’s house, we’ve both decided to take that term out of our vocabulary.

Being someone’s Best Friend is a fickle position. It changes with the wind, and implies being put on a pedestal to a degree where the fall from grace is both brutal and merciless. It’s a disservice to both parties, it’s the mutual creation of a myth.

I know I’ve had my trail of Best Friends, each changing with the person I happened to be at the time. It’s like a new pair of pretty shoes, or a fashionable bag. They all only last a season before things change, and they ‘re replaced with someone who ‘gets you’ the way you are at the moment, better than the previous person.

I was discussing the subject matter with D, and he said “Primary? Secondary? Why can’t you just be friends?”

I found it just really funny, because it’s impossible for me not to think of people in hierarchical terms.

It’s always been my Primary(s), then my Secondary friendships.

Primaries are the people closest to me who satisfy that need to connect that need for closeness, to bounce off ideas, and with whom I put up no barriers or very little distance. They’re confidants, they’re the people I feel ‘get it’ the most. There’s that intense empathy, or simpatico, as S calls it.

Secondary friendships can be friends of friends with whom you don’t have much of a relationship with, or simply people you get along well with, but the friendship is kept at a superficial level. There is no desire on the other person to give any depth or weight to the interaction, aside from lighthearted fun.

The problem with a Best Friend is that the moment the person acquires that title, a shitton of responsibilities and expectations are dumped on each other. They’re placed so high on a pedestal, and view through such rose-tinted glasses, that they’re put in a position where they can’t help but fail.

There’s also this notion of Best Friends Forever, but really, none of them last that long, and the position is easily filled before the predecessor is even cold.

A friend and I came to the conclusion that we’re each other’s ‘constant’. We’re the thing that’s always been there though the years, undemanding, yet always there. It feels like a neutral friendship, but with all the qualifications of a primary. The depth is there, the weight is there, but no one dumps unrealistic BFF expectations or demands your typical BFF behavior, simply that general feeling of stability.

We also used the term ‘priority’ to qualify people who fit as primaries. So it’s not about having a ‘bestie’, it’s about the few people you give priority over everyone else, because they get it.

Unrealistic expectations are always the beginning of the end.