'Six Forces That Fuel Friendship'

A friend sent me this article in The Atlantic from June 10, 2022 — 'The Six Forces That Fuel Friendship' written by Julie Beck. The writer is a senior editor at the journal heading the Family section. She created 'The Friendship Files' in 2019; it was a weekly series of interviews distilled into articles that "tells stories of human life through conversations with friends". 

The final instalment of the series is the 100th interview the editor published on June 10, 2022 in which she spoke with "two women who were brought together by an extraordinary act of courage". It's titled 'She Wouldn’t Exist if Not for Her Friend’s Family'. I'm not talking about this conversation today.

In this article that is like a summary of the writer's insights about friendship, and finding similarity in topics and in the recurring themes that float up in her 100 interviews with friends, Julie Beck said,

Saying goodbye to this series is bittersweet. These conversations have felt different from any other interviews I’ve done. In them, I’ve not only heard about friendships, but witnessed them in real time—how the friends talk and joke together, how they remind each other of their shared history. I never did a single interview that I didn’t publish; every friendship has a story. I’m so grateful to the hundreds of people who have welcomed me into their relationships. Being trusted with your stories has been one of the greatest honors of my life.

My friend likes this series of interviews done by Julie Beck. She wanted me to check out the neatly categorised factors that sustain friendships or aid in the creation of them. There're many articles discussing about these factors, it's up to you how you want to categorize them or accept these stock since someone else already penned it for you. In this opinion piece about 'The Six Forces That Fuel Friendship', Julie Beck proposed that,

Though every bond evolves in its own way, I have come to believe that there are six forces that help form friendships and maintain them through the years: accumulation, attention, intention, ritual, imagination, and grace.

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All of the forces I’ve mentioned so far—accumulation, attention, intention, ritual, and imagination—are ideals. They’re impossible to fully live up to. Life often gets in the way.

Accumulation : through time and hours spent together, either over a long period in terms of years, or a short intense week of hours. 

Attention : to pay attention to people, to catch the nuances of body language or words as being welcoming or otherwise and have both parties be open to a friendship regardless of age.

Intention : it's like courtship, we gotta make some time and effort to ask after the other person, to extend invites and accept them in return, because no relationship can grow without intention. 

Ritual : a regular schedule of whatever it is that friends do. Cards, gaming, meals, gym, etc. This gets a bit hard if friends don't live in the same city or the same country. 

Imagination : We would have to design our lives so that our friendships play the role we want them to. Too many conventional societies and social norms emphasise 'family' bonds over friendship. You can choose to redefine that.

and Grace : we stop sweating the small stuff. we don't be calculative over who did this and who did more. We forgive each other when one falls short. 

'Accumulation' is a very scary thing for me. I don't fancy spending many hours with friends daily in that sense. I would be exhausted. This sort of frequent contact doesn't work for an introvert like me. This explains why I don't have many friendships with schoolmates from school days. Frequent daily contact doesn't make someone my friend. Also, we didn't plan a murder or execute a heist together, nothing traumatic or remarkable shared that would etch schoolmates in my memories forever. I think my friendships are all built from years of meaningful non-daily regular contact. My colleagues or ex-colleagues aren't my friends either. 

At the end of the day, whether two persons are friends is entirely dependent on their characters and fundamental principles in life. If we don't see eye-to-eye on many things, then it's tough to sustain a friendship, and I'm not talking about whether we like Harry and Meghan or William and Kate. These people don't feature in our lives greatly; if we have a differing view, we simply chat and drop it. But if someone insists on going deep into it, or insists that Donald Trump is wonderful, then my gawwwd, I don't need this juvenile rubbish. 

Friendships are my primary relationships in this life. Not the conventional definition of 'family' ties. This isn't a relationship outlook many understand. I happen to be one of those who do not place priority on these conventional family ties and highly resent it. To that, I've built my own family through friendships, and these friendships have stood the test of time, and various hiccups and milestones. I'm thankful for that. My friends in the outer circle might not place me as priority over family, and they don't need to. And I don't need that. My inner circle of friends do. 

I seek for 'Grace' in my relationships. When I do things for people, I don't tabulate if they can 'return the favor' in future, or I consciously 'rack up brownie points' to have a standing credit with people in order to call in favors. I'll simply do what I can, and not sell a kidney to do so, and be perfectly at ease saying 'no' to requests that I'm not comfortable with.

This friend who sent me the article? She lives in Bangkok. She's a few years older than I am. We've known each other for two decades. Heh. We meet when we can. Otherwise, we're only a text away from each other, and we text often. We converse mainly in Thai because she insists that I have to practice the language, and as a professor of social policy and community development at the university, she's in a perfect position to lecture me about it. She's also one of those who will flag newsworthy topics and send me links to articles that I tend not to have read. Heh.