OPTIONAL FRIENDSHIP: YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

An optional friendship depends on time and place. But it’s not your time or your place.

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

“I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to do anything, but in between my schedule, my plans, my obligations, my interests, my work, my obsessions, my fears, we should get together sometime.”

“Great how about getting together next . . .”

“I’m busy that day.”

Some friendships, optional friendships, and they’re all optional, sound like a song from the 1970’s.

This song:

Well I tried to make it sunday, but I got so damn depressed
That I set my sights on monday and I got myself undressed
I ain’t ready for the altar but I do agree there’s times
When a woman sure can be a friend of mine

Let’s break it down.

They had plans for Sunday, but one of them had a mental health moment that lasted until Monday. Did they explain it before not showing up?

It sounds like they got dressed to go, got to the door, and froze. It happens. Who is going to say otherwise?

So, for the good of all they changed out and went back to bed.

This makes sense? If it does, the next two lines blur things.

Did someone leave their beloved at the altar? They were getting married on Sunday? Sounds like a wedding opt out to me. But the woman is still a friend?

That’s not how it works, ladies and gentleman. This is how it really works:

The Best Kind Of Friend

From the personal file, I’ve found an example that refutes the idea that leaving a woman at the altar won’t affect the relationship.

I met someone I wanted to marry and told her. She agreed, and we set a date.

About three seconds later her mother appeared from a thousand miles away to help with planning. Weddings require plans, hence Wedding Planners.

But my future mother in law didn’t need a planner. She and her daughter had the plans. I was part of the plan, but not a very important part.

After listening to them long enough I got butt-hurt feelings of ‘what about me, don’t I matter?’

I was new to a planned wedding, okay, that’s my weak excuse.

The plans changed when I decided to act out. If I wasn’t going to be the center of attention, I wasn’t going through with it. So we broke up, told her mom we broke up, and got this:

“You’re just another man with cold feet.” That’s not a flattering judgement. Cold feet? Me?

Back at my place I told my girl, “Let’s just be boyfriend and girlfriend like before.”

My fiancé didn’t take to being demoted.

“If we’re not getting married I think I’ll move and start over someplace else. I could move to England and work in a naturopathic hospital. My life is more important than waiting for someone to make up their mind. If this is what you want, we’ll both find someone new.”

This killed my power play. She had back-up plans? Without me? What about the wooing, the convincing me to marry her, the neediness. Turns out I had all I needed.

She didn’t need me.

Hurt Feelings In Optional Friendship

I tried to hide my surprise at her plans. Instead of hanging around NW Portland and circling the drain of failed relationships until we both got old, tired, and bored, she dumped me.

How could she dump me when I just dumped her? My plan was not having plans; her plan was living a full life.

That was the moment I knew what ‘full life’ meant. And what it didn’t mean.

A full life isn’t cycling through a cast of characters of the month, coffee meetings, sharing stories until I heard one that broke the deal.

The full life was with this woman so full of life that I somehow weaseled my way in, and was about to lose. I made some fast calculations on my emotional abacus.

Do I need to be the center of attention at my wedding when I’m not the bride?

Was my mother in law to-be right about cold feet?

Would my girlfriend really abandon some shiftless guy with an uncertain future?

The answers were No, Yes, and Hell Yes.

I explained my reasons for backing out, apologized without sounding like I caved while caving, and returned to tell her mom we were back on track.

Those were the longest thirty minutes of my life. Looking back after three and a half decades of marriage puts it all into perspective: It’s easy to quit, but damn near impossible if you’re not a quitter.

Turns out we’re not quitters, for better or worse.

Best Friends Forever?

Marriage is different for everyone, and since everyone is different before marriage, what changes?

One thing that doesn’t change? Friendship. My wife has friends from grade school, high school, college, and every stage of life. It’s a celebration of optional friendship. She’s got authentic BFF’s.

I’m a fan of her friends. At the same time, she believes I don’t have any friends.

In my quiet voice I disagree. We just have a different definition of ‘friend.’

I remember a kid from fourth grade. Fun to be around, interested in things I was interested in, but something happened.

Something always happens with some people. Flag football started in fifth grade. I joined the team, he didn’t. I made new friends, then he moved away.

Teammate friends continued through high school, then everyone went their separate ways.

Or maybe it was just me?

I like to tell her I have friends she doesn’t know about, the sort of people she wouldn’t appreciate. They are bad at marriage, bad a parenting, bad with booze and weed, just not the sort of people who celebrate the sanctity of a loving couple like she and I.

I finish with, “Your welcome,” which never goes over well. But wife-cheating, child-ignoring, addiction-prone jackasses hanging around would eventually get scrappy.

Jackassing around with a limited time in a neutral place is a better choice because too much time together leaves room for problems.

Where do you go when a guy starts explaining how the insurrection of Jan. 6 was no different than a regular Capitol tour? How does it go when they explain how important it is to attend evangelical services that interpret the Bible in ways Jesus would condemn?

It goes poorly, which is why my wife says I have no friends. What I don’t have is optional friendship.

Lone Wolf Life With Optional Friendship

For a long time all my male friends were guys who didn’t have friends, whose wives said the same thing mine did.

I was a friend to the friendless. There’s a lot of them out there.

These nut cases aren’t the sort I liked to bring around. Once they get comfortable, they loosen up.

Instead of long rambling thoughts on God knows what, which I happen to enjoy, my wife engages and wants explanations.

That’s when the clock starts. Not everyone wants a good grilling about their half-baked ideas on freedom, government, love, family, and the American Way.

She’s got the give-and-take with her lady friends. But guys feel attacked and get defensive and start running their mouth. And they cross the line.

If the choice is being around men hostile to uppity women whom I love dearly, or the loneliness of the long distance husband without optional friendship, call me Wolfie.

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you might get what you need.

I know the difference, now you know the difference. Do I need to say it?

You’re Welcome!