Friends perform variety of roles in little drama we call life

Monday, August 24, 1998

Friends perform variety of roles in little drama we call
life

FRIENDSHIPS: From platonic to parasitic, relationships fulfill
our different needs

By Ellen Cho

It is true what they say : If you survive and graduate from
college with one true friend, you’ve gained a lot. Throughout my
three drama-filled years here at this social and academic
institution – where you will actually learn more about yourself
than any other academic subject – I have painfully learned that the
term "friend" is not something to be taken lightly. Beware.
Especially you underclassmen. Be wise as to who you get close to
because your friends are the family you choose for yourself. Your
friends’ joys and triumphs will become your own, and their sorrow
and depression will plague you as well.

There are many types of friends. Let’s identify the main ones so
that you know exactly what I’m rambling about. First of all, there
are the fragile, opposite-sex friendships that usually arise from
living in close quarters, such as in a coed dorm. These are the
friends you become comfortable just shooting the breeze with after
a carbohydrate-filled dorm dinner, studying with one another
(supposedly) at the study lounges or bitching to after that first
"D" on a midterm. These friendships are great because you can
really get to know people through all their daily trials and
tribulations, but I should remind you, there is a fine line between
friendship and relationship, and once that important line is
crossed, there is no going back.

But for many, the line will be crossed (or attempted) because of
various factors. The first of these is emotions – seeing a person
every day in a casual setting creates a feeling of comfort and
complacency that you just don’t want to lose and might mistake for
love.

The next reason is history – boys and girls always have a hard
time just being friends (one party usually ends up liking the
other, whether the feelings are reciprocated or not).

And the last reason is social – displaced, misdirected or
repressed sexual feelings might be transferred to a familiar face
that you see on a daily basis.

The bottom line is, having this type of a friendship is like
walking on a tightrope because you never know what will happen if
one party crosses that line, and once it happens, feelings are
exposed, egos are shattered and it won’t be the same for a long
time (unless you are really mature about affairs of the heart, but
c’mon now, let’s get realistic).

Secondly, after the opposite-sex friendship is the person who
always has drama in his or her life. This is the friend who will
always have some sort of traumatic thing happening in his or her
life whether it is family, friends, grades, health, financial aid,
car or especially boy- or girlfriend problems. With these friends,
you hear (or become inclined to swap) incredible tales or similar
stories of heartaches, backstabbing, cheating and more. This may
lead to many nights of crying, drinking, consoling or losing sleep,
but these may be the times when you genuinely bond with a person
because it is then when a person is most open, honest and
vulnerable with another human being. Sometimes it’s hard to be
friends with drama queens and kings because if you are close enough
to them, you also tend to live through a part of their hectic,
unstable lives. These friendships can also be very rewarding,
however, because you experience and create many memories
together.

Thirdly, there is the best friend who also happens to be your
boy- or girlfriend. This is a hard one. If you become friends with
his or her friends but you break up with your significant other,
you lose those friends as well. Do not fall into this trap. Retain
the friends that you had before you became attached to a
significant other. A boy- or girlfriend who has dual roles as best
friend and significant other is not a good idea. If one is lost,
the other is as well. And there goes your entire support
system.

Fourthly, there is that one friend who you can connect with on a
deeper level but is difficult to hang out with on a regular basis
because of his or her intense involvement in a greek organization,
a religious or ethnic group, or a boyfriend or girlfriend. When you
first meet this person you feel like nothing could come between you
… but then he or she gets sucked into the depths of his or her
current affiliations, and the good times you once shared now seem
to be a distant memory. Sure you still have lunch together once in
a while, but things aren’t quite how you remembered them. But then
again you have to remind yourself that you’re at college, and it’s
the nature of the college environment to be anything but
static.

Finally, this is the type of "friend" I should warn you about –
a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is a friend who is not really your
friend – a person who is never really there for you when it counts
but always has a good excuse to why he or she wasn’t there. Such
"friends" will use and abuse you, and mercilessly step on you to
get ahead.

A key sign of this type: this person will value quantity more
than quality. You might always give this person the benefit of the
doubt and forgive him or her because you are too naive or because
he or she is a glib talker. But that’s just it. It’s all talk.
Remember that actions speak louder than words and just see if those
nice words match this person’s actions. Never compromise yourself
by befriending this type of person. You may think that this person
has to be your friend because the two of you share similar tastes,
interests, backgrounds or even high schools, but this is not true.
You might share some similarities on the outside, but on the
inside, the two of you might have vastly different agendas.

I have found out (the hard way, but the best way to learn) about
the many types of friendships that exist. The friendships I seem to
have lost, I actually never lost because I never truly had them to
begin with. And I am slowly starting to regain the friendships that
seemed to dissipate because of outside factors and past immature
decisions.

And the close friendships that I now have seem to be based on a
more matured and weathered senior’s outlook: keeping friends is not
about having similar interests but about having respect and care
for one another. Friends don’t have to share the same looks, tastes
or backgrounds to click with one another. A beautiful friendship
blossoms when two people can just have fun doing really nothing at
all.