I marvel at my husband who has lived more than eight decades is calmer, happier, and more tranquil than I will ever be as I sit at my tortuous desk cursing at my computer in language not befitting of a lady. The contrast between his gentle, calm spirit and my hysteria when something goes wrong with my now ancient computer reminds me that opposites do indeed attract. He will occasionally remind me that my very unladylike vocabulary is unappealing and tells me that I am overdoing the high drama.
That thing on my desk is actually just a machine and I am presumably a sane woman who should be able to cope with technological challenges. Yes, it's sobering, but I am an addict, like so many others. I'd love to hear from some of you who might have the same, or very different, thoughts and feelings.
But do me a favor, please don't email me. Just write to me at this newspaper if you are inclined. And please don't worry about my sanity. If I answer you, it will be in letter form and I'll be smiling. Facebook Twitter Email. Friedman: A battle of technology versus simplicity.
As part of a nonprofit news organization, we count on listeners like you to make sure that these and other important conversations are heard. Skip to content. Season 3 Episode 4. Oct 15, Support This is Uncomfortable. Listen Now. Share Now on:. Cover designer: Elizabeth Spiridakis Olson. Email Address. First Name. They decided to write the book after noticing that there wasn't much social support for friendship when they felt the strain in their own relationship — a lack of public discussions about the complications of friendship led them to create the book they needed.
While Big Friendship gets honest about what the pair went through, their bond helped the first-time authors work together to tell their story. EW spoke to the authors about thinking about friendship as an intimate bond, its political nature, their own "big" friendship, and more.
It was interesting to realize that there was not a lot of robust research about adult friendships specifically. We found some stuff about how you make a friend, a lot of it was centered around younger people, like children, frankly. Then a lot of research around how college students are saying friends with their phones, which is not really helpful when you think of college as this transitory stage of life.
There wasn't a lot of research specifically about how do you stay in close friendships, and we all know that culturally important things are studied. Understanding that really started to make us understand why we were not finding the support that we needed.
Speaking for myself, at least, I was really interested in some research we found about social media and friendship. The people who reported being the most content with their social media use were people who mostly followed people that they knew personally. It sounds so elementary, but I think it really made me rethink my own relationship with social media and how many strangers are retiring versus how many people I knew personally.
To follow up, what specific areas under the umbrella of adult friends do you think we need more exploration? How much time do you have? One area where we had hoped to find research but didn't is group dynamics and friendship. That's something I think we have often been quick to dismiss, kind of trouble between a large group of friends, as something that like maybe only happens to teen girls as opposed to something that can happen throughout life as different friends and friend groups become interconnected.
I really wish that we had been able to find some research about how people navigate conflict in those groups, how likely people are to introduce their friends to other friends, and what that says about the longevity of a friendship if you're part of a larger friend group. Many of these questions are not something we could find research about. That's something we write about in the book.
Our own strive and joy related to a large interconnected friend group, but we sort of had to rely on anecdote there. How do you think our relationship with and thinking about friendship would change if we thought about it as an intimate bond?
SOW: If I had grown up understanding fully that friendship is one of his most intimate relationships I could have with someone and that it was a relationship that was worth protecting, and worth taking seriously, and that society takes seriously, I think I would have made a lot of very different choices along the way.
Namely, that I would have fought a lot harder for a lot of friendships I was in. I also think that taking friendship seriously means as a society that we are really just letting human beings be really honest about the way that they want to organize their lives and there's perhaps like less pressure on marriage and parenting because you can have a world in which a lot of your needs are taken care of, completely decoupled from that pressure specifically.
I wish I grew up in that world, but I did not grow up in that world. It's been really, really interesting to spend years immersed in conversation with Ann and see the scope of what is possible and what we've lost as a result of not taking friendships seriously. Friendship has always been political, but I think now we're talking more about looking at our own blindspots.
How do you think friendship can be a tool to move conversations about political and social issues forward? Unlike a family that you're born into, with friends, people say, "Hey, this is what I want my community to look like.
This is what I want my world to look like," and that is definitely political. For most of us, it is also determined by these like factors in our world. We live in a really segregated society, for example, and so while we may feel like we are freely choosing our friends, often those things break along lines that are determined by forces much bigger than us.
0コメント