Little Girls and Their Friendships

Men don’t do friendship like women do. They have good friends sure, they may even have mortal enemies, but if they need to fill a chair at poker even a guy they don’t really like is welcome. They don’t need, let alone want, to talk to their friends every day and certainly as young guys they never felt some other guy might take their friend away. They sit side by side for hours and never exchange a word. 

Whatever jealousy they may feel to great depths when their women is being charmed by some guy, they don’t even notice if there best friend is spending more time with some other dude.

Women and girls go about friendship and love in a much different way. 

As a result it’s tough for men to counsel their wives and daughters about friendships. Just as it is hard for women to understand how the boys and men in their life can be friends with guys who don’t seem to be good pals.

My husband’s Montreal friends are a posse he has had since he was a kid. Once, one came through town and didn’t even call him. They hadn't seen one another in years. I was shocked. The guy was here two days. Donny didn’t care. “Yeah wouldn’t been nice to see him but I guess he was busy.”

He didn’t dwell on it, wonder what he might have done to piss the guy off so that he didn’t want to see him. He didn’t reevaluate the friendship and determine it no longer seemed balanced. He didn’t lose a moment over it.

When I became pregnant I took parenting classes, met women waiting at the doctor’s office, struck up conversations with other enormous women taking a break on a bench to rest their tired feet and my world of friends began to change. 

Of course I still had my old pals, women I was tight with, had know for years, who knew my secrets and I knew theirs.

But when the baby came, suddenly the only people with whom I could identify were the new moms. My old pals came and cooed and brought gifts, but they left, and in light of the fact I didn’t bathe, or wear clean clothes or talk about anything but my kid and sore nipples, they stayed away.

Overnight my world was made up entirely of people I did not know six months before and may never have met had we not shared the same new shocking and overwhelming lifestyle of fatigue, fear and filth (not the kids but our clothes/hair/house).

I met a great girl in a fatty swimming class and we became fast friends. When the babies were born about a week apart we stayed tight and then a third women came onto the scene she stole my friend away.

I was 41 and I behaved like a child. I missed her, called her all weepy and emotional and though I have no memory of what it was really all about or what I said I know it was very important at the time.

And that’s how it is for most girls and lots of women. So when a dad or a brother says “Oh don’t worry, you’ll make new friends.” it doesn't help because we don’t make them that easily.

It’s not just about the fact that you feel a friendship slipping away it’s that you know how hard it is going to be to find it again. The time and effort that goes into finding another pal is so daunting that we’ll act like a moron to keep the ones we’ve got  - behaviour more likely to push people away. Just ask old boyfriends.

My daughter’s best and only real pal is away this weekend. We were at the park last night and her brother was playing with strangers who had a ball. That's all he needed to get right in there.

Clancy said “I miss my friend. I really need to get some more."

We lay in the grass and while I showed her how to pull new grass and eat the delicate, delicious little white end she explained what it was she wanted in a friend. She said being with this particular girl was so easy, just felt right. I knew exactly what she meant. I also understood when she said she didn’t have that feeling with anyone else and didn’t really like making small talk much, she’d rather be alone. But, one the other hand, she explained, I don’t like feeling lonely and missing one person so much.

It’s a “girl” conundrum and she’s going to have to work it out for herself but I worry for her and I feel her pain. When she thought recently she may have lost this girl she sat in the bath and cried, it was all I could do not to get in there with her and bawl too.

I had secretly hoped for a ball-busting shallow beauty who would be doing any and all heartbreaking, getting through life leaving broken hearts in her wake rather than trying to glue her own back together. It's not going to be like that though, this one wears hers on her sleeve. 

I remember my mother’s worry when she had to comfort my broken heart as a young girl. I’d come in crying after a break up (one in particular that took place while Meatloaf’s "Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad" was playing in the background) and I know she hid all the sharp knives when I said I didn’t want to live anymore.

I got through it, and many more heartbreaks, and everyone one of them helped to to better spot my Prince when he came along. It also honed a radar that can help me find a true gal pal in a room full of women.

Much as it is hard for her father to know what to say in these instances, it’s even harder for me not to tell her some things, she must work it out on her own.