by tashmcgill | Aug 7, 2015 | Friendship, Relationships
Men and women need each other, and they need to be friends. However, rarely do people write about what happens to precious, life-giving male-female friendships when friends find lovers that are not each other.
I’m lucky to have a lot of married/engaged/commited men in my life. I enjoy their friendship and mostly I love their women too. Sometimes, my dear male friends have become so because I loved their wives first anyway. I’ve successfully negotiated relationship mergers before.. guy friends who have married and their wives have become as close as the husband ever was.
But it’s tiresome, heartwrenching work because there are moments you have to sacrifice the role your boy bestie played, sometimes for years.
A woman like me, needs men in her life. Companions and champions. Buddies and trusted advisors. I need them because I have a wealth of women in my life but if I don’t continue to have positive, thriving relationships with great men – I might risk believing the press that no man you’re not sleeping with is worth your time.
Truthfully, I think these relationship transitions are more important than we realise. The fabric of social groups and communities is woven with the complexities of many different types of interactions between men and women. So while I am writing about my male friends, this is true for many of us regardless of gender.
Sometimes, a rare thing happens and you end up adoring the woman that makes your friend so happy, even more than you loved your friend to begin with. Those relationships are amazing and I’m lucky to have a few of them. Sometimes, the one you thought was never good enough turns out to be worse and you have to bite your tongue from saying all sorts of things. Sometimes you don’t have to say anything because you’re so relieved your friend is no longer suffering. That’s happened a couple of times.
Sometimes, you end up seeing your friends through their weddings, marriages, children and then through their divorces. That’s happened a few times too.
In any of those circumstances, there is a season where your friend is lost to you, replaced by a creature called ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’. Your secrets, once shared in trust between the two of you are now the shared property of your friend and their lover. You have to re-introduce yourself and hope they are equally as trustworthy. You have to hope that they choose to love you, as you choose to love them.
You hope happiness lasts for them, forever. You hope not to lose them forever.
Mostly, the change is within you. You learn to say goodbye differently and hello less often. You grow accustomed to a changed priority, a new role, a different place. ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’ is no longer as available, for good reason. They too, are undergoing personal adjustment. Avoid bitterness.
You have lost your friend for a season, maybe forever. You cannot retrieve him from the place he has arrived at; that’s not your right. You now have only the choice of waiting, hoping and nurturing some expression of a relationship that somehow bridges the stranger he has become and the memory of who he was. In it you become a stranger too; a stranger to his partner, a stranger to the friendship that you had that now merges to be something different.
More often than not, you are no longer on the inside of their life, even though once you shared dreams and thoughts. Indeed, crisis and tears and whispered words float past their ears, the smiling partner who knows enough of your face to warrant knowing a measure of your heart. You will whisper, ‘I miss you’ and it will go unheard in the depths where you needed to be heard.
You will pick yourself up. Your friend may one day return but you are less likely to have the same sense of comraderie you did before. You can’t be forced into loving companionship with his wife, and you can’t force yourself upon them, they are two, they are strong.. and they wholeheartedly go about their existence. This is the way the world should be.
You won’t talk too loudly about it, because boys and girls struggle so much to be friends anyway. You won’t be too demanding. There is no sensitive way to say I love you, but I do not know your wife enough to love her yet. There is a sadness admist your joy in your friend’s delight.
See, in the corner of your heart, you always fear that you had your friend by default .. that he has only room for his mother, sisters, wife and daughters in the woman-shaped spaces in his life. You wonder how you got there to begin with, and you know you’ll never be the same.
His empty space is shaped like a brother, within your heart.
by tashmcgill | Dec 30, 2014 | Bodies, Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Mind, Relationships
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
There is family; whom you cannot choose and there is fraternity – the brothers and sisters you do choose.
Do I value friendship over all other things? Yes. Friendship – true, complete companionship outlasts all. Friendship is the root of love. You depend on your friend, but you are not dependent on him. It is in friendship that we learn to see someone fully as they are, we learn how to live with the differences between us and remain loyal regardless. We learn to see the truth of people rather than our ideal of them. Friendship will outlast romance, marriages, the birth and death of children, the death and decay of lovers, career changes. Friendship is a paradox – to hold another so close in your heart yet not be dependent entirely on them in the same way we need a spouse. Friendship spans continents and endures the years.
We live in a complex culture, hindered by lack of inhibition yet a proliferation of obstacles to true friendship between men and women. But if we are to navigate this complex culture, we must do with the art of friendship high in our priority. Not just friendship between like of our like, but friendship between the genders (and transgender). More than ever, men and women need to understand one another and engage with each other in meaningful ways outside the limitations of potential partnership and sexual liaison. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 15, 2014 | Friendship, Health, Love & Marriage, Relationships
I wish I could say that I wisely hold back in loving the people around me. But it’s not true – I’ve never once been a ‘hold back on love’ kind of girl. Which means I’ve loved deeply and truly a bunch of times, but I can honestly say I’ve never been in love, not really.
And now it might be too late, because I’m falling out of love with the idea of falling in love. At least, in the way we think about it. The way the movies tell it, or at least, the way most movies tell it.
Was there ever a more unlikely couple than Steve Carell and Keira Knightley, confessing their love to one another as the world ended in the film ‘Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World’? But by the time the story reached an inevitable conclusion, it was obvious that neither character could have found a partner better matched. It was not a long list of shared interests and mutual sexual attraction that made their love story so compelling or so real – and it was, despite contrived circumstances, honest and truthful about what love can be.
Instead, they found in one another an honest, endearing, truthful and compassionate friendship. Both characters were able to be themselves and grew to a more honest and engaged individual when supported and encouraged by the other. They gently inspired one another to a better self.
But I believe that this what we should all be looking for, a friend for the end of the world who loves us as ourselves, rather than an idea of us. The friend who brings us home to ourselves with humility and the one who helps us feel capable of climbing mountains. It’s idealistic but that’s kind of beautiful – for a girl as smart as I am to recognize the naïve innocence of that desire and desire it anyway.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to pretend that chemistry and attraction aren’t a really big deal in successful relationships. But I also know from experience that the deepest attraction grows from the heart and mind. From the soul, I guess you could say.
True passion requires a lot of fuel, on an ongoing basis. I’ve watched love fade from the eyes of people who once couldn’t keep their hands off each other. If the sparks are your only fuel, you might fast run out of matches. True love takes a long time to grow. We confuse the possibility of love for Love itself and where we ought to nurture true and deep companionship, we burn out in a flash of heat and sparks.
And here’s the truth hidden in the detail of a movie of a story we should pay more attention to: sometimes the best friend we’ve been looking for our whole life is just within reach, within eye contact or a phone call. We just don’t recognize it when we’re busy looking for something that feels like love (sparks) but isn’t friendship.
The older I get, the less I’m looking for lusty sparks, I’m looking for a different kind of chemistry. One that is no less exciting, but a little more substantial. Is there a chance we can share a common outlook? Is there a chance I could care about you more than myself? It is probably a terrible sign for my love life, but the truth is I’m no longer looking for a fairy-tale kind of love story. I’m seeking a friend for the end of the world and that makes dating even more of a challenge. The more experience you have of what true Love looks like, the more you are able to recognize what is good and what is not worth holding on to.
In the same way you might study Van Gogh originals to best recognize a forgery, once you’ve recognized the kind of life-changing love that can be experienced in the embrace of a true deep friend, everything else feels like a cheap knock-off. I have too much good love in my life already, so it feels intimidating and impossible to start from scratch.
I’m looking for someone who can follow the sub-text of a conversation, who shares the meta-narrative, the one I laugh with like no one else and who embraces my sentimental, romantic nature. While I don’t believe that any one love can meet all our needs, I’m looking for my best friend and the one who knows I’m theirs.
Here’s why: if anybody is going to stand a chance in making love work for longer than the sparks do, it will be those who are friends and continue to nurture that friendship and relationship above all things. That’s what I’ve learned watching my parents, my friends and dozens of disasters.
I’m talking about the kind of friendship where trials and triumph matter as much to you as to your friend and layers of sub-text and meta-narrative accompany every experience. Where trivial moments of laughter, bad humour and everyday experiences meld effortlessly into what matters and what does not. Sometimes the deepest friendships appear shallow because the foundation is so deep. A deep foundation that anchors people to a common outlook is the richest and best kind of love, no matter who it is shared between.
While I would gladly embrace the heat and spark of new love, I can’t wait for old love. I’d give anything to fall in love with someone who already knows my best stories, my deepest hopes and maddest dreams. I’d love to fall in love with a friend and skip ahead to holding hands.
by tashmcgill | Dec 5, 2014 | Friendship, Relationships
To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage. –Lao Tzu
It takes a lot of courage to love someone well. It involves giving so much of yourself to another, and holding enough of yourself back to let them be truly themselves. It’s such an act of practical grace and wisdom.
It’s a wonder that we ever succeed at loving one another. We take hold of hands and lift one another up the craggy face of courage to the brave lands of loving gently and ferociously. We leap over chasms of honesty, truth and silence. Love, really good, true and honest love is made up of lots of forgivenesses, big and small. It is that forgiving that makes us so brave and scared all at once. Love is all paradox, hope and hopelessness.
There is nothing independent about forgiving another. It indebts you to another because where you forgive, you give away Love-That-Heals by choice, you pour love into the cracks of another jar from your own vessel. You leave something of yourself behind, making yourself vunerable by giving something away. Forgiveness frees you and ties you together at the same time. Forgiving is such a brave thing to do.
I said to a friend ‘I have learnt to love well’. What I ought to have said is that I am trying to be as brave as I can, for love needs to be spoken aloud. Love lends its strength only when given actively and purposely into the life of another. So perhaps I do not love well, so much as I am foolishly brave at times.
Still I am caught by my own insecurities and I do not speak the deepest things, or the strongest longings. I still find my sleep hiding in the safety of darkness rather than leaping into the daylight of loving so openly.
So dear friends, for you – I will choose to love you bravely and speak love aloud so you might be strong and courageous in the face of your challenges…I will place one hand into your hand and one hand at the small of your back and we will climb, taking as many as we can with us.
when the light rises it takes me
cast out adrift into the rush
the daylight crushes against me
steals my breath, takes hold of me
here on the cusp of bravery
put my hand in yours
put your hand in the small of my back
love is nothing if not known
in the smallness of your touch
love is everything brave about me
though I am a coward
holding your hand
i want to climb
by tashmcgill | Nov 25, 2014 | Family, Friendship, Relationships, Travel
I need another suitcase. This beauty has accompanied me more than 100,000 miles and she’s starting to show her age. She’s been the perfect size though – an ample fit for a two week journey that’s not overly cumbersome to deal with. She’s modern, sleek but not flashy. Practical but with a splash of colour and a curve here or there. I’ve packed her this morning in Tennessee to realize that she’s on her last run home, while I’m leaving again from a place I’d like to stay. Time to talk tough to myself and start the next leg of my journey home. Here goes.
Dear Heart,
You will be ok. I want to remind you not to wear your heart on your sleeve but we both know it’s too late for that. You’ve dug yourself a hole you can’t get out of now, invested so deep in a place that’s far too many miles away from where your life is everyday. You’re a bit of a fool, really – but a sweet one.
You should own up to the fact, you could have stopped this years ago. Put your foot down and refused to get involved but people have this way of crawling inside of you and taking up space. The ones that are making a home for themselves in there now are too good to throw away and you know it. But you could have pulled the plug before it got this hard.
So you need to toughen up. You’ve got a couple of hours til your next flight and it pays to remember there’s a whole other family of people you love waiting there, not to mention your family back home. If you wouldn’t spread yourself out so much, maybe you wouldn’t have this problem.
Just acknowledge that every hello comes with a poignant goodbye. Every goodbye is easier when you’ve planned the next hello. And this is a cycle you’ll probably be in for life now. So toughen up, Heart, get on the plane and then you can let your tears swell.
Every year you hope and pray that this year will be the one you travel one way. Every year you find a little more home here and find it a little harder to re-engage back there. Every year when leaving, you say – next year, I’ll unpack for good.
And if we’re honest, you suspect that time is a clock still ticking on things working out the way you suspect they might. You think you might have stumbled on the best of the best but it’s not something you’re brave enough to admit yet.
Here’s the truth of it, Heart. You’re lucky to have found something that is so hard to say goodbye to. Lucky to have people to return to. If you will keep expanding the boundaries and letting more of them in, you’ll always be travelling somewhere. Maybe there’s no unpacking for you anymore. Maybe you’ll always be travelling between here and there.
Maybe it’s time to accept, Heart, that home is the people and life will be a series of journeys between those you love – unless you’re prepared to give one of them up? No, I didn’t think so.
Dear Heart, you are a brave little soul. You throw yourself into loving people with everything you have and wonder while leaving feels so much like being torn apart. But without this pain, you wouldn’t have the joy of coming home. You, Heart, are at home here with these people. Truthfully though, your next stop is home too, and the next. Enjoy the travelling. Tonight, you’ll land somewhere new and begin it all again.
Good luck – you will be ok.
Self.
by tashmcgill | Sep 4, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Love & Marriage
Here’s what I wrote on Facebook this Valentine’s Day: just a thought about constructing love that lasts whatever the relationship context may be. I wrote it because I believe that Love is something made over time. It might begin in a moment or a series of moments – but for it to last it must be crafted, thoughtful, constructed, built, fixed, refashioned, renovated, added to over time with intention, creativity and purpose. It does not happen by accident. Love cannot be found, but Love comes looking for you. (more…)
