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Will you be my true friend?
I have looked all my life for a true friend. Entering the last third of my life, I can’t say that I have ever really had a true friend. Yet, I wonder.
When my children were young, they would come to me with friendship troubles. My standard advice to them was that to get a friend you need to be a friend. They now have their friends, some of whom they would call “true.” I’m still wanting a true friend.
Why is this so hard? Raised as an only child, I learned to get along without. It wasn’t good to be alone, but it was safe and it became familiar territory. I learned to become my own best company.
But something was missing. I began to envy women, and their apparent ease of friendship. Their phone would ring, and it would be that true friend on the line, checking in, picking up where their talk ended. Easy. No awkwardness. True.
Whey can’t we men take care of each other that way? When I call a man, the conversation is uneasy until we solve some problem, nail down some agenda, define a purpose. Until then, it’s the unspoken “What’s he want?”
The men in my group know each other’s intimate secrets. But is any a true friend? I don’t hear from them between group meetings. They don’t hear from me either.
I have a new friend whom I know because he is married to my wife’s true friend, one she calls her “soul sister.” Can he become my soul brother? I wonder. Our differences are dramatic. He likes professional sports, while I don’t know a Jet from a Cardinal. I like classical music, and he thinks the Three B’s are beer, baseball, and barbecue, not Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. I’m Western, he’s Eastern. True friends don’t care about the differences. Can we be true friends?
I feel closest to Tom when we are honest about what is not great about our lives. Maybe my advice to my kids is not too far off. To have a true friend, be a true friend.
And just maybe I have more true friends that I have been willing to admit. Just a little more work on my part could reap huge dividends.
Will you be my true friend? Yes, you already are.
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Photo credit: Getty Images