This isn’t what friend-making should be. I need to be true to myself, not some super-smiley dessert-wielding chipper version of myself, which is probably expected of someone at a cookie exchange. But “being true to myself” is perhaps just a self-indulgent way of saying “hiding in my comfort zone,” so when Natalie’s car pulls up to my apartment, I’m all grins.
We enter the home of the cookie master. It’s like a cozy winter wonderland. The entire downstairs, made up of a dining room, kitchen, living room, and enclosed back porch, looks like something out of a Martha Stewart magazine. The cookie table displays beautiful treats—frosted sugar cookies, giant peanut butter bars, and oversize classics like chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin. My own offering looks dinky in comparison.
The affair is filled with grown-ups. The 38-year-old host’s parents are here. Her in-laws are here. There’s a small gathering of grandmothers in a corner admiring the desserts. There’s a fire burning in the back room and an itty-bitty baby asleep on the couch. The kitchen has two pots of heavenly smelling soup, phyllo dough appetizers, and a champagne-spiked punch. The soundtrack is set to classical music. I had pictured a loud gathering of 20- and 30-something women laughing, gossiping and eating, but this party has more of an afternoon tea vibe. It’s the single most refined event I’ve ever attended socially. That doesn’t automatically disqualify it from being the bearer of best friends, but, looking around, I’m not hopeful. Unless there’s someone else who showed up and was caught totally off guard. I stand in the corner downing my punch as I scan the room for such a girl. She’s not here.
If this were an evening event there might be more mingling, but at noon on a Saturday this party is more of a family affair than a friend one. Considering I don’t even know the host, I wonder if everyone in the room is thinking, “Who the hell is that girl?”
When Natalie first told me about the exchange she explained it as “such a fun girl thing,” but she and Anne are sitting in a corner by themselves. I settle in next to them. Rather than making new friendships, I’ll use the party to keep building these two.
A few hours later, my Lululemon bag is full again (the guests think it’s hilarious that the rookie didn’t know to bring Tupperware), this time with a variety of cookie flavors. I’ve met and actually talked to only Melanie, who lives in Wisconsin but comes to Chicago some weekends. Not BFF-qualified. It’s time to get out of here, and I feel perfectly satisfied that I put forth my best effort. There’s only so much talking to Grandma and gazing at a newborn I can take. Anyway, my friend—my real friend—Chloe is in town and I need to get home to greet her.
As I leave the party I think about my ideas of us versus them. I do think I could be close friends with a woman in a different life-stage, but between the date with Rebecca and this cookie party, I’ve come to realize that finding her may not be easy.
So, Chloe. She’s one of those effortlessly gorgeous friends who, no matter what she wears, looks fit for the pages of Vogue. She makes jeans and a T-shirt look fresh. She pulls off berets and sequined blazers and wears them so easily that I wonder, “Why haven’t I spent a hundred and fifty dollars on a sequined blazer?” And then I do. And then it sits in my closet. And then I give it to Goodwill, tag still attached. Where does one even find the occasion to wear a sequined blazer? But, anyway.
Chloe is Sara’s best friend from college and when we both lived in New York, we became friends ourselves. She’s smart and silly and whenever she visits we stay up late chatting on the couch like 12-year-olds at a slumber party. Chloe is in business school in Philadelphia now, and she came to Chicago Thursday night for a job interview. The rest of the weekend, she’s staying with me.
I’m elated that Chloe might move here but I’m not planning our life together just yet. She’s teased me like this before. About a year and a half ago Chloe almost enrolled in Northwestern’s business school. I was skipping around town thinking my friendship problems had been solved, picturing our Sunday brunches, when she called to tell me she’d chosen Penn. I can tell Chicago’s a second choice for her this time, too, so I try not to get my hopes up.
But still, my hopes are a little up.
“Take a breath,” Matt tells me on our way to dinner. “You two have all night together.”
Chloe and I are talking so fast I’m not sure either of us can hear the other, let alone break for air. She’s telling me about business school dances and yesterday’s interview and I’m yapping about our 8-month-old nephew and plans for a one-year-delayed honeymoon. I’m a giddy schoolgirl, in a car with Matt and a close friend. I have it all! It feels as if, finally, I can stop trying. I’m talking about anything and everything—work, family, Top Chef—without a filter. It’s so natural and I feel so … light. It’s as if I was totally unaware I’d been lugging around this burden until it was lifted. The weight, I guess, was the heavy load of loneliness, though I loathe that word. It reminds me of those “Depression Hurts” commercials, the black-and-white ones where everyone is gazing out windows. People are always doing that in movies, staring out windows to signify their hardships. I’ve tried a few times, but it was pretty boring. I’d vote couch for a good bout of the blues. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’m not depressed, and to even think the word “lonely” sounds so … sad.
The psychological definition of loneliness is “perceived social isolation.” As John Cacioppo told me, “Loneliness isn’t being alone, it’s feeling alone.” If we’re going strictly by the book then I guess I am, in fact, lonely. I’m certainly not alone—aside from Matt, I’m surrounded by coworkers and family, and the two of us do have plenty of friends. When we throw a party, we pack the house. But obviously I don’t feel enough of a meaningful connection with any of them, or I wouldn’t have launched this yearlong search.
There’s also what social scientists call “social comparison” working against me. The gist of the theory is that we evaluate our own circumstances by comparing them with others. It’s why researchers say loneliness peaks during the holidays—inundated with images of Christmas parties and loved ones gathered around the tree, our own small dinner party feels not good enough. Because I watch so much TV, and my favorite shows are the likes of Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Sex and the City, and Entourage, I’m socially comparing myself all year long. If those are the models I live by, I should have three or four BFFs who I meet for coffee or beers or cosmos every single day, sometimes twice.
But now that Chloe’s here, I’m feeling super-socially connected. We spend Sunday laughing, eating, and trying on clothes. She’s my favorite shopping buddy because she buys with abandon and encourages me to do the same. Probably Matt’s worst nightmare, but whatever. She’s only here for the day.
“You need to get it,” Chloe tells me about a gray cotton vest with a shimmery trim.
“Really? It doesn’t make me look like Charlie Chaplin?”
“No! If it doesn’t feel girly enough, pair it with skinny jeans and heels.” I never wear skinny jeans and heels.
“Okay. But if you come back in a year and I’ve never worn it, I’m giving it to you,” I say.
“Deal.”
We go through a few more rounds like this. When we get home, I’ve got a new cable-knit sweater, a plaid button-up shirt, a little black dress, and the vest in question.
“I had so much fun,” Chloe says as she packs her suitcase full of purchases. “I’ll keep you posted about the job.”
“Please do,” I say. We hug goodbye. “Our second bedroom is always ready for you.”
Matt’s in the office, so after Chloe leaves I plop on the couch to check in with my DVR. I think about her visit, about how purely happy I was, and how I don’t have that relationship with any girl in Chicago. The potential for how happy I could be, versus how happy I am, is clear for the first time. Which is weird because I’ve had friends visit before without these kinds of epiphanies. Only five weeks in and this project has me all hyped up on friendship. It’s worse (er, better
?) than crack.
I’m not unhappy in Chicago, it’s just this idea that I could be so much happier. For the first time in two and a half years, I wonder if Matt and I could have made it work in New York, if he really would have been as miserable as he thought, and what life would have been like to have him and my best friends all in one place. I picture us living in Brooklyn, inviting Callie and Sara over to watch the Golden Globes or eat Thai food. I don’t want to even think it, but I wonder, could we have made a mistake?
It’s a moot point. We’re here, and we love this city. It’s not like I didn’t want to move to Chicago. I was the one who pushed for it because it was the one place we both wanted to be. But still, I wonder.
When I wake up beside Matt the next morning, the questions are lingering. Will I ever find the pure giddiness I felt with Chloe with someone nearby? Will there ever be a time when I feel like nothing is missing? In New York, Matt’s absence left a deep void. Here, the hole that should be filled with friendships is a bit shallower, but it’s there, like a manhole you don’t notice until you’ve fallen and are knee-deep in sewage.
“What are you thinking about?” Matt asks.
“Just Chloe’s visit.”
“What about it?”
“Just that I was so happy, it was so fun, and I never have that here. I was just, you know, wondering, if—even though I know we didn’t—if we maybe made a mistake when we moved here.” The minute the words are out of my mouth I regret them. This will turn into a fight.
“You think we made a mistake?” he asks. “I’m sorry, I thought we were happy. We love Chicago, we love each other, we have an amazing life. Then your friend comes for one day and you think we made a mistake?” Oh, no. Now this, this was a mistake. “I don’t have that many best friends here either, Rachel. But I don’t let that make me question my entire life here. I have you.”
What Matt’s saying is actually quite kind. That I make him happy, that all he needs in life is me. Or something like that.
“Of course I’m happy with you. I was just thinking, I don’t know. That I miss having them …” There’s no easy way for me to articulate my feelings, mostly because I know Matt can’t understand them. A man’s well-being isn’t as dependent on friendships as is a woman’s, and his needs really are different. Psychologists say that women have face-to-face friendships, while the male kind are characterized as side-to-side. Women like to engage in conversation, men like to bond over an activity. It’s not that novel a discovery. Anyone who’s seen men sit and watch the game while the women gab in the kitchen knows this to be true.
The fight escalates. There are tears (mine) and heavy sighs (his). Matt says I’ve become obsessed with this friendship thing and have let my search spiral into the notion that my life here is empty when we actually have a lot going for us. I yell something about how I know I have friends but not the friends I need, and that it’s not a reflection of my feelings for him.
I’m worried this last point might be hard for my husband to believe. Research has found that both men and women get more emotional satisfaction from their relationships with women. Studies show that men think their wives are their best friends, and women think their best friends are their best friends. When marriages break up, social scientists say it’s the men who have the harder time. They’re suddenly left with no one. Women, usually, have friendships to fall back on that are nearly as intimate as the romantic relationships that failed them.
While I can help Matt stave off loneliness, my own protection must come in the form of some local BFFs.
There are, of course, plenty of people—male and female—who tout the idea that “my spouse is my best friend and the only one I need.” It’s one of those romantic notions that has been perpetuated by our mothers and grandmothers and every movie in the Meg Ryan canon. It’s a myth that has probably been responsible for thousands of unhappy marriages. Imagine the sense of failure a woman must feel when she enters into this covenant, expecting to be rewarded with a whole new level of bestfriendship, only to realize that her husband will never be her Callie or Sara. It’s enough to make her feel far lonelier than when she was alone.
A husband can fill many vital roles—protector, provider, lover—but he can’t be a BFF. Matt is my most intimate companion and the love of my life. But I can’t complain about my husband to my husband. That’s what friends are for.
It’s like what journalist Ellen Tien wrote in O, The Oprah Magazine about her self-proclaimed “mid-wife crisis.” “Your husband is not your best friend. Your best friend is your best friend. If your husband were your best friend, what would that make your best friend—the dog?”
Or as an old colleague once told me of her significant other: “He can’t be my girlfriend, he’s my boyfriend.”
I’m not sure where the husband-as-best-friend myth came from, anyway, but I imagine it began as a story women told themselves to ease the pain of giving up friendships for marriage. Loneliness in matrimony isn’t a new phenomenon. Back before women were liberating themselves and taking back the night, they were doting on their husbands and children 24/7. That didn’t leave much time for BFFs. “Wives are lonelier now than they ever used to be,” wrote Nora Johnson in “The Captivity of Marriage,” her 1961 Atlantic Monthly article. “Great numbers of friends are a luxury she can no longer afford; old friends often diminish in importance, which she is sorry about. But there is a limit to her capacity for giving affection, and maintaining old friendships at their original intensity requires an effort she hardly has the energy for. Besides, she is often forced into unwanted and demanding friendships with the next-door neighbor, the boss’s wife, or the ladies’ club chairman, and she must learn to cover up her real feelings … It can be painful to find oneself isolated, in marriage, with problems that have always been shared with mother or girlfriends, and to realize that there are some things that even one’s husband cannot be told.”
I can’t necessarily relate to being forced into friendship with anyone at a ladies’ club, but the isolation Johnson writes of is still very real almost fifty years later. The problems that I’ve always shared with girlfriends cannot be foisted on Matt. Not because he doesn’t want them, but because I need to sort through them in the female, face-to-face manner.
And, anyway, these days friends are a luxury women can afford, so I want to embrace the “have it all” mentality. Marriage and bestfriendship. They’re not one and the same, nor are they mutually exclusive. And, as it is with work and life, I need to find a balance.
When I started this project I told Matt that I’d found the perfect man, now it was time to find the perfect girl. He encouraged my quest so that I could find a way to be happier here, not so I could decide we should move back East. Hence, the fight.
It’s become one of those arguments where halfway through neither of us knows what we’re arguing about. Matt does make one point that sticks with me. “It was just a visit,” he says. “You were with Chloe for less than twenty-four hours. If she lived here it wouldn’t be like that all the time.” He’s right. Maybe I’m letting the idea of having a best friend here cloud the reality of it. I’d still have to go to work. I’d still want to spend time alone with my husband and veg out on the couch solo once in a while. I’d still have family obligations. And if, say, Chloe were here, she’d have her own life, too. We wouldn’t have sleepovers and stay up late every night. People are busy, people travel. It’s likely that if she lived in Chicago, we’d only actually see each other once or twice a month.
Matt and I leave for work. While I’m at the office, I get a call from Chloe. She didn’t get the job. Well, that was quick.
Back to the drawing board.
The workday separation gives Matt and me time to breathe. When I come home, things are okay. We apologize. Matt knows I don’t regret moving here with him, I know he just wants me to be happy where we are. That’s what I want too. After all, I can find a new BFF in Chicago. I can’t find a new Matt in New York.
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nbsp; FRIEND-DATE 6. Fight or no fight, there’s no time to dawdle at home. I have a date to get to. My coworkers and I have planned a group date of sorts. We’re all fans of musicals, both the High School and Broadway varieties, and Kari found a coupon for thirty-five-dollar tickets to In the Heights. We decided to make it an event. Kari, Ashley, Joan, Lynn, and I gather at Ashley’s for dinner and drinks before the show. These four are currently my closest friends in Chicago, hands down. After two years of lunches together, they know I hate strawberries and mint, send me any and all links related to How I Met Your Mother, and agree that Rachel Bilson should play me in the movie of my life even if my hair is closer to Keri Russell circa Felicity. There are a few problems though. First of all, they’ve lived in Chicago longer than I have—Joan, Ashley, and Lynn are all from here originally—so they already have their own best friends. I figure that’s not too big an issue. I’ve already entered their Dunbar circle, I’m just fighting for higher status. If I earn a spot, they can add me to their BFF list just as I’m looking to add to mine. The larger problem is that we spend most of our time together gossiping about work. As we grow closer that’s fading, but it’s still our common thread and dominates the conversations. I want time with my best friend to be an escape from office politics. Then, of course, there’s the fact that since we spend so much time together on weekdays, we hardly call or see each other on weekends. When we do, it’s for a group activity like dance class. I can’t imagine any of us will share a one-on-one “want to get brunch?” call until we’ve moved on to new jobs.
But this year is about building relationships. I’m not going to make a best friend overnight, so this is a date with long-term potential. Every time the five of us have a real-life playdate we move another step closer to being friends independently of the office.
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