MWF Seeking BFF

by Rachel Bertsche

  It was a blemish on an otherwise perfect trip. Nothing a little breathing room couldn’t have quickly squashed. But our fight was emblematic of what is happening in plenty of marriages these days, when couples are so determined to keep the honeymoon alive that they try to maintain their vacation-from-the-world attitude long after the suitcases are unpacked.

  Recall the 2004 General Social Survey, the one that reported social isolation in America is increasing. It found that the average American reports feeling close to two people, down from three in 1985, and that a whopping 25 percent of the survey respondents reported feeling close to no one at all. The only good news to come out of the study was that the percentage of people who include a spouse in their circle of closest confidants increased by 8 percent—from thirty to thirty-eight. This speaks well for the future of marriage. Long and happy relationships are made of trust. But while it’s great that more people can confide in their spouses, the number of people who reported that they can confide in only their spouses increased by almost half.

  Confiding in your spouse: good. Confiding in no one but your spouse: bad. What if something happens to your hubby? Or if he’s the very person you want to vent about? Then who do you turn to?

  This is where things get tricky. Alongside the increase in communication among spouses has come a tendency for couples to isolate themselves from the rest of their social network. A 2010 study found that when the average person couples off, she drops two friends. A pair of researchers who studied U.S. national data from 1994 to 2004 found that married couples had fewer familial ties and were less likely than single folk to socialize with neighbors or friends. “Once people get married, they seem to feel relieved of social obligations toward family and friends,” write Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz in The Lonely American. “Cocooning is the couples version of social isolation. It does increase closeness in marriages. It also increases the fragility of marriage, the burdens placed upon marriage and, over time, it increases the likelihood of both divorce and loneliness.”

  Our European vacation can’t exactly be qualified as social isolation. It was a welcome and necessary getaway, complete with wine tours and yoga, banana boat rides and massages, people-watching and the best seafood I’ve ever eaten. We spent significantly more time laughing, talking, and being all, you know, romantic than we did squabbling. But it can’t be a coincidence that our first big fight since early in this friend-quest came just as we were a thousand miles away from the rest of our social network.

  We land in Chicago on a Sunday night with gifts, some three thousand photographs, an empty tube of SPF 85 sun-block, and one bandaged heel. Good old Mom picks us up at the airport. I am not particularly thrilled to be home—would you be? After a week of island-hopping on the Adriatic Sea?—but I’m not sad to return to the new women in my life. Much worse, after all, would be returning to no one.

  CHAPTER 10

  Summer may be tough for girl-dating, but it’s prime time for catching up with old friends. I guess that’s what my new pals are doing, too. Everyone is taking advantage of the nice weather, using it as an incentive to persuade lifelong friends to visit—Chicago winters scare off potential guests ten months of the year—or to take those unused vacation days for trips of their own. I’ve already done the high-school-ten-years-later thing, and next week my summer camp is hosting five hundred alumni for a one-hundred-year anniversary weekend in Maine. And despite having gotten home from Croatia just yesterday, this week Matt and I are playing host to friends who are in town for Lollapalooza, Chicago’s annual summer music festival.

  Our first guest, Sam, is a buddy from the college days. He’s part of Matt’s close-knit group of guys—men who maintain their ties six years after graduation by way of fantasy football—but he and I actually connected long before either of us knew my husband. We became friends in the first few weeks of freshman year because we lived in the same dorm (the only prerequisite for friendship in the early college days) and he went to high school with Sara. She’d been singing his praises since we both got accepted, so I had my eye on him from day one. (Platonically, that is. He came to NU with his high school girlfriend, who is another close friend of mine.) Now Sam is staying with us for a week, exploring the city while Matt and I work.

  One of Sam’s most endearing qualities is how awkward he purports to be, when in fact he’s one of my most accomplished friends. He graduated from Northwestern undergrad and Georgetown Law School. He taught English in Japan, worked on immigration law in Geneva, and monitored human rights in the Congo. He’s hardly an underachiever. Yet to hear him tell it he’s a bumbling fool, so he’s genuinely in awe of the concept of friend-dating.

  “I went out to dinner with this guy in Geneva once. We were introduced through a coworker,” he tells Matt and me over dinner. “It was a total man-date. Very intense. And uncomfortable.”

  “A bromance in the making?” I ask.

  “Hardly. It was painful. I had no idea how to behave.” I’m willing to bet Sam’s behavior was perfectly appropriate, but his discomfort wasn’t unusual. An intimate dinner for two is not the male bonding method of choice. It goes back to the face-to-face versus side-to-side friendship theory. Men prefer the latter—watching sports or movies, playing golf or poker or video games, going fishing or drinking or camping. Author Jeffrey Zaslow, whose book The Girls from Ames recounts the forty-year friendship between eleven girls in Iowa, tells a story about how he’s played poker with the same guys for eighteen years but none of them knows his children’s names. I’ve always found it hard to believe—by the time I leave a girl-date I can usually recite my new friend’s entire family tree, not to mention her offsprings’ names and ages. I was so skeptical of Zaslow’s story that I recently grilled my uncle George about his own poker game.

  “You play with them every week, do you know the names of their kids?”

  George thought for a moment. “I’m not even sure which of them has kids,” he said.

  That’s not to say that male friendships are less vital to their health or happiness. One study of Swedish men found lack of social support to be one of the two leading risk factors for heart attacks and death from coronary heart disease. The other factor was smoking.

  The trouble for men comes as they grow older and disengage from the activities they once enjoyed. According to the research, when men get married and have families, the pressure to balance wives and kids and jobs doesn’t leave time for the office softball team or weekly card game. They reluctantly cut back on time with friends, seeing the existing ones less and abstaining from activities that help them make new ones. By the time they realize what they’ve lost, they feel like it’s too late. And unless he’s Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man, no guy is going to set out on a friend-dating quest.

  Sam is not married and doesn’t have kids, so he isn’t at this family-or-friends crossroads just yet. One botched Genevan man-date is no big deal. He has recently returned to New York City for good, his first permanent residency stateside since he graduated law school. Considering he was born and raised in Manhattan and all his BFFs are still there, I think he’ll be just fine.

  The girl on the yoga mat next to mine looks incredibly familiar, but I can’t figure out how I know her. I do a mental scan of my personal rolodex. Was she a girl-date? No. Phew. I have a perpetual fear of running into one of my lady-dates and drawing a blank. It wouldn’t happen with one of my new friends, but what about someone I’ve only met once? Five or six months ago? Definite possibility.

  Then, mid–triangle pose, I place her. She taught an exercise class I took at a different studio last year. The old me would silently register this coincidence and go on my way. But a consequence of this year has been that I talk to everyone now. As it turns out, shopping is more interesting when you know the saleslady’s life story, meals are more delicious when you dissect each dish with the waiter before ordering. I’ll chat with the woman in line behind me at the movie theater, the guys next to me at the sports bar, an
yone. It makes life more fun.

  Well, more fun for me. Not everyone in my life loves my newfound everyone’s-a-potential-BFF attitude. My mother recently treated our whole family to dinner at celebrity chef Graham Elliot’s restaurant, and I didn’t want to botch the ordering. After some discussion with the waiter—who was quite friendly and seemed to appreciate having his culinary knowledge put to use, I might add—I went with the suckling pig.

  “You get everything you needed?” my brother, Alex, asks. He looks mortified.

  “Yup. Why?”

  “You talked to him for fifteen minutes.”

  “I didn’t know what to get! Now you’re all going to be jealous of my meal.” And it was three minutes, tops.

  “It was a little ridiculous,” Alex says. My brother’s not unfriendly, but he is perpetually concerned with how others perceive him and he embarrasses easily when people don’t behave “appropriately” in public. To him, appropriately means using proper etiquette and being polite, but also not inconveniencing people. And talking to a waiter—making too many special requests or asking too many questions—is, by his standards, an inconvenience. He’s of the “don’t bother the waiter or he’ll spit in your food” mind-set, just as I was earlier this year.

  “How do you eat with her?” my brother asks Matt.

  “Oh, I just tune it out.”

  Nice guys. I used to be on their team though. I was annoyed when strangers talked to me—I’m trying to get things done here, people, not have a pow-wow—and even more frustrated when the people I was with chatted up everyone in sight—Um, hello! I’m right here. Pay attention to me! I’d stand off to the side with a half smile, not knowing when to jump in or how to cut the conversation short.

  Now I’m the talker. Not the kind that can’t read social cues and overstays her welcome (although I’m sure that’s what they all say), but the kind who gets pleasure from a few bits of friendly banter. And you know what? I like life better this way.

  “Don’t you teach at The Daily Method?” I ask the yoga girl after class.

  “I do.”

  “I thought so. I took a class with you last summer.” She looks guilty, as if I’ve caught her in bed with the enemy.

  “I’m cheating on them!” she says with a laugh. “But actually a lot of the teachers take yoga as a complement.” I want to tell her she doesn’t need to justify herself to me.

  “Aren’t you getting married this summer?”

  “Wow, that’s some memory.”

  I’ve always had eerily good recall. I remember this tidbit because when we met she told me she did The Daily Method in hopes of getting arms like Jessica Biel’s for her wedding. I wanted the same thing.

  “It’s actually in three weeks,” she says.

  “Congratulations! That’s so exciting.” We talk about her nuptials as we roll up our mats and head out. I’m not even toying with the idea of asking her out. She’s getting married in less than a month. I know how busy and exhausting the lead-up can be, and I can hear the stress in her voice. I have no interest in adding to her anxiety.

  A year ago I wouldn’t have talked to her at all. Six months ago I might have, but only to get a girl-date. Maybe now I’m just friendly, no strings attached.

  When I tell Matt and Sam about the encounter, which isn’t much on its own but is a nice model of my growth, they seem impressed.

  “You’ve become quite the friendship expert,” Sam says.

  “Ha! Maybe you missed the part about how this whole year started because I had no friends?”

  I have started to feel like something of a self-made friendship scholar though, if only because relationship behavior is the framework through which I now see the world. Got a beef with your boyfriend? Maybe you’re cocooning. Sending a text? What a modern-day communicator! Even going to brunch is like that restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich, where the actor’s face is everywhere and all anyone can say is “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich.” Except in my world it’s tables of friends everywhere I turn, taunting me with their air kisses and giggly BFFness.

  Even when Sam and I go to the zoo later in the week, all I can think of is how friendless the lone polar bear must feel.

  * * *

  FRIEND-DATE 31. I’ve wanted to get together with Dianne since she started working with me a year ago. We have some mutual friends so we’d both been given the heads-up about the other when she was hired. We’ve talked about getting after-work drinks, but the few times we’ve tried, work got nutty and Dianne had to cancel. She’s on the tech side of things while I’m just a words person, so she is called on at the eleventh hour to fix problems way above my paygrade.

  Dianne sent me an email while I was out of town about a new social dining website in Chicago. Grubwithus is similar to OpenTable, the online restaurant reservations site, but instead of reserving a table, you secure only a seat or two at a party of eight. “Being recent transplants to Chicago, we wanted to meet new people but didn’t want to hang out at the bars and clubs every night,” the founders say on their website. “We thought it’d be much more fun to bond at the best restaurants in Chicago for a discounted price.”

  Basically, they’re me, but they launched their search over family-style dining rather than girl-dates.

  It’s a brilliant idea. A real why-didn’t-I-think-of-that in our Groupon-hoarding Top Chef–obsessed culture. Meals cost anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five dollars, and even though the company is brand-new, they’ve already set up partnerships with some trendy Chicago restaurants. From a friend-making standpoint, it makes perfect sense. Nothing brings people together like food, except maybe drink, and these meals promise to be rife with both.

  I am definitely intrigued.

  The problem is that since the site is still in its infancy, you have to be invited to join and I haven’t been issued such an honor. So when Dianne tells me she’s thinking of going to the inaugural meal—she was granted access for being a prolific Chicago restaurant Tweeter—I jump on my chance. I know each diner is allowed to bring a friend.

  “I’d love to try it out,” I tell her, completely inviting myself along. When you’re on a determined quest you must be willing to be assertive and this is too good an opportunity to pass up. It could be both a friend-date with Dianne and a chance to meet future date prospects.

  I’m not entirely clear on the ethics of picking up a potential friend while I’m already out with one. Perhaps the most egregious romantic-date transgression is the wandering eye. Checking out other prospective mates—no matter how cute they are, or how horrifically inept/obnoxious/meatheaded your date is—is not okay. Does the same hold true in the world of friend-dating?

  I wouldn’t want Dianne to feel like I’m only half paying attention to her. But friendship is not romance, no matter how similar girl-dating and the romantic kind are. There is no exclusivity. We don’t have to have The Talk. (“What are we?” “Why do we have to give it a label?” “But do you like me? Or do you like like me?” “I just want to be friends! Not best friends. It’s too much too soon.”) And adding a third to the mix doesn’t bring up any porn imagery.

  At dinner, it quickly becomes clear that this concern is a nonissue. Dianne is as interested as I am in new methods of socializing, and she spends more of her time talking with our fellow diners than she does with me.

  Our group is seated at a long rectangular table, not the ideal scenario for group dining. I’m at the end, which means I have three people within speaking distance—Dianne, who’s seated next to me, the girl across from her, and the girl across from me. If I shout I can talk to one of the company’s founders, who is sitting on Dianne’s other side, but she has his ear. Early in the meal she mentioned that she’d found some flaws in their website, so they’re debriefing operating systems or coding problems or some other such techspeak.

  “How are things going in the office?” I ask her during a break in their conversation.

  “Fine. Crazy. You know. I’d love to get home
before eight some night soon,” she says before turning back to Daishin, the founder.

  Luckily the girls across from me are talking books and I jump in as the conversation turns to Harry Potter. Sonia, a nurse practitioner, is an überfan. We talk shop—the theme park, the real-life Nicholas Flamel (I had no idea he was an actual guy!)—and our conversation takes off from there. As if single-handedly advancing child literacy weren’t enough, J. K. Rowling has now been the guiding force behind two of my friend connections. It’s a bit overachieving.

  I don’t gel with Dianne nearly as much as I expect to, but I do find Sonia. And I sample three appetizers, a sushi roll, three entrées, and dessert for eighteen dollars. Overall, I’d call it a win.

  When it comes to sleepaway camp, there are two, er, camps: Those who get it, and those who don’t. Even today, twelve years after my last summer, I find myself struggling to articulate to noncampers why my nine seasons at Tripp Lake (plus one as a counselor) were so life altering. It’s a losing battle.

  “I don’t get you people and your camp obsession,” my coworker Kari said recently, after I told her I was going to Maine to sleep in old bunks and shower in what can only be described as a moth-filled plastic box.

  “If you didn’t go you’ll never get it,” I said. “It sounds a bit ridiculous in the retelling.”

  “I went to tennis camp for two weeks,” Ashley offered.

  “Not the same!” She looked offended. “I don’t know what it was, specifically. We sang a lot, played a ton of sports, made pottery. We basically played all day long. What could be better?”