The high claim
"Of course, I also go to Hamburg because of you," she had said, and I had the slight discomfort that triggered her words with me, immediately displaced and "That's nice, I'm happy," said. I had known Marion since my apprenticeship, we had lived together and stoned and philosophized all night about life and men. About men I enjoyed and changed in those wild years, falling from one love hole to the next. "You cling too much," was my constant mantra that she always wiped away with the phrase "I'm just intense." After she had married her "absolute dream guy" in Munich, we telephoned and emailed, once a year I visited her on the way to the ski holiday. A relaxed friendship, so I thought.
But then she moved to my city. In my neighborhood. "Can I have some soup with you?" She asked on the day of the move, and when I regretfully had to decline because a craftsman squadron was disassembling our kitchen into pieces, she was offended. After that, their calls came hourly, always an emergency. Can you lend me your vacuum cleaner? Do you have a drill? Can your husband come over and attach my shelves? When her apartment was ready, she invited to the housewarming party and asked me to bring "nice, interesting" friends because she did not have one herself.
Women's friendship can be tormantly narrow
My discomfort grew, the contact became too overblown, too exhausting. What had once felt warm and heartfelt slowly became an emotional straitjacket. Her need for contact was insatiable and blew me off. Careful attempts on my part - "You, I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed" - immediately ironed them with a "I know that I expect a lot from you, but I think our friendship is so good that it can endure" away. I fell silent as I swayed between barely suppressed irritation and understanding (divorce, new city, loneliness), obligation (old friendship).
And I was scared. Fear of the clear sentence: "You overburden me, I can not and will no longer fulfill your claims, I need distance." Fear of her tears, of her disappointment. That's why I chose the cowardly way and let the relationship drift off, let me deny myself on the phone, once I even switched to the street side when I recognized her. "With me, you are also scrounging without end," said my husband, who found the situation simply ridiculous. "Why do not you just tell her what bothers you?" Yes, why not?
We all sing the Song of the Woman Friendship. We all need girlfriends like the air to breathe, they need as soul rust, as a buffer against the rest of the world, as a solid web that carries us through life.
Unlike men who cheat us, leave us, break our hearts (exceptions confirm the rule), we can rely on women unconditionally. "Men come and go, but friends remain", we live by this belief. With women, we can often laugh better, feel more familiar, are closer to us. We have such a high demand on our relationships with women that we do not want to allow doubts and fears, aggression and disappointment. That's why people often drag their friends through the decades, which no longer do us any good, slow us down, overwhelm us, strain us and depress us.
Why are we doing this? Why is it not difficult for us, in the job and in the love a clear "No, I do not want, I do not like it!" to say, and we silenced over girlfriends?
The female desire for harmony and fusion lies in the imprint of the mother relationship, say psychologists. Or, as the Hamburg therapist Oskar Holzberg puts it: "Mommy chews the porridge, Mommy loses herself at the Mikado, warms our feet, returns her own needs without complaint, for life." - "Mum is the safe ground," agrees his colleague Heide Gehrts, "and that is exactly what women want from their girlfriends later on - everything should be the same as with Mama - always an ear, always a warm tea - which is possible, but by no means of course. "
We expect from the friendship of women, what we have long since removed in love and profession: permanent unity and harmony, clouded by no dissonance clouds. You are totally there for me. When you are there, everything is fine. You always know what I need. You understand me.
Konkurrzenz? Confrontation? Women do not like that
This yearning for total fusion, the claim "I want to fulfill everything you want, when you do it", often leads us to what Heide Gehrts calls the "emotional scoundrel of expropriation and overburdening". Because this is about a need that is impossible and unhealthy.Listening to cuddly skirt and sipping cocoa with icing on the sofa is easy, it's harder to get used to questions that go back to the substance of the relationship: What bothers me about her? Where do I not like her? Why does she disappoint me? Or more difficult: is she smarter than me? Successful? Is she more attractive, does she fare better with men? Questions where friendships can break. Because women love the harmony and the competition badly endure.
The very intimate relationship that my friend Iris had with her colleague Sophie, with whom she shared a newsroom and shared fraternity, abruptly stopped when Sophie became department manager and thus supervisor. "It did not work, we were not the same anymore, the base was gone," explains Iris her request for transfer. "This desire for complete equality of cover among women is lifeless," says Heide Gehrts, "because it suppresses conflicts instead of correcting them."
It is also difficult for us to emerge from the comfort of a friendship between women, even scratching the tried-and-tested relationship, because, in contrast to men, we generally have a cramped relationship with competition and arguments. Men are naturally programmed with the competitive gene: who is the greatest, the strongest, the smartest? This is clarified with words or with fists, but not with tears and insults. "Clear words or in case of doubt one on the mouth, where is the problem?" Said a man from my gym, which I have asked about this topic.
Conflicts, competition, criticism - we have a hard time with the K-words. Even a harmless criticism is not easy for us. While we easily throw a "In this shirt you look like a liverwurst out" our men, we answer our best friend cowardly with "man, something quite different," when her new hairstyle resembles a burst vacuum cleaner bag. In work and marriage we like to be open and opinionated, with our friends we are like mimosa, do not bear the slightest crack, the most painstaking dispute, even a homeopathic dose of criticism can already be a potential friend killer. "Recently my best friend did not laugh as usual about my nasty man jokes," says a colleague, "but only very calmly, I think they are not funny any more," I said, "I was completely exhausted.
Since diffuse, exaggerated fears of abandonment set in at the slightest hint of dissonance, we become emotionally shocked if there are major difficulties. Do not react for far too long, and if so, then inappropriately violent and hurtful. For a long time I had annoyed at a good old friend, that she mutated more and more to the "wife" whose life seemed to rotate only about marital golf and spa weekends. Maybe there was a pinch of envy that she enjoyed so well cared for her life, while my everyday life was much more uncertain and exhausting. But since we had over 20 years of history, I ate my anger into myself.
And when she called me in the middle of an altercation with my daughter: "Only very briefly, immediately my battery is empty, we are just in Naples, our ship is already waiting," because I simply slammed the phone. Did not answer the phone because I did not know how to explain my childish reaction. If she had not insisted on a conversation after her return, this would probably have been the end of our long friendship. "Women tend to put a stop to crises," says Heide Gehrts, "because the idea that even the most intimate friendship can not be a permanent bubble bath, but is now and then a cold shower, for many is unbearable."
Instead of subject matter there is a constant exchange about sensitivities
Because women define themselves through relationships, while men do so through factual issues, their friendships are more fragile and prone to failure. The constant exchange of mental states, for women of course, is not an issue for men. There are women's friendships that are mostly about problems, my child is bad at school, my husband is bad in bed, the whole life is bad. That goes well as long as both are bad. Is that friendship or emotional Schmodder?
"A cardinal mistake is the twin fantasy: you're like me," says Oskar Holzberg. "We have to recognize limits, check expectations, develop a self-sufficient area for us."
But finding the right "self-sufficient" sound is not only difficult for us when it comes to telling a good friend, for example, that it bothers us when she tells us "Whoever comes too early punishes life "always lets wait. Or at parties always the entertainment dominated and no one can speak. Or us borrowed money returns only reminded.
Almost impossible for us is a clarifying conversation when it comes to policy issues.Will we still fit together or have we diverged? Is our relationship still balanced, or is one more than the other? Can we grind everything, or do we strive for improvement? "What does our friendship mean to you?", A friend asked me recently, from whom I had retired after a fight. Your question hit me deeply and unpleasantly. My friend laughed: "You have to go through this now, you finally started," she said - and in a long conversation the fronts cleared again. She had dared to ask me the vote of confidence, had insisted on an inventory, and that has done our friendship very well. It is worthwhile, especially for the habit-queens among us, to face the cold wind of change and not to fritter ourselves into frustration.
A functioning women's friendship means curiosity about being different
"Beautiful would be: Curiosity to be different! Endure dissonance! Dare to be open!" Wishes psychologist Heide Gehrts of us women. It is a great mistake to believe that relationships are spared when you put all your feelings into them. Especially very close friendships would be good if you let light, air and a little distance approach them. If you do not call twice each day, do not respond to every sigh and cough. "In love, space is important, in friendship too," says Oskar Holzberg, "so women should, for once, take an example of men, or rather, of male friendships, doing sports together, gardening, renovating, everything is better as this constant umbilical. "
