At the end of the second act of
My Best Friend's Wedding
(2011) its protagonist (Annie) makes a mess at her friend Lillian's pre-wedding party.
A life crisis and the strange presence of Lillian's new friend cause the two women's relationship to implode, already a little resentful of the usual distancing that most friendships suffer in adult life.
Lillian has changed, she is not the spontaneous and chaotic girl that she was then and that Annie still is;
Now she is, in her eyes, an uptight and fake cock.
“Why can't you be happy for me and then go home and talk about me behind my back like a normal person?!” Lillian yells at her in front of the other guests, before telling her that if that's her attitude, Better not go to their wedding.
Actresses Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph perfectly project that mixture of pain, rage and fear on their faces when, after all the reproaches have been shouted, there is no turning back and it seems that the friendship has come to an end.
But
my best friend's wedding
has a happy ending.
Annie and Lillian reconcile and end up dancing at the celebration.
The script by Annie Mumolo and Wiig follows the classic structure of any romantic comedy, but puts at the center a type of love other than romantic: the one between two lifelong friends.
In reality, unlike Hollywood, love (whatever kind) does not have to be eternal.
I'll be there for you (or not)
Matthew Perry's death impacted beyond the consternation that comes with the early and sudden death of a celebrity.
It was a blow to the millions of
Friends
fans because they considered his character, Chandler, just another friend.
Far away and strange, but part of his world.
Friends
inaugurated an era in which the concept of friendship as a lifeline and chosen family came to the fore and gave life to a subgenre of youth series that talked about the power of these relationships.
Currently, when Spanish women become mothers later and have fewer children, friends as chosen family is a palpable reality beyond words.
More information
“Friendship economy”: why men have fewer and fewer friends
But in all families there are differences, even those who are not by blood.
An article by Jo Ellison in
the Financial Times
questioned the myth of unbreakable friendship: these relationships also suffer blows and, when they do not suffer them, they wear out, like a marriage does.
It's a lesson that we all have to learn at some point: we are going to lose friends along the way.
According to the National Institute of Statistics, it is adults between 35 and 64 years old who meet with their comrades the least frequently.
And judging by the figures for 2022, it is a fact that has gotten worse over the years.
“There are friendships that can last a lifetime, but there is a lot of myth about it,” warns psychologist Jose Manuel Campo.
“All long-term commitments, whether social or not, are going to go through phases.
Furthermore, every relationship goes as far as it has to go.”
Promotional image for 'My Best Friend's Wedding'.
The New York Times
warned some time ago that Americans, especially men, were experiencing a “friendship recession”: statistics say that less than half of men are satisfied with the number of friendships they have, and the 15% do not have any close friends.
In Spain we are not much better: a recent study attested that more than a third of Spaniards feel that they do not have enough relationships of this type.
The pandemic did not help: mandatory isolation revealed the purely functional nature of many relationships, which did not survive the distance.
The Internet has been filled with advice to “break up with your friends.”
An American high school teacher named Danielle Bayard Jackson has become a “ friendship
coach
” and makes a career out of teaching her clients how to break off friendships following a three-step formula in what is probably the epitome of the wild America of capitalism and self-help: if you want to abandon your friend, tell him that you no longer have “the ability to invest in him.”
There is even mathematics to support the end of friendship.
A study carried out in the Netherlands assures that friends will last no more and no less than seven years.
According to Oxford University psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar, someone who lives long enough will end up with one or two close friends (or one and a half, if we take the math literally).
Why do we neglect friendships?
According to Campo, friendship has always been “a little undervalued.”
“It has been the ugly cousin of relationships, a consolation prize.
The relationship we focus on when we have not yet built the important ones, which are the couple and the family.”
The psychotherapist Diane Barth defended something similar when she pointed out last year the absence of concrete words to describe this not necessarily romantic love: “It is very rare for friends to become poetic when talking about that moment when they
fell in love
with each other.
“We don’t have fancy words for that kind of connection and deep affection.”
'Sex and the City' talked about many types of relationships but, above all, it talked about the power of friendship between women.
The nicest thing we can say about someone, in terms of friendship, is that they are “like a brother.”
Lidia, a 45-year-old from Madrid, talks about her longest friendship.
“Chiti and I have been friends since school.
She is like my sister, when we were little they called us the twins, because we look alike physically.
She grew up like a third daughter in my house because her parents were overwhelmed.”
Carolina, a 41-year-old Brazilian woman who has been living in Spain for a decade, maintains daily contact with her best childhood friend, Jaiminho.
“I've known him since I was six or seven years old,” she explains.
“Her family is my second family.
Jaiminho really liked ballet, and since I took classes, he would secretly put on my ballerina costumes and dance with me, locked in the room.
We fought, we loved each other, we discovered life together.
He is like a brother to me.”
Candela, a 32-year-old girl from Valencia, says the same thing about her friend Aitana: “she started new at school when we were 15 years old and we connected from the beginning, because we were both the misunderstood
geeks
.
He was like my sister, and he still is, although I now live in Madrid and she in England.”
You on your side, I on mine
Still, Campo invites us to recalibrate expectations regarding these types of relationships, even lifelong ones.
Or perhaps even more so with those of a lifetime.
“No relationship is always going to remain a perfect idyll, an untouchable complicity, it is not a TikTok video.
There will always be phases in which we are more or less connected, in which we get along better or worse… Or suddenly the relationship falls fallow for a while and then we reconnect.”
Germán, a 40-year-old from Madrid, explains: “I have lost friends along the way for purely managerial reasons.
The ones I had at 20 don't fit into the life I have at 40, nor do I fit into theirs.
Some have started families, others have gone to live in other cities, others have stopped going out, others go out too much... And it has not been dramatic: it is the course of life.
I think having a couple of friends that you keep for a lifetime is nice, but trying to keep 10 is an impossible, even childish, aspiration.”
Jackson, the
friendship
coach , emphasizes precisely the need to “normalize conflict as part of friendship, just as we do with any other relational dynamic.
With your boss and your colleagues you know there are going to be bumps, but for some reason with friendship we maintain the fantasy that it has to be fun, recreational and easy.
And when that's not the case, it seems like a sign that the friendship is over."
There are two fundamental keys to making a friendship last, according to Campo.
The first is the adaptability of the people involved: “We are never going to agree 100% with the other person.
There are always going to be things that make us change: partners that we like or don't like, job changes, moves... Those types of things force us to adapt."
Lidia and Chiti's relationship has survived moves, courtships, weddings and children.
“Each one has her own life, we respect each other's times, space, those who come and those who go, those who can and those who cannot... You have to have another life beyond those relationships,” she advises.
“I believe that adaptation has to arise naturally,” says Germán.
“Friendship should be a realm free of commitments.
If we no longer understand each other, why extend it?
Let's normalize breaking friendships like we normalize breaking courtships."
Adaptation often involves changing the communication channel.
Friendships at a distance.
Santiago, a 39-year-old Spaniard living in Berlin, maintains a friendship of more than three decades with Guiomar.
They met in Madrid and now she lives in Brussels, but they still talk frequently.
"We probably both have attention deficit, we are united by the same interests, traveling, partying... We spend time talking about a lot of topics that interest us both, and we consider ourselves nourishing for each other."
A relationship so strong that it is maintained even though they have gradually separated politically, something that has also happened to Candela and Aitana.
“I am left-wing and she is right-wing, and on some issues we disagree.
But we tell each other's version, and we can come to understand, although not share, the other's position without getting heated."
That is the ability to adapt that Campo talks about: “We can adapt the topics of conversation so that this discrepancy does not affect the relationship.
There may be things we talk about and things we don't, and when we talk about them we do so in certain terms.
"It's similar if I have a lifelong friend and she has a boyfriend who is an asshole."
The other fundamental key is the development of intimacy, which will separate friendship relationships from those that Campo defines as “colleague relationships
.
”
Both start from similar premises, such as affection and spending time together, but
collegiality
is limited to specific contexts such as work, partying or the gym.
“The key is to conquer other areas, like getting to know each other at
work
but talking about other aspects of our lives, seeing each other outside of work and having drinks afterwards, meeting up for a weekend or taking a trip together… That is developing intimacy. , which makes the relationship more resilient.”
The last photo that Carolina has of Jaiminho on her phone is a screenshot she took in a recent video call.
Their relationship has overcome many obstacles.
“At school I didn't know how to deal with the issue of his homosexuality.
Many
bullied
him and I was ashamed of him, but later I asked for his forgiveness.
Later, when I was 17, I became the girlfriend of his brother, who was my first love, and we had a relationship for 10 years.
There we grew apart a bit, because he also went to live in another city.
But we ended up reconnecting.”
Carolina is single and an only child and her mother lives in Brazil.
For her, her friends are her family.
“Friendship is sacred.
I have lived alone in several countries and friends have always become my family.
I am looking for relationships similar to the brothers that I have not had.
And there are many friends that I have lost along the way, because you realize that a relationship is no longer going any further.
But with those who really matter you feel it.”
While a part of society is experiencing a crisis of friendship, others seem to give more and more importance to “the ugly cousin” of relationships, as Campo defines it.
This is what he believes: “We increasingly have references to important and powerful friendship relationships, like the ones we see in the
Felipe's Daughters podcasts.”
and
Deformed Weekly
.
That is part of this whole sorority thing, but there is also the bro
culture
;
Both cases are praises of friendship.
There is more talk about the subject, and the dynamics of friendship are talked about, just like those of love.
It is a topic that appears more and more in therapy sessions.
It seems very healthy to me, the richer and more versatile a person's relational context is, the better.
I think these are good times for friendship.”
You've already read it: make friends.
And, if you can, keep them.
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