Too many friends

There are plenty of people who feel lonely and short of close friends. But spare a thought for those people who're so addicted to collecting friends that they have too many of them and would like to lose a few.

Anya Meyerowitz thought that having lots of friends would make her feel better about herself. She seized every opportunity to make new friends but all that happened was that her friendships became more and more superficial and unsatisfying.

"Where I got to instead was a place where I found many of these hurriedly acquired friendships to be draining, tiresome and anxiety-inducing. The more I weaved my way into other people's lives, the less I felt a sense of community. I was juggling a full social calendar that left me feeling empty."

Not a problem I have to deal with. My opportunities for making new friends are strictly limited as I've been retired for 6 years and my only regular socialising is with my monthly book group and a few residual friends.

It seems a bit naive to think that the more friends you have, the happier you'll be. Obviously you'll have less time to spend with each one and inevitably the friendships are likely to get shallower. More is less, you might say.

It's interesting that she managed to keep so many friends for so long. I think for most of us friends come and go quite quickly. You discover something off-putting about them, they move somewhere many miles away, they turn out to be hopelessly needy, or you simply don't have the time to keep in touch.

Anya doesn't tell us what she did after her sudden disillusion. Did she have the nerve to discard half her friends? I'd love to know.

Retired and annoyed

I tend to get annoyed when someone asks how my retirement is going, and I'm trying to work out why. I think it's because either they're expecting me to say it's fantastic and everything's a bed of roses, or alternatively that it's dreadful and I wish I was back at work. But the reality isn't so black and white.

There does seem to be a common assumption that retirement is great and there's no downside, that you're rolling in money and always off on the next cruise or the next luxury city break.

Of course this wonderful image is half-true at best, as the minuses of retirement are usually glossed over or spun as if they're benefits. To name a few:

• You might have medical problems that limit what you can do
• You might be expected to look after boisterous and exhausting grandchildren
• You might be very short of money
• You might miss your old workmates
• You might feel isolated or lonely or bored
• You might have to care for frail elderly relatives

At the moment I'm genuinely enjoying retirement, though I do sometimes feel isolated and a bit lonely. It's hard to make new friends and acquaintances to replace the friends you worked with. Many people are so consumed with the day-to-day demands of their family they simply have no time for new friends.

The other thing that annoys me is someone asking what I do now I'm retired, as if, stripped of employment, I have no other interests and don't know what to do with myself. Why should I have to justify my retirement with a list of worthy activities? Why shouldn't I just watch rubbish TV all day if I feel like it?

How's my retirement going? Is that a trick question?

Final regrets

I was remem-bering the five major regrets people have on their deathbed, as recorded by an Australian woman who spent many years looking after dying patients.

• "I wish I'd been true to myself, not to what others expected of me"
• "I wish I hadn't worked so hard"
• "I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends"
• "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings"
• "I wish I'd let myself be happier"

If I was on my own deathbed, I wouldn't quote the first three. I've always been pretty much true to myself and resisted people's attempts to turn me into someone else.

I've never worked especially hard, and I never took a job requiring long hours and constant pressure. As for friends, I never had many to start with, but I've kept in touch with those that remain, and with my family.

But I do think I don't express my feelings enough, I suppress them and assume nobody wants to know about them. And I wish I could be more relaxed and easy-going and let myself be happier and less anxious.

There must be other regrets people mention - like not travelling more while they were fit enough to do so, not having a healthy enough lifestyle, not being very good parents, or pursuing the wrong career.

I'm not generally prone to regret. Disappointment is as far as I go. I remain disappointed for example that I didn't have a closer relationship with my mum in the years before she died. As hard as I tried to get through to her, she always kept me at a distance and never revealed very much of herself.

I'm disappointed that I have several friends in Australia who I hardly ever see because of the distance between us. Yes, we keep in touch through our blogs or Facebook pages or email, but that's never the same as face-to-face meetings. Why can't Australia be a bit nearer?

Damn geography.

The cold shoulder

I'm not good at dealing with rejection. Even quite trivial rejection. Even totally justified rejection. Even perhaps unintended rejection. I can't just shrug it off as one of those things. It always hurts. It always bugs me. It always saps my confidence a little.

I know it's supposed to be a sign of maturity, of being grown up, to be less bothered by rejection and not see it as a huge slap in the face, but I do. And I bet plenty of other people do, though they don't like to talk about it.

A big rejection really hurts. If I've known someone for a while and we've been on friendly terms and shared confidences and so forth, it's hard to take it on the chin when abruptly they push you away and don't want to be friends any more.

Even when I tell myself it's their choice who they want as friends and who they don't, and it's their right to edge me away if I'm becoming a turn-off, it still cuts me to the quick.

I dwell on it incessantly. Why did they suddenly push me away? What did I do wrong? What did I say? Why overnight the big frost? Have I turned into some sort of obnoxious weirdo without realising? It takes me quite a while to stop obsessing and finally be more sanguine about it.

But even minor rejections can often sting. Just someone ignoring me, or being curt with me, or looking at me distastefully, makes me feel a bit worthless and belittled. Again, I wonder what I did to cause it. Why the visible snub?

Do other people feel as hurt when I reject them - or appear to reject them? Do they obsess about it in the same way? I hope not, but doubtless some do. This over-sensitivity is a drag, but that's how some of us are made. Like a small child who's lost her teddy bear. Pathetic really.

The secret's out

Over the 66 years of my life, I've confided some very intimate, very personal thoughts and feelings to other people. Mainly to Jenny but also to other close and trusted friends.

Have I ever regretted such confessions? Strangely enough, I haven't. I can't recall anything that had damaging consequences or made me feel a reckless idiot.

Other people seem to do it all the time. Those familiar phrases - "Me and my big mouth", "I open my mouth and put my foot in it", "Did I say that out loud?"

Well, I don't use them myself. Have I, for example, ever been unfair to someone, shocked or horrified someone, diminished myself, exposed my weaknesses and frailties? Yes, I've done the last. But I'm happy to do that with people I trust.

Have I revealed things that are simply too private and personal to be shared? I don't think so. Someone can only get to know me properly if I tell them everything that goes on inside me. And that means everything.

There are people I haven't seen for decades who know quite mind-boggling things about me, but I'm not bothered. I doubt they've abused my trust in them, and even if they have, even if they've gossiped shamelessly, it'll be to people I don't know who can't do me any harm.

Then again, I don't need to have confessed to anything. There are glaring shortcomings I've revealed simply in the course of everyday life - sexual hang-ups, social ineptness, nasty habits, chronic self-doubts. But so what? Why be embarrassed that people have stumbled on awkward faults? They have just as many themselves.

I've got nothing to hide. My only worry is what others will do with the information. But by and large my trust hasn't been misplaced.

Spilling the beans

In this era of supposed personal frankness, when people gush out their intimate thoughts and feelings to any passing journalist or TV presenter, you might think that no one has anything left to hide any more, that it’s all out there for instant public consumption.

I think not. For every person who spills the beans, there are ten others who’re more reticent and still keep an awful lot to themselves. Most of us don’t trust other people to be sympathetic to our innermost secrets, be they embarrassing, weird, disgusting or just incomprehensible.

The fact is that there are plenty of people only too willing to exploit other people’s weaknesses and eccentricities for their own personal gain or entertainment, and those uninhibited souls who lay their entire life on the table for others to pick at should either have a very thick skin or be prepared for a rather painful public mauling.

Even routine oddities like fear of flying, or fear of public speaking, or a passion for pickled onions, are often concealed in case of scorn or ridicule. As for the more rarified traits like social phobia or aversion to sex or hating to be watched, very few people would be trusted with those. Maybe only our partners, who’re going to find out sooner or later anyway.

It may be that other people are more sympathetic to those things than we imagine, but we daren’t risk telling the wrong person and being treated as some kind of freak show.

It may be that our shameful secrets are not as shameful as we think. But the longer we hide something, the more we prevent others from accepting and neutralising it, the more peculiar and monstrous it becomes, until the very idea of exposing it to others is unthinkable. We convince ourselves we’re so warped that if we confess all nobody will ever speak to us again.

We probably all need a personal therapist, someone we can confide in without fear of a negative reaction, someone who’ll listen without judging, someone who’ll help us to understand what we are rather than expecting us to be normal. With the best will in the world, even the closest and most trusted friend isn’t necessarily that dispassionate and all-embracing.

Deathbed regrets

If you're on your deathbed, the chances are you'll be reflecting on your life and how well or badly it went. And in many cases, you'll be regretting something or other you didn't do, or didn't do whole-heartedly enough.

An Australian woman* who spent many years looking after dying patients and listening to what they said about their lives has come up with a fascinating list of the five major regrets they mentioned most often.

1) "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
2) "I wish I hadn't worked so hard."
3) "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."
4) "I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends."
5) "I wish I'd let myself be happier."

How sad that so many people feel their life was a false one and they repressed their real self, hid their feelings and stifled their happiness. We still think far too much about other people's expectations, or imagined expectations, and feel we have to change our own behaviour accordingly. It's very hard to just be yourself, however bizarre or outrageous or inappropriate this might seem to others.

How common too that people wish they hadn't worked so hard and spent more of their time enjoying their own personal pleasures, or doing things with their partners or children. Sometimes this is our own fault, chasing after perfection and unachievable goals. Sometimes it's the nature of the job and long hours are necessary simply to get the work done. But either way, it's not healthy.

And how difficult it can be to stay in touch with friends when we're all leading such busy lives. When we're rushing from one urgent task to another, friendships can easily be neglected for so long they lapse altogether. Then a few years down the line we discover all those bosom buddies we used to have such fun with have somehow vanished. And our psychological well-being suffers.

What a shame we don't take a good look at what we're getting out of life while there's still time to do things better. Once you're on your deathbed and heading for oblivion, it's too late.

* Bronnie Ware is a writer and singer/songwriter from New South Wales.

Scatterbrain

I don't have that many friends, which seems like a major failing when most people seem to have dozens and dozens. I'd like to have a few more. On the other hand, I'm such a scatterbrain that if I did have so many friends my life would be total chaos.

I'd be in the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong day, probably with the wrong person. If I remembered I was meant to be meeting someone. And if I could remember who I was meeting. Was it Sophie or Maxine?

Having finally met up with Sophie, I would then only be half-listening because I would be thinking of another friend I was due to be meeting. Was she the one who was pregnant, had broken up with her boyfriend and bought a ruinously expensive flat or had I mixed her up with Lotte again?

Then Sophie would be asking me what I would do if I were in her place and because I'd only been half-listening I would be totally in the dark so I'd have to confess I was miles away and ask her to run through the problem again. And try to pay closer attention this time as she scowled venomously at me.

Meanwhile Maxine, who I'd accidentally double-booked and had been waiting for me in Caffé Nero for the last 57 minutes, would be trying to ring me but I hardly ever use my mobile phone so she'd be getting no reply and cursing me so viciously a waiter would be discreetly asking her to keep her voice down as she was disturbing the other customers.

Then I'd remember I promised Lotte (or was it Polly) that I'd help her look for a new car as her old one had died on the M1. So I'd ring her up and she'd say she wasn't going out today as her hair looked like a gorse bush but did I think she was mad to spend £150 on a new Fossil handbag and I'd say I can't talk now because I'm with Sophie and I'll ring her back and she gives a long-suffering sigh and I feel guilty but I ring off anyway and find a furious text from Maxine.

And the rest of the day just gets worse.
.................................................................................

Blogging is a bit erratic at the moment as Jenny and I are going to Liverpool for a few days with our friend Kath from Melbourne. You'll just have to be patient....

Mysteries of friendship

Even at my grand old age, friendship is still a big mystery. How is that we can click with some people instantly, while with others there's no spark whatever?

How remarkable it is when I've met someone and straightaway there's something flowing between us, some vigorous connection as if there are no personal barriers and we might have known each other for years.

Even if you don't meet for months, as soon as you do it's like you saw each other yesterday and conversation comes easily and naturally as if it never stopped. You simply pick up where you left off as if you merely paused for a cup of coffee.

With other people that psychic "ping" just never happens, however much I'd like it to. We can talk about the most intimate subjects without any actual intimacy. We can be utterly frank but there's still an invisible boundary between us, as if I'm talking to a doctor or a therapist.

I may know someone for 20 years, I may have shared all sorts of experiences with them, but still I don't feel close to them, there's a hovering sense of reserve and distance despite everything.

I can meet someone and think they would be a wonderful friend, they have some sort of quality that immediately attracts me. I do everything I can to ignite a friendship, to get something going between us, but somehow it never works. We meet up occasionally, we chat, we share things, but it never makes that final leap to long-term devotion.

How lucky you are if you have a handful of really close friends, a select few you get on with effortlessly, a seamless communication with no restraints. It's a rare thing in a world of distrust and caution.