Friends? –-

For the most part I think I’m a nice guy. I’ve never been arrested; I haven’t picked a fight for thirty-five years unless you count church basketball. I guess I’m quite opinionated and a little sarcastic – but I don’t think I force it on anyone. Maybe it’s just hard to be around some people for an extended period of time.

I’ve had a lot of friends in my lifetime – the ultimate word is had. Now before you start feeling all sorry for me I still have friends and some of them are ones that I want to associate with. But some of them are outright vocal that they’re my wife’s friends and I just come with the package.

Women just seem to have closer and longer-term relationships than men do. We had a group of friends that we use to go out to dinner with on occasion, after a couple of moves we still went out to dinner but it just not as often as before. It seemed that every time it happened I was the instigator – so at dinner I announced the next time we go out one of them needed to set it up and give us a call.

Well that was eight years ago, and literally we haven’t seen one of the couples since then. The other couple we bump into once very few years but they have never given us a call. I can envision their ride home from dinner that night – ALL RIGHT! He’s not going to call us again. In their defense we did move a couple of times, but we have always been with in an hour of each other. I wish this were the only example that I had.

There is a local politician that acts like we are the best of friends until the election is over then I might see him in four years. When he ran again I got a call from his wife and she wanted to have me write a letter to the editor for his campaign. I couldn’t because his opponent was a friend of mine as well.

I had a co-worker that I talked to a couple times a month for more than ten years; we even went to lunch at least once a month. He got a promotion and moved to another location and I’ve talked to him twice in five years – both times I made the call.

My two best friends in high school each live within a couple miles of our house, but we haven’t hung out or done something as a couple since high school. Some people could argue this is a gender thing because my wife doesn’t seem to have the same problem, but maybe it just a me problem. She sees someone that she hasn’t seen for a while and they start up right where they left off.

My wife has been going swimming with one friend three days a week for more than fifteen years. On more than one occasion I’ve asked her friend what she wants for birthdays and Christmas, I think they talk about every thing. I think there are some simple answers to this problem; my best friend by far is my wife and I really don’t need many more. I think this is true for most men, so I don’t make those friendships a top priority. Women on the other hand need to have close friends that think like they do and have the same interests.

My wife belongs to a quilting group or I think they call it a guild, they get together and make parts of each other’s quilts and talk about the kids and what’s going on in their lives. When men get together we talk about anything but feelings and what’s going on their personal lives. Thank goodness for sports! I grew up in a family with six sisters and my wife has four sisters and only one brother. That mean there are a bunch of women that will tell each other everything – the greatest is when they get on the birthing process. No I don’t want to trade them places, but I don’t want to hear about it either. The bottom line is that I have a lot of acquaintances that would say we’re friends of some sort – but don’t worry about getting together.