Friendship-land

In a world with millions of people, in a city with millions of options, when it comes to relationships, I got to thinking about man-woman friendship.

Language is useless sometimes, when you need to label relations among consenting adult people.

If historically friendship between a man and a woman has been considered if not impossible, not exactly easy, because one of the two is necessarily involved in a different way, be it sex or love or a deeper admiration, or all of them together, it seems to me that today we are moving towards a different meaning of that label.

Basically what we mean today by male-female friendship is a keep in touch policy most of the time, especially in a big city like London, where it's easy not to see one another so often.

It depends actually, also on the declared intentions. If there's something physical lingering above a girl and guy when they are together and they know it cause something between them did happen in the past, what's the way to friendship-land!?

Perhaps outdoors meetings in crowded places or with other friends could ease off the chemistry or the attraction?

Or maybe it's just a matter of being mature enough and face the risk of meeting alone, for dinners, for whatever could be part of a date without being one, and just refrain whatever sexual impulse one might have and behave, like those situations where one of the two persons is in a relationship and there's the need and duty to refrain from flirting or worse, sexually engaging.

There's also a difference when two persons were friends without benefits before, then shared some benefits and then come back to friendship-land. That is better maybe, cause you can consider the benefits as a parentesis, something in between, not that important.

The thorny issue here is when two people who shared something physical feel like not pursuing any relation but do want to try and visit friendship-land. There's the need for agreed rules here or maybe it is better to just be natural risking to make a mess, mistakes, or worse, finding oneself unable to handle the 'we-had-chemistry-but-we-must-think-is-gone' situation? Could it be a matter of one of the two persons, in turns, helping the other in not stumbling into difficult behaviours? Like, respecting untold boundaries?

When it comes to fresh relations with someone, in a city like London, where people come and go and can perfectly avoid one another, what kind of thought governs the choice between pursuing a love affair or just being satisfied with a ride in friendship-land or just let it go?

When it comes to friendship between a guy and a girl, is sexual tension something necessarily included and acknowledged? Is this the future of the word 'friend' around here? And what about being spontaneous or impulsive, which allegedly is something you are with friends?

Can you be sincere without being spontaneous in friendship-land?

Is there the possibility that this kind of muted and a bit lame friendship becomes a real friendship?

Why our predecessors didn't feel like inventing another word for that!?

Let me be your Muse

Breathing is just a rhythm. Let me help you create the music. Let me be your Muse, the one lightening you. Living is not believing. Let me help you believe in something more. Let me be the one driving your pen, kindling your inner language, pulling it all out. Let me speak your language, let me teach you my language. Do trust me, do let me enter. Do talk to me, as if I was a song to be written, Please, please, let me light your sun, the sun you are suffocating inside your dark soul. Let me be your Muse, that is all I've ever needed, all I've ever wanted. To be your Muse. Play my music, act my script, please, listen to my words, recite them, recite them all, but not as if they were cold and heartless, do take them in you, make them yours. Let them inspire you. Let my words inflame you. Let me inspire and inflame you. Don't ask me to be one among the others, Do not oblige me to remain silent and to hide who I am. Do not ask normality of me, Dare an...

Because He is the One

They say that when you meet the One you feel it, deep inside of you, something tingles. You try to suffocate it because there is no way you can be right, after all the times you have been wrong. And certainly he is not the One. He can't be, he will try to escape, from you, from commitment, from intimacy, from proximity. They say that there is a moment, in everyone's life, when you know that you need to fight. And fight harder for a love, or something really similar to love, that is slipping away, that is not blossoming as it should. What happens, when do you know when is the right time to start fighting? Perhaps when do you feel that he is the One? Or when is it that you let it go instead and accept that it is over? They say that the more you grow up the more you learn to know what you like and what you will never like. They say that at some point you are bound to find people who seems to be the right ones and are not, just because of the circumstances. So...

Millennium Bridge

Mid Afternoon, with the Millennium Bridge embraced by such a weird sun, too powerful to be London, too bright. One never gets to appreciate how big is the bridge until one sees the people walking down it. Stories passing by. So humble. And suddenly I remember that night when I called him because some romantic musician was playing 'Let it be' on the bridge. And those lights...oh those lights on the Millennium bridge that night. In my eyes. Trapped in my heart. And I remember how he was touched by this gesture. One of my usual silly romantic gestures. I sit on some stone stairs which lead directly to the water of the Thames. Directly in the river. Dirty waters but smelling of summer, today, kissed by the sun, moved by the implacable wind. I stare at a couple sitting a bit before me. She is fat, he is bold., they kiss and they seem in love. They share the food. They probably found that compromise which allows every man and woman in love to accept the beloved one without getting ne...

Matthew Morgan said…

That's quite some analysis! I find 'complicated' a pretty all-encompassing word to describe the dynamics of such relations! It's always very hard to label the kind of relation two people may have, since the dynamics involved are so dependent on both the individuals, and I guess the way for successful friendship to work between them both depends on that and also the past history and situations experienced. So what may be best for two people is to set 'agreed parameters', yet for two people in very similar circumstances, that very act may damage the chance of successful friendship that could have been achieved naturally. To know which is best to follow I can imagine is perhaps pretty hard to do.

17 September 2010 at 15:17

AnnaFullStop said…

That is exactly my point.
If you set agreed parameters, then you lose spontaneity, and that means, or not?, that true friendship is already jeopardized. But then again, if you don't want to lose someone, or just feel you need a bit more time to see if you two can be friends, well, you need to set some rules? Or maybe if you keep going naturally, and you do make mistakes, and still the other person doesn't go away, well, maybe that's true friendship after all!

17 September 2010 at 15:44

I have the agree with the last statement - I like to think, that if someone really understands someone and cares for them as a person, then its a bit more inspiring to take a more natural path. It would mean both would have to accept that maybe each others' view of the bounds may be set slightly differently, and that sometimes the differences will cause situations. But if the underlying basis of the friendship is still there, then those situations should be able to work through you'd hope :) if you know each other well enough though, perhaps the limits can be agreed on, without jeapardising the friendship in the process, just through good communication? But then maybe, if you did both know each other that well, you'd perhaps both be aware of where the level of friendship has its bounds anyway? I personally favour the more spontaneous route, but still think that it very much depends on the two people as to what would work :)

17 September 2010 at 17:40

I believe the problem is when you don't really know the other person and therefore you don't know what to expect at all, so you keep on trying but somehow you feel you prefer the boundaries because you are afraid of making mistakes!
When you have no underylying basis for the friendship, I wonder, is it still possible to create one after knowing each others under different circumstances!?

17 September 2010 at 19:34

That's always going to be more difficult, mistakes are always going to be much more inevitable. If you both really do value a friendship with each other, those mistakes you'd think could be put aside. But I agree, its always going to be hard if the mistakes are made if there's no underlying friendship already there, and if either or both individuals don't have such a strong desire to create a good friendship. I don't think it's impossible though by any means, and to work out a good friendship through all that is probably a worthwhile one, given the work it may have taken to get there.

17 September 2010 at 21:29

Just Maybe Forse Ciao

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