Friendship

I've been in "hiding" pretty much ever since OLF. There's just been a lot going on in our lives, so it has been easy to not find the time to write -- to avoid coming here and struggling to get the words and feelings and ideas to take shape on the screen.

Something about the anxiety that I sense in what I've been reading on Taylor's site lately, as she has worried about the state of her various online relationships, has had me thinking about how so many of us characterize Friendship in this medium...

I can't speak for anyone else in this arena, and I've never been one to make or cultivate LOTS of friends. It wasn't my way as a child or an adolescent, and it isn't a pattern that I've ever managed as an adult. I just have never "gotten" the knack of attaching to a big gang of folks and then juggling all those interpersonal dynamics.

Still, one of the things that I've noticed since I began pursuing my interest in spanking and BDSM through connections online, is that people tend to connect and form intense relationships in this medium. Often, with nothing more than words on a screen, we create attachments to people in which we invest enormous amounts of personal capital. Sometimes we create friendships; sometimes we fall in love; sometimes we engage in power exchange committments -- the range of relating that occurs via this electronic connective facilitation is truly staggering. I know. I've done it myself. With a full range of degrees of success -- from joyful and fabulous partnering, to the most dreadful mismatched catfighting...

I am old enough to remember that "friendship" was once a thing that developed between two people who met face to face, and came to know and trust and care about one another over time and through shared experiences. There was a time, when if you were lucky enough to have a few good friends in your adult life, you absolutely knew that you could call upon them for just about anything, and there was nothing (NOTHING) that they wouldn't do for you. Friends, in that world, knew you for the long haul -- they knew your faults; your failings; your hopes and dreams; your kids; your parents; your siblings; your boss; and likely your hair dresser, banker, vet, and doctor... It was a world where friends often grew up together; fought each other's fights in school; stood up at one another's weddings, and carried one another's caskets.

What drives US to call people who are mostly strangers "friends?"

I believe that it is because we are largely isolated. We live isolated in a highly mobile and disconnected culture -- out of touch with our neighbors and our families. Then, those of us who are in "alternative" lifestyles" and "alternative" families are forced into even further isolation to greater or lesser degrees depending on our perceived degree of exposure and risk. We live in hiding because society finds our way of life unacceptable. So many of us cannot have friendships out in the open in the usual way. We keep some essential elements of our lives shrouded and secretive. Not always, but often. Perhaps we have some community connections. Perhaps more of less, depending on where we live, and the circumstances of our lives.

We turn to the online community to find others who are "like us," who will "understand," and "accept us." Those people, once we find them, become the FRIENDS that we so desperately miss in our daily lives -- even though they are across the continent, or across the globe. Even though they impose (tacitly or otherwise) certain constraints on their acceptance and friendship. We don't talk about it openly. Sometimes we don't even notice it, but we all know about it -- and when we step out of line or the comments dry up, or people just go away, or say something sharp or critical or pissy or nervy, we react as if we've been slapped. We notice. We can't help it.

I know that I long for "companions" on this path. When I get lonely, frightened, confused, lost... I wish there were others who could see what I am seeing, hear the voices in my head, speak to my heart with wisdom and experience and calm. I wish there were mentors and guides. That is the one thing that I have longed to find as long as I have written in the online universe. Those people are as rare as hen's teeth.

On the other hand, I sometimes wonder what on earth people are thinking, or why they choose to do or say the things they do or say. I wonder what people think or feel about their lives in the context of the wider world, or how the things they do affect them in some context or other, but I worry that asking those questions will stir up them and their "friends," and so I just keep my questions to myself. I've begun to think that sometimes the layers of friends around people keep us from actually talking to each other -- or maybe it just keeps me from talking to some people.

I don't have a lot of "friends." I don't have many real time friends, and I have even fewer online friends. I need to know someone a long time before I trust them and value them that fully. Call me prickly and stand-offish. I am skeptical of the online "friendship" business. Too often it becomes the online "fan" business.

I think your friend will tell you that you are fucking nuts. I think your friend will sit up with you all night when your world is crashing around you. I think your friend will come and find you when you have lost your way. I think your friend will disagree with you even if they know it will make you furious. I think your friend knows your past and dreams your future. I think your friend loves you and trusts you and cares you no matter what. And I think you don't have to worry that your friend will change and leave you behind.

swan