1. Make the visit for the purpose of friendship only—not because you have a business trip in the area, for example.Would you do this? Whether your answer is yes or no, is it because of the nature of your relationship with human beings who are distant from you in time and place? Is there something about these rules that inspires you or puts you off? If you wanted to find your way back to friends (are they still your friends?) what rules would you follow? Hmm. Maybe we need a set of rules about deciding whether to travel back into old friendships. I mean, how would I feel if someone I once had in my life as a friend emailed me about her plan to follow these rules? How would you feel? It's awfully... invasive! Suddenly, you're somebody's project.
2. Stay at your friend’s house.
3. Be alive in the space of the friendship, meaning no social media during the visit. Take pictures for yourself, if you want, but no posting until later.
4. Don’t make special plans (spa, resort, fancy local restaurant), because the purpose is to see an ordinary day in the life of your friend.
August 4, 2019
4 rules for traveling to find your way back to old friendships.
Jessica Francis Kane "wrote a novel about a woman who rekindles old friendships with some strict rules" (Slate) and then tried to follow the rules herself in real life. The rules:
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So, you just invite yourself to stay at their house?
Suddenly, you're somebody's project.
The project is to discover how few people there are for which you’d be willing to follow the rules.
Women’s self help nonsense
(Slate) The rules:
Rules from Slate, eh?
The first rule is: OBEY ALL RULES. Secondly: Do not write on the walls, as it takes a lot of work to erase writing off of walls. Now as we tell all men when these doors shut behind them, you are starting a new life. If you are wise, you'll begin rehabilitation.
Mad magazine old friendship
Sam, you old son of a gun
Bill, you snake in the grass
degenerating into a fistfight
The author decides in the end that the rule that's in need of tweaking is Rule 4! Rule 4 is the least problematic of the 4 rules!
Is there something about these rules that inspires you or puts you off?
The first two are red flags for me.
The rules:
1. Make the visit for the purpose of friendship only—not because you have a business trip in the area, for example.
2. Stay at your friend’s house.
Whatever happened to "Working Your Way Back..." gradually?
"♬ Today and Every Day ♬"
Oh, I mean, for most people Rule 3 is fine. It's just a killer for me, having blogged 15 years without missing a day. I could declare that blogging is not social media. Social media means showing off where you are and what you are doing for your on-line followers, which is something I rarely do (though I do it in the next post) and usually avoid doing when I'm away from home.
But the really problematic rule is Rule 2, because someone who might like to rekindle a friendship with you shouldn't be put to the test of wanting you in their house! Many people don't have room in their house or have other things going on that they don't want to share or simply aren't ready to trust you with that kind of intimacy. Rule 1 is a problem if you TELL the other person that's what you are doing... and yet it's creepy to have that as your idea and not to tell. What if someone I knew years ago told me they were going to be in Madison and would like to get together and it turned out they were traveling to Madison JUST to "be alive in the space of" me?!!! If they told me, it would freak me out.
I could write a novel about the person who read that Slate author's rules and embarked on the plan....
Tried to do this with my best friend after she'd moved to the East Village circa 1981. Hadn't seen her in years. I'd always slept on her couch, she on mine. I just assumed...
She said no. Just, no. I think maybe she was squatting and was embarrassed about it. Or just didn't really want me in her space anymore.
Evidently, the lyric is "Been pay'n every day" not "Today and every day".
Well, I've been singing that deep bass lyric wrong for the last 50 years or so.
I inadvertantly follow all these rules, but only with my closests friends who all happen to live very far away. Couldn’t imagine doing this with someone who I haven’t connected with in the long time. I would hope that if we once had this kind of friendship that we would be able to continue it in this sort if way.
This is exactly why women were not allowed to vote.
Since someone mentioned Dian Fossey yesterday...
4. Don’t make special plans (spa, resort, fancy local restaurant), because the purpose is to see an ordinary day in the life of your friend.
Is she observing someone in the wild?
The fair and polite way to do this is to contact the person with whom you've lost touch. Tell him or her you'll be in the area, and that you'd like to have lunch or dinner or whatever. If the meet and greet goes well, then the two of you can make plans to expand the visit or to set a time for a return trip. But it doesn't surprise me a column at Slate would promote something this so selfish and self-serving. Friendship requires at least two people, and both need to willing and equal participants, or I don't know what it is, but it isn't a friendship.
You can't stay at the person's house without being invited, and you can't invite yourself.
It's the difference between being young and informal and spontaneous, and being all grown up.
I miss those days but yeah no going back. Please call first! I have a life now! Lol..
My rule #1: Don't impose on people.
Narr
Who needs more rules, after that?
Past friends are generally past for a reason - physical distance not being a reason for lapsed friendships. Men have the ability to not see each other for years, meet up and go on right where they left off. I do have several lapsed close friendships that because of marraiges, jobs, etc have caused a distancing. But it's not emotional distance. Women are different in their approach to lapsed friendships.
These are terrible ideas. Not only off putting but rude as Hell. You lose touch with 'old' friends for various reasons. Most of those good. Many just because that's life.
BAD IDEAS (except for staying off of your damned phone and social media)
Scenario: Old friend I haven't seen in a long time. So..suddenly out of the blue
"HI...I want to get back in touch. SO.....I'm coming to visit you and will stay in your house for a few days. Don't plan anything special. I just want to watch you, shadow you and live an ordinary few days...Oh yeah....in your house by the way.
We will just hang out. M'kay!!. See you next week"
Old friend: "WTF!! Um...I'm out of town. No...wait. I've moved, joined a gypsy caravan and you can't find me!"
You can't stay at the person's house without being invited, and you can't invite yourself.
As obvious as that seems to me, the writer must have a much different "cultural" view of friendship.
Siblings, parents and in-laws can invite themselves. Actually they can invite our permission. However, the fish rule applies.
5. Remember that you never really liked them in the first place and why you lost touch.
Yeah, it is invasive. Invitations are issued by hosts, not guests.
It might be because I'm inventing reasons to keep playing the lottery (after reading here how it's just a tax on dumb people) After sobering up I've changed some old behaviors.
But my fantasy to keep playing is to have two families (mother/father) reunions, back in the Dominican Republic, my native country. And after that somehow arrange a MeetUp with commenter Ruth Ann and the commenters who enjoyed her here.
I would put Victoria/@vbspurs in charge of invitations/logistics.
Wish me luck.
Imagine trying this with an ex-spouse.
Three years ago, I went to visit my best friend (since 4th grade) in his smallish town of Westminster MD. We went for walks in the woods, sat and talked, spend the 4th of July at his church cooking for the homeless. I rented a high-powered Mustang convertible which wound up sitting in his driveway the whole time. We walked most everywhere.
When he visited me last year, we did pretty much what I do normally. We went for beach walks daily, a swim when we could, and I watched some of his favorite films on Netflix and/or Prime.
We talked a lot. We are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and guess what, that subject never came up.
When you're best friends, you know each other well enough that you don't have to do "special" things -- just hang out like we did in our Wonder Years.
THEOLDMAN
Reminds me of that song "Traveling North."
Many times we drift from friends because of geography. Vacationing in Europe recently I made an effort to reconnect with friends from different periods not seen in long time and in each case it was great to spend time over a meal or an evening and pick up as if yesterday (elementary school 45 years, college, can't remember, more than 12, first job 3o+ years).
5. After you've done all that, but not a minute before, then you can ask for the loan.
2. Stay at your friend’s house.
That's a problem. After about a week, I have to verbally say: "Hit the fucking road".
It's a good-looking vehicle, ain't it? Yeah. [it = Cousin Eddie's "new" RV]
Looks so nice parked in the driveway.
Yeah, it sure does. But don't you go falling in love with it now. Because we're taking it with us when we leave here next month.
If any of my guy friends learned I was coming to stay with them 'for a visit', they'd think I'd lost my job or got kicked out of the house.
Give them a call. Say you are coming to town and ask for advice on a hotel. If they say "Nonsense! You're staying with me", then great. Otherwise at least you now know a decent hotel.
In the past decade I have made 3 trips back to my home area. I have had numerous visits with old friends. Of the people I have seen- about 10 or so- I stayed at only 2 houses- I had kept in touch with them and their parents over the years.
You don't need a home setting for a good conversation,though it can help.
There was one home setting that was definitely advantageous to the conversation.Via a Facebook message to my brother (I don't do Facebook)- an old friend had gotten in touch with me. We had exchanged several e-mails, courtesy of that initial connection. Several years later, I was in my hometown for a short visit. We arranged a meet. She lived an hour away. She gave the option for the hometown meeting of a restaurant or her mother's house. I chose her mother's house. We had an 11 hour conversation. The length may be explained by it being the first face-to-face conversation we had had in nearly 50 years. I doubt that conversation would have gone as well or as long in a restaurant.
Some of the conversations went better than others. I concluded that one old friend had gone off the deep end- an opinion I found out that others shared. In another instance, I concluded that while we were once friends, we were now strangers.
readering
Many times we drift from friends because of geography..
Agreed, but I suspect that in some instances, moving away may be an indication of previous alienation. A classmate of mine has lived in Alaska for decades. Granted,he initially moved to Alaska when he was stationed there in the Army. Liked Alaska, so he stayed. After his father retired, his father moved to France, where he died decades later. Granted, his father had previously worked in France, so he had some ties there and thus some reasons to relocate to France. Even given these reasons for moving, I wonder if the geographical distance between father and son- halfway around the world from each other- had something to do with a psychological distance between them.
(My classmate did some outrageous things, which could be viewed as an attempt to get attention. I don't know that much about his relation with his father, but I do know of another peer who had a neglectful alcoholic father and who was an outrageous attention-seeker.)
I've moved a lot and have a lot of friends that I've lost touch with. When I see them again, it is like there was no time between. When I lived in California, our best friends were someone I went to high school with who I hadn't talked to in all the years since high school. When we lived in London, the same was true except this time it was my husband's high school friend.
There are no rules. There is just being. Just letting things happen.
When I read that those who are highly proficient with swear words have more friends than their boring pious citizens, I decided to visit all my "f*****g friends.
Only in America. As a Canadian who loves my Americans neighbours, I can still be thrown by the "openness" that just assumes one should be able to show up after decades, stay in their homes and pick-up where one left off. I'm assuming the advice that one should avoid social media during such visits is because it cuts into the time needed to interrogate them about their finances, love lives, career successes and failures, etc. Europeans can be mortified about this. I suspect the one place in America where this advice doesn't play well is the South.
Peter@321-- please clarify the South's exception for me. I want to be sure I understand your point.
My wife and I have not stayed with family or friends in probably 20 years and more, and the last time out-of-town friends stayed with us was about 2005. I'm willing to pay for a Hampton Inn or the like; and quite often the prospective hosts have cats, which puts their homes off-limits for anything other than short (like 30 minutes) visits anyway.
And yes, some of my friends and I can pick up after decades, without missing a beat.
Narr
Some, but not all
As soon as you arrive, it is not an ordinary day
Asking where a good hotel is close by, is the right way to figure out where you’ll be staying. As indicated by Unknown.
I’ve recently had contact with several friends I left behind long ago, and quickly remembered why that was so
Narr--I just meant that I'm guessing a lot of Southerners would also find the advice presumptuous and intrusive. Aren't you supposed to wait for an invitation before planning to stay at a friend's house? If an old friend wanted to visit me, I might be happy, but I'd be a little taken aback if he/she told me the purpose was to observe an ordinary day in my life.
When I lived alone I was happy to put up friends and family and when I travel alone I am happy to be put up. But with a partner I have only (occasionally) put up her friends and we don't get put up. Adds an additional level of stress I don't want.
No one should ever stay at someone else's house unless he or she pays the occupant or owner or is a sick close relative or loser slow to exit spawn. Get a hotel room, mooch.
Friendships die for good reason, and it's usually better to let them.
Aged parents too unless they were really crappy parents. Most deserve better than shunting off to old age homes living on crumbs of social security and zirp era returns. But that's the system the so called greats and I-me-my boomers created so they can live in it. That, and minimum wage and mandatory FICA, withholding, etc. taxation for domestic help that's separated the classes by a chasm and turned many otherwise qualified to be staff into sponges always in need of more "help" from judgy Democrats and President Donald J. Trump and, presumably, self-centered lady writers at Slate.
Ann Althouse said...
The author decides in the end that the rule that's in need of tweaking is Rule 4! Rule 4 is the least problematic of the 4 rules!
#3 is fine for a non-prominent social media figure, but I think #4 is the most unworkable. Of course you’re not going to see your host living normally unless “host” is their normal function. No spa, fine, but are you going to shadow them at work?
#’s 1 & 2 are problematic unless it’s a fully mutual arrangement—this is not a close friend so your visit is going to be weird and intrusive.
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