Читать книгу Living in Love and Faith - Bishops of the Church of England - Страница 40

According to Kate Leaver’s study, The Friendship Cure, many contemporary Western people regard friendship as more reliable than marriage.⁸⁴ While there are overlaps, friendship is often distinguished from couple relationships in a number of ways. First, friendships can be picked up and let go of, and may therefore be less intense than couple relationships.⁸⁵ Friendship represents a commitment to stay in each other’s lives by choice more than by obligation: the notion of freedom is inherent in popular understandings of friendship. One of the appeals of friendships over family relationships is the way that they enable people to define and identify themselves in ways that are under their control, in what might be called ‘families of choice’.⁸⁶ Friendships tend to be relationships of equality rather than hierarchy. Because of the voluntary nature of friendships, and the equality at their centre, they also require a different kind of ongoing reciprocity and effort. Some sociologists have argued that friendship is a particularly ‘ethical kind of love’.⁸⁷

Secondly, friendships tend not to become institutionalized in the ways that exclusive couple relationships do. Where couples over time tend to subordinate individual goals to those of the unit, friends remain autonomous agents, pursuing their own lives and bringing their distinct life experiences to the relationship in a creative act in which each party is enriched.⁸⁸ The absence of formal contracts means that friendship is comparatively ‘weak’ as a social bond. Yet despite the informal, voluntary and non-institutionalized nature of friendships, they are increasingly perceived to offer alternatives to more traditional social models based on the sexual couple relationship and the raising of children. For those choosing to remain single or not to have children, living arrangements organized around friendships are increasingly common.⁸⁹

Research suggests that human beings can sustain relationships with a maximum of around 150 people, of whom 15 are close friends, 35 are friends and the rest are acquaintances.⁹⁰ In contemporary society there are many types of friendship: legacy friends from early life, family friends, college and work friends, neighbourhood friends, casual friends and social media friends. Friendships within and between genders are much more fluid today than in traditional societies.

Friendships and friendship groups alter considerably over time as different stages of life draw people into different environments and spaces, forging new encounters and relationships. For example, a significant shift in friendship patterns happens when people have children. Parents suddenly find themselves in antenatal groups, play groups and at school gates, mixing with a whole new cohort of other parents. The friendships that emerge around child-rearing are often anchored by mothers, who find in other mothers solidarity and support in the responsibility of caring for and raising children. These friendships are characterized by mutual caregiving – for the children, for each other and for each other’s families – and are time-bound and contingent on the life-stage of the children.⁹¹

According to Leaver, modern female friendships tend to involve more intense sharing than male friendships. Male friendships tend to be about doing things together and being there for each other. Friendships between genders have become more prevalent, as work and social life bring the genders more regularly into contact with each other. However, the nature of such friendships may be challenged by the different social rules for friendships between genders, particularly where both parties are heterosexual, and questions of sexual attraction may arise.

The mixing of friendships with sex – ‘friends with benefits’ or ‘erotic friendships’ – seeks to incorporate the benefits of sexual intimacy without elements of romance or commitment. However, some sociologists have argued that friendships which incorporate sexual elements involve hidden power dynamics which work against the equality at the heart of the relationship because it remains the case that there are different social rules that inform male and female intimacy.⁹²

A major and new feature of friendship in society today is the phenomenon of online friendships, which can themselves come in a variety of forms, and that interact with offline friendship in complex ways that are not yet well understood. The nature of online encounters – often fleeting and transient – pose challenges to the very ways that ‘friendship’ has been defined and understood. Online spaces both foster the development of entirely new friendships and help deepen connections within existing friendships through the regular sharing of experiences and feelings. Whilst there can be negative consequences to online expressions of friendship – such as people unfavourably comparing themselves and their lives with the (curated) lives of their friends, or feeling the pressure to present well-liked content – the benefits of technology for friendship are well evidenced. Online friendships can be a very important or even primary route to friendship, not least because the Internet can enable the elderly, widowed, introverted, isolated, disabled and hard of hearing to keep in touch with friends and indeed to find friendships. Further they enable the development and sustenance of relationships across geographical contexts in increasingly mobile populations. During the COVID-19 pandemic an increasing number of people connected with family and friends in this way. This was particularly significant for some older people who would not have relied on virtual ways of connecting prior to the lockdown.

Friendships can be life-affirming because they imply likeability and worth. They represent emotional investment in each other’s lives. They are generally good for health, especially as people get older.⁹³ One of the effects of the pandemic was, for some, a renewed sense of mutual care manifested in the forging of local, neighbourly relationships.

They can, however, be an arena for problems. Friendships tend to form between people who are like one another, and so tend to reinforce social silos rather than bridging social divides. Like other forms of relationship, friendships can be arenas for social anxiety, for manipulation, and for bullying. They can be sites for the negotiation of prestige: the more ‘friends’ a person has, especially on social media, the more influence and significance that person is perceived to enjoy.

Alongside changing patterns of friendship, our society has also seen a growth in loneliness, to the extent that many now speak of a ‘loneliness epidemic’. The incidence of loneliness was exacerbated, especially among some young people, during the pandemic. Loneliness is not the same as living alone – though the massive growth in solo living is one of the factors in the growth in loneliness. Loneliness is a matter of felt isolation, an experience of lacking rich contact with others – lacking friendship. The causes are multiple: demographic, economic, and cultural, involving everything from lengthening life expectancy to urban planning, and from divorce rates to changing patterns of employment.⁹⁴ The consequences are serious: as well as itself being a painful experience, loneliness appears to be bad for our mental and physical health in a wide variety of ways.⁹⁵