How to Be Friends, First and Always
RETOUCH BY DAVID FINCH
M
y wife Kristen and I were standing
in the kitchen the other day, playing
Aluminum-Foil Paddle-Ball Game. If
you think you’ve never heard of Aluminum-Foil
Paddle-Ball Game, you’re right. You haven’t.
Kristen and I made it up back when we first
started dating—back when romance was transforming our friendship into a relationship.
Aluminum-Foil Paddle-Ball Game is really quite
simple to learn. It’s a lot like indoor baseball,
and with the exception of most living Chicago
Cubs, almost anyone can play it. The game
requires, at a minimum, two players: a pitcher
and a batter. You wad up a sheet of aluminum
foil. The pitcher then lobs the aluminum-foil
ball at the batter, who attempts to hit it with a
sandal or flip-flop. There is no specified limit on
the number of attempts the batter gets to hit the
foil ball, nor is there a limit on the number of
hits each batter is allowed. And we don’t really
keep score, come to think of it, so it’s sort of like
a home run derby, except there’s no prize, and
it’s played in our pajamas.
It’s maybe not the ending to Casablanca, but
moments like these are important—vitally
important—to keep the friendship with your
partner, not just alive, but thriving.
This became one of my goals a few years ago
when our marriage was struggling – to earn
back Kristen’s friendship after years of mis understanding and resentment as a married couple. At the time, I had no idea how to go about
doing this, but with the luxury of hindsight, I’ve
since distilled what I’ve learned from undertaking such a quest. At the risk of demonstrating
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my Asperger’s, here is how it went, in a convenient list format. (I’ll spare you the flow chart.)
Step 1: Decide to be friends.
Kristen and I were close friends who decided
to get married. Nothing new here; married
people just love to say that they married their
best friend. But really, the veneer of marriage
changes things, and most of us lose that friendly
connection we once shared with our spouses.
My first step was to decide that I wanted to be
my wife’s friend as much as I wanted to be her
husband.
Step 2: Make time for your
friendship.
Time management isn’t just for Type-As and
corporate weenies; daily schedules can do
wonders for couples, too. We all set aside firm
appointment times for important engagements,
such as meetings, therapy visits, and the occasional teeth-whitening. Isn’t your relationship
worth this sort of commitment? Because we
have kids and jobs and workouts vying for our
time, Kristen and I make a point of scheduling our time together on our weekly calendars:
COFFEE DATE WITH KRISTEN or WATCH
FOOTBALL WITH DAVE. If it’s not on your list,
it’s not going to happen.
Step 3: Give your bestie only
the best.
The time you do schedule together has to be
quality time. Shockingly, it’s not enough to
simply deem a person your friend. Most people
need you to actually earn the relationship,
which probably explains why Molly Ringwald
hasn’t come to any of my birthday parties,
despite my suggestion a few years ago that we
should be pals. The same goes for your spouse:
you have to continually earn the friendship. So,
be present when you’re together, wherever you
are. Dates can happen in the most mundane
moments, but only if you’re engaged in them.
Step 4: Let your partner be that
person you fell in love with.
There are countless ways in which a wife differs
from a girlfriend or friend, per my woefully unrealistic parameters, which is something I didn’t
know until after Kristen and I were married. If
a friend were to decide to go back to school and
get her master’s degree, I would be all for it. If,
on the other hand, my wife decided to pursue a
change in career, I would vociferously wonder
why on earth she would willfully disrupt our
perfectly cozy, long-established daily routine.
If a friend wanted to buy one of those cubeshaped cars, I would encourage her to do so if
it would make her happy, but should my wife
express interest in such a vehicle, I would go
to great lengths to talk her out of it because,
as a rule, Finches do not drive weird-looking
cars. If a friend engaged in playful interaction
with a waiter, I thought it was funny. When my
wife did it, I assumed it meant my marriage
was over. I was constantly building new walls
around Kristen, which left me anxious and exhausted and left her feeling trapped and resentful — and what woman doesn’t love feeling like
that? Now, I try to remember to treat her like a
friend—except in the case of cubic cars, which ...
I mean, come on ... not in my garage.
Step 5:
Practice being a friend
even when things aren’t going so
well.
It’s easy to feel like friends when your relationship is grooving as it should. But inevitably,
there will be times when your marriage feels
like the punchline to a Rodney Dangerfield joke,
and that—perhaps more than ever— is when
it pays to treat your spouse like a friend. That
means being quick to empathize, quick to forgive and quick to put their needs and feelings in
line with, or ahead of, yours. You’d do that for a
friend, wouldn’t you?
The moments that make a friendship are among
the most precious in a person’s life. That is why
I love playing Aluminum-Foil Paddle-Ball Game
with Kristen. That, and because she pitches and
hits really well. She might crush a foul ball into
the living room, or I might take a screaming line
drive to the stomach. What can I say? It’s not
exactly a couples’ tennis league, but at a certain
point, you just have to make time for fun and
friendship, even when you’re broke. And so,
there we were the other day, laughing hysterically, two old friends having the time of our
lives.
David Finch is a humorist, inspirational speaker and author
of the acclaimed New York Times best-selling memoir, The
Journal of Best Practices. David’s essays have been published
in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Slate, and
he contributes to Psychology Today. To book David for your
next event or to contact him in person, please visit his website.
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