“Electronic communication is instantaneous, illusory contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships.” – Clifford Stoll, silicone snake oil
It’s not enough that so many relationships at work, at home, and at play are disintegrating, losing their connectivity, intimacy, and depth of sympathy. Now people have the opportunity to create new relationships, poof, by buying and selling “friendship.” uSocial, an Australian marketing company, will save you the time and hassle of building friendships by “buying” a few thousand friends and peers from you. If you’re feeling starved of friends, uSocial will help you “buy” friends by the thousands on Facebook for just $200 per thousand. So you need to feel like someone being friends with someone who is popular, or you need to have someone like you, or you don’t have any friends, just bet! Money speaks and says: “buy or sell your friendship!”
What if I don’t have $200?
While many may scoff at the shallowness and stupidity of buying or selling “friendship,” many of us actually “trade” friendship, albeit not with money. How is that?
sacrifice for friendship
One way many people cultivate friendship is by doing-doing-doing for others in hopes of buying their acceptance and approval: their friendship. Even engaged and married couples do this with each other. We do this at work with colleagues and bosses, at home with partners, spouses, children, and parents, and in the outside world with neighbors and others. We sacrifice our own selves, our integrity, our time, even our hopes and dreams to please others so that we can feel accepted, loved, and “being their friend.”
Furthermore, many even sacrifice their life force so they can be accepted by someone whose “friendship” they feel they desperately need. They will avoid associating with certain co-workers, bosses or relatives, for example, to be accepted by another person whose friendship they feel they urgently need. The specific ways that people sacrifice their life for others are: putting their plans on hold, doing something for others or owing someone something, out of shame, putting off making important decisions without consulting their “friend” first, feeling guilty about making a decision that your “friend” disagrees with, constantly seeking approval, and being in a codependent relationship.
Control others to gain friendship
One of the most insidious behavior patterns that people use to “buy” friendships is to control others. For example, do you ever act like a victim, feign emotional or physical illness, or helplessness in order for a “friend” to save you or work to “cure” you? Do you ever, overtly or covertly, threaten to withhold or withdraw your friendship if a “friend” doesn’t “do something”? Do you ever say “It’s your turn” to take care of yourself? Do you feel like you need a “friend” to constantly complete your activities or tasks because you are too stressed, anxious or overwhelmed? Do you offer friendship as a “reward” that your friend earns for doing what you want someone to do for you? On a deeper, more abusive level, do you threaten a friend with your own self-destruction to keep your friendship going? Do you try to play with the friendship of others by telling them how essential they are to your life?
Helpful
Probably the most unconscious and unhealthy way that people seek to win and keep friends is by pleasing, that is, doing whatever it takes to please others in order to win or keep their friendship. We accommodate when we tell others what we think they want to hear, we do for others what they want even though such actions or activities may go against our values or moral code. Accommodation is the most common way that people buy another person’s friendship, without directly paying for it, and sometimes we foot the bill and pay whatever it takes to make or keep a friendship.
Why we buy friendship.
The worst loneliness is to be deprived of true friendship.” Sir Francis Bacon
From very early on, as infants and very young children, we have a deep need to relate and be related; we needed contact, warmth and human relationship. At that time we had the capacity to be our True and Real Selves, but our parents and primary caretakers, given their own imperfections and struggles (as all parents and primary caretakers experience as a fact of the human condition) were unable to see and appreciate our True and Real Nature, our True Being. So, we interpret their “rejection” in the sense of: “To be real means the absence of love, warmth, support and security.”
Thus, growing up, we learned to pretend, to be like them, to join them in their world: the world of illusion, of “lies”, the conventional world. As part of the human condition, most of us learn to become what our parents and primary caregivers wanted us to be by focusing on what they paid attention to in us, what they preferred in us, what made them relate to us ( as we moved). far from, and abandoned, our True and Real Being, our Essential Nature). Thus, we learned to “accommodate” and please them in order to win their love, acceptance and approval.
And now, as adults, we find ourselves behaving in often self-limiting and self-destructive ways that we believe will earn us the love, approval, and acceptance of others (friendship), even paying $200 for a thousand “friends.”
Authentic friendship is an “inside job”
Essence is a quality of the heart and soul. Living one’s life is not about pleasing others, having a full dance card, or bragging that we have a host of superficial “friends.” The foundation of a conscious, healthy, and real friendship comes from accessing one’s inner trust, value, and worth, not from controlling others, pleasing others, or responding to others’ controlling behaviors, in the work, at home or at play.
The core value of friendship comes from deep within, not from pleasing or needing others. Allowing one’s own fears of abandonment, guilt, shame and low self-esteem and then “doing the personal work” to move through our fears and insecurities, contacting and allowing our True and Real Self to allow the possibility of being and acting independent, with more confidence and a healthy sense of self-esteem and value. This flavor of Friendship arises from contact with our True and Real Self, where friendship is defined by quality, not quantity.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Friendship with oneself is of the utmost importance, for without it one cannot be a friend to anyone else in the world.” Especially the thousand you can buy for $200.
So some questions for self-reflection are:
How do you define friendship?
How would your friends describe your friendship?
How well do you know your friends from the “social network”. Actually.
How well do you know your real friends from real life? Actually.
Do you ever use controlling behaviors to keep a friend?
Do you ever sacrifice yourself, your plans, your energy, or accommodate others to maintain your friendship?
Do you ever feel alone?
Do you feel that your parents/friends were/are “genuine” friends?
Would you invite your friends to share a Christmas dinner with your family? If not, why not?
Do you ever criticize, judge or feel ashamed of your friends?
Are your friends reliable and trustworthy? Like his friend, is that you?
How was your friendship experience when you were little?