I Became the Rich Friend
I wrote Rich Friend, Poor Friend three years ago. Some people liked the piece, some found it kind of yikes, and I think it slightly tanked some friendships for me in the immediate aftermath which is how you know you're doing this "blogging" thing right. I will attempt a repeat performance here.
Overall, I still like Rich Friend, Poor Friend. It still seems true to me that people with resources need to put more deliberate work into their relationships, because they are not dependent on their networks for survival, which means it is in some sense more optional for them. One thing I would clarify is that this is better than the alternative; bonding in crisis management-y ways because you have no alternative can forge great friendships, but it can easily lead to a lot of toxicity, co-dependency, and other unhealthy relationship dynamics. Overall, it is good when people have more resources and are more self-sufficient, even if it means one must put a little more deliberate work into their social lives. I think the me of 2022 would endorse this if pressed, but with some amount of reluctance. I feel much less reluctance to recognize this fact today.
Some updates to my own situation since 2022, some good, some... not as good:
More Resources
My friends and I are now closer to mid-career than we are to new grads, and we are doing more things for each other again. This is something the me of 2022 might not have predicted, and I think some of this is downstream of increased wealth in the group making it easier for people to be generous.
Friends are more likely to have things like spare bedrooms now, which means favours that used to feel like bigger asks are now smaller - not because the size of the favour changed, but the imposition the favour incurs is lessened.
(The Splitwise sits mostly untouched these days outside of group trip spending, which frequently require people to front 3 or 4 figure amounts.)
Class Sorting
I have largely stopped hanging out with people outside of my social class, for the standard reasons that people stop doing that. I am sad about this.
Deliberate Vulnerability
I did do the thing where I just hang out with the same guys regularly for years on end, and this works well if you have a few years to burn. Then, I had the experience of a new guy coming in with deliberate purpose and doubling the group closeness in, like, a fifth of the time. He did this by creating more invitations for connection at the cost of being vulnerable.
I try to follow his example often. I'm more thoughtful about cultivating relationships, I try to be less afraid of vulnerability (or to not let the fear get in the way of it), I make authentic bids for connection and am receptive to the bids of others.
How I Think About Friendship Today
Reflecting on the last three years, part of me thinks that I was sort of pattern matching to the wrong thing in my previous post. Yes, it's really nice to have friendships that you can depend on when shit hits the fan. But you can't optimize for that at the outset; you just have to have to cultivate good relationships with people, and the ride-or-die dynamic emerges naturally as a result.
I'm more content about friendships these days. I'm happy to take them as they come and have them bloom in their own time.
I wish I could say that it's because making new, deep friendships is now a thing I feel like I am capable of doing. I do feel that way, to be clear, and that's good. But that's not the whole story, and the other part of it seems a little distasteful to mention, which is why I want to talk about it: I started making decent money, and as a result became less needy, and sometimes it feels like all this "growth" is downstream of that and enabled by it.
... I Kind of Hate This Update
Bluntly, I have become the Rich Friend of my previous post. Go reread the first subheader of this post again if you don't believe me. And I empirically have better friendships now, even though I like what I wrote in my previous post. The contradiction makes me deeply uneasy.
Look, the Marxists are just straightforwardly correct here1: material conditions significantly shape the kind of relationships one is capable of having, you have more slack when you have more resources, you can't You Can Just Do Things your way out of this.
My material conditions enabled me to have many more friendships that are real and substantive. We used our wealth to create slack, we use that slack to deepen our connection to each other, and that's wonderful, except for how it feels cursed as hell.
Having resources makes it easier in that it reduces the stakes of vulnerability, the same way that having a spare bedroom makes it easier for you to host friends with less hassle and more gladness in your heart. Being more self-assured allows you to perform more vulnerability than you could previously withstand, because now it feels more like play, a signalling game, and less like baring your neck for the slaughter. (I don't know, it does seem kind of weird that you can trade one off with the other, but I suppose they both play a part in a feeling of psychological safety.)
I am not needy about deep connection now, the way I am not needy about anything else. And this very non-neediness has, for some fucked up monkey dynamic reason, allowed more of my friendships to deepen. I have appreciably more deep friendships than I did when I wrote the first piece. Friendships where I sincerely and strongly wish for my friends' flourishing and would do large favours for them, and I feel like I can ask large favours of them in return.
When I wrote Rich Friend, Poor Friend, some part of my brain was always tracking which parts of my social circle I can tap as an emergency resource, and now it barely matters to me. But the change was not because of any sort of personal growth, but as a natural consequence of a change in material circumstances.
Wealth is playing on easy mode. Wealth removed so many barriers. Wealth feels like cheating. I don't even have that much of it and my life is so much better in so many more ways than I thought possible.
I often think of Peter Maurin's exhortation, to make the kind of society where it is easier for people to be good.
I wonder what he'd make of our little utopian bubble, where deep friendships, generosity, and vulnerability is this easy.
And then I think, "if he doesn't like it, fuck him. Everyone deserves to live in a world like this."
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Sigh, obligatory they are wrong about as many as several other things↩