Musical Monday vol. 9: Musical taste vs friendship

Exchanging forms of entertainment is a sign of true friendship. We all do it. We'll see commercials for a movie--or more likely fast-forward through them thanks to DVR--and say "meh". But once a trusted person says "Hey, you really need to check this movie out," we'll seriously consider watching it. In a way we never would have considered it based on the merits of the commercial.

For instance, if it hadn't been for Amber, I never would have gotten into the Liaden Universe. (Link is on the sidebar.) If it hadn't been for Geds, I never would have listened to The Waterboys. If it hadn't been for Myke, I never would have watched Mirror Mask.

But it occurred to me recently that I myself don't actually go out and read, watch, or listen to things in order to recommend them to people. I'm almost exclusively a second audience rather than a first. The only cool song I've heard recently that my peeps aren't already into is Bo Burnham's Love Is. (You should go watch it. It's awesome. A couple of off-color jokes, but nothing that'll throw your conscience for too much of a loop, I think. One of the more egregious examples is: "I need you like New Orleans needs a drought / Like Hitler's father needed to learn to pull out.")

Makes me wonder about the responsibilities of friendship. When you're a friend, do you have a responsiblity to your friends to serve as a test audience for those types of media which fall most directly in your areas of interest? Or is that one of those side benefits of friendship that gives one bonus friend points but is not necessarily required?

It's a topic that's been on my mind lately, because I haven't been so good at keeping friends. Making them, no problem. But when it comes to keeping them over a long period of time, one of two things tends to happen. Thing #1: I get freaked out because my friend is unreasonably fixated on me and break it off. (This happened with Myke.) Thing #2: I get all low self-esteemy because I feel I have nothing to contribute to the friendship and stop contacting them. The Thing #1 situation, as far as I can tell, tends to be the result of mutual dysfunctionality which I can prevent by changing my behavior. In other words, not trying to get self-esteem by indulging in emotionally unequal relationships where I set myself up as an ersatz therapist to someone who would benefit more from seeing a real therapist. To avoid Thing #2 I have got to get over my feeling that I'm an innately inferior person and hence, unworthy of being befriended by somebody cool enough for me to want as a friend. And in order to do that, it's important that I come to understand what characteristics and behaviors emotionally healthy people expect from friends.

Interpersonal bonds of intermediate strength have always been a problem for me. What seems instinctive for other people is totally counterintuitive for me. I feel like I'm trying to reconstitute from scratch something everyone else is born already knowing. Which is certainly untrue in practice. On an intellectual level I try to see things in as many shades of grey as I can resolve, but emotionally I am always fighting the fear of something I know I don't undertsand. A person expects reasonable variations on what they've seen in previous relationships. If I can infer their expectations from their own actions plus those of their relationships I have been able to witness, then I can glean some knowledge about the limits of behavior to which I am expected to conform. The less of that information I've had access to, the more uncertain and easily scared off I've become. On the flip side, if I know a lot about a person's relationship history, it's difficult for me to envision myself living up to an imaginary, inferred standard. Kind of a Catch-22.

Which is what has resulted in Thing #1 for me above in the past. If someone is desperate for a confidante and convinced no one wants to be their friend, they'll be willing to spill all their hopes and fears to the first person who offers a handy shoulder on which to cry. So all the things a relatively healthy person would hold back in the interests of personal privacy, an emotionally vulnerable person will offer as their "show cards" in hopes of convincing a potential friend of their sincerity. If my fear of potential rejection is so overwhelming that I won't commit to a friendship unless the other party puts more on the line than any rational person would, then I condemn myself to unequal friendships with people who are more needy than I'm able to handle.

So if I want to be a better friend, or at least, develop a sense of identity in which I feel I'm worthy to befriend people who have something to offer beyond dysfunction, I too need to have something to offer beyond dysfunction. I've got to be interested in things that I think are exciting and cool enough to recommend to others who haven't heard of those things. And I need to think well enough of the things. I care about that I'm not embarrassed to recommend them.

Hooray self-esteem.