Struggling to Make a Friend
- SH
- Feb 5, 2022
- 19 min read
Updated: Apr 26, 2022
I’m back home texting with someone that Erik and I had just met at the climbing gym in the morning that I liked. Originally from Spain, L came to university in New York because she found that socially accepted career options were limited for women back home. She attended Columbia University, where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering, and, having been disappointed with the available options to apply her skills towards social good, now works at Facebook. While we climb together and I regale in this opportunity to see people in person again after the Omicron wave of COVID, I notice that she has gorgeous loose curls chopped short, and the most perfect set of eyebrows there exists (this, too, is hopelessly defined by white people).
I ask her whether her kitten is okay, after the minor accident that had led her to leave unexpectedly. I get a picture of an innocent furball with gray and white furs; she’s fine as ever.
Then I relay a brief conversation that Erik and I had had. I tell her that we were joking about how I find people when I meet them. Put in a very crude way, I find them either boring or scary. Erik suggested that I tell her how I find her scary.
So, I do.
(And she takes it well.)
In today’s session with my therapist, I tackled a subject much alluded to by now but never yet reached between us: my struggle with finding friends. The right friends.
Ah, friendship. What a topic. So basic and pervasive a part of our social world, wherever one is in the world. Yet so little discussed as a topic for critical examination.
Before I delve into (a slice of) my findings and assessment of the complex social dynamics that have made my personal search for friendships so difficult, allow me first to explain where I am located in relationship to the whole topic.
It is true that until very, very recently (and only as a result of extreme intentional personal work), I did not know who I am and what I want. In life, in general. This led me to be in a state of indecision for most of my life about pretty much everything, including how I regard friendships. In a world where capitalism alone can be a destructive force for any authentic being*, I insist that being a Korean** immigrant in the western world added a substantial layer of complexity to it.
It is also true that I have secured the one friend in the world that matters most to me in the world, who makes me happier beyond what I have ever dreamt of before I met him. We have been married for five years, and if all goes according to plan, will be making babies together in the near long term. We are such good friends that sometimes we have trouble distinguishing oneself from the other. However, Esther Perel might be proud to know that we have made good strides in making of ourselves “the other” as needed.
Finally, it is true that ever since I became politically empowered***, it is like I got in on a “secret.” The secret is that most people assume and behave according to social expectations in ways that have not been critically examined. The political forces at play that run all of society are alone enough to ensure this. In other words, having experienced enough systemic alienation and disempowerment as an undocumented immigrant woman of color while coming of age in this country, and having come to realize that, in a perfectly sensible way, none of it was my fault, I just stopped giving a shit as to what most other people do and expect.
These three contextual facts might be enough to demonstrate that I have not had much reason to look for friends. If, perhaps, I better embraced the artist temperament with more earnestness and courage, I might have really let myself go unhinged with regards to the social ties I keep or don’t keep. But in fact, I have held onto great hope all these years, and was recently heartened to discover through the successful, shall we say, resolution of a few friendships that were relatively long-term that I have been earnestly trying all along. After all, I cannot only turn to Erik –no matter how perfect he is for me—for all my friendship needs while he is also my spouse.
*Bearing in mind that this, of course, is a very strong western individualist sort of value
**Actually, I’d say that about being a minority immigrant of virtually any minority race or ethnicity. But here, and oftentimes, I specify Koreanness because it has a very impactful set of history, underlying beliefs, and norms that has, shall we say, a very special and unique pungent flavor to it for those of us raised within its culture.
***I use this term freely all the time because it’s just perfect to describe what I mean. I use it to mean gaining awareness of oneself and one’s community in the context of the greater political system’s processes and impact, and finding ways to gain personal, interpersonal, and political control of oneself within said system in order to better their lives.
Several hours after my therapy session, I reconnect with S, a brilliant and clear-thinking woman who is very dear to me. We knew each other from the time that I worked as program manager at the Columbia School of Social Work’s Action Lab, but had fallen out of touch except for loosely on Instagram. It has now been a year since I’d left that position, and much had happened at the lab in the aftermath. On a personal level, starting at the end of that position, I’d been evasive with her. On a personal level, I’d been evasive with a lot of really great people.
In the span of two hours, we catch up and connect on all sorts of dramatic, horrifying, hilarious, social, racial, ethnic, existential matters as women of color who give a d*mn about systemic issues in the US and world, from a certain standpoint of awareness and personal and professional experience. What makes me laugh hours after are the observations we shared about Americans as immigrants –she from Nigeria, and I a Korean from Paraguay. It’s amazing how well we connect.
What still aches me are the grave strifes she endured in the meantime. What breaks my heart is to know that in a very real way, she might not have been alive to have that chat with me due to the everyday sort of way that a woman like her is taken for granted and used. Social work programs like hers (Columbia) and mine (Chicago), which are among the top in the world, can attract brilliant and compassionate people who, for the same urgent and dire systemic reasons that we are called to fight, enable toxic and destructive behavior and environments.
I express my sorrow to her for not having been present for her before, though I do love her, explaining that I’ve been trying to work on myself. She kindly understands.
S shared about her personal* struggles with me on a couple of occasions, but I know that she is, like most other women of color I’ve known, extremely mindful of who she unloads such difficulties with for fear of a negative emotional impact on the listener. Just like she might not have shared about it with me, I can safely assume that there is much not shared with me from other women who have tentatively and individually approached me. But if I had had a chance to do it all over again, to have the option to be present for S and for these other women who I know are struggling and could potentially greatly benefit from the support of a friend in me, given where I am with my own confusions and struggles, I would not have chosen differently.
*I wondered how a white male corporate lawyer on a board I serve once framed my imposter syndrome for being in a majority white professional board as a personal struggle. I didn’t assign the act so much to the person as to that they are from the corporate environment, and white male. I call S’s poor mental health personal here for now, but I am not entirely sure how much of this should be regarded as personal, if it should be so at all.
When I was facilitating discussion groups through KALBI* last year, the topic of friendships came up in most of the groups. Along with noting that it’s harder to make friends in adulthood, we were also able to note that there are drastic differences in the ways that Americans and Koreans make friends that added a substantial level of confusion and pain to the experience of growing up. We were noting broad patterns on how we make friends, on top of the differences in other facets of social and interpersonal aspects of life, such as the ways that we communicate, that we handle emotions, etc.**
In Korea, we thought, forming friends is much easier. Your social ties are largely determined by your position in your environment, which is largely determined by age and gender. Your personality and taste plays in to determine who you might click with after these factors have played their part in determining your part of the world. While similar factors are also at play in the US, they’re not as strong. You can befriend someone older or younger than you. Your position in the environment doesn’t have to define you. There’s a lot more room for selectivity, and room for variation of expression and being that doesn’t lead you to suffer severe consequences as an outcast. Americans play a weird dance around each other for some time, feeling each other out, as distinct individuals separate from each other gauging whether the other is trustworthy and likeable.
One of the sweet and kind Korean-American members*** in the “OG Group” recalled having a repeated experience of approaching someone with eagerness and trust, no doubt thinking something like, “we’re both similar, we must want to be friends together!”, only to be met with rejection. I and at least one other member heartily expressed resonance. This was (by coincidence) a women and femmes’ group of six, and various members present shared that they would approach others in the US by being too trusting. There was a lot of pain –the pain of embarrassment, of rejection-- that was not explicitly said but thickly implied in the air. It was all too familiar for us.
*KALBI, or Korean Americans Living Their Best Identity, was something I voluntarily on for the middle half of last year. With the support and consultation of cofounders, I facilitated four discussion groups with Korean-Americans and Koreans in the US to better understand ourselves in the mish-mash that is living as Koreans in the US. It was an amazing experience for all of us involved –to learn more about this unique community, here’s a recruitment document. Unfortunately, I got emotionally burnt out and had to stop.
**Please note that any observations or patterns made in KALBI were done mostly anecdotally. It was a fundamental part of our values that we should value and give weight each of our own subjective personal experiences, given the potential self-erasure that can happen particularly for marginalized identities if we prioritize some greater collective truth. None of it should be taken as anything more than people talking and sharing what we observed based on our experiences. And, of course, this will be a subjective collection of what I recall and can semi-coherently put together.
There is a certain simple model that social network experts like Damon Centola of the University of Pennsylvania depict people in relationships. People are nodes, and social ties (relationships, or bridges) are lines between the nodes. If in an individualist society like the US, identity stems from the nodes themselves (from the nature of the nodes), I would say that for Koreans, identity stems more from the positional context of the node in relationship to its surrounding bridges, and the bridges, than from the nodes.
(In case this is all foreign to you and feels overwhelming, I keep saying how it’s something miraculous that we Koreans or Asians make our way at all in this western society.)
After my chat with S, I think of other great women, and particularly women and femmes of color, that crossed my path in the recent past and showed interest in further developing a potential friendship with me. They are objectively great and admirable people, and in many ways possess the very qualities I actively seek in others. Nevertheless, I’d been drawing clear boundaries between us to prevent further advancing our relationship, and very mindfully, often repeatedly, so. A large part of the reason I am writing this post is to let these women know that it is not that I dislike them, or that I do not think very highly of them, but rather that I am trying to keep my own head above water and contextualize our relationship to greater beliefs that I hold.
After having actively “worked” through a lot of psychological pressures built up over time, there is one significant one that remains most affecting now. It is the pressure to be present for the needs of others, particularly women, and women of color, as a feminist of Korean parental heritage.*
The reader might be aware of the global valorization of “the good woman” who tends to everyone’s comfort and emotional needs. She “earns” the love that she has always deserved by doing this well.** I have unfortunately become too familiar with an extreme interpretation and enactment of this ideal that emanated from real systemic disempowerment and insecurity. I have witnessed in various settings multiple times that the blurring of boundaries between individuals in an intense sort of collectivism can easily lead to devastating consequences for particularly those within who are marginalized, often including women.*** To be clear, collectivism doesn’t inherently create or enable more of this sort of subjugation than individualism. Collectivism just makes it –its origin and effect-- harder to trace and identify between individuals.
S shared with me that asserting herself against the person that harmed her and many others was for her a matter of life and death (she had ideated suicide multiple times). And for me, figuring out these longstanding matters –social expectations, obligations— tied to the social identities that I hold (and by extension others with similar social identities), and then living in accordance with my own will and values, has been a matter of life and death.
I have never contemplated suicide for myself (though I did question how I came to be living many, many times, one result being this short tale), but I had already known what it is to be driven by these social standards to throw myself away. I would come to rediscover as recently as last year that the possibility of that fate had always remained just a visit away from my helpless mother.
Saying no, or not reciprocating genuine regard, has been the hardest to follow-through with other women, and more with women and femmes of color, because of a few reasons. First, I find it harder to say no to them due to the intense pressures we share as a result of socialization. The woman and I might both know that we are trying to be “good women” of a certain sort given all that makes it difficult for us to be so. Shouldn’t that mean we should be friends? Second, I also know fully well that so many of us women of color simply hadn't had any role models to show us alternative forms of being that are comfortable with saying no to others without feeling like we are being mean or selfish. We haven't seen and therefore even known that we should have our own cups filled before filling that of others, particularly if we are even struggling to do the latter. Third, the act of not being present for them, or even not finding myself intuitively liking to be with them, directly contradicts my genuine belief that, along with genderqueer and trans folks, women of color deserve the most due to global systemic inequities. Among other things, I feel that they (we) deserve the most love, attention, and support, given how they each might likely be holding a village. Fourth, a lot of these women are very smart, resourceful, and capable. They are no doubt attuned to the struggle of gender-aligned social expectations, and I would hope and think that they have found alternative ways to deal with these social expectations themselves. The fall would be harder, then, when I’d realize that they might not have –not within the constraints they might each be facing (which of course I could not possibly know). I’ve realized that the way other women might behave in these socialized ways has not much to do with their level of intellect or awareness of the impact of social identities, though I think these qualities help.
I am deeply afraid of and have avoided committing to any sort of relationship with any other women or women of color who uphold these collectivist values where it does not seem clear as to where the boundaries and loyalties between individuals lie. By boundaries I mean responsibilities held and assumed for and to one another. As a sort of holding space while I try to understand these social identities, I have learned to generally avoid situations where I feel social pressure to respond particularly in gender-aligned ways. My ethnicity and race can hardly be separated from the way gender plays out for me; I have even more fiercely avoided situations where I sense that I am expected to act in a certain way because I am a Korean-American or Asian-American or immigrant minority woman. I do not hold the answers, and I do not pretend to.****
As a coping mechanism in the thick of deep confusion and the danger of self-erasure, I have personally decided to take firm stances to protect myself when I am unsure. I am not sure what can be reasonably expected of me as a woman, woman of color, or woman of Korean heritage, given how things already are in the world. I am not sure how much I could stretch myself to absorb the pain of another who might not examine the relationships they enter as critically as I do, or even who might not have yet learned that painful lesson to intentionally value herself as I have. I can only control my own choices, which includes whom I open my heart to (and therefore expose myself to potential heartache). In all of my adulthood, I’d sought to be able to own up to my own actions as an individual out of a deep resentment for others who refused to do so. The stance I take in the face of great uncertainty is that I think that women of color should prioritize our own needs and desires.
The lack of connection to those who intuitively understand me the most is a great cost to me, and similarly I hold regret for the sense of loss the other woman might feel. I imagine that the way I’ve been approaching it all sounds extreme to the outside observer, perhaps unnecessarily so. But I don’t think it’s any more extreme than the challenges and social expectations presented to minority immigrants and women on a daily basis.
I have shed many tears to grieve for the way that women, and even more women of color, are socialized to give their will and themselves away to others when they themselves might not and may never have their own needs expressed, acknowledged, validated, or met.
* Before I continue, I need to contextualize for the western audience how it is that I find myself resisting that very call towards greater collectivism that great scholars like Judith Butler call on us to do. Does it not go against my morals? Does it not go against even my heritage? The answers: no, and, unfortunately, maybe. The clashes presented here deserve a whole other post, so I will not delve deep into my reasoning here. Suffice it to say for now: The west has no idea the intensity of collectivism that we Koreans are part of (and, after all, I am not writing this blog post for the primary benefit of white people). Even the children of Koreans that have never even been to Korea, like me, are affected by it in our entire world view. None of these great western thinkers or organizers are accounting for the Korean norm when they call towards collectivism or collective action. I believe that progressive, social justice-oriented Korean-Americans are not yet empowered to realize that western experts simply are not experts for us to determine what works for or is right for us. Only we are. And we can only hone this expertise by validating intently our own lived experiences. Perhaps all this only points to the need to distinguish various forms of collectivism for the benefit and as a potential strength of this particular group.
**I realize I am already framing all this in a negative way when it need not be so from the perspective of other women who really enjoy and find meaning in caring for others. I fully acknowledge and respect that reality of other women, and in no way intend to demean or minimize this purpose in their lives that may be a great source of joy and pride.
*** One notable realm where I’ve seen this rampant is in the social justice world, an observation which is in itself deeply distressing, as I firmly believe that world has the right motives, and if it only had all the resources that it deserves it wouldn’t have as many challenges.
****Insofar as anyone might be looking for applicable solutions to their own lives, all I can do is offer up my solutions (or temporary coping mechanisms) that work for me given my awareness of my own situation (the constraints I face, my needs, my support system and relationships, my own strengths and weaknesses, etc.) as just one case for consideration. After all, all of our experiences and their effects on us are different.
In the span of the last four years, I ended several friendships with male friends. They are remarkable here, if nothing else, in that they had been longer and more consistent than ones with women during that time. As I look back now, I can safely say that we were mostly friends because they were more assertive in expressing interest and I was largely undecided. Of course, they each also had personal qualities that made them likeable. They asserted some aspect of me at a time when I needed validation, and I strove to appreciate them for who they each were. I appreciate that they were there for me.
What potential I saw in friendship with men, as compared to women, is that I would not find myself having to cater to emotional needs as a core foundation of our friendship. I realize that this is a critical component, to some extent, in all meaningful personal relationships. But what I struggle with is rather about how it happens and the weight of significance that is placed in helping the other deal with their feelings as a primary characteristic of the relationship. When I observe now the stark contrast in the ways that progressive new male and female acquaintances in New York and beyond engage with me, I know that I am reacting to something real. And this is also something very basic, if pervasive.
The men I finished my friendships with, on the whole, didn’t contribute much to my growth into myself, my problem-solving efforts, my own emotional or intellectual needs, my needs for challenge or variation of thought, or even my need for some good diversion. Hell, most of them ended up benefiting from what I had feared the women might expect from me –my personally responding to their emotional needs (various factors make this complicated, though). But all of this I assign not to a lack of intent or will on their part. Most were Asian-American, and there are added broader cultural forces that explain their own tendencies towards reservedness and conformism, qualities which contributed to the dearth I experienced.
Nevertheless, in hindsight I find all these efforts thoroughly irritating and frustrating. I become irritated at myself and at the world. I try to soothe and remind myself that looking for friendship and comfort, by whatever mixture of instinct and reason that is at work at any given time, is simply human. And don’t I believe that we need more humanity in this world?
I’ve presented my difficulties along gender lines (in a mostly binary world, even more in Korean society) so far because that social identity has been most affecting to me in my efforts to connect with others as of late. But before these, it was the scary and non-scary binary.
It’s very simple. I explain it in my blog post on how the myth of higher ed in the US corroded me as a blooming young adult; people who have greater educational titles attached to them scare me (or as I put it, “intimidate” me and induce fear in me). There is, of course, a lot of subtle variation based on a myriad of other factors, like how they might present themselves in their way of being in relation to these white-dominant and moneyed institutions, or how else they might have continued to choose similar such widely recognized establishments in their careers.
I admit, having just read through that post again, I had to hold my breath through it. I am still enraged and saddened by the whole matter, though as a new US citizen I no longer feel the need to prove things in the same way (and neither do I feel actually scared to be caught out for my legal status). But mostly, I found my decisive tone at the end, as if I had gotten over it, quite laughable. Just the other day, I said to Erik, “she’s very smart, you know. She went to UPenn for undergrad.” And he, who is a post-graduate scholar, responded for the umpteenth time something to the effect that where you get your undergraduate degree from tells you more about social class than how smart you are.
When someone is scary they could hardly be boring. If a tiger were to appear before you on this Lunar New Year, I would hardly imagine you would be bored. This is what even I would intuitively conclude. Scary and boring cannot occupy the same space. And, in a land of individualism, indeed, boring is fatal.
Predictability is boring. Predictability is not a quality we (or at least definitely I) tend to seek in the arts and in entertainment. Given political empowerment mentioned above, I will not deny that I generally find people who follow social expectations to be boring.* This does not preclude the possibility that I might find them interesting for a whole host of other reasons. But doesn’t the world feel rather sleepy once one has figured out how extensively and powerfully certain corrupt ideologies have shaped every aspect of our lives in very predictable ways? Doesn’t one itch for the possibility and excitement of something different? Anyway, the world is replete with cause to be bored. Hence, if not scary, then one could easily be boring.
Except, I realize as this writing exercise helps me organize my thoughts that it is quite possible for me to find someone both scary and boring at the same time. In fact, this topic can extend for far longer. But I will listen to my angel of mercy and try to get to the point of this portion.
Ideally, I would find someone neither boring nor scary to befriend, but this is rare for me in the US. I am trying to get over the scaredness, as that’s my best bet in finding friends right now. But it is difficult and, along with all the other gender-aligned difficulties, I blame it on systemic issues.
*This is probably a sentiment shared by many artist-types
I do not navigate the world with the intent to categorize people based on gender, race, ethnicity, education level, or any other such categories. I have been striving, as an artist, to simply express the core of my experiences as a human being, peeling back all these social identities. The reason that these take such a central role in my search for a friend is that, for minorities like me, these things have a way of making themselves present and overwhelming sooner or later and cannot be escaped, even when one is trying not to mind them. The patterns of imbalances and injustices are apparent with any genuine ounce of compassion or interest for the world as it is.
What I want lies in the arts and humanities. I want to dream, explore, discover. I want to critically examine myself and the world in order to come to some greater understanding. I want to be challenged and interrupted. I want to know thoughts and feelings and experiences different than mine. I want to be struck by originality and insight that would have never occurred to me, to then fuel my own process in a new direction. I want to experience in or with another the intensity of life and what it holds. I want to know people who dare to dream beyond what corrupting forces have systematically and predictably laid out this country and world to be the way that they are. I want to be with people who want these same things.
These are not extraordinary desires. They are in a way certainly very privileged. And yet, I also disagree. I don’t think these are privileged. This is the sort of spirit that I find in Latin American literature and that I experienced in the remote, dry, and barren environs of Paraguay. The enemy of this spirit of humanity is not any more poverty than the busy-ness of capitalism, or conformity. It is a great challenge to live in this sort of freeness of mind, willingness to let oneself go, given the hell that we are living in in this country today. But I think it’s not just wishful thinking, or some excuse to live as carefree as a child; it is the necessary work that at the very least artists should be tackling for the advancement of society, and even for the advancement of justice. This is the call to action that Pablo Neruda got a Nobel Prize in Literature for.
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