Dear Vanessa
This is a complex piece of writing.
You measure lovers and friends in the same breath and using similar criteria.
You put out the message that except in rare circumstances, speed of action may inevitabily lead to disaster. You quote from literature to make your point.
What I find interesting is that you do measure lovers and friends whilst in a relationship together. Makes sense to me but the measures you use in either circumstance are either a little different, or are they the same?
What I find even more interesting is your proposition that we should be guarded about anyone who appears not to have any friends.
I wonder where that idea comes from.
I can see why you might say it. If no-one worthy if note is recognised as being friends with the person in question, they must therefore be incapable of forming a relationship with anyone.
This interests me. Whilst I have had many ‘friends' over the years, I have not sought to ‘collect' them and sadly movements in time and space particularly in the old days where mobile phone numbers and email addresses were not available made this nigh on impossible.
I moved from Belfast Ireland to Haute Savoie France, to Paris France, to Cambridge United Kingdom, back to Belfast, back to Cambridge, to Birmigham United Kingdom, to Bristol United Kingdom (all before I was 30 and mobile phones and email addresses existed) to Cardiff Wales, to the South of France, to Dartmouth England, now with three houses and mobile and internet contacts.
I am approaching 60. In days of yore most people were born, lived and died where they were born.
I was born in 1959 and was part of the Irish diaspora before technology existed. In some ways it was a product of the Troubles in Ireland which I lived as a teenager in the 1970s. We all wanted to get out.
So I find your notion of those without friends interesting. Sometimes, as with me, the acquisition of friends is prevented by time and space.
But what I think you are getting at is those who choose not to have close friends or rather those who choose not to be friends with you.
I am both, dislocated by circumstances and not in pursuit of connection.
There is nothing in what you say I disagree with.
I just ponder where I sit in your summary of the rules of engagement.
Am I someone akin to those who should be avoided by your definition?
Of course, Vanessa, I would not have responded to this unless your writing had had its own particular impact on me, even more so to this extent.
Good writing gets a reaction and yours has just had mine.
I just wonder whether my reaction to this suggests lack of, desire for, or disinterest in, connection.
Thank you and with my kindest regards
James