External Pressures on Friendship: Geographic Distance

Like any other relation, friendships are exposed to external pressures from outside sources. In chapter 10 (p.266), Julia Wood sums up these external pressures into three categories: competing demands, personal changes and geographic distance.

Studying abroad is an experience acting as external pressure on my relations with my friends. In this case, it is mostly connected with geographic distance. As Julia Wood recalls, most people have faced distance in some of their relationships. But it’s the level of commitment that will set if the relation will survive or not. But it may also depend on socioeconomic factors (it takes time and money to visit a friend that is away!). To keep in touch with my best friend (see the picture of us beside) and not loose all the time and memories invest in our friendship, we try to chat everyday or two. Sometimes it’s really quick, almost just the ‘’headlines’’ of our respective life. However, even though we’re thousands miles away, I feel like she’s just next door. This is really important to me, because I can still feel close to her and know what’s going on in her life. At the meantime this helped me to enjoy fully my trip, since I know she’s doing fine. She’s also a doing the bridge between me and my other friends. She keeps them aware of my abroad experience as well as she feeds me with important things going on in my other friends’ life (love, school, work, etc.). Sometimes I feel far away, but I make an effort to share my experiences and thoughts because I know investment is the best way to feel close again. I’ve been here for almost 3 months and I believe things didn’t change between us.

One of the things my friends studying here with me and I are doing to keep in touch with people back in Quebec, is writing a blog on our Californian Exchange. On this blog, we share thoughts, facts and pictures of our lives in here. People seem to appreciate it because they often give us feedback on how they feel about our posts and also comment our beautiful pictures. Some people told me they almost feel like they’re part of the trip when looking at our blog and pictures.
Here’s the link of Eat.Pray.Surf (blog) if you want to take a sneak peak of it!

Plus, I found this video of Gossip – Love Long Distance, in which the girl is complaining about her boyfriend lack of investment and commitment since they’re apart. She’s feeling like the relation is falling apart because of the geographic distance: ''love long distance is testing me, trying my patience, I need more of your assistance now''.

Responses to conflict: The Exit Response

In chapter 9, Julia Wood is broaching the management of conflicts. At some point, she discussed of the various types of responses to a conflict: the exit response, the neglect response, the loyalty response and the voice response. It was really interesting reading this part of the chapter, because I can identify people in my entourage who relate to the different kinds of response. This was particularly true with the Exit Response: ‘’The exit response involves physically walking out or psychologically withdrawing’’ (chapter 9, p.234). As Julia Wood explains, exit conflict is engaging negative effects since the problem isn’t address. People aren’t always doing it with bad intentions, for them, it often refers as a way of avoiding conflict as they don’t believe in engaging in it.

This is the case of Kate, one of my good friends, who can’t stand getting into an argument. Since she doesn’t feel comfortable into that kind of situation, she prefers not saying a word and she just sneaks out. When something’s wrong between us, I know we won’t be able to discuss about it and express our feelings to figure out how to manage the disagreement. For me, this ends up being very frustrating. As we learnt earlier in chapter 9, conflict is natural and can even be good for the individuals. I feel like we can never get completely over the difference, as we don’t talk about it: it makes it almost unfeasible to understand each other’s point of view. The ‘’ real problem ‘’ is kept under silence and tensions between us are rising. This is really draining energy from me and our relationship always turns out being weakened every time.

Now I understand that it’s not because she doesn’t care about it, it just because she doesn’t see the point in arguing. I think I’ll try to let her know that exit isn’t a good solution. I found an interesting quote of Maggie Kuhn, which clearly illustrate the message I’d like to tell my friend Kate: ‘’Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes’’. I think this sentence expresses the importance of talking, saying your opinion and emotions. This might be hard, but nothing’s worst than saying nothing. It’s important to give a voice to your thoughts and feelings. (Like it is represented in the image at the top of the text)

Reasons We May Not Express Emotions

Communicating emotions effectively is not something very natural and easy for some people. Considering myself not very skilful at expressing my inner emotions, I completely understand the reasons we may not express emotions described by Julia Wood in chapter 7 (p.180). According to researchers, there are 4 majors reasons why people hesitate to communicate emotions:

(1) Social Expectations
‘’[…] what we feel and how we express it are influenced by the culture and social groups to which we belong. Gender socialization seems particularly important in shaping feelings and the expression of them.’’ (Wood, p.180) For example, our culture tends to portray women as caring and supportive people, talking overtly of their feelings. As a woman, not always being able to deal well with my feelings makes me feels out of place, in some situations. I can really tell that social expectations play a major role in my perception of myself when it comes to expressing emotions.

The character of Bree Hodge (Marcia Cross) in Desperate Housewives is the perfect looking woman: she’s always dressed very nice, wearing pearls and acting very nicely, like a real lady (see picture). She looks like the higher expectations we have on how a western woman should behave. In fact, this is very ironic because she actually struggles with expressing her true feelings and consequently, her relationships are very affected by that problem.

(2) Vulnerability
In others words, vulnerability is the fear of self-disclosing to others that could affect their view of us.

(3) Protecting Others
Not expressing emotions can be a choice. The fear to hurt or upset someone’s feelings can overpass the need to express one’s own emotions. However, you must take the time to consider and analyze the situation, because restraining from expressing feelings can cause personal distress.

(4) Social and Professional Roles
‘’A final reason we may not express some feelings is that our roles make it inappropriate’’, argues Julia Wood on page 183.