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Key points
- Friendship’s place in the hierarchy of relationships changes over the life cycle.
- Friendships are high stakes when they are intimate.
- According to Harry Stack Sullivan, the first high-stakes friendship is formed in pre-adolescence, a “chum.”
- For many people who are without a spouse and/or retired, friendship can play a major role in their lives.
When I was teaching, we talked a lot about high vs. low-stakes writing. High-stakes writing is when an assignment is graded and worth a large portion of a student’s overall grade. Low-stakes writing is much less pressured because it will either not be counted in the student’s grade or it will account for a small portion of it.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about friendships the same way—high and low-stakes friendships. (Since the stakes might be different for men and women, I will limit this discussion to women’s friendships with men and women.) What do I mean by high and low-stakes friendships?
Friendships are high stakes when they are intimate. We share feelings about important aspects of our lives and about each other. We also depend on the other person for support in difficult times; advice in times of conflict; and empathy in times of remorse. We feel “known” by them. The loss of a high-stakes friend is painful; it has a noticeable impact on our lives.
Low-stakes friendships, on the other hand, are more casual and limited emotionally. We may play bridge or tennis together, go out for dinner with our spouses, but we do not feel “known.” We don’t share any feelings or experiences that would make us feel emotionally vulnerable and we do not talk about feelings toward each other. The loss of a low-stakes friend may be regrettable, but it does not leave a dent in our lives.
According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan, the first high-stakes friendship is typically formed in pre-adolescence with a friend of the same sex, a “chum." A relationship in which the other person's interest and security become as important as one's own is what Sullivan terms “intimate.”
The formation of "chumship," according to Sullivan, is crucial to personality growth. The preadolescent who successfully enters a chumship finds someone with whom she can share her innermost thoughts and feelings. To her chum, she can reveal what she feels to be the most terrible things about herself in an atmosphere of acceptance. Successful chumships offer an opportunity to work through disagreements and learn to compromise. It is a developmental stage that lays the groundwork for later relationships.
Sullivan thought chumships occur during preadolescence (10-12), but they can continue much longer than that. During high school and college when most people are trying to separate from their parents, but have not yet found a romantic partner, chumship or “best friendship” is at the top of the hierarchy of relationships. We participate in activities with them; share our thoughts about our family; and share our feelings about budding romantic relationships. During the years before having a permanent romantic partner, and perhaps even in the early years of that relationship, best friend is still a high-stakes relationship. By that, I mean a disruption in, or an end to, the friendship would have a dramatic impact on our sense of well-being.
When both friends have romantic partners, or if one does and one does not, the friendship may in some cases start to wane. As sociologist Georg Simmel explains, in a dyad each party is dependent on each member equally. The introduction of more actors changes the relationship drastically by dissolving this dependence of the group on each relation equally. The partners of the original two friends do not share the same history or have the same trust between them. And if one friend has a partner and the other does not, the dynamics of the friendship change.
When children are born, the role of friendship may shift even more. One friend may have a child when she is not married, while the other gets married and does not have a child. One of the friends may have a career, while the other chooses not to work outside the home. Where once you could run over to see a friend at her house in the neighborhood, or in the dorm, at a moment’s notice, now planning weeks in advance may be necessary. Work, romantic partners, children, and elderly parents all come before friendship.
One of my college roommates married and had children right after college. In our forties, she was divorced and her children were in college. Friendship became more of a priority for her; she was eager to take trips and try out her newly found independence. In contrast, I had a husband, two young children, and two jobs. I was putting one foot in front of the other trying to manage work and family; I did not have the time or emotional energy to revisit the high-stakes friendship we had had in college.
For women who work, have partners, and children, friendships may remain low stakes for years. While for women without partners who work and have children, friendships may play an important supportive role. But when marriages end and/or children grow up and leave, friendship may move up in the hierarchy of relationships and low-stakes friendships may become more intimate and important or end.
For example, my husband and I socialized frequently with another couple when we had children who were the same age. We shared picnics at the lake with the children and many dinners with good wine and interesting conversations. But when the couple got divorced, the wife, Barbara, sought us out for comfort, while the husband disappeared. We became high-stakes friends for her because of her life circumstances.
But she remained a low-stakes friend to us. For many years, the relationship with Barbara continued, seeing each other sporadically and having increasingly less in common to talk about. Finally, one day we got a note from her saying, “I think this friendship has been over for quite a while and we should stop going through the motions.” I agreed. There was no argument, just a parting of the ways that had been building up for years.
When spouses die, high-stakes friendships are more likely to develop again. Patricia, for example, lived next door to Kathy for years. They were both married and had children, but their children went to different schools. For many years, they nodded in passing and occasionally talked about the weather. But when their children were grown and moved away and their husbands died, Patricia and Kathy started having longer discussions when they met on the street. They discovered that they both loved to visit museums; they both were doing yoga; and they both liked to have dinner in restaurants. They made a date to have dinner and their relationship evolved from an acquaintanceship to a high-stakes friendship.
Clearly, friendship’s place in the hierarchy of relationships changes over the life cycle. For many people who are without a spouse and/or retired, friendship can play a major role in their lives. Low-stakes friendships may offer social support during lonely or difficult times and high-stakes friendships can offer intimacy without romantic or financial ties. As people live longer, both high- and low-stakes friendships can play an important role in healthy aging.
