On friendship

I was listening to a podcast today. (On Being with Krista Tippett if you must know.) They started discussing what it takes to build a strong friendship. I started crying. I realized that I don't have many good friends. Besides my wife and kids, I don't have any really. I mean I have acquaintances, people with whom I am friendly. And coworkers with whom I get along. But no real friends.

The closest I have to friends are my wife's friends. She has lots of friends. And consequently her friends have sort of adopted me. She is popular on Twitter too. She has friends from all over the world. (I'm afraid sometimes she may be too friendly.)

It's one of the problems with growing up gay in the Church. (Perhaps outside the Church too... I only know the "in the Church" version.) For me, I never had really good guy friends because I wanted more. I wanted them to want me the way I wanted them, but then I would check myself; I wasn't supposed to want more. I never had great girl friends either. Well I did in high school but then I went to BYU. There I had a few girl friends but they wanted to be girlfriends (or at least I feared they did) and so I didn't get too close with any of them or really maintain any of those relationships. Plus, they went and got married and I didn't want their husbands to think I was the creepy guy friend who kept in touch with their wives. (Even if I really was harmless.)

And I'm sad.