Category Archives: Relationships

Probably, but you might also experience the “funny feeling” as Gretchen Rubin calls it:

The “funny feeling” is the term the Big Man and I use to describe the uncomfortable feeling you get when a friend or peer has a major accomplishment. You feel happy for that person, but also envious, and also insecure and anxious about your own success….

Now, you might argue about whether it’s true that people succeed in groups. I happen to think it is true, but it’s debatable. But whether or not it’s objectively true, it’s an attitude that will make a person much happier. After all, your friend doesn’t get the promotion, or not, depending on whether it makes you happy or unhappy, but your attitude about that promotion will affect your happiness.

I remind myself of this. I’m so competitive and ambitious, with an unattractive grudging streak, that I often suffer from the funny feeling. It help to remind myself that the fact that something good happened to someone else doesn’t mean that it’s less likely that something good will happen to me–in fact, it might make it more likely.

Of course, it would be more admirable for me to be happy for other people’s successes, purely for their own sakes, rather than having to remind myself that there’s some possible benefit for me, but this catchphrase helps when I’m feeling small-minded.

A great perspective, and something a lot of people (including me) struggle with.

When I shared some good personal news with a friend the other week, his first words in the email reply were: “You fucking motherfucker.” He then went on express his happiness and excitement for me. I think it captured the emotion of the moment and what I loved about it was its humorous acknowledgment that we’re all competitive and human and genuine friends…instead of the attitude that I see a lot in college which is a kind of unacknowledged envy, where one makes up some negativity about a person to hide fundamental jealously.

My friend Andy McKenzie, a sophomore in college, recently blogged about feeling jealous at friends’ success. It’s, as usual, an honest and mature take. He concludes that ideally we could channel jealously into inspiration. Yes. The reason I continue to try to expose myself to as many impressive people as possible is to continue to push me to turn up more stones and never rest on my laurels….even though this means, at times, I must deal with that “funny feeling.”

The first step to combatting counterproductive emotions is being self-aware enough to understand that they exist.

A reader of my post on the networks and connections of today’s grads points me to this brief but highly interesting article on friendship in the cyber-age. It starts by reviewing Aristotle:

In Book VIII of his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle categorizes three different types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good. Friendships of utility are those where people are on cordial terms primarily because each person benefits from the other in some way. Business partnerships, relationships among co-workers, and classmate connections are examples. Friendships of pleasure are those where individuals seek out each other’s company because of the joy it brings. Passionate love affairs, people associating with each other due to belonging to the same hobby organization, and fishing buddies fall into this category. Most important of all are friendships of the good. These are friendships based upon mutual respect, admiration for each other’s virtues, and a strong desire to aid and assist the other person because one recognizes their essential goodness.

The author goes on to discuss each category and how the web and email play a role in the forming and maintaining of such a relationship. He’s optimistic — people tend to dwell on the negative when it comes to the internet and its effect on friendships, he says, but in the end it is more a force for good.

Does going through a grieving process contribute more to your emotional depth than going through a period of intense joy?

Does sadness stretch you more than happiness? Does experiencing intense loneliness change you more than intense companionship? In short, do only negative emotions count for depth?

I’m not sure. I think experiencing emotions on either end of the spectrum contribute to your emotional development, and that if you only have experienced the negative but not the positive you are no more emotionally developed than someone who’s only experienced the positive.

But as someone who fits in the latter category — no intense grieving, depression, or prolonged loneliness for me, yet — maybe this is just wishful thinking. Naturally, it’s he who has experienced and understands the full range of emotions who should in theory be most emotionally dveloped.

Your thoughts?

(hat tip to Dave Jilk for sparking this idea)

What’s with all the sluts nowadays? That’s the lazy rhetorical question asked by many when it comes to the widely-used phrase and widely misunderstood phenomenon known as "hooking up".

There’s been some nice chatter by Matthew Yglesias, The American Scene, and Dana Gouldstein who are all tackling the issue raised by a recent David Brooks column. Brooks said this ($):

Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit puberty around 13 and many don’t get married until they’re past 30. That’s two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn’t a transition anymore. It’s a sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.

This strikes me as accurate. As you can see from all the blogosphere discussion, though, it’s really complex.

I expect I’ll have more to say once I’m living in a dorm. Until then, here’s an old post of mine on girl-on-girl hookups and performative lesbianism which had 21 comments. Here’s a summary of that discussion. Here’s my review of I Am Charlotte Simmons. Here’s some chatter in the comments to one of my old posts on "fuck buddies".