excerpt from article in the magazine

I once read that it wasn’t kind to cultivate a friendship just to have an audience. Reading that is helpful, living it is more. Witness my story.

My new friend Kathy was great fun. It had been a particularly pathetic time in my life, what with getting dumped by my boyfriend, working at an idiotic job and enduring the usual city dweller stupidities. In short, I readily welcomed some female bonding and Kathy provided it. We shopped, we drank, and we took a vacation together to Savannah, where we practiced very bad Southern drawls. Six months later, I noticed, our bond started to shift. Good friendship, like any medicine, should act as a tonic, ingested slowly and with great care. I was patient getting to know her until I saw our friendship was becoming uneven. Plans were made only on her schedule, phone calls unreturned, and all of this was cheerfully explained by Kathy saying, “Well, you know how I am.” And so I accepted it.

Kathy often asked for my help with organizing her bills and cleaning the house. It struck me a little odd that she forgot to pay her mortgage seven times, but I rationalized it: She was a single mom and besides, I liked to be helpful. Still something didn’t feel quite right with my new friend. As much as we laughed and engaged in Ethel and Lucy-esque adventures, (a trip to Home Depot and a faulty electric drill springs to mind) I often found myself drained after spending time with her. Only in retrospect did I see that she dominated every conversation. At no time did I have my turn. It appeared I wasn’t really a source of advice -- only a captive audience. The truth of this “friendship” was emerging.