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I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the biggest thing on my mind lately is love, that thing of all things. That thing everyone is so desperately reaching for. Why is it that when things get hard or when things get monotonous, the love is suddenly the first thing to go? Do people really feel the same way about one another for absolutely forever? My guess is no. I know I haven’t felt the same way about my friends for as long as I have known them, and my friendships generally last a long time. My average friendship is about 10 years, and the longest is over 20 years.

Love in the context of friendship is a funny thing. It’s strange that Amanda (my 20 year friend) and I have had some pretty stupid spats as kids, and in the next week or two, it’s as though nothing happened. We’re back to basics. We’re compatible people. We get that each other makes mistakes and nothing in our lives really forces us to stay friends. We’re not related, we don’t work together and we’ve never gone to the same school. Yet, we talk like there’s no tomorrow when we get a chance, but there is no pressure to make time for one another. We don’t have set days where our goal is to enjoy each other’s company. We get together when it’s convenient for our lives and schedules. There has been very little stress or tension on our friendship. We both make an equal effort or lack of effort. In my opinion, it’s the perfect partnership. If that’s not love between two strangers, nothing is.

I don’t say all this to sound as though there is more to us than just friendship. We are just friends, and we don’t spend an extraordinary amount of time together. We just get each other and we couldn’t imagine our lives without the other in it. That’s not to say there’s never been tension, or we’ve never been angry with each other. That is saying that in those situations, there was never an option of ending the friendship. Whatever it was, time would just mend all wounds.

If only all relationships were this easy. I’m not saying that maintaining this friendship did not take a great amount of work on both of our parts. I am saying that we each expected the other to work just as hard at maintaining the friendship. If a letter was written, it would be responded to. If a phone call was made, it would be returned. If plans were made, they would either be followed through or cancelled appropriately. Of course, this is very general. No one is perfect, but we both are fully aware of this fact. Sometimes we would hurt each other’s feelings. We both are also aware that this is just another part of life. Life is worth both the ups and the downs.

With all of this being said, I wonder why Amanda and I are the only ones who get it. We are both fabulous people, but we have both had boyfriends whose answer when things get a little weird is to just end the relationship. She’s been through hell and high water with her man for the last four years, and now he’s just starting to get it. I somehow feel a little responsible for keeping them together, because I get it and I remind her that she gets it. It just takes time, experience, and (here’s the big one) patience.

What is it? What abstract idea do we get that has eluded many others in our life paths? Well, I don’t have a simple answer for that, but I’m willing to elaborate. Understanding life is understanding that nothing is easy. Everything (yes, even that!) takes effort, especially if it is really worth having or doing. The idea that when you find love it will just be easy is false. It will feel easy because the rewards are worth the effort, especially in the beginning. As the days pass, the love will wax and wan like the moon, sometimes just as frequent. If it is still there, though, you can’t just give up on it. The sinusoidal curve of life will reach its peak again and you’ll wonder what you were thinking by giving up on it.

Here’s an example. After five years of bi-annual trips home and correspondence via email, phone, letters, or parents, Amanda and I are finally living in the same town again. Life is pretty good. Our journey to adulthood is beginning to reach its pinnacle, and we are happy to help each other through it. Then, she moves to Iowa for her first real, degree related job. I’m happy that she’s doing the job she wants. I’m sad because I’ll really miss her. After a few months, our conversations seem to stop and I panic. I call her a few times and leave messages. I feel as though this friendship is about to reach the we-just-lost-touch-with-each-other phase. A tearful phone call later, all is back to the way it was before. Neither of us really enjoyed having each other out of touch. The thing that we both seem to get is that you just don’t give up on something because it’s hard or unexpected. Our friendship began pretty easily. We grew up next door to each other, we were always geographically close. It made perfect sense to be friends. Even as kids, it wasn’t always easy. We would make fun of each other or (more often) make fun of each other’s brother(s). We could get mad at each other, hurt the other one’s feelings and the next week, we’d be over it. Somehow, that way of thinking and relating to each other transferred into our adult lives and friendship.

I think we both thought we’d grow out of each other, but we somehow just ended up growing into each other. Like I said, we never went to the same school. We didn’t know a great deal about the other’s day to day habits. We mostly spent weekends and summers together. We didn’t talk a great deal about our classes or what we learned. We mostly just drove around or talked about boys or mutually made fun of our brothers. College talk started and suddenly we found out our favorite subject was math and we both wanted to be math teachers. We both really liked volleyball, even though she was leaps and bounds better than me. She eventually played volleyball for the college that recruited her, whereas I got cut from the high school team the first time I tried out. After a while, we just found more things in common. These were just silly little things that couldn’t have resulted from living next door to each other, such as, our favorite beer. We also share a mutual respect for each other’s life choices. I completely admire her ability to tough it through five years of college (with a math major!) while playing volleyball for a coach that told the players they were fat. She tells me she brags to everyone that I was in the army. Neither of us expected our lives to take the turns that they did, but when the shit hit the fan, we always had each other. We just get it.

I keep looking at this relationship and thinking, this is the way people are supposed to interact. Nothing magical happened to bring us together, and nothing magical happened to keep us that way. We just get it. The life that we both chose involves the other one, and everyone in our lives has to deal with it. Now, Amanda’s not the only one in my life who gets it, she’s simply the best example. I could go on for days about who in my life gets it, but none of them have gotten it, or me, for nearly as long and as well as she does. This is what a best friend is, and this is why they say that your spouse should be your best friend. They just get it.

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