The on-call friend.

It seems like most single gals have what I like to call the "daily girl friend." This is a friend who you talk to almost every day and you probably hang out a couple times a week. The "daily girl friend" may not even be your best friend, but often they're a close friend who lives nearby. Given the circumstances in your life you can have several "daily girl friends" over the course of your single life (such as a roommate). The "daily girl friend" provides a listening ear, a movie or shopping date, and someone you can share meals with. This arrangement can work great, until one of the women gets into new relationship mode. Suddenly the "daily girl friend" can get bumped to the "weekly girl friend" or even "monthly girl friend."

One of my good friends is in a new relationship. She met the guy last summer, and throughout the fall and early winter they had a very casual and gradually progressing relationship. In the past month or so, the relationship has become more serious and she now spends most of her free time with him. In this situation, I feel like I'm the "daily girl friend" who has now been bumped. I barely see or even talk to her anymore. She has cancelled plans with me more than once so that she can hang out with the boyfriend. She doesn't call me or text me anymore (unless she needs my help with something). When we are hanging out, she is constantly texting and/or talking on the phone with the boyfriend. I find this quite annoying (especially the part about how she has cancelled plans on me).

I was venting about it to my best friend, who kindly pointed out that what was happening was a phenomenon she likes to call the "on-call friend." This is when a friend is so sucked into a new relationship that spending time with their signifgant other is their top priority. They will keep their close girl friends on-call to hang out only when it is convenient for her and does not interfer with the boyfriend's free time. I thought that was a great way to describe it. That's me, the "on-call friend."

Time to out myself...

For a full explanation, please visit my other blog:

http://www.phinneyfamilygrows.blogspot.com/

Cheers!

And....exhale.

Ever feel like you've been holding your breath for weeks at a time? That's how I feel lately. Time to exhale....

More on this later.

Can YOU keep a secret?

A while ago I told a friend a bit of personal information (a secret). I swore her to secrecy and trusted that she would stay true to her word. A few days later she admitted that she shared my secret with her mother. I was a little annoyed, but explained that she better make sure her mother understood the importance of the secrecy since there were other people in their family I was withholding the secret from.

The same thing happened again with another friend. I told him something personal and let him know how important it was for the information to remain private. He went on about how honored he was to be in "the inner circle" and that I trusted him enough to divulge such personal information. A week later, he confessed that he had shared the secret with his brother (someone I barely know). Again, I was thinking, "WTF?! Can't people keep their mouths shut?" I recently saw this friends brother, and it felt really uncomfortable to me knowing that this guy knows something so personal.

These experiences have had me thinking about secrets and human nature. Can people truly keep secrets? What makes people share the private information that others have shared with them? Is it a need to gossip, to hear someone else's opinion, or just the fact that knowing you're "not supposed" to tell makes you want to tell even more? Or something else?

I've wracked my brain trying to figure this out. In each of those situations, there was no need or relevance for either of those people to tell the people they did (it's not like my friends mother or my other friends brother have any interest or stake in knowing things about me). I still have yet to ask each of my friends (if they can even remember now) why they chose to divulge my secret. The more I've thought about it, the more curious I am about this topic of human nature and the art of keeping secrets.

Last weekend I was in a situation where I was having a conversation with another friend and for a moment I had the urge to tell her a secret since it was relevant to the conversation. However, I was able to stop myself when I realized that it was quite possible she would do the same thing the other two people did (tell someone else). Also, I was remembering my New Year's resolution I made to be better at keeping things private and not allowing myself to be such an open book.