At almost 50 I have a pretty sizeable number of friends. I read an article once that had an illustration that showed a representation of personal relationships as concentric circles, ranging from the small circle closest to the center to depict those closest to you, to the large outer perimeter -- those who know you because your paths cross regularly enough, but don't actually know you. I've felt lucky in friendship. Almost each new life experience I've had -- a horrible work environment, a local chapter of a writer's club, taking sunrise photos on the shore of a nearby lake -- has resulted in finding at least one friend.
I believe friendship requires mutual respect, a feeling that each person values each other, consideration, and empathy -- the same things needed for love and affection. I haven't had an issue finding this with my closest female friends. Can you guess where I'm going with this? My friendships with men, if you can even call them friendships, have been complicated and problematic.
I went to a college that I believed would provide more insight on men. I don't have brothers and often felt uncomfortable around boys. Going to a service academy that was about 90% men didn't do much to reassure me. There were guys that were nice to me, but I felt distrustful. Do they want to know me or was it like that fortune cookie joke, did they want to know me in bed. My senior year of high school, my own newly widowed mother provided this advice, stated smugly: "Men only want one thing." You don't have to be a master of riddles to figure out what she meant.
It's a pretty dismal thing to believe your value to men might very well amount to how soon and how well you'll put out. I want to believe that isn't true. I don't think I'll give my daughter's the blunt advice my mother gave me, but I'm not going to lie, either. If I only use my life experience as evidence, it may be dismal for them, too.
When I separated from my ex-husband, I had hoped we could maintain a friendship. I never should have burdened myself like that. Like many men, he took friendship to mean I would be available for phone calls or texts at his whim. One Saturday morning he stopped by with my youngest kid and his dog in tow, and let himself into my house because he wanted to talk. It didn't matter that it was 8 a.m. and I was in bed enjoying a slow and quiet morning, and that *I* didn't want to talk. He wanted to talk and therefore, in his mind, I should entertain it. There was no phone call, no warning text. It didn't end well for him. I took that incident and recalibrated my expectations.
He'll ask if I talk to any of my other friends the way I talk to him, and I counter with, "my friends don't treat me the way you do." Isn't that at the core of it -- friendship means each side is holding up their end of the rope. It means you meet in the middle of the bridge, not that one person is perpetually crossing the entire bridge to meet the other. It causes me to question the ideas men have about friendship and causes me to suspect many of us are operating from vastly different definitions.
I remember whenever anyone who fell into the category of former-fling-but-not-ex-girlfriend-who-still-held-a-torch reached out, my ex would reassure me that this person was a "friend." This all inclusive bucket category confused me. Why do men get angry when they are "friend-zoned" when many of them refer to former people they fucked as "friends?" Do men see friendship with women as the catchall for before and after sexy times? In these cases, friendship seems to be a waypoint in the course of pursuit and inevitable retreat phases but not a valuable destination in its own right.
I've had other men befriend me, but they only like the agreeable, fawning version of me. The moment I raise an issue or want to take the focus off of their interests, or, gasp, criticize them because I don't like how they treat me, it's a problem. They seem to want to call the terms of the relationship, as if I don't get an equal say. My ex is hurt that I don't consider him a friend. The solution to that is simple -- act like a friend! His hurt feelings aren't going to bully me into a change of heart, not anymore. This post is not intended as a slam on him; he's not the only man in my life who unilaterally seemed to think he could declare the status of the relationship.
I have a long running joke with three of my friends on our ongoing group chat. They're all college classmates of mine, and the joke is about the previous class president, who was also a friend of mine. As cadets in our senior year, we had taken a trip to the mall with the goal of buying his fiancee a few gifts. At one point during this excursion, he said "It could have been you, you know." That's it, that's the joke. Anytime he did or said anything on social media, the joke would re-emerge in our group chat. In life's typical you can't make this shit up fashion, at our twenty year reunion, his wife wasn't there, and I, who was in my hotel room because I had not forked over the money to pay for the dinner event, was summoned to the hotel ball room to star in the role of plus one. This was comedy gold for my friends, who were all in attendance. As I've matured, I see how little this "friend" actually cares about me. I looked good in person and on paper, and therefore was deemed worthy enough to consider a "could have been." But does he know me? Did he consider that I had a choice in that declaration or was I supposed to melt and feel flattered that I had been chosen?
It's the same way with friendship. Friendship doesn't happen because one declares it. Friendship requires practice, and, hard to believe, friend behavior. I suspect the entitlement my friend the class president felt is a widespread phenomenon that expands into all of those concentric circles of friendship. Paired with that entitlement is a warped perception of love. There are people who think love means you can treat the other person like shit, and if they put up with it, they're a keeper. Notice how the decision making is one-sided. I imagine this entitlement is why my couples therapist had to emphasize to my ex that only one person has to want to leave to initiate a divorce. When you think everyone is living in your world, you may start to believe that your way of seeing things, including the labels you place on your relationships, is all that's required for validity.
This is a societal problem, and I have not quite worked out the dissertation to explain all of it. When someone is raised to see the opposite sex as inferior in every way, how, as an adult, can this person be a true friend to anyone of the opposite sex? When someone is raised to believe they will be the head of the household someday, and everyone in that household "under" them will adopt their last name, simply because they were born with the chromosome combination that indicates it's their birthright, a friendship enacted as a valuable connection between equals appears to be a contradiction.
I don't think any of that is difficult to understand. The women in my life seem to get it; the verdict is out on the men.
2.16.2025
The people who ask why the black kids sit together
About two weeks ago, West Point released a memo disbanding certain cadet clubs "effective immediately" with the reasoning that they were complying with executive orders.
The twelve disbanded clubs are: the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, Japanese Forum Club, Korean-American Relations Seminar, Latin Cultural Club, Native American Heritage Forum, the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association, and the West Point chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers, Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and Society of Women Engineers. The letter states the clubs are "not authorized to continue informal acivities using Government time, resources, or facilities."
These clubs were not exclusive; anyone could join, whether they identified with the group personally or not. They were also privately funded. Some of these are national organizations, which allow cadets to network with civilian students at events outside of the granite walls of West Point. There are graduates outraged, and with that outrage came news articles. Apparently due to the category of these particular clubs, they were disbanded while other clubs, the Polish Club for example, and all religious clubs, were spared. I read comments on LinkedIn from the colonel who signed the letter. He backpedaled, stating that these clubs were under review. The words "disbanded effective immediately" don't exactly paint the picture that there will be any reviewing and re-banding.
When I was a cadet, I was part of the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, better known as "CAS." This was the "black" club, with a history of being overtaken because black cadets could not start a black student union, but that is part of another story in academy history.
CAS was my social outlet in a place where I felt I didn't belong. This was my way of knowing people outside of my barracks and classes. For an introverted cadet who seemed to struggle with everything at that place, this club offered a brief reprieve and an occasional weekend trip. Joining this club privided a sense of belonging that wasn't hinging on my academic grades, athletic performance, or military bearing and I imagine cadets and graduates who were members of the eleven other clubs feel similarly.
I was a suburban middle class kid who didn't appear disadvantaged on paper, but that didn't tell the whole story. My dad had died February of the year I entered West Point. The domino effect created by losing the family's breadwinner, meant my mom sold our house in the fall of the same year and moved overseas to be with her family. My sister had an active duty careeer in the Air Force, a spouse with his own active duty career, and young kids. I didn't have the support network of cadets whose parents drove up for weekends in their cars proudly adorned with West Point decals, or a nearby home to visit when I wanted a moment away without having to wait for an extended break. Mine was the family who didn't show up, and it wasn't anything personal, but a pattern of repeating what they knew. We didn't plan a trip around my sister's graduation from basic training. Instead, she flew home and we watched the videotape of her training, and laughed at the instances where she appeared among the patched together clips, like when she was struggling through an obstacle course. There was a stark practicality in my family that bordered on coldness, a you're-an-adult-now-so-you-don't-need-us mindset. For example, instead of sending packages, my mother would send money -- which is also nice, but she didn't seem to understand the importance of knowing someone cared enough to buy what they knew you liked, and carefully assemble a package especially for you. Explaining would be pointless; I'd only hear "But it costs less just to send you the money so you can buy what you want!"
I entered West Point in a time of personal grief that I had to push away in the name of getting through my first year. The mental health support at West Point at the time (early '90s) ranged from being an unhelpful waste of time to feeling like a deterrent. I remember going to the Cadet Counseling Center to deal with my grief and being told to work through a personality test first. I never returned. I'm saying all of this to share that I felt a lot like Mayo from "An Officer and a Gentleman" at West Point, like I had nowhere else to go. There was no "home" to go back to, as my mom had sold the house and moved to Italy after my dad died, and moving in with my sister and her growing family was not an option.
All of this backstory isn't my attempt to garner sympathy, but my way of saying CAS was my place to go.
I don't remember how I got invited into the club. I know in the flurry of walking to and from classes, several black cadets would look you in the eye, ask questions, and act friendly, as if to break away from that initiation ritual of breaking you down into nothing and rebuilding you until you were ready to graduate and commission. The club met in a designated academic classroom in the evenings, and much of the discussion revolved around activities. I got to travel to Manhattan one Saturday. A cluster of us in our white over gray uniforms were heading down a sidewalk on our way to the Blue Note Jazz club and a man who was watching us smiled and exclaimed, "Cadets!" As much as some of us hated the gruel of our daily lives, we also had occasions that gave us the feeling that we were lightning in a bottle -- special in our uniforms during this brief time in our hopefully long lives. The delight that stranger showed us, this group of black cadets -- validated that feeling. We planned and organized, held CAS "jams" where you could socialize, dance, and shed the mask that came with being among the "best and the brightest." I got to take a trip to Washington D.C., when the Museum of African Art first opened, and that trip included a group of us going to the home of a member whose family was local to relax and have dinner. These clubs formed with the intent to connect people, not divide them.
In a place where I struggled academically, athletically and militarily, CAS gave me a glimmer of something positive, a much needed break, especially in the years before I was allowed to have my own car and move around freely. We had fun, and we also talked about real things, like the importance of cadets choosing certain career specialities when they graduated to ensure some of us would represent in the higher ranks.
As a cadet, there were clear markers that others didn't think we belonged, or that we should group ourselves together -- people that did not delight in our existence. People asked why we sat at non-mandatory dinners together, or why we sat together at the football games. I got the sense that the people asking didn't actually care about the answer, and they lacked the ability to empathize with feeling like a token at a place that was just as much yours as it was theirs. These people didn't ask why we had a barracks building named after Robert E. Lee, even though he was on the wrong side of history, or recognize that they themselves had the privilege of blending into obscurity without the pressure of feeling like any misstep would be a reflection upon an entire group of people. The disbanding of these clubs feels like these people that questioned why we sat together achieved the goal of ensuring we can't gather to have fun, feel a moment of comfort or talk about what plagues us. I can't help but think there are miserable people in the world who somehow think the answer to solving their misery is to ensure no one else is having a good time, either.
This quickness to disband these clubs is alarming, as if implying these clubs existed out of something nefarious, or they are somehow no longer needed, and it also sends the message to current cadets that places where they feel a sense of belonging are going to shrink or disappear entirely. It sends the message that fitting in is more important than belonging, and I can tell you, even when when I wore the same uniform as everyone around me, I still stood out. I don't know what's going to happen, and my realization after attending a recent discussion with other graduates is that West Point has always been reactive, not proactive. My hope is that this action was a punt by the leadership with a hope that they wouldn't get fired and replaced by loyalists. A quote I've heard and read since receiving my West Point prospectus as a candidate is, "Much of the history we teach was made by people we taught."
I can only hope we remain on the right side of history.
These clubs were not exclusive; anyone could join, whether they identified with the group personally or not. They were also privately funded. Some of these are national organizations, which allow cadets to network with civilian students at events outside of the granite walls of West Point. There are graduates outraged, and with that outrage came news articles. Apparently due to the category of these particular clubs, they were disbanded while other clubs, the Polish Club for example, and all religious clubs, were spared. I read comments on LinkedIn from the colonel who signed the letter. He backpedaled, stating that these clubs were under review. The words "disbanded effective immediately" don't exactly paint the picture that there will be any reviewing and re-banding.
When I was a cadet, I was part of the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, better known as "CAS." This was the "black" club, with a history of being overtaken because black cadets could not start a black student union, but that is part of another story in academy history.
CAS was my social outlet in a place where I felt I didn't belong. This was my way of knowing people outside of my barracks and classes. For an introverted cadet who seemed to struggle with everything at that place, this club offered a brief reprieve and an occasional weekend trip. Joining this club privided a sense of belonging that wasn't hinging on my academic grades, athletic performance, or military bearing and I imagine cadets and graduates who were members of the eleven other clubs feel similarly.
I was a suburban middle class kid who didn't appear disadvantaged on paper, but that didn't tell the whole story. My dad had died February of the year I entered West Point. The domino effect created by losing the family's breadwinner, meant my mom sold our house in the fall of the same year and moved overseas to be with her family. My sister had an active duty careeer in the Air Force, a spouse with his own active duty career, and young kids. I didn't have the support network of cadets whose parents drove up for weekends in their cars proudly adorned with West Point decals, or a nearby home to visit when I wanted a moment away without having to wait for an extended break. Mine was the family who didn't show up, and it wasn't anything personal, but a pattern of repeating what they knew. We didn't plan a trip around my sister's graduation from basic training. Instead, she flew home and we watched the videotape of her training, and laughed at the instances where she appeared among the patched together clips, like when she was struggling through an obstacle course. There was a stark practicality in my family that bordered on coldness, a you're-an-adult-now-so-you-don't-need-us mindset. For example, instead of sending packages, my mother would send money -- which is also nice, but she didn't seem to understand the importance of knowing someone cared enough to buy what they knew you liked, and carefully assemble a package especially for you. Explaining would be pointless; I'd only hear "But it costs less just to send you the money so you can buy what you want!"
I entered West Point in a time of personal grief that I had to push away in the name of getting through my first year. The mental health support at West Point at the time (early '90s) ranged from being an unhelpful waste of time to feeling like a deterrent. I remember going to the Cadet Counseling Center to deal with my grief and being told to work through a personality test first. I never returned. I'm saying all of this to share that I felt a lot like Mayo from "An Officer and a Gentleman" at West Point, like I had nowhere else to go. There was no "home" to go back to, as my mom had sold the house and moved to Italy after my dad died, and moving in with my sister and her growing family was not an option.
All of this backstory isn't my attempt to garner sympathy, but my way of saying CAS was my place to go.
I don't remember how I got invited into the club. I know in the flurry of walking to and from classes, several black cadets would look you in the eye, ask questions, and act friendly, as if to break away from that initiation ritual of breaking you down into nothing and rebuilding you until you were ready to graduate and commission. The club met in a designated academic classroom in the evenings, and much of the discussion revolved around activities. I got to travel to Manhattan one Saturday. A cluster of us in our white over gray uniforms were heading down a sidewalk on our way to the Blue Note Jazz club and a man who was watching us smiled and exclaimed, "Cadets!" As much as some of us hated the gruel of our daily lives, we also had occasions that gave us the feeling that we were lightning in a bottle -- special in our uniforms during this brief time in our hopefully long lives. The delight that stranger showed us, this group of black cadets -- validated that feeling. We planned and organized, held CAS "jams" where you could socialize, dance, and shed the mask that came with being among the "best and the brightest." I got to take a trip to Washington D.C., when the Museum of African Art first opened, and that trip included a group of us going to the home of a member whose family was local to relax and have dinner. These clubs formed with the intent to connect people, not divide them.
In a place where I struggled academically, athletically and militarily, CAS gave me a glimmer of something positive, a much needed break, especially in the years before I was allowed to have my own car and move around freely. We had fun, and we also talked about real things, like the importance of cadets choosing certain career specialities when they graduated to ensure some of us would represent in the higher ranks.
As a cadet, there were clear markers that others didn't think we belonged, or that we should group ourselves together -- people that did not delight in our existence. People asked why we sat at non-mandatory dinners together, or why we sat together at the football games. I got the sense that the people asking didn't actually care about the answer, and they lacked the ability to empathize with feeling like a token at a place that was just as much yours as it was theirs. These people didn't ask why we had a barracks building named after Robert E. Lee, even though he was on the wrong side of history, or recognize that they themselves had the privilege of blending into obscurity without the pressure of feeling like any misstep would be a reflection upon an entire group of people. The disbanding of these clubs feels like these people that questioned why we sat together achieved the goal of ensuring we can't gather to have fun, feel a moment of comfort or talk about what plagues us. I can't help but think there are miserable people in the world who somehow think the answer to solving their misery is to ensure no one else is having a good time, either.
This quickness to disband these clubs is alarming, as if implying these clubs existed out of something nefarious, or they are somehow no longer needed, and it also sends the message to current cadets that places where they feel a sense of belonging are going to shrink or disappear entirely. It sends the message that fitting in is more important than belonging, and I can tell you, even when when I wore the same uniform as everyone around me, I still stood out. I don't know what's going to happen, and my realization after attending a recent discussion with other graduates is that West Point has always been reactive, not proactive. My hope is that this action was a punt by the leadership with a hope that they wouldn't get fired and replaced by loyalists. A quote I've heard and read since receiving my West Point prospectus as a candidate is, "Much of the history we teach was made by people we taught."
I can only hope we remain on the right side of history.
2.08.2025
Now It Can Be Told
Almost three years ago, I took both of my kids with me to visit my best friend Heather and her family in California. My best friend and I have been an item since the first day of eight grade, when we met at the bus stop. We were both new kids at school -- I had come from Rockland County, New York while she was from a different school district in the same county. We bonded over our observations of the school, the other kids, and feeling out of place in rural, coastal Half Moon Bay. She lasted a month before arranging to return to her old middle school, while I stuck it out.
We reconnected in 9th grade, and this time we stuck together for our high school years and beyond. Now we had kids who were in middle school, and because everyone's spring break dates aligned, we had time to explore, share stories, and rest. One morning we went out to breakfast and Heather talked about an incident from nearly twenty years ago.
My husband (at the time) and I had visited California with his family to watch his cousin graduate from UC Santa Cruz. This meant most of the trip would include his extended family but we had one day set aside to visit Heather, so we drove to her house to meet up, parked, and piled into her car for a trip to San Francisco.
We hit the tourist spots -- Fisherman's Wharf, and even did a tour of Alcatraz. On a walk through the city back to the car, my husband split off to a parallel street. I remember feeling anxious about it, while Heather looked annoyed. It felt like a loyalty test -- was I going to follow him, or stay with Heather? We are so often expected to place our romantic relationships above our friendships. If your spouse doesn't get along with your platonic friends, it can isolate you. Loyalty tests are not part of love.
There were many little things like this in my marriage, unspoken rules that I learned along the way all in place to ensure I remained considerate of his feelings. Meanwhile, I never seemed to look closely enough at his actions to decide what was abnormal, or what felt inconsiderate of my feelings.
Towards the end of our day out, Heather drove us across the Golden Gate Bridge. I sat in the front passenger seat, laughing and joking with her, while my husband had the back all to himself. At some point he decided to remove his sock and shoe and foist it into the front, on my side of the car. Heather made light of it by laughing and pointing to the splatter shaped glittery sticker she had affixed to the inside of the passenger door that said, "What's that Smell?" I snapped a photo with my disposable camera. We joked and laughed and I had never paused to think, this isn't normal. This is not a thing I would do if the situation were reversed and I was in the back seat while my husband and his friend spent time catching up in the front.
This was the story Heather shared with my kids about their dad as we sat in a restaurant booth eating breakfast. They didn't know. While that incident really happened and I still have the photographic evidence, I had filed it away. There were a few things like that -- so outlandish and weird that I kept it to myself, partly out of not wanting to tell on my spouse (which is the type of thing that keeps experiences of dysfunction and abuse quiet), and partly out of shame. If you let it sink in that you married a person who resorts to removing their sock and shoe to place their bare foot into the passenger seat where you were sitting instead of opting to use their words, it can feel like you supremely fucked up your choice in your person. At the same time you can play it off. Oh, it was just a failed attempt at humor. It's harmless. Lighten up, Francis!
The kids were incredulous. Mommy, did he really do that?! Oh my God! It shifted their view of their father and at the same time made them pay attention to incidents with him that felt off kilter. The story has become a litmus test my oldest kid uses when she meets a friend of mine. "Did she tell you about the foot?" The friends that don't know all have the same reaction. WTF?!
We are no longer married and I don't have to "protect" him out of a sense of loyalty anymore. The foot incident was shocking, funny and harmless, and one of many things that happened in the course of over two decades that I remembered but buried. We marry as adults on the outside while being emotionally immature, resorting to playing games, being shocking, getting revenge and testing our loved ones all in an attempt to get attention, and under that, be loved. I'm guilty of my own embarrassing antics, but I am also done being ashamed and staying quiet.
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