“Valuing” a Friendship
1) New love. “My parents have been married for 40 years, and they don’t really talk to each other like newly in love people do.” Meaghan Brown in Outside Magazine, Spring 2025.
Beth and I will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary next weekend. I typically wake up first (still working, and all), and I honestly can’t wait for her to get up so that I can tell her how much I love her.
2) Audience. “Know your audience but don’t underestimate them.” Sydney Sweeney, actress/producer. WSJ Magazine Fall 2025.
I like this. The better I know my audience the better I tend to connect with them. The better I tend to provide some sort of value to those listening to me. What I think I will take from Ms. Sweeney’s quote is a little strategic tweak: Having done my homework studying my audience I will assume that they are up to the task of keeping up with whatever I am transmitting. If it becomes clear that I have overestimated them, either through faulty research or some other miscalculation, I will pivot in a way that better aligns my transmission to their reception “bandwidth”.
One thing worse than underestimating your audience is to speak “over” them, especially if you’ve recognized that you are flying at a different altitude. Demonstrating your respect for the audience is as important as any other part of the transmission.
3) Odds. “Don’t look at the odds. If you look at the odds, you won’t try anything.” Hoda Kotb in the WSJ Magazine Fall 2025.
This is good. Kinda lines up well with another quote I like: “If you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space.” The new stuff, the true change-agent stuff isn’t typically found in the middle where you and your ideas are odds-on favorites to be right. Just like everyone else. Sometimes you just have to have faith that what you know about yourself and your footing out there on the edge is all you need to know. Look within for the courage to not just buck the odds, but ignore that there are odds there in the first place. Winston Churchill’s classic quote clinches this: “Success is never final. Failure is seldom fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
It takes courage to ignore the very existence of the odds.
4) Value. Friendship has a cost. There’s a price for each friendship, a certain trading level if you will. Think about your friendships, where you are financially with regard to your friends, how you talk about money together, deal with money when you are together.
People are weird about money. I was reminded about a couple of stories from my younger years that illustrate this. I grew up with two small groups of friends, one older and one my age. We were all sorta middle of middle-class economically, and our folks made all of us work for our spending money. I don’t ever remember “owing” any of these guys any money, and I don’t ever remember any of them owing me. We kinda fell into this “it’ll all work out” kinda thing; whoever had money bought the beer and/or the pizza. Our young family once dropped in on one of these guys en masse a few years ago and nothing had changed. We stayed for a week. Our wives had never met one another. I don’t remember, but I’m sure we bought some food or some wine or something; I’m equally sure that Tom doesn’t remember, either. Tom and I just knew it was gonna work out.
All of the “investments” we made all of those years ago paid out in spades.
When I was a young physician in training, missing both nickels to rub, Beth and I chose to live near some college mates, all of whom were doing very well, thank you. We received many very nice invitations to spend time with them at some very lovely places in and around NYC, Dutch treat, all of which would have required both nickels and then some. We couldn’t go, of course, and our invitations for them to join us in our very modest apartment for burgers and dogs always found them busy.
Only one friend understood, the one who had less when I had more when we were youngsters. In New York his family accepted all of our invitations, and his invitations were either to his home or on his dime, making it clear that it was HE who was getting the better of the deal because we were together. He remains my closest friend on earth.
I’ve been fortunate as an adult in that I’m relatively free of needs, and there have been times when I could cover the wants of my friends, or cover my wanting to cover them even if my friends were able. What’s interesting is how difficult it can be to have it be comfortable when someone is “treating”, especially with friendships that were formed after your trajectory has sent you well beyond school and first jobs, etc. It can be a little trickier to pull off the same “it’ll all work out and be even” thing, even with your closest friends. Think about it a minute: do you feel owed when you treat or that you owe when you are treated? To be fair this is almost universally the default mode, at least the “owing” someone for a generosity extended to you.
Beth and I are best friends with a couple we met in grad school in the ’80’s. It took 10 years AT LEAST for my buddy to stop keeping score when I was the one more able, to understand that I was actually the one getting more out of the deal because he and I were doing stuff together. Over our 40+ years of friendship we have moved in and out of periods where one or the other of us has been at least one nickel short. And yet, once we managed to stop looking at the tab, we have been free to do whatever it has taken for the two couples to be together. Bill and Nancy did all of the legwork on our recent early anniversary trip to Italy.
I never gave the nickels a single thought.
Last weekend I enjoyed a wonderful example of friends doing whatever it takes to be with each other. There are 8 of us who were originally brought together by our wives and the local pre-school PTA back when our kids were too young for even kindergarten. It’s been 30 years since we met for couples nights out as our wives’ plus-ones. Interestingly, the girls don’t really hang out very much any more. We’ve been playing golf and going out to breakfast together for decades, most recently for five days of golf in central Ohio. Everyone did whatever it is that they do best in this group. For some that meant choosing a menu, shopping, and making a meal for 8, remembering that two of the guys have a special dietary thing to consider. Others, like yours truly, simply show up with wine.
What we didn’t do is keep score on the tab. With the exception of the one big ticket item, lodging, we honestly all pretty much assumed that the numbers were going to work out.
There’s a cost to every friendship, a trading range if you will, and the greater the range between those involved the more difficult it can be if you look at it this way. For me, with those friendships like my close friends from high school, college, and my life as a young father that have passed the test of time, the money involved is nothing more than a measure of how much that friendship is worth.
The more we ignore the cost, the more valuable we find the friendship.
I’ll see you next week…
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