Accounting lesson in friendship
It’s easy to begin a friendship, but it can be extremely difficult to maintain friendships, especially over many years. Unlike a marriage, few friends usually exhaust all efforts to keeping a friendship. And some times, at no one party’s fault, friends drift apart as interests diverge over time.
I’ve always felt bad whenever I see friendships get strained as the income levels of a group of friends diverge significantly. Over time, it becomes impossible for those with less earning power to participate in all the other friends’ activities. In this case, I feel it is important for those “richer” friends to be more sensitive to their friends’ needs. After all, that’s what a good friend is supposed to do – be caring.
Speaking of caring, it is true in most relationships that this is a contentious issue because each person values their level of caring differently. If one party feels they are doing more of the caring or giving, then dissatisfaction ensues. They start to feel like the other friend doesn’t care enough to spend time with them, or to recognize their birthday or other important occasions. Every action, including inaction, is a choice. Hence, the friend who is constantly “too busy” to meet with their friends, for example, has in effect chosen to not to care enough to do so because their other activities are more important than this friendship.
The fact is everyone has finite resources in terms of time, income, and energy. Every decision we make every day, we are deciding how to allocate or spend these finite resources; we are constantly prioritizing what’s important to us at that time. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. At certain points in our lives, some things are more important that others. When these priorities among friends do not coincide, then you have a mismatch that can lead to a strain in the relationship. Most friendships can withstand these temporary mismatches, as long as they are not protracted or constantly recurring.
A friend recently introduced an interesting perspective she had about long-term friendships. If a friendship has stood the test of time and managed to be been sustained long enough (e.g. 20 years), you could decide to accept and stick it out with your long-term friendships no matter how bad it got. The recognition here is that people generally do not change and if you have known a person for that long a time, you really know all about that person’s strengths and weaknesses, and you accept them as they are. After all, no one is perfect.
At first, I thought it was a very calm and collected way of evaluating the situation, but upon closer analysis, this perspective essentially debunks the accounting concept of “sunk cost” to the world of friendship. In accounting, when something is considered “sunk cost”, you do not take it into consideration at all (no matter how tempting because of the amount time or money you had previously invested) in making future decisions on a related item. In other words, friends would have to “win” their friend’s friendship over and over again as each case or interaction is discrete. Well, this seems a wee bit dry when evaluating friendships. But should it? How many friendships and marriages could be saved if we worked hard – every time – to build that relationship and keep it?
Ok, so back to real life. Obviously, our relationships build upon a “bank account” from which we occasionally draw down on. The key is to put something back in the friendship piggy bank and don’t keep drawing down into an overdraft and become a dead beat. By avoiding “protracted and/or constantly recurring failure to care”, we can be better friends to our friends.
I’ve always felt bad whenever I see friendships get strained as the income levels of a group of friends diverge significantly. Over time, it becomes impossible for those with less earning power to participate in all the other friends’ activities. In this case, I feel it is important for those “richer” friends to be more sensitive to their friends’ needs. After all, that’s what a good friend is supposed to do – be caring.
Speaking of caring, it is true in most relationships that this is a contentious issue because each person values their level of caring differently. If one party feels they are doing more of the caring or giving, then dissatisfaction ensues. They start to feel like the other friend doesn’t care enough to spend time with them, or to recognize their birthday or other important occasions. Every action, including inaction, is a choice. Hence, the friend who is constantly “too busy” to meet with their friends, for example, has in effect chosen to not to care enough to do so because their other activities are more important than this friendship.
The fact is everyone has finite resources in terms of time, income, and energy. Every decision we make every day, we are deciding how to allocate or spend these finite resources; we are constantly prioritizing what’s important to us at that time. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. At certain points in our lives, some things are more important that others. When these priorities among friends do not coincide, then you have a mismatch that can lead to a strain in the relationship. Most friendships can withstand these temporary mismatches, as long as they are not protracted or constantly recurring.
A friend recently introduced an interesting perspective she had about long-term friendships. If a friendship has stood the test of time and managed to be been sustained long enough (e.g. 20 years), you could decide to accept and stick it out with your long-term friendships no matter how bad it got. The recognition here is that people generally do not change and if you have known a person for that long a time, you really know all about that person’s strengths and weaknesses, and you accept them as they are. After all, no one is perfect.
At first, I thought it was a very calm and collected way of evaluating the situation, but upon closer analysis, this perspective essentially debunks the accounting concept of “sunk cost” to the world of friendship. In accounting, when something is considered “sunk cost”, you do not take it into consideration at all (no matter how tempting because of the amount time or money you had previously invested) in making future decisions on a related item. In other words, friends would have to “win” their friend’s friendship over and over again as each case or interaction is discrete. Well, this seems a wee bit dry when evaluating friendships. But should it? How many friendships and marriages could be saved if we worked hard – every time – to build that relationship and keep it?
Ok, so back to real life. Obviously, our relationships build upon a “bank account” from which we occasionally draw down on. The key is to put something back in the friendship piggy bank and don’t keep drawing down into an overdraft and become a dead beat. By avoiding “protracted and/or constantly recurring failure to care”, we can be better friends to our friends.
Comments