Healthy friendship is about giving as much as taking, it's where boundaries are observed and demands seldom made; it's where conversation can move effortlessly from superficial chat to deep discussion. But a friendship can become an unhealthy one when two friends leave no room for anyone else, when their enthusiasm for spending time together, for talking late into the night and for sharing secrets is as great as that between lovers. The need in this type of friendship is to give your undivided love and attention to someone who you know will return it in equal measure. But with this intensity comes turbulence, and inevitably such friendships become high- maintenance and hard to sustain.
These intense adult friendships are similar to those formed by adolescent girls desperate to have one "best friend" on whom they can rely and on whom everything depends. In adulthood, however, we don't usually have the emotional or physical space to devote this amount of attention to one person.
Psychologist Dorothy Rowe sees intense friendships as something that most people grow out of. "Adolescents need very strong, passionate relationships because they are learning to cope with becoming an adult and trying to understand society," she says. "But when we grow older, passion and intensity are not what we normally require from friendship."
So, when do problems arise in these relationships? It's when other people and situations need to be accommodated. "It becomes a painful relationship," says Rowe. "Something will change, and one person can't cope with that change. For friendship to work without pain, both people have to accept that the other has obligations and responsibilities outside friendship, whether it be their job, relatives or children."
Normally, when circumstances change in a friendship, you evolve or drift apart mutually and amicably. However, when the friendship is intense, the danger of an emotional break-up similar to that of a love affair is much more likely. Under pressure, the relationship is likely to erupt. Partners can feel jealous of the time spent with the friend, the friend can be jealous of the time spent with the partner or children. Intense friendships are never flexible.
Inevitably, as soon as one person becomes more demanding or more willing to please than the other, then a friendship will implode.
The very nature of intensity, whether in love or in friendship, is that it cannot be sustained. Intense friendships, therefore, don't meander or evolve, but get pushed towards an inevitable conclusion, destined to end in either a huff or a rage.
