Dear LPG, 

We all have friends that we have done a certain amount of growing up with over the years, and while we used to see some of them all the time, perhaps when we worked with them every day for years, or when we went to the same club or even school, our best friends of today always seem to end up going in different directions to us with the result that we don’t know them as well as we used to. 

I have read somewhere on the internet that the average person has about four best friends in a lifetime, although what I read did not specify if you can have all four at the same time.  There is usually someone you worked with and someone you went to school with and there is the question of counting your other half as a best friend, although if you are still with them when you retire they must be in the running.  

How do you define a best friend?  I think that a best friend is someone who you can trust with all your secrets; someone who you know you can telephone at three o’clock in the morning because you are lonely and you just need to talk; someone who will be honest with you about what you are wearing or doing when no one else will;  someone who will not judge you however silly you have been;  someone who will help you pick up the pieces however broken you feel, without saying the words, ‘I told you so’ too loudly and someone who will make the time to stay in touch with you even when you are so upset that you think you want to be alone.

One thing that has always got me wondering is if, in general, the older men among us really have many close friends let alone best friends.   For some reason, even if they do have one, they are likely to keep it a secret because men seem to think that they are supposed to be macho and confident, and having a best friend to depend on could ruin the way they are perceived when they are young enough to make them, which often leaves them even more alone as they get older.   

I looked on the internet and, as usual, there is a lot of information on the subject which is typically geared towards younger ladies while most of the information about friendship of any kind for older people is written from the point of view of an expert on the subject rather than from an older person’s personal experience.  There are also many little quizzes designed to test just how much we know about our best friends and what we would do for them.

I do think that communication is important, and the Covid-19 experience has brought many best friends closer together again with video calls and telephone calls in the absence of much else to do.  it has been said before on your pages, but I would like to repeat I truly hope that keeping in touch with those friends is one legacy of the pandemic which does not get lost as we continue to get back to normal.    

But just in case it has been a while since you got in touch can I remind you that today is National Best Friends Day which I hope will be a day when I can remind you to pick up the phone again if you have not done so for a while … 

SA.  Lewisham 

SA share some of the online information about what makes a best friend …

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… and some quizzes that might help if you ‘think young’ when answering the questions…

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