MWF Seeking BFF (15 page)

That is totally something I would do.

“I love that,” I said. “So did you?”

“Ha, no. Josh and Jeremy. But people definitely thought I was going to.”

“I always say that if I have a girl, I really love the name Grace. But I’m probably going to name my son Will, after my father—he died almost four years ago—and then it hit me. They’d be Will and Grace! I love that show enough, people would actually think they’re named after the characters.”

“That’s hilarious. Grace is a favorite of mine, too.”

I was slowly falling under her spell. I have a lot of respect for other adults who openly adore Harry like I do. And I’ve long been obsessed with the idea of having identical twins, a wish most people say is crazy but Jillian, whose boys are almost two, thinks is awesome. And I love that when I mentioned my dad she did a sympathetic quick head nod but just listened and didn’t interrupt me to say “Oh, I’m so sorry.” That’s the usual reaction. It’s nice, but it always jolts the flow of conversation. I usually find myself, mid-sentence, uncomfortably saying, “Oh, thanks, it’s fine but I was just saying that …” Jillian just listened and laughed when appropriate.

But back to the twins. “Do they have a secret language?”

This is the single most fascinating element of twinship, I
think. That unbreakable bond that allows them to communicate with each other before they can even speak.

“I don’t know if it’s a language, but they definitely have a baby-talk partner.” Tomato, tomahto. “I think that’s why they started speaking later.”

One of the reasons Jillian wrote me is that she wants to join one of my book clubs. Since I’m still pretty new to the groups, I proposed we meet so I could vouch for her when I made the suggestion. So, after a few pieces of salmon-avocado maki, talk turned from babies to books, and more specifically, young adult fiction.

“On top of
Harry Potter, Little Women
is my other all-time favorite,” I say. “I want to be Jo March.”

Jillian is a middle-school administrator, so she suggested some other young adult novels I might like. Her office, she said, is wallpapered in YA covers. As she told me about school, and her latest adolescent troublemaker, a small smirk took over her face. It’s clear she gets a kick out of her students and finds their antics amusing, even if she’d never admit as much to them.

We exchanged adult book titles, too. I told her what we’d read in book club—most recently
The Space Between Us
—and she told me about her book-buying addiction and the three-foot-high to-read stack next to her bed.

Over the course of the meal we shared three sushi rolls and each downed two glasses of wine. We conducted a deep analysis of the tabloid headlines and also our shared love of cooking. Jillian took our discussion of the latest celebrity romance as seriously as the talk of her sons’ speech pattern. This is my kind of girl.

When the check came, we were nowhere near ready to go. We sat for another hour, conversation pouring out of us. She
has a brother named Alex. I have a brother named Alex! Her father is William. My father was William! I’ve always had a thing about coincidences—not that I believe in fate, per se, but I usually take it as a sign when I share a lot of random similarities with someone. (I still remember when I first met Matt at Northwestern and learned we both had brothers at Syracuse. I thought it meant
everything.
)

It was the first time I legitimately wondered if I could call off the search. I know I said I’d like to have a handful of new best friends, but maybe I’d rather just free up my time to hang out with Jillian and her twins every week. I could send out an APB. “A BFF has been found. Resume your regularly scheduled programming.”

But then, amid talk of how we’re both East Coasters who migrated west, Jillian dropped a bomb. “Paul’s taking classes this summer so he can apply for Nursing programs. We’re thinking of moving to Philly.”

And we’re back. This is why I can’t stop the search for anyone, even the most promising candidates. No matter how great a potential best friend is, there’s always a but. She’s perfect but she already has ten local best friends. She’s perfect but she’s too busy working out to make plans. She’s perfect but she might move to Philadelphia.

The moving thing could be a big obstacle for me. Americans are the most mobile people in the world, moving on average every five years. And while fewer of us are relocating these days—the total number of families who changed residences in 2008 was the lowest since the 1940s, probably due to the re-cession—those who do move are largely in their twenties and thirties. And according to the U.S. Census, Illinois had the third largest annual outmigration—people moving out of the state—between 2000 and 2004, with an average of 72,000
people leaving per year. (New York, perhaps not surprisingly, had the highest average outmigration at 183,000.) It’s got to be the winters. Damn sub-freezing temperatures drive everyone away.

Alison told me she’s applying to grad school. Kim might move back to Missouri to be closer to family. Now Jillian. No one has it all. Things happen. I need to hedge my bets.

It’s just further evidence of my more-is-more philosophy. Yes, quality is important, and you can only have the highest-quality friendship with a select few. But the closer you get to satisfying your Dunbar 150, the better off you’ll be. It’s not about quality over quantity. You need quality
and
quantity. More friends means better health, higher likelihood of living longer, better chance of surviving breast cancer. On top of that, making more friends today protects me against loneliness later, when someone like Jillian moves away.

I tried to hide my disappointment. The move wouldn’t be until the following summer—Jillian’s already signed on for one more school year—so no need to focus on that now.

When we parted I promised to let her know about book club ASAP. She said we should work out a time for me to meet the boys. We hugged completely not awkwardly.

And now I’m pretty much skipping home. I’m as surprised as anyone that my girl-crush is a mom. With two kids and a demanding job an entire state away, I can’t imagine she’ll be a meet-me-in-thirty-minutes friend, but suddenly that doesn’t faze me. We’re technically in different life-stages—I’m a newlywed, she’s six years in and has twins nearing the terrible twos—but I don’t even notice. It’s the first indicator that I may need to change my friendship test. Maybe best friend and spontaneous friend aren’t the same at all. Jillian made very clear that while she may have two children, adult time is important
to her. Our values are aligned, our interests are similar, and though she could probably never drop everything to go grab a pedicure, she seems the type of friend I might feel comfortable—eventually—calling to say, “What are you and the boys doing? Can I come over?” That might be enough.

When I open the door to my apartment after the three-hour date, I approach Matt with a big smile. “I’m in friend-love!”

He’s wearing a big grin, too. He’d been anticipating my good mood. “I knew it must be great. You’ve been gone so long. Put her on the board!” Matt really enjoys likening my search to a sporting event. To him, it’s a horse race and he provides the play-by-play regularly: “Hilary’s losing her lead, Jillian and Margot are neck and neck …”

I settle in next to him on the couch. After I tell him everything about the woman he has deemed front-runner there’s still time for an episode of
How I Met Your Mother.
It’s the perfect evening.

When I first started this friendship quest, I worried that such a personal project might place a huge burden on my fledgling marriage. A part of me wasn’t confident in testing the relationship only four months into year one. I certainly didn’t want this to turn into a lifelong cycle—spend one year concentrating on friendship to the detriment of marriage, next year do the opposite, then flip back and forth forevermore—and spending twelve months keenly focused on friendship would mean I’d be busy with things that didn’t involve Matt. We’d spend significantly less time together than we were used to.

I’m delighted to see that the opposite is true. My already-good marriage is getting better. Now, when I get home from a girl-date, Matt and I are excited to see each other. On
the rare weeknight when neither of us has anything planned, it feels like finding a twenty-dollar bill in my back pocket. And because I’m hyperaware of how hectic my schedule is, I carve out time, usually on weekends, dedicated to being with my new husband. We schedule date nights. When we braved the tourists at Navy Pier to see
Avatar
at the IMAX last month, I looked over at him wearing those ridiculous 3-D glasses and felt, more than anything else, grateful.

Before this year, Matt and I spent almost every evening together. The nights had become so routine that when we went to bed I’d realize we’d hardly had a substantial conversation all evening.

Things are different now. On friend-dates, the dish most often served is girl-talk. We discuss issues big and small, from hunting down the right dress for a black-tie wedding to where we see our careers in the next five years. I need an hour of this talk daily like I need seven servings of vegetables. I can survive without it, but I’m at my best when I’ve filled the quota. And when I go a long time with none at all, my health eventually starts to suffer. Back pre-search, when Matt and I spent the majority of our nonworking hours together, I tried to unload my girl-talk on him. It was like trying to get my vegetable servings from a french fry. When Matt didn’t respond with the long, thoughtful, “I hear you” that I’d expect from a girlfriend, we’d suddenly find ourselves in an argument.

“You’re not listening to me,” I’d say.

“I heard every word,” he’d respond.

“Well then say something!”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say what you think.”

“I did already!”

“You did? Explain it again.…”

“I can’t keep repeating myself.”

Then the nail in the coffin. “You’re my husband. You’re supposed to care enough to talk with me about this as much as I want.”

“You’re impossible.”

“You’re mean!”

Good times.

But now I’m doing the analyzing and reanalyzing with other women. I don’t need that from Matt anymore. In
Vital Friends
, Tom Rath warns against committing what he calls “the rounding error” in relationships—expecting one person to satisfy every need. I used to think a husband should be my sounding board for every aspect of my life. Now I realize it’s not that
he
needs to be my sounding board, it’s that someone does, and, until recently, Matt was the only one nearby.

FRIEND-DATES 16 AND 17.
Ellen and Lacey. Two more essay readers. Ellen, a consultant, has a number of surface friends but says she struggles to take it to the next level since she travels so much for work. Lacey moved to Chicago from Kansas City for work
and
love but says her girlfriend has her own set of friends, so she’s trying to make some, too. (She tells me she’s a lesbian mid-sentence: “My girlfriend—it’s a girlfriend that I have, not a boyfriend—she’s from the South Side.” In our email exchanges she exclusively used the term “my better half.” I can’t help but wonder why. If I were some nasty homophobe, wouldn’t she rather I know early and bail on dinner than have to deal with me all night?)

They’re great. In both cases we have an easy, friendly dinner (Ellen and I meet at Market, one of my usual spots; Lacey and
I go to a sports bar halfway between our apartments) and afterward I offer rides home, which makes me realize that a) I must be getting more comfortable—there was a time I’d worry I was coming on too strong—and b) they might think this is all a ploy to drive them to a torture den in an undisclosed location. But they accept, and I’m careful not to lock the doors as soon as they get in the car. Like I said, I’ve seen that episode of
SVU.

My least favorite part about living in the Midwest is that we have to fly pretty much everywhere. Unless we’re going to Michigan or Wisconsin, which we never are, taking the train is not an option. O’Hare is like a second home, and anyone who’s seen Matt take a nap on the floor in the middle of the gate—yes, he’s that guy—can see how comfortable we are there. Usually, while we wait for our flight, Matt does his sleeping on the floor thing while I read, and nobody bothers, er, talks to, us. But this weekend Matt and I are visiting his brother, sister-in-law, and 10-month-old nephew, and something’s different. Instead of flipping through
Us Weekly
with the same do-not-disturb intensity that the Hasidic Jew next to me is dedicating to his bible, I’m looking around the gate for a new potential friend. Flights are the perfect friend pickup spot. You and Potential BFF are together long enough that if you start chatting early, you can be old pals by the time you deplane. There’s a good chance you’re from the same city. And there’s something poetic about the fact that you’re on the same journey, literally. (For anyone who ever finds herself on a plane next to me: Don’t worry. If you put on your headphones, bury your nose in a book, or make any naplike gestures, I will leave you be.)