Sorry I’ve been away so long
I see it is almost a month since I (or anyone else) last spoke. I shall use that discrepancy as an excuse for my excessive expression now. Our new homework is to talk about a difficult situation. I chose work/personal relationships.
It is, however, all too true, from a certain point of view. I would certainly suggest that nothing prevents oneself from forming very strong friendships both at work and with lovers, but these two particular conditions make such friends of a different kind. Allow me to clarify. Although mutual affection and intimacy exists between both friends and lovers, I would expect a far more intense bond connects the latter, whereas a quite flexible arrangement befits the former. Friends can feel free to act and speak as they please around one another, and amongst a circle of such companions, whereas lovers have formed a much deeper, and therefore riskier, cohesion. Most lovers share a part of themselves that they do not share with their more common ‘friends’. Indeed, lovers can be ‘friends’, but once their liaison begins, it becomes increasingly more difficult to sustain a ‘normal’ friendship, as one or both look for a deepening, or a relaxation, of the relationship depending on the circumstances. Putting one’s true self to the test in such a fashion exposes one to a hurt which can also be exploited by ‘normal’ friends, but in a different way. Which is why becoming involved romantically with someone requires trust. Certainly, Shakespeare (and myself) makes a number of assumptions here, but I believe the presumption correct. If trusting lovers can find that special place between friendship and romance, then they have found the balance required for a lasting relationship. In business, the opposite is true. Never, ever trust anyone in business. If one thing is true of human nature, it is that money changes people. Perhaps only marginally in some cases, but for most, money is more important than friendship, or has an influence that transcends that of a mere association. In business, money is everything. Which is why employee-employer friendships are rare, and most usually treated with great care, with extra effort required to overcome the financial barrier. Friends who engage in business are similar: many a friendship would suffer due to the resentment caused by debt, or a perceived deficit in financial capacity. Friendship, therefore, is not compatible with the office, nor with affairs of love. Shakespeare is careful to say ‘affairs of love’, rather than simply ‘love’, because they are two different things. Affairs of love would encompass short-term lovers, flings, romances and those little duels of lust that the young find so appealing. In such things, friendship is more a burden than ally. It is an unloved complication. In love (I refuse to capitulate to cliche and add ‘true’), however, friendship is an absolute requisite. How one can be completely devoted to another without being able to call them friend is inconceivable.
