On Friendships: Are you a Gardener or a Discarder?

The pandemic has, I think, begun to teach us all to see our lives with fresh eyes. Patterns we'd acquired or developed over time were suddenly interrupted and--lo and behold!--hamster off the wheel has a different view of the wheel.

I have noted with a variety of emotions--some sadness, some wonder, a lot of curiosity--how some of my relationships have endured, others have morphed into something altogether new while one or two have simply died.

I wonder about that. What is it that makes some relationships evolve within new and challenging environment while others disappear?

I think in large part it's all a matter of how we see ourselves in relation to other human beings.

I think when it comes to friendships and most other meaningful relationships, there are two types of participants: Gardeners and Discarders.

Gardeners see themselves as fully autonomous contributors to every relationship they're in. The Gardener sees each relationship as something she is helping to build and so it is something she can alter should the need arise. If a problem arises in a friendship, the Gardener's first inclination is to ask: What can I do to fix this?

Discarders see themselves as victims of circumstance and if a problem arises in a friendship, they tend to see the source of the discomfort as external and potentially dangerous and will look for ways to free themselves of whatever outside force they imagine to be causing them harm. Discarders do not build their relationships (at least not consciously anyway). They are controlled by them. 

The Discarder's most common fallback question is: Why me?

The Gardener's is: What am I going to do?

Recently, I was left by a Discarder. We'd been friends for nearly 20 years. Every 1-2 years our friendship would hit a crisis point and we'd not speak to each other for 3-6 months.

Sometimes the logjam was broken by me picking up the phone. Other times it was broken by a chance encounter in the lobby of our building. As far as I can tell--and it's not entirely possible to fully know the answer--most of our crises were caused by the same issue. If you asked her to name it, I'd bet she'd call it my neglect of her. If you asked me, of course, I'd say it was her perception of my behavior as neglect.

Is there really such a thing as benign neglect?

The bottom line is that our friendship had reached a point where I assume it was making her more unhappy than happy. So she left.

And I'm pretty sure the friendship is dead. 

Still, I can't help but wonder whether given a different set of circumstances--no pandemic, for one--we might have been able to roll up our sleeves and get to work on gardening the relationship rather than discarding it.

But then, of course I'd think that because I'm a Gardener in the extreme. 

I know I'm a gardener and have been one for as long as I can remember. And I am sure that neither default is less painful or more productive than the other. I can't even begin to count the number of relationships I probably should have abandoned but kept trying to make work despite all the signs suggesting that we'd both be better off just walking away. In fact, just a few months ago I was dumped by a man who I should have left years ago. But in my endless gardener desire to turn every relationship problem into a project had been completely blind to the ways in which we simply didn't fit as a couple. In that case, I thank God for the Discarder who pulled a tooth I was too afraid to pull myself.

Which are you? Are you a Gardener or a Discarder?