I was just looking at some never published drafts for my blog, and while I think I've blogged about this topic several times, this draft seems good enough to post. Btw, said friend now has a second child and we haven't spoken in at least 2 years; I got tired of being the only one interested in maintaining our friendship.
An American friend of mine recently had a baby, which has only exacerbated her Facebook/email avoidance techniques. I finally got her on the phone a couple of days ago to hear about the birth and how everything is going, and near the end of the conversation I tried to convince her to send news more often.
She has had an iPhone for several years, and I playfully asked her "You do have the Facebook application on your iPhone at least?" To which she responded that the application didn't work well and was full of bugs.
I tried to assure her that it works perfectly for me (on my iPod touch) and for my husband on his iPhone, but she practically yelled at me "Don't argue with me! You're in France, it's different."
Which has made me think about whether or not you should (be able to) argue with your friends.
I know the general American idea is that if you're friends, you have similar opinions and agree on most things, so arguing or debating means you don't share interests or beliefs. The French, on the other hand, take debate as a sign of a healthy relationship.
After 5 years in France, not being able to argue or debate things with your friends seems more like censorship than friendship. How has an entire country come to believe that friends will always agree, never be disappointed by one another, and never see things differently? If the definition of being friends means always seeing eye-to-eye, you probably wouldn't have many friends.
I like having the reassurance too that despite disagreeing with a friend on some topic, that won't be the end of our friendship.
2 comments:
I noticed that too, the other way around, coming from a place where yes, debating was fine. I do find North America are very non confrontational to a fault. It's OKAY to disagree and to have a different perspective! The result is that friendships here can be very cliquey.
This is one of the things I love about France - you can disagree and debate and even be a bit angry, but at the end you tend to respect each other more, not less.(And if someone doesn't deserve your respect, at least you know about it!)
I'm sometimes shocked by the un-PC things that people say here, but more and more I believe that these thoughts are better out in the open where they can be challenged than hidden under a cloth of inoffensiveness.
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