Friends celebrate 65 years on earth. Front row, from left: Stan Reavens, Arnie Hauptman, Donny Botvinick, and Mordechai Friedman. Back row, from left: Sandy Ravens, an unidentified couple, Resa Hauptman, Al Beiber, Judy Beiber, Sandy Botvinick, and Ellen Friedman.
Friends for Life
The people who are there – from childhood – when the chips are down
By Julie Jacobs
It may have begun with a classic childhood oath that required mixing blood from finger pricks. Or perhaps during playtime on the stoop outside the home in which you grew up. However it developed, that lifelong friendship you’ve cultivated over the decades may say more about you than you know, and prove to be of significant value as you get older.
“Long-term or lifelong friendships are a rarity in that they involve a high level of commitment and unconditional caring. You might not see one another for a long time, but when the chips are down, you’re there to help with no second thoughts,” says Robyn Landow, Ph.D., a Manhattan psychologist. “There’s a strong dimension of trust and a certain security with this type of relationship.”
“People in lifelong friendships have a great sense of needing to stay in touch with others. They have a high tendency toward connectedness,” states Queens-based psychologist Patricia Berliner, Ph.D.
Neighborhood Ties
Every good friend was once a stranger.
For today’s over-50 set, much of that connectedness has its roots in the neighborhoods of one’s youth, where families and friends spent more face-to-face time with one another, than at a computer sending e-mails. Mildred Carbone, 79, met her friend Lucy when they were young girls living in adjacent houses in the Bensonhust section of Brooklyn.
“She knew all my aunts and uncles and I knew hers. Our moms were friends. We were always together until we reached our 20s and Lucy moved with her husband to Rosedale, Queens,” Ms. Carbone recalls. “Then we saw each other once a month.”
Arnie Hauptman, 68, an attorney from Long Island, also made lifelong pals during his early days in Brooklyn. His group of six, all the same age give or take six months, have remained buddies since they were kids in Brownsville. Arnie has actually known Ivan, then a next-door neighbor, since both he and Ivan were 2 years old, and then formed bonds with Stan, Al, Donny, and Mordechai in elementary school. Hauptman says their friendships really solidified in junior high when they formed an informal social/athletic club called the Condors.
According to Dr. Berliner, men are more affable and usually develop long-term relationships from places like clubs and fraternities. Women enter into lifelong friendships with a greater degree of intimacy.
As for differences in economic or social status in adulthood, “it usually doesn’t matter very much. The foundation of where you came from remains the common bond.”
Being There for What Matters
A friend is one who knows who you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you become, and still gently invites you to grow.
“Friendships are chosen,” Dr. Landow points out. “We can decide whether or not to keep friends. We really can’t do that with family. And lifelong friends often become among the most important people in our lives.”
For sure, they are the ones called upon to acknowledge significant occasions. Although Arnie Hauptman’s group is spread out from Long Island to New York City to New Jersey, the guys regularly stay in touch via the phone and e-mail, and have attended the weddings of each other’s children and the bar and bat mitzvahs of grandchildren. They have also celebrated milestone birthdays by way of cruises, trips, and weekend getaways. Recently, when Hauptman’s mother died at 96, every one of his old friends made sure to pay a condolence call.
This past March, Mildred Carbone journeyed to eastern Long Island to surprise Lucy on Lucy’s 80th birthday. The fact that the women hadn’t seen each other for 10 years – prevented from doing so by distance and the infirmity of their husbands – did not diminish a heartfelt reunion in the least.
“We both started crying,” says Mrs. Carbone. “Ours has been a constant, solid friendship. We think alike and we have the same morals and interests. She knows so much about me, I can say almost anything to her. We guide each other. Having a friend like Lucy has been really great for me, because I’m an only child. If I had a sister, I’d want someone just like her.”
The Best Medicine
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. — Charles Caleb Colton
Lifelong friendships have been linked to improved overall physical health, enhanced memory, reduced depression. “All friendships, really, offer emotional buffering and keep you healthier,” says Dr. Berliner. “Friends make you more accountable for your health, and more compliant with what you’re supposed to do to take care of yourself. Science is showing that when we feel connected, we become more resistant to disease.”
Mr. Hauptman says that when he gets together with his oldest buddies, “there’s a different feeling that I have with them. We always reminisce about the old neighborhood, and I feel a little bit younger every time.”
A study conducted in Australia showed the positive impact of friends over family in regard to increased longevity. Researchers at the Centre for Ageing Studies at Flinders University followed nearly 1,500 people aged 70 and older for 10 years. They assessed the involvement with different social networks that included children, relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Results indicated that individuals with an extensive network of good friends outlived those with fewer good friends by 22 percent.
In a statement appearing on the Flinders University Website, researcher Lynn Giles writes: “What hasn’t been done before is to break down which social networks might be most beneficial. [From our study], it looks as if friends are the most important in terms of survival.”
But for all the depth, strength, and benefit of many lifelong friendships, society has yet to recognize or even understand the emotional, and other consequences to survivors when such friends die. The mourning period can actually be akin to that for a spouse, but without the same sensitivity and support from sources like bereavement groups and social-service agencies.
“The mourning of a friend, particularly for people in their 70s, 80s, and up, can be disabling. That person might have been the one individual who took you to the store or checked on you to make sure you were okay,” Dr. Landow says. “Society has been absolutely inadequate in considering the needs of surviving friends.”
Friendly Foundation
Friends are like windows through which you see out into the world and back into yourself ... If you don’t have friends, you see much less than you otherwise might. – Merle Shain
Dr. Berliner describes long-term or lifelong friends as an interesting circle, with more rights and fewer responsibilities than may be associated with newer confidantes. These relationships, she says, are more allowable and liberating, and require minimal regular contact.
Dr. Landow sums up: “People we call friends can run on a continuum. With lifelong friends, it all has to do with the initial level of connectedness – with what they’ve shared with one another and what they’ve meant to one another over the years, rather than just right now in the present.”
“These guys are reliable and our friendships have stood the test of time,” says Arnie Hauptman of his Brownsville cronies. “It would be heartbreaking for me to lose any one of them. From the time of P.S. 156 in Brooklyn until the time I die, they’ll be my friends, for better or for worse.”
