THE SUBJECT OF FRIENDSHIP

In the “School of Friendship”, we treat friendship as a school subject in all respects – a subject that can be studied. It isn’t even a particularly difficult subject; in any event, not much more difficult than many other school subjects. Just as you acquire a professional identity through long years of study and experience, until you become experts in your field, you can learn to develop the ability to befriend another person, until you become experts in each other and acquire an identity as a couple.
The subject of friendship is a compulsory subject, for two main reasons. The first of these is that the ability to make friends successfully supports most of the professional and interpersonal subjects in life – relationships between business partners, between employers and employees, between suppliers and clients. People who neglect the ability to be attentive to others will almost certainly have difficulty succeeding even in their professional spheres of expertise. Strange though it may seem to you, the same ability which enables spouses to enjoy each other supports many other kinds of connections, even business connections. The other reason is a social one. True, one can live rather well even without a spouse. That’s a fact. At the same time, we are surrounded by a society of couples and families. I often run into people who, in young adulthood, felt no need to invest efforts in this area. They were involved over their heads in all kinds of other interesting occupations. But suddenly one morning they woke up to a dreadfully depressing feeling of having missed out on something. Suddenly they found themselves suffering every time they saw a baby in its mother’s arms or a couple embracing in the street – as if the whole world had something that only they didn’t have. Well, if you have any suspicion that, some day in the future, you may suffer because you haven’t cultivated the ability to make friends, you had better start cultivating now and not put it off any longer.
By the way: from the social standpoint, the identity of every adult contains elements of coupledom and parenthood. In other words, people who give up the idea of developing their spousal skills, and probably also give up their parental identity, are generally perceived as childish by their social environment. It’s sort of like not being promoted in school… or like being stuck in the same grade for years and years.
In this book, we will use the term “unattached” to define people who do not have a life partner, or who do and are not happy; in other words, all those who, for whatever reason, don’t know how to form a satisfying relationship with another person, or are only partially able to do so – just as many people know how to work and hold down jobs, but have never learned to enjoy what they do for a living. (Obviously, an unattached person can be of either sex; whereas language makes distinctions between male and female, it is my intention in this book to focus on content without being bogged down by form. Wherever possible, the plural has been used; obviously, though, this is not always possible – and the “he-or-she” construction, though undoubtedly politically correct, is clumsy at best. Accordingly, any sentence in this book which uses “he” and “him” can just as easily apply to “she” and “her”, and just about everything in this book applies equally to both sexes. There are some areas where there is a clear distinction between men and women – pregnancy, for example; but in studying the subject of friendship, there is no difference at all.)

The purpose of this book is to promote the ability to enjoy friendship. At the zenith of our capacity for friendship is the enjoyment of life with a partner. I’m not talking about just any kind of coupled existence, which the great majority of humankind is still compelled to achieve and therefore doesn’t try to do any better. And I’m not talking about a wedding, either. So many people, men and women alike, still think that the act of marriage puts an end to their role as friends. But we all know that marriage itself is no guarantee of pleasure; in fact, many people unfortunately miss the opportunity to enjoy life even though they manage to get married. No one expects a car to run without filling the gas tank; in just the same way, the relationship defined as marriage must be nourished with rich, satisfying content.
Those of us who already know how to be friends can enjoy that ability – but many still have to invest efforts in order to achieve enjoyment. Those who are not well-versed in the subject of friendship cannot expect to enjoy it as soon as they start studying. They will achieve a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction as the relationship progresses.
In order to derive pleasure from life as a couple, an extensive change of identity is necessary. And, just as in any other field, some people’s skills enable them to achieve this change; others’ ability does not enable them as much, and the result is partial relationships or bitter, unsatisfying life with their spouses. And there are some poor souls who have no friendly relationships at all.
Each and every one of you should be able to identify and accept himself at his present starting point. On this basis, all you are asked is to learn to add to your present abilities the ability to change – and not just any change, but a change of identity.
Some people think this approach on my part is behavioristic. This is an error that I find hard to explain. I do often use the term “homework” – that is, I expect people to learn by actually practicing the skills involved. I do this in order to emphasize that doing is better than talking about doing, and to stress that making a change is an action which involves not only study, but the investment of effort (which I call “homework”). Naturally, many people do their homework and still don’t manage to change. This is because the most important component in both learning and change – a component which is itself not easily explained – is not “just” doing, but a kind of concentration on doing. In the same way, holding a book and looking at the lines is not yet reading. What makes it into the experience of reading is the concentration and effort aimed at understanding what is written in the book.
A similar process is involved in emigrating from one country to another. This is a very significant move – but it is not yet a change of identity. Some people take up residence in a new country and stay “immigrants”, detached from the culture and experience of the new land. This can be compared to people who are “technically married”, but behave more like singles. They have not made a change of identity, even though they have gone through the act of marriage.
Anyone who thinks he can remain himself, unchanged, and still become a friend, a spouse, a parent, is wrong. He simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. To be a friend, you definitely have to change, to become other than you are. Being a friend means being someone other than you were before, because your identity contains the ability to be attentive to another person. This attentiveness means knowing that other person as well as you know yourself. The role that person plays in your life does not allow you to return to your former identity, just as you cannot go back to kindergarten after you finish school. The volume and space of your former world contained only one being – yourself. Now your world contains other beings as well. This is a change of identity.
It may sound frightening, but don’t panic. Change can be learned like any other subject. When I established my method, I decided to call it the “School of Friendship”, but I had several alternatives to choose from. I actually almost called my method the “School of Change” – until I discovered that there are many people who can change, and even do change, but that the changes they make seem to be idle, pointless changes. At times, even I thought they were using their ability in damaging ways, destroying whatever they built. Instead of going from less to more, such people go from more to less, seeming not to know what is good for them. Even when they think they mean well, somehow they end up hurting themselves. This is why I eventually selected the name “School of Friendship”: in order to emphasize that learning to change is not enough. Everyone has to learn to know what is good for himself, and not just to make any kind of change, but a change for his own good – in other words, a friendly change.
There can be no doubt that we have the ability to change. This is not a belief, but a statement based on knowledge. Even if comparatively few use this ability in their lives, the fact remains. In the same way, there is no real difficulty involved in going to Australia; even if many people die without ever having visited Australia, there can be no doubt that each of us is free to do so. I myself, in any event, have had the honor of accompanying many people on their journey to change. Of those, many who were unattached have become couples.
Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of people consider humankind as incapable of change. “You can’t change your nature”; “We inherited our makeup”; “Humans have a personality structure” – all these are common sayings, and the psychologists who coined the phrase “personality structure” have put it into our heads that we are as rigid as buildings. The vast majority of people do not know there is a possibility of change, because the conventions of education and psychology have blocked that information and kept them from accessing it.
Naturally, this does not mean that every part of our personality can be changed. No one asked us where, when or to whom we wanted to be born. I would not suggest that anyone waste time and effort trying to change the unchangeable. Basically, though, you can design your identity through study and practical experience. And the subject of friendship can definitely be learned at any age.
Those who do not know that humans are capable of change need and expect others to adapt to them – or, more precisely, to be adapted to them in the first place. This is also the main reason that most unattached people wear themselves out looking for a life partner, but in vain. They’re looking for a suitable life partner, waiting patiently for Lady Luck to smile on them. And for those who wonder how, in such an enlightened era, so many people seek the advice of fortune-tellers and Tarot readers, this provides a bit of an explanation. Instead of changing what needs to be changed in themselves, many people wallow in despair, where they wait passively for Chance to bring them change. As we all know, they generally wait in vain. We all know the statistics – each lottery can only have one first-prize winner. And still, we know how many go on patiently buying lottery tickets, year after year, and never win a thing. Let us remember, though, that the same principle applies to bad luck. People get killed on the roads every day. Has this led humankind to stop driving? After all, most people travel from one place to another quite unharmed. This is why I say that you should accept yourselves at the point where you are now. There’s no point in berating yourselves about the unchangeable past. What you have to learn is where you are and how you can move on from there. That’s how students in the School of Friendship get promoted.

Sometimes people who are opposed to my methods claim that I am insisting on knowing what’s good for them better than they do themselves, and that I interfere too roughly in their lives and their decisions. Nonsense. My intervention in others’ decisions consists of stating that people who make important decisions according to their moods or feelings at a certain moment are likely to make mistakes. In other words, this lone, limited, out-of-context attitude is not friendly – whether the decision involved is against something or in favor of something. For example, you refuse to meet someone on the assumption that she’s “not for you”. This could even be true – but, to the same extent, it could be false. Or perhaps, in a burst of excitement, you decide to enroll for an intensive course, four times a week, four hours a day. The course is interesting and useful, but it turns out that such intensive studying ruins your chances to establish a family, because you’ve chosen to invest all your free time in another direction.
Some mistakes can be corrected through learning processes; in fact, that’s what most people do. People usually use up their “quota of folly” when they’re still young, when they may still have a better change to correct their errors. We learn lessons; in doing so, we manage to design our identity to the best of our ability. But if someone repeats the same mistake over and over again, doing what he “feels like doing” at every opportunity, no lesson is learned and the person stays stuck. In general, when a pattern repeats himself, even if the person doesn’t realize his own repeated mistake, it means he’s stuck.
The only thing I insist is that you learn the rules that will help you make important decisions based on friendly considerations, and not on “moods”, “feelings” and the like. People who have the ability to make such considerations usually don’t have anything else to learn from me.
The friendly rule is this: You have to be attentive to your abilities – to your entire range of abilities – and apply them. You also have to be attentive to opportunity – to the entire gamut of opportunities. You are not permitted to repress your abilities, and you are not permitted to repress your opportunities; you have to apply them. Each of the above words requires study in order to grasp its significance. What does “be attentive” mean? What does it mean to “apply” an ability? Or an opportunity? If it sounds complicated, don’t worry: we will discuss this extensively and patiently throughout the book.
Since everyone usually has a very wide range of abilities, not to mention that the selection of opportunities in this world is infinite, each graduate of the “School of Friendship” has to learn to sift this vast range, in order to bring the most abilities into contact with the most opportunities. Even after sifting, there are still quite a few friendly possibilities.
In the world of ordinary therapy, dealing with inability, the wealth of abilities each of us has is often ignored. This is not only an unfriendly attitude toward yourselves and others; it is a malicious, misleading and murderous attitude.
Anyone who is in touch with his abilities and allows himself to be fully attentive to the profusion of opportunities open to free choice, has hardly anything more to learn from others. That is where I step down. I have no doubt that the consideration each of my clients applies to himself is better than mine, because the clients are “out in the field”, on the forefront of their lives, exposed to much more information than I can gain from my armchair view of them. Accordingly, the greatest investment is in building the tools to achieve friendly thought and applying them in the field. This is why I call the first two or three sessions “mind sessions”. After that, if the clients choose, I accompany them on their journey, while they work on changing their lives.
For example: a business executive comes to me for a consultation. He is anxious, depressed, and full of complaints about his co-workers. He feels he has to make a drastic change in his life. He yearns to sell his business, leave the country, get a divorce – all kinds of whims are tumbling around in his head. The first thing I will demand of him is not to make any decisions in that mental climate, which is inappropriate for any decision, just as one should not make any vital decisions while drunk, drugged or in love. I will first ask him to marshal his strength for a quick investment in bringing himself to his best. Only when he gets in touch with his ability will we try to find the best possible work-related solution for him. If he cooperators and does what must be done to recover himself, he will be fit to consider his options within two or three days. And here he must decide for himself. After all, he’s been a businessman all his life – and I haven’t. I have no doubt that he will know how to reach the correct business decision much better than I can. If he wants me to go along with him while he puts his decision into practice, I will gladly do so. I apply the same approach when I work with unattached people. The greatest investment lies in building tools of friendship, in identifying and nurturing ability. Once you have these, the considerations and the decisions are all yours. The most I will do is go along with you as you learn and work on change.

This book includes many case histories. All names and particulars have been changed. I am not interested in gossip. The stories are intended to illustrate and “lighten the reading”, as another instructional genre. Some people learn by understanding the principle, and case histories add nothing for them or even “get on their nerves”. Others understand through example and only then succeed in applying the principle.
I admit that, in the course of writing, associations with all kinds of people and incidents form in my mind, and I express them in one way or another. After my earlier books were published, I was flooded by phone calls from people who were convinced that they had identified themselves on my pages. Now I can reveal that none – not even one – of them were right. I can’t even explain the fact that, as I wrote, I was thinking about other people entirely. Some of the people who called me could have made very good case histories, but they just didn’t come into my head at the time.
Anyway, I again emphasize that the particulars in the stories do not identify anyone. I changed not only the obvious items, such as names and professions, but even unimportant details. It could definitely happen that, precisely because of these changes, a character seems to match someone who happens to have the same name… or whatever. Please understand that this is pure coincidence, and don’t get carried away!
One more thing: why did I use certain stories, and not others? Unfortunately, there is no special reason for this either. If I had known in advance that one day I would write this book, perhaps I would have been more meticulous in documenting my experience. As things are, this is a random sample drawn from memory. There were many other cases that I have not mentioned. Obviously, these stories do not provide a comprehensive, accurate picture of what really happened. No story is an exact record of sessions with me. Take into account that it is very difficult to encompass an entire chapter of someone’s life in a few lines; nor is it easy to describe what happens in the sessions. I don’t think anyone can know everything about another person. I’m not even sure I know everything about what happens in therapy. Moreover, what seems important and influential to me may actually have led my clients nowhere – while other things, beyond my awareness, were what really did the work.

1
A MAZE CALLED “MEETING PEOPLE”

What are the usual ways for you to meet partners,
what do you generally do to finally find “someone serious”,
and why doesn’t it ever work?

I would like, as I usually do, to get right down to what is going to help you. In this book, you will find everything I know that can help you. I have not kept any professional secrets to myself. Unfortunately, however, I must first take a moment to discuss the situation in reality; before we start studying, we have to deal with the generally accepted tools for meeting people. This will also involve talking about what doesn’t help – from matchmaking services to psychotherapy.
I will not discuss those who content themselves with dreams, or wait for miracles, without lifting a finger. Such people have already been discussed in my book School of Friendship.
In this chapter, I am addressing you, the doers, who don’t agree to stay stuck in their “single” identity, who struggle to find partners. Unfortunately, many of you are wearing yourselves out in vain. The next pages will deal with the common services which supposedly operate on your behalf. We will find out why you obediently work your way down the road of matchmakers and therapists, who generally just increase your frustration, and we will attempt to channel your energies into a much more effective and satisfying course.
I do not know whether my contract with you will let me express frankly all I know on the subject of friendship without your getting offended. Will you go on listening, even if I candidly state my opinion – that the tools of friendship used by most unattached people are embarrassingly childish? Even worse than childish: the important thing is that these tools are ineffective. And yet you go on using them and refuse to replace them with much more innovative and practical tools. But if I don’t speak frankly, this book won’t be worth a dime.

 

WHY DO PEOPLE WHO LOOK FOR RELATIONSHIPS NEVER FIND THEM?

The people reading this book are unattached men and women who believe they are very interested in living as couples. They don’t just sit back and wait for miracles to happen; they work tirelessly toward their goal. And yet they don’t succeed. Why? Because they are wasting their time and their strength in irrelevant ways. We have already mentioned that doing in irrelevant directions does not lead to success. Searching in irrelevant ways is one of the wrong turns most commonly taken.
You look for relationships with great diligence. You set out on an exhausting trek, walking on and on, staring at everything and everyone around you, looking for a connection. But you never find one – because there’s no such thing as a “connection”, lying around somewhere just waiting to be found. It’s not a treasure hunt, where if you look long enough and hard enough, you’re sure to get a prize.
What we call a “connection”, or a “bond”, forms between two people who take the trouble to befriend each other. When they incessantly invest in each other and nurture what forms between them, they find that they are very much bonded to each other. When they invest less, they become less bonded.
The idea of connections is characterized by a tendency to sensory illusions. One of the most common is that some people have a feeling of being strongly bonded to people who may not even know they exist, or whose presence in their lives is minimal.
Remember sentences like “Chris is my best friend. We’ve always been best friends. We have this really deep connection…” – when we know the person is talking about someone they have seen three times in the last four years. We understand that this is a work of the imagination, and that the speaker’s imagination is strong enough to resist being confused by the facts. Only when the victim awakens from this dream, shakes off this illusion, will there be an opportunity to form a true connection. So remember: when you communicate with yourselves, use the language of facts.
A second common illusion is that two people who happen to be placed alongside each other, like two chairs, believe they are companions, friends and lovers. They may look bonded to each other; in fact, many people turn their limited mobility into a connection – as if they were handcuffed to each other. Or are they imprisoned against their will, surrounded by walls of conventions, culture and habits, which keep them from moving freely? This is repression of reality. In other words, they repress their own ability to move and the fact that nothing external can keep them from moving. They aren’t really locked away in jail; they just feel that way sometimes. In actual fact, this is refusal to learn. This is renunciation of a part of life. This is being stuck. But very often, people claim that their unwillingness to change is a positive attitude toward something, as if it involved preference and choice. Sometimes they express this as an attitude toward a certain place, or a certain person. They feel connected and loving, or obligated; they have to take care of their parents, children, or spouse; they have to “preserve the framework”. They give themselves nicknames which sound really positive, to themselves and to certain cultures: “I’m conservative”; “I’m loyal”. Bob is going on a long trip to a far country. But he’s OK. He knows his wife. Other men just don’t interest her… He is utterly convinced that she will stay his and his alone, forever…
In another culture, a woman would be insulted if someone were to think such a thing of her; if he dared say such a thing of her in public – as if he were talking about a chattel – she would feel slandered. Bob is lucky to be married to a limited woman that no other man will notice. This has nothing to do with what we call friendship or love. This, first and foremost, is a limitation, not an ability.
Let’s dare to attack the sacred cow. There are some cultures which exploit this kind of repression, or even foster it in educating women to fill certain roles. A man can be away from “his” woman for years, but she must stay bonded to him. She belongs to him, as if she were his property. Sometimes he may be long dead, and she, his widow, supposedly unattached, will never look at another man. She can’t. She’s still tied to his memory. Here too, this has nothing to do with love or friendship. This is nothing but a clumsy rejection of life. These women waive their identity as women – as persons! – and are content to be treated like objects. In other words, when a woman acts as if she has a connection with a man, and there is no man in her life, she is agreeing to be no more than a sheep or a cabbage. This phenomenon persists in our culture as a remnant of earlier cultures, in which women really were the property of men. In some cultures, when the man died, his wife was buried with him, along with other items of his private property.
Naturally, this phenomenon is not unique to widows – or widowers. There are many divorced woman who stay unattached for many years. Having neglected themselves in the area of coupledom, they become weaker and more accustomed to being alone. Their most common excuse is the burden of child-rearing. This, of course, is nonsense. It is much easier to raise children as a couple than alone. Women concerned for their children will invest in promoting their ability to enjoy and befriend men. Statistically, this phenomenon is more common among women; but many men also suffer from this type of paralysis. Psychologists call it “dependence” – but in simple language, these people have just given up on developing their mobility, and eventually, their skill at coupled friendship as well.
The reverse can also happen: two people maintain a connection for some time, and suddenly one of them tells himself and his wife that he doesn’t feel the connection any more. There’s no real bond between them, no communication. This can come in various forms. Sometimes they speak of a love that once was, but, alas, is no more… as if it had gone somewhere else, leaving nothing to glue the couple together. In most cases, the couple actually falls apart at this point.
In fact, these couples were “left back”. At first, they stopped investing in their coupledom; later, their ability to entertain each other faded and died. Only then did they notice the emotional fluctuation. As is often the case, they based their diagnosis on a momentary feeling and pronounced, “We’ve lost our connection.”
Imagine someone driving a car. He puts his foot on the gas pedal; the car goes forward. He takes it off; the car slows down and stops. The man diagnoses a problem with the car, gets out and walks home.
Then there are those who look for a connection, and may even believe they have found one – and then, suddenly, they lose it. This phenomenon belongs to the mindset of those who remain alone. Not knowing that a connection between two people depends on what they do with each other is prime ignorance. This ignorance may exist in people who are otherwise quite learned – but in this specific area, they do not see that they have no idea of how to create and develop a connection, or that they are supposed to learn how to create one, and that once they have learned to create it, they are supposed to fuel and nurture it, just as they do in fields where they have abilities. Connections don’t grow on trees; and if they aren’t nurtured, they don’t grow at all.

 

CHEMISTRY – THE MYTH OF UNIDENTIFIED MOLECULES AND WHY IT DOESN’T WORK

“Chemistry”: that’s the name of one of the myths that keeps you stuck in emotional kindergarten. “Stuck”, did I say? How about “rooted”! And it is especially prevalent in that phenomenon known as a “blind date”.
Actually, this is another case of the problem that recurs throughout this book: diagnosis by feelings. And the problem only has one cure: guiding ourselves in a friendly direction, and not necessarily according to our feelings of the moment. Obviously, this is not that simple for new students at the “School of Friendship”; in fact, it’s not all that easy for graduates, either. They, too, may need to make special efforts to discipline their thoughts into the right direction, when the right direction is opposed to their current whim or immediate impulse. Even when we know that, at this very moment, we are making an awful mistake, we give in to the demand for immediate, powerful stimulus. Or sometimes, though we may try to stand firm, we are “forced” to give in. It is as if we are haunted by an uncontrollable urge that at times leads people to do unlimited harm to themselves and others. In short, even “postgraduates” of the “School of Friendship” have to take the matter of diagnosis by feelings very seriously indeed.
Now back to the chemistry myth. Let us first state that “chemistry” between people indubitably exists. In other words, I’m not saying there’s no such thing. But I wouldn’t leave something as important as friendship in the hands of something as clumsy as the mechanism of chemistry.
This mechanism, as an adjunct to mating, is very common in the animal world. Female dogs, for example, give off a special, very powerful odor when in heat, which carries far and attracts innumerable male dogs. For days on end, poor Lassie is surrounded by a pack of barking, panting, utterly devoted admirers. If her owners don’t interfere in the process, the male dogs will ensure that this heat does not go to waste. Lassie will get pregnant and bear a litter of puppies. By contrast to humans, who preserve racial purity and will not let their female dogs mate with just any old canine, Lassie herself really doesn’t care. She will fraternize, not only with other pedigreed bluebloods, but with any available male of the right size.
The mechanism of chemistry sometimes causes problems in mating. We have all seen a frustrated terrier trying to climb on a female Great Dane, or a wolfhound, quivering with desire, attempting to mount a miniature poodle – barking, whining, groaning, but to no avail. The chemical command cannot always be obeyed. It sometimes leads to really ridiculous situations. For example, a man who owns a female dog in heat may play with her, caress her, and then hurry off to work. All of a sudden, he finds himself followed by an ever-growing procession of excited male dogs! Very embarrassed, he will try to explain to the people staring at him that they shouldn’t get weird ideas into their heads; it’s not that he is some kind of pervert who intentionally arouses the… interest… of male dogs! But the facts speak for themselves, and people see perfectly well what is happening… Now, why am I telling this story? Just to emphasize that the mechanism of chemistry is clumsy. And just as a male dog does not distinguish between a female and her owner’s pants legs, it’s the same with people. Despite the strength of the feeling that results from “chemistry”, which some people call “falling in love”, it has nothing to do with really noticing another person, and certainly not with being attentive to that person. The opposite also applies: chemical “repulsion” is no more reliable than chemical attraction as a component of friendship.
Where does the chemical command lead? To friendship? Don’t be ridiculous! Sometimes, yes – but not because of the “chemistry”, but because the people involved took advantage of their being in love, invested in each other, learned each other, and became friends. Generally, however, it leads to a short-cut between the sexes. As soon as the passion dies down, the game is over.
No one, then, disputes the existence of “chemistry”. An aroused woman affects her environment; so does a man in a state of sexual excitement. Obviously, if a man and a woman meet and feel sexual stimulation, they identify the “chemistry” between them and have an opportunity to perform some kind of sexual transaction. So what? That’s all very well. The problem arises only when someone assesses the potential for friendship, or life partnership, according to “chemistry”. In other words, when someone thinks that, if there is “chemistry”, it proves that the connection or the friendship is worthwhile, and if there isn’t, nothing can be done. That is not true! Certainly not about the ability to form a friendship – and not even about the sexual transaction. There are many people who cannot easily release their sexual expression. They do not transmit sexual excitement on the first date. Nevertheless, in the course of time, they come to be friends in bed and to enjoy each other thoroughly. This is a fact that many people discover to their great pleasure.
The “chemists”, however, are harder to reach – precisely because they are convinced that, without “chemistry”, there’s nothing to be done. On each date, the one thing they pay the most attention to is the presence or absence of “chemistry”. They don’t need a lot of time. Experts in “chemistry” can end a blind date in five minutes. Why should they go on with the date – not to mention the connection – if there’s no “chemistry”?
In the field of friendship, these people are really not much more than human baboons. They flare up – and die down. People who have no experience with them may think they are charming, romantic, seductive, admiring. All this, however, is only skin deep. Students at the “School of Friendship” don’t waste their time on anyone who can’t be depended on to go out with them several times in a row. Anyone who says he won’t budge if there’s no “chemistry” simply fails to meet the minimum requirements for investment.
The only area in which the “chemists'” particular skill guarantees them some success is in one-time “singles” evenings. They go hunting, rapidly locate each other, and generally spend one passionate night in bed. After that, they return to their loneliness – until the next hunting trip. At times, they arouse the envy of more “serious” types who can’t get much out of a one-time evening. The “serious” types think of the “chemists” as bold Don Juans… and of themselves as cowards beset with emotional blocks. As one who has known and accompanied many singles through the years, I promise you there’s no point in envying them. The “serious” types, when they finally start moving and learning, go much farther in their achievements. On the other hand, the “chemists”, who appear to be better hunters, have only momentary success. They don’t know how to be friends, and most of them are isolated. Moreover, in small towns, they acquire a reputation, and anyone looking for a serious relationship won’t waste time on them, because they really have nothing to offer. They are often exploited for the sake of the one-time services and pleasures they can supply. Anyone looking for a convenient way to pass the time – a woman whose boyfriend stood her up, or who has quarreled with her husband and is looking for “revenge” – can pick up the phone and call such a man, who is good for just that. She will go out with him, confident that he will give her a pleasant evening, wining and dining, noncommittal chatter, a good performance in bed and a nice bath before she goes home. A virgin who has bravely decided she wants to lose her virginity will arrange a meeting with such a man, who has earned a name for himself as a “bedroom artist”, and use his good services for her own benefit. Afterward, confident in her sexual ability, she will prefer to spend time with men who can develop into friends. The “bedroom artist”, having played his one-time role, is consigned to oblivion. She will never relate to him as a serious friend.
Generally, as the years go by, such people become pathetic – seemingly stuck in adolescence as the world around them matures and develops. Even in the area where they supposedly have a relative advantage – quick and useful sex – they fall behind. Because anyone who has earned a more serious friendship also has dependable, pleasant and convenient sex, whereas these poor creatures keep running around, without the foggiest idea where, or with whom, they will spend tomorrow night. Allow me to be crude: every time they want to score, they have to work overtime courting someone new, just to gain what most people their age already have more or less effortlessly. Most people who bother to invest efforts improve the level of their friendships, enjoy each other’s company more and more, and achieve much more. The “chemist” only achieves the same thing over and over again.

 

NOT GOOD-LOOKING ENOUGH

George is 35. Unattached. He’s actually had quite a few women – that is, quite a few partial encounters with “partial women”. But he can’t have the ones he wants, and the ones he can have, he doesn’t want. The reason he hasn’t managed to find someone up to now, he thinks, is that he isn’t good-looking enough. If he were really handsome, he would be able to “get” the one who didn’t want him, and then, of course, he would be happy. He would also, of course, be married.
Since George only acts according to what he sees, appearance is important, and – as he puts it – he notices that the handsome guys have more success.
I bring up ability and opportunity. I try to explain to him that the one who wants him constitutes an opportunity for friendly experimentation.
“Get real!” he says. “Why should I waste time on someone I don’t want? I have a lot of experience, and I know that won’t give me the ability to get the one I want.”
I try to illustrate my intention by talking about the ability to read, which allows me to understand one book, and remains at my disposal when I pick up another book. “When you don’t have the ability to read, you just leaf through the book and look at the pictures, like a little boy who doesn’t have the ability to read long passages,” I explain.
But George is a “learning objector”. I did not succeed in motivating him to change his belief system as reflected in his statements above. More than ten years have gone by, and George is still a bachelor – which strengthens my belief in his objection to learning. In order to understand this concept exactly, it is important to note that our ignorance in most fields does not necessarily attest to an objection to learning. We are incapable of investing efforts in learning everything. We don’t even try to learn everything. But in George’s case, this is out-and-out objection to learning, because George believes that he is already doing everything he can to succeed. I know, from women who have met him through telephone dating services, that he is still looking for his “Ms. Right”. He goes through a lot of disappointments. Again and again, he meets women whom he likes, but they don’t like him. They generally get the impression that he’s childish and a bit of a fool.
Perhaps it’s a shame that there are no laws against stupidity; but being stupid is not against the law. Nor is there any law that obligates people to be happy. They are definitely allowed to be miserable, too.

 

“CLICKS” – I SAW AT FIRST GLANCE…

The “click” – the “instant glue” that supposedly binds people together – is very similar to “chemistry”, and occupies a similar role in the animal world. In this case, however, it mainly concerns the sense of sight as a prelude to mating. Some animals send out stimuli of color and shape in the mating season. The peacock, for example, spreads out a huge fan of brilliant tail feathers, and the peahens go wild for him. Peacock and peahen precipitously proceed to the encounter which ensures fertilization; immediately afterward, they go their separate ways, with no further interest in each other. As far as she is concerned, he could drop dead. In fact, there are some animals – locusts, for example – where the male actually does drop dead, at times with the courteous assistance of the female, who no longer has any use for him.
In humans, it’s a bit more complicated. The two sexes see each other, and they like what they see. This generally does not result in a transaction – certainly not after a random exchange of glances, and not even in the course of a “get-acquainted” singles evening. What usually happens – and we’ve all experienced this – is that you look at a woman, and you really, really like what you see; she appeals to you… but, oh dear, you don’t appeal to her. She doesn’t even notice you. Or it could be the other way around. She looks at you, and she very much likes what she sees. And she doesn’t hide it. Her eyes bore holes in you; she’s already weaving fantasies about you. But she will apparently have to content herself with fantasies, because you don’t like what you see. You almost literally look right through her. If you notice her at all, you only see her as some kind of useful accessory. You don’t discern her as a woman, and you don’t consider her to be a woman. If someone tells you that she’s interested in you and suggests introducing her to you, you give him an unmistakable look – the kind that says that now it’s clear to you that he’s no friend of yours, and you’re beginning to wonder if he ever was. And if he says “What do you care? Try and see,” you answer, “Why should I try? What’s the point in going out with her, when I can see she’s not for me?” Because you don’t believe there can be a connection without that initial “click”, that “spark” that flashes when, totally by chance, you look at each other and see in each other’s eyes that you were made for each other. It has to be mutual. Instant information transfer. No “click”, no game. It’s either there or it isn’t. Nothing to be done.
Again, I am trying to intermediate between people who really believe in this nonsense and the more complex reality. There is no correlation between how one person looks or does not look to another person and friendship. It is simply an irrelevant component. Moreover, a “click” between two people does not even ensure that they will be compatible in bed. It does not guarantee they will like each other’s company. The only thing they are certain to like is “what they see”. Like looking at posters on the wall.
Naturally, if two people who have that “click” take the trouble to add more components to the transaction, invest in each other, it is sometimes possible for an outstanding friendship to develop between them. But that same friendship can be gained – you guessed it – even without the “click”, just as a result of investment.
The feeling of the “click” is totally random. Admittedly, it does not derive only from biological processes in our cerebellum. It is conditioned by our childhood experiences. But anyone who so completely gives himself over to his sense of sight is actually blind. This is no paradox: such people see, and relate to, irrelevant information as the basis for the transactions which they wish to implement.
I often use the example of buying a car. When you want to buy a car, you take the trouble to check the engine, the body, the chassis – in short, everything relevant – in order to decide whether to buy the car or not. The color of the car is one of the last components on the list. In any event, we can assume you would not choose a car for its color alone. Why, then, do you choose a woman “for her color”? – Apparently because you don’t know how to choose in a friendly way.

Those who have read my earlier books know that I wasted many years of my life on analysis. In other words, I dealt with my repression of the past, and I was able to recollect almost every day of my past life. Among other things, I had the opportunity of discovering the source of one of my own “clicks”. While I was still very young, I noticed that there was a great discrepancy between my taste in women and that of my friends. I already knew the proverb “There’s no accounting for taste”, but it still troubled me. I didn’t understand why girls I thought of as “real lookers” were considered drab and repulsive by my friends. There was a certain dark-haired, dark-eyed girl whom I found extremely attractive. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. If I hadn’t been embarrassed, I could have stared at her all day and never gotten tired of her. Of course, I never told anyone. I gazed at her secretly, and the fact that I desired her was my deepest secret. My friends had no idea that I was interested in any girl whatsoever. I would simply ask, as if casually, what their learned opinion of so-and-so was, and they would state their views on the girl in question in quite a definitive way. On the other hand, when a gang of man-puppies exulted in my hearing, in chorus, about the incredible beauty of a certain blue-eyed, fair-skinned blonde – “eyes like the sky, hair like spun gold” – it disturbed me. Why wasn’t I seeing what they were seeing?
Do you understand? Before I underwent analysis, Sharon Stone would have left me cold – which many would say attested to a serious problem with my eyes, if not with my head. To my great relief, I remembered a book which had been in my house when I was of preschool age. The pages were made of thick cardboard, with few words and many pictures. There was a very educational story, with a moral, about a boy who was “bad” – that is, who did not listen to his parents or help old people – until an old witch cast a spell on him and gave him a face so ugly “that even his father and mother did not recognize him and did not let him into the house”. That helped somewhat: he changed for the better, and began to help old women carry their shopping home. Then the witch put him to sleep and gave him back the handsome face he used to have. When he awoke, he saw a beautiful girl standing next to him. And the picture showed a girl with black hair and shining black eyes and a charming smile. Not a redhead, not a blonde. Just “black and comely”, like the girl in the Song of Songs. Of course, they got married when they grew up. I must have been about four or five, and the book stayed with me for a very long time. This was long before there was a radio in almost every home, before tape recorders, and obviously before the TV sets and computer games that present-day children have. This was back in the days when a book was a book. So how could I not believe what was written so plainly, and even illustrated, as if to remove all doubt? That was how I learned what a beautiful woman was, a long time before I met my friends with their strange tastes, who got everything backward and thought blondes were beautiful.

The “click”, in the sense of a discovery that someone really pleases you, is a major component in the process of falling in love. Anyone who expects and waits for the “click” before having the motivation to form a connection is placing something very important in the hand of Chance, of Luck – as if he were giving up the idea of developing the ability to work, and only waiting to win the lottery.
In the “School of Friendship”, waiting for the “click” is a clumsy means of rejection. In other words, people who wait for a “click” before forming a bond and reject anyone who doesn’t produce that “click” are rejecting, and missing, opportunities.
To avoid misunderstanding, I would like to emphasize that I do not recommend that two people live as a couple without love or attraction. My intention is only that we should not set preconditions. We should not reject an experience only because we do not succeed in feeling something for someone at first glance. Nor should we wear ourselves out pointlessly looking for the ones we “fall” for – the ones our feelings tell us that we will never be happy without. And most important, we should not forego our ability to learn to love. We have all had the experience, in one area or another, of starting something without desire, without enjoyment, without loving what we were doing – and, somewhere along the way, realizing that our feelings and emotions had changed, and we were actually enjoying and loving what we could not love before.

TIP:
An opportunity is not someone you like, but someone who likes you.

I suggest that students at the “School of Friendship” bypass the matter of “chemistry” and “clicks” in favor of more relevant learning. A bypass is a very friendly, economic and efficient move. The usual way of doing things is to deal with the problems: deal with the guilt, deal with the anxiety, deal with the fact that the workers are always late, and wallow in the problems all the time. They tell us that if we don’t deal with the obstacles, we cannot proceed. And that, for your information, is simply not true! In the “School of Friendship”, we save all our strength for promoting our relevant abilities by means of a bypass: we go around the obstacles in our path and concentrate on the target. Those who learn to do this solve what are known as “problems” in the process. In the present context, we will not wait for the “chemistry” to fade and the “clicks” to stop happening, and only afterward start being productive. They won’t go away – and they don’t have to. I don’t care if you continue to “fall” for people. Just don’t waste your time on it. In other words, in the case at hand, a bypass would be not trying to pick up the people we like, but to identify the opportunity inherent in the people who like us.
Again, just so that there will be no misunderstanding between us, if someone likes you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she notices you, recognizes your many advantages, and that’s why she likes you so much. Usually this is not at all the case. In other words, she doesn’t really notice you. If she were to notice you, she might not like you at all… She may like you just because, at that moment, she likes what she sees. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile for you to be attentive to that opportunity to get to know the woman and do as much homework with her as possible. Maybe some kind of friendship will develop. And even if it turns out that you don’t become friends, it’s certainly better than doing nothing and waiting for the “click”.
Sometimes, especially in the beginning, when doing is vital, I compromise with my clients about the “click”. If several women are courting you – that is, if several women like you – I don’t care if the first one you meet is the one you like, the one where you like what you see, more than the others. Students who advance to a more mature class will have to choose the one who is most worthwhile as a friend, to learn to identify her from among the other available women in the field, and to realize that she will not necessarily be the one they like most, or the one who likes them most, at first sight.
There is another case in which I compromise about the “click” – the case of a gay person (let’s say a man) who wants to “switch”. As, in any event, he has difficulty being turned on by a woman, I think that if we require him to be attentive to every woman, it will be so hard for him that he may just give up. Therefore, at least in the initial stages, I will make it easier for him. I will find out which woman he tends more to like at first sight. Here and there, I have even played the go-between. For example, I could invite such a client to see a workshop for unattached women and ask him to point out the woman who looks most attractive to him, and then I could turn to her and ask her to do a “project” with him.

 

FINDING THE SUITABLE PERSON

We have already discussed “finding” when we talked about “seeking”. This word belongs to the same thought pattern which keeps you stuck where you are, as if a person were a kind of object lying around somewhere and waiting to be discovered. And what does “suitable” mean? Different people mean entirely different things when they look for suitability. The myth of compatibility is an ancient one. It also helps the matchmakers, who purport to save you the trouble of looking. They’ll do the work for you, they say.
Most people I’ve met who are looking for a suitable person meant to find someone who would adapt to them.
It’s as if such people were saying “I’m a given.” In other words, “That’s the way I am, and I’ll never change! If you want to be my friend, you may; just adapt to me. I’m not prepared to invest efforts in you. I’m certainly not prepared to change just so you’ll be more comfortable with me. Either adapt to me, or I don’t need you.” They may not say it quite so crassly and directly, but that’s what they really want. Some of them don’t know that’s what they mean, but it shows in every complaint they make, every argument, every meeting. They cannot be attentive to the other person. He makes things hard for them. If he wants something that’s not convenient for them right then and there, they get rid of him as they would any other nuisance. Either things go exactly the way they need, or there’s an argument. And even if they don’t argue, they just go away, or send the other person away.
Compatibility, with a slightly different meaning, can serve as a basis for a very asymmetrical relationship. This happens when someone is willing to settle for belonging to another person. He finds a place in the other person’s life, and that’s good enough for him. Maybe this can be a good deal at times, when life with a certain person is entertaining, fascinating and rewarding in all kinds of ways. Spouses of famous people generally seem happy to be latched onto them – “compatible” with them, the spouse would say. It’s hard to know if they’re really content, though. Sometimes it turns out that the supposedly content exterior hides a less appealing reality. In any event, in most cases there is no connection between this kind of “compatibility” and a friendly connection.
At times, in order to test the degree of compatibility, people at the very beginning of a connection set up barricades composed of all kinds of whims, just to determine exactly how loved they are. For these people, the degree of willingness to adapt seems like the ideal test of love! “Let him call me… let him call me again… let him come to me… let him wait…” And if he disappears and doesn’t come back, they immediately comfort themselves by saying it wasn’t such a great loss: “If he really wanted me, he would have kept trying.”
This childish attitude is quite common, especially in people who are apparently stuck in a period when one of their parents would run after them and plead with them to eat, or to study, or to sleep. They became so used to receiving the services of their parents that they sometimes feel that this is the only way things are supposed to be. They expect the whole world to look after them and offer them, support them and forgive them – and this, of course, generally does not happen. If someone displays a certain degree of interest in them or curiosity about them, or expresses attraction or affection to them, they wear him out so fast, and are so quick to destroy the small amount of good will he has, that he just gets up and leaves, in favor of a relationship which will give him more joy, more easily. They do not notice that they often chase away potential suitors. After all, most people don’t have the patience to exhaust themselves pointlessly. Only their old friends have the ability to enlist good will and make the effort when the friend becomes a chore. No one – especially at the start of a connection – should be expected to invest in an inaccessible, unpleasant person who only knows how to turn you off.
This is why people who are stuck in this childish language of love, and who think they automatically deserve something from the other person, pay a heavy price. Sometimes they don’t learn to grow up and know that their life is their own, and that they should realize that they have to learn to promote their own abilities for their own good. They are generally isolated, unless they meet someone who “adopts” them, like an adult looking for a baby to adopt; in that case, they become childish parasites draining the able “adoptive parent”. The “parent” advances, while the “baby” falls further and further behind. It may even look as if the able “parents” are advancing at the expense of the “babies”.
Generally, in asymmetric relationships, people settle for very little indeed. They almost give up on coupledom. And the one who really gives up, surprising as it may seem, is the one who benefits from the “compatibility”, the one who receives services from the other. Because people who ask their partners to adapt to them remain stuck in one place. They never change. They stay the same. They don’t learn, don’t acquire new knowledge, and don’t expand their horizons. They miss the opportunity to make a change of identity, which normally occurs when two strangers become a couple. They stay limited by their own boundaries, just as they always were. Such asymmetric relationships are typical of contacts between religious and secular persons, or cases where one person in a family becomes religious. The secular person must learn to be like religious people, who perceive themselves as absolutely good and correct. They, in principle, are preserving the tradition handed down to them, objecting to any change, and locking themselves up in their own boundaries. Any friction with a different environment threatens them with the risk of assimilation. And “assimilation” is a negative word for them. It cannot improve; it can only ruin. From their standpoint, assimilation does not add; it takes away. Therefore, in secular culture as a whole, some parts of religion look like an anthropological nature preserve, fossilized, unchanged, alongside the dynamic, rapidly developing lifestyle of the secular population.
Admittedly, the willingness of those who are prepared to content themselves with “adopting a baby” is rather puzzling. But these people, who know how to adapt to others, have qualities which develop their ability to make friends, because they are constantly learning to take others into consideration. Yes, they do show signs of settling for little. Otherwise, why would they have selected someone who obviously does not know how to befriend, does not know how to love? Still, relatively, they are capable of learning. Sometimes such a person gets out of the rut and moves on. He can use his ability anywhere. He can select people, choose his friends; but those who are stuck have to go on waiting for someone, for whatever reason, to choose them – because they actually have nothing to offer, and they especially do not know how to be attentive to others.
For all these reasons, I want to turn to the older unattached people, the divorced, the widowed, and tell them once and for all: “Compatibility? No such thing!”
You are the victims most damaged by the compatibility myth. True, when you meet people who have been a couple for a long time, they generally look very compatible with each other. This compatibility is the result of life together and a wealth of experience which has transformed them into compatible people. Sometimes they even physically resemble each other, because they have been building their personal identity as part of their couple identity since their youth; in other words, they developed as individuals and as a couple at the same time. But when you’ve been existing for several decades, there is no one in the world who can adapt to you. At the outset, the person you meet is certainly incompatible with you! He is a different person. And since he is probably about your age, he has done his development without you. Therefore, if you want to give yourselves any chance at coupledom, despite your advanced age, it must be clear to you that you will have to work a lot harder to get a lot less. It’s like sports: young people can do a lot on a little effort. Older people have to sweat much more to do much less. Only if you make a special effort to befriend a strange person will you succeed. Routine, unsophisticated investment will yield no fruit.

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