Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
friendship will be enriched. You will be appreciated for being
provocative and witty more than for just being supportive.
The French do not worry about being 'equal' with
their friends. They do not count favours or seek an
equilibrium in the number of dinner parties or gifts one
presents the other. They expect their friends to love
them as family and the activity of reaching out to each
other is more important than remembering who reached
further or i rst.
Carroll notes some interesting examples of this. A good
friend calls another, saying she is exhausted. The friend
immediately offers to come over, take the children, and allow
her friend a few hours' relief. Pretty amazing, eh?
In France, friends can call on each other, day or night, for
the slightest reasons.The telephone is an extension of their
relationship, another visit, another chance to connect, and
the conversations are rarely short.
French people will call each other, right after they get
home from a party together, if they think of something they
forgot to say, or they have a bit more news or analysis to
offer. Between friends, a telephone is a line of love. When
friends call you on the telephone, they will rarely introduce
themselves, expecting you to recognise his voice (and thereby
coni rm yourself: if it wasn't you, you wouldn't know who
they were.)
French friends often do things together several times a
week. As you become friends with a French person, you
can expect to be pulled into the close circle, meeting other
friends, and be included in their activities.
You will also be expected to fulfil these myriad
emotional obligations and commitments. That is why
the expansion of the friendship circle is slow in France.
Each of us has limited amounts of time and energy, so we
must limit the number of people with whom we can be
true friends.
Counting many people as 'friends', and therefore being
very 'popular' is not the French ideal. It is quality rather than
quantity that counts.
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