The dilemma I’m 32, have a fulfilling job, a wonderful partner and child, and travel a lot. Unfortunately, quite a few of my close friends bore me to death. They haven’t developed personally and intellectually over the last decade. They have no, or limited, ambitions and are the opposite of inspiring. Meeting up with them feels like a chore and I don’t respect many of their opinions. I often wonder whether we have grown incompatible because we are from different class backgrounds, as horrible as that sounds. My friends lack drive, curiosity and resilience, and I’m often embarrassed by how uneducated and bad with money they are. I have tried over and over again to get them to develop an interest in further education, reading, the arts, different cultures, politics and finance, to very little avail. I’m immensely frustrated. On the other hand, they have been loyal and supportive, and breaking up with them because our lives have little common ground strikes me as cruel.
Mariella replies Perhaps they’d welcome it? Allowing for their challenged intellects they can’t be unaware of your feelings. Even if you are wholly insincere and brilliant at feigning false interest they must have sensed your frustration towards them and their low expectations. The rolling of eyes and raising of eyebrows at the immensity of their cultural ignorance will have been hard to miss. Hopefully they’re equally unenamoured of you lecturing them about their lowly ambitions and the glories of aspiration and artistic expression.
Feeling constantly as if you’re a disappointment is an unhappy position to be in, as any unrequited lover knows all too well. It would certainly make things simpler if you were all to recognise that this historic relationship is perilously past its sell-by date. They’ve been kind, you’ve been tolerant, but now it really is time to sever that cord and roam free with your own kind.
Friends are a choice not a life sentence and when the going gets as tough as you describe it, there’s little reason to continue the torture. The ability to choose with impunity and move on at will is often what makes friendship more harmonious than family relationships. You’ve every right to transcend their dreary lives and look for equal acceptance and support from your more elevated companions, but you may be surprised to hear that I’m more worried about the outcome for you than them.
There’s every reason to believe that they will manage perfectly well without you to patronise their little lives. But for you, wrinkling your nose at the peasants in their unilluminated state of stasis could prove quite the challenge in our aspirationally classless society. Many will struggle to recognise your portrait of what it means to be “lower class”, and perhaps even confuse it with the aristocracy on the basis of the inherent qualities you bemoan. Lacking “drive” and being “bad with money” are not qualities I’d associate with those for whom scaling the greasy pole to success is a necessity, rather than something to look down on.
I don’t want to create problems where there aren’t any. You seem content with your lifestyle, ambitions and domestic situation. It is possible, though, that your old companions are still indulging you because of shared history rather than what little – aside from judgment – you have to offer them today? While your life has sped on, encompassing a rich tableau of what really matters (to you), they remain engaged in a hand-to-mouth existence, untroubled by cultural elevation. It’s clearly a miracle they can string together enough syllables to make a social engagement with you.
But before I move too freely into the mockery your sentiments inspire, let me say that, despite appearances, I do have some sympathy. Perhaps these are people who you have outgrown for the myriad reasons that we do. But you can’t seriously think that working-class equals the litany of vices you’ve listed. Having circumnavigated the British class system many times since I leapt off the ferry at Holyhead in 1979 – poor, unschooled and without designer luggage, I’d be far more likely to ascribe the “lack of drive, curiosity and resilience” you outline to the aristocracy than to worker bees bent on escaping poverty.
What does have resonance is the fact that, as our lifespans grow ever longer, it’s not just lovers and spouses we’re outgrowing. The friends you had at 20 can, at 40, be barely recognisable – as anyone who’s attended a school reunion will know. You give me little detail of where you met, how you got acquainted, whether you were always the ambitious, upwardly mobile intellectual or whether this is a persona you’ve adopted as you scaled the precipitous slopes of social status via birth, work, job, marriage, or simply force of desire. Either way, my advice is the same. Leave these lovely people to their little lives, free of your judgment and disdain, and set your sights on a group of mates who better reflect your aspirations and values. What class they’ll end up being is anyone’s guess!
If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1
