Soul Friends
March 5, 2026
Sign up for blog updates!
Join my email list to receive updates and information.
I never referred to my wife as my best friend. I thought it was an odd phrasing to apply to a spouse. “Friends” were Vic and Chuck and Bill. My wife was, well—my wife. An intimate connection far beyond friendship.
Now, long after her death, I understand that perhaps our marriage endured precisely because she was my best friend.
I’ve come to see that friendship is like holding a bird in your hand. Squeeze too tightly and you will smother it. Pay it too little heed and it will fly away.
Writer Simone de Beauvoir asked women:
Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.
My wife was nineteen when we met, both of us students at Fordham. And, for better or worse, she found herself involved with me for life.
All this was on my mind when I attended a day-long seminar titled, “Pursuing Relationships that Enlighten our Lives.”
The presenter was Sophfronia Scott, a novelist, essayist, and contemplative thinker.
The first thing she did was introduce us to the concept of anam cara. This is a Celtic description of a “soul friend,” defined as someone who tells you something about yourself that changes you.
Vic Dougherty was the first person outside my family circle who did this for me.
When I became an altar server at about the age of nine, I was paired with Vic, three years older than I and a “veteran” altar server who would teach me the ins and outs of hand bells, thuribles, and the proper hierarchical order of processions.
But he did more than mentor me in the ways of sacristies and sanctuaries. Vic shaped my early years by teaching me things about myself:
• My company is enjoyable• I am likeable• I am trustworthy
He’s been my friend through my entire life, no matter where job, wife, or geography took us.
But. There’s always a “but,” isn’t there?
I never told all this to Vic.
This blunder on my part came crashing down on me as Ms. Scott unveiled her primary principle in nurturing relationships.
It is a plain-spoken directive articulated so memorably in Arther Miller’s classic Death of a Salesman: “Attention must be paid.”
The mother in that famous play was speaking to her indifferent sons about the way they needed to treat their father.
At the seminar, however, many of the other participants at the seminar described relationships with “best friends” that began in youth and endured for decades – just like my friendship with Vic.
And to a person, they each answered “no” to Sophfronia’s question, “Did you tell them?”
Her other questions were equally probing:
• Where am I inattentive in a relationship?• What would disciplined attention look like?• Do I reach out to my friends to listen to them?
All this is a far cry from the Bud Light “I Love You, Man” campaign during the mid-to-late 1990s.
The commercials centered on a guy named Johnny who would go to overly emotional lengths to suck up to people — all in a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get them to share their beer.
"You're not getting my Bud Light," they’d all say, seeing through his phony affection.
Hey, Vic, if you’re reading this blog, this Bud’s for you, man!