The comfort friend is a dangerous friend, presenting the ideal of friendship but in reality detracting from real potential by inviting us to "check out." This friend operates primarily by only stroking the feel-good areas in such a way we are seduced out of, or soothed out of, the exacting stretch that would be required were we to enter and face more challenging areas. They are the friend who cushions our experience when we miss the mark so we never have to feel the discomfort that would have us grow. They are the friend who not only approves of but supplies the resources we need for "compensations"—the pleasure-based or addictive activities we do to simulate flow by giving hyper-focus to objects, experiences, or people with diminishing returns. These compensations cover the discomfort of not having our skills fully realized. The comfort friend is looking for a payoff. They are looking for the power of genuine attention and for power itself, but they try to flatter it out of us, accessing it only at the egoic level, and therefore also keeping us at the egoic level, so neither of us ever descends to essence. Thus, the danger of the comfort friend is that in order to have companionship, they provide comfort and shelter in mediocrity.
There is a grip that is similar to the challenging friend. The difference is this one has a velvet glove. In OM, it feels good. It may fulfill all the hungers of our conditioning for Eros to feel loving, sexy, or special. In this type of OM, everything seems right and yet for some reason we still feel tumescence. We may even feel guilty or like something is wrong with us for feeling irritated or like we want to push this person away. At the same time, it can feel so seductive we get lost in it and allow our attention to go lax, experiencing a sedative-like sensation. We forget that the only true gratification comes from the experience of active attention finding resonance. This is because in that opening, our essence can breathe. Being in the velvet glove of the comfort friend feels like being in an enclosed space that seems safe but has no ventilation. At some point, we start to suffocate.
The key to understanding the comfort friend is knowing they lack power. Because they lack power, they plug into another person's power and from there they resort to people-pleasing. They withdraw their opinions and viewpoints so they can conform, keeping everyone happy and flattered. This withholding causes a buildup of undigested material in the comfort friend, occurring first as shame and eventually, resulting in low self-esteem or even self-loathing.
The trick is to recognize the comfort friend has taken a short-sighted route to accessing power, whereas we worked for ours. Everyone must do this work for their own power. We owe them nothing and their shame is a result of not choosing to do the work to develop real power. On the other hand, while it is not our responsibility, it is an opportunity to guide them to true power. Should they find true power, we will have a friend who is formed out of kindness and generosity. This is a friend we can exchange with and who will genuinely have something to offer because they have done the work for themselves.
When someone's focus is on pleasing their partner, the key in OM is to have them focus on the sensations in their body. The key when relating with this type of friend, is to have them focus on their experience. They tend to be either indirect about their opinions or withhold them altogether; however, learning to be more direct is the beginning of opening their power line. Power is a painful quality to develop because there is really only one means of developing it; trying it out, making mistakes, paying consequences, fine-tuning, and, perhaps most importantly, withstanding painful circumstances. We can do this with a comfort friend by making it more painful for them to not make mistakes than it is for them to make them. We must at once withhold attention when they are "playing it safe and good," and refuse the benefits of their people-pleasing, casting it as displeasing so they realize they must develop their attention by pleasing themselves. The method is simple: turn all things back on them. "What do you think? How do you feel about that? What do you want?" And when they offer flattery, ask them what is good and beautiful about themselves.
As we begin to move them back onto themselves, we discover a secret: Eros loves emptiness and space to breathe more than anything. It loves emptiness more than it could ever love even the best comforts. The acquisition, the piling on of things—a reward in a tumescent world because it helps to cover discomfort—feels almost like a punishment in Eros. It simply yearns for nakedness in all things because when it is exposed, it has a natural filtration system that breathes out the bad and takes in the good. We do not need to add to it.
The realized version of this friendship is two powered people who have enough sympathy between them that there is a kind of "love fat" on each that buffers some of the impact of life without weighing either down.
