The raw thrill of both “How Should a Person Be?” and “Girls” (and let me acknowledge here that I am hardly the first person to compare the two) is in the way they treat heterosexual coupling as secondary, and how they depict the profundity of female friendships, not to mention their real perils—which are quite different from the competitive jockeying that is so often imagined. It is other women, not men, Dunham and Heti seem to be saying, who most impact the evolution of girls into women. Other women, not men, who provide the opportunities for self-expression and self-discovery. Other women, not men, who bear witness to the triumphs and tragedies of young womanhood. Other women, not men, in whom we both find and lose ourselves.
– Anna Holmes, “The Age of Girlfriends”
This has been a summer of discovering the profundity of my friendships. They are not all female friendships, as not all my friends are female; but I think they are the kind of friendships Holmes is talking about: aromantic, affecting, essential. And because I am female, all my friendships are deeply affected by my experiences of life, and of friendship, as a woman.
Friendship has always been strange and difficult for me. I am somewhat solitary by nature. My parents didn’t have close friends of their own when I was growing up, so they didn’t model good friendships for me. They created an insular, arrogant, antisocial family dynamic that discouraged me from intimacy outside of it. They never gave me any indication that friendships are important for human well-being.
Moreover, our society does a shitty job of teaching girls how to be friends or have them. Girls are mean to each other, we’re told. And, taught from early on to view each other as competitors and tools, secondary to boys, of course they are! My childhood relationships with other girls were fraught with manipulation, rejection, and outright bullying. My friendships with boys were distant or prohibitively awkward, as we all learned gendered expectations about emotional openness and heteronormative restrictions on emotional ties.
As a young adult, I have sabotaged friendship after friendship through awkwardness, prolonged silences, and mistrust. It feels like nothing short of a miracle that some friendships have endured anyway.
When my marriage ended in a clusterfuck that undermined some of my closest friendships, I woke up to how poorly I had been tending those friendships. I not only had failed to call or write, but had been unwilling or unable to trust my friends with the emotional depth and candidness that they deserved — and I needed.
After 25 years of deluding myself with an illusion of self-sufficiency, I realized I need my friends. Haltingly and heartwarmingly, I discovered that they were there for me. As I’ve spent the last three months alone and adrift between homes, I feel like I’ve been learning friendship for the first time.
This wretched summer, my friends have casually done a million tiny and enormous things for which I am grateful.
I’m grateful for the friends who picked me up from my apartment, picked me up from the train station, and picked up my grocery bills. I’m grateful for those who’ve installed me on their couches and made their houses my homes. I’m grateful to friends for taking me out, and for staying in and watching tv with me when I wanted to hide from the city. I’m grateful for when they fed me and when they trusted me to take care of myself. I’m grateful for the friends who have reached out to me every week, or at times even every day, just to say hello. And for those who’ve reached out to me for the first time in months, or even years, like it’s no big thing. I’m grateful for those who’ve shared their problems with me so I wouldn’t have to think about my own, for those who’ve made it easy for me to talk about my troubles, and for those who haven’t pressed me to explain. I’m grateful to my friends who have forgiven me my failures and to those who’ve accepted my forgiveness for the same. I’m grateful for the friends who laugh at me in a way that lets me know they know me. I’m grateful for the friends who include me in their lives, giving me things to do and places to be.
Every one of these gifts has been more than I ever expected. Above and beyond what I ever imagined I would deserve, what I imagined my embarrassingly malnourished friendships could be. Knowing how noncommittal and undependable a friend I have often been, it is difficult to accept these kindnesses. I’m awed by them. It’s hard not to feel like I’m imposing, like even the smallest attention to my needs from another person is too much to accept.
But I’m learning that the sandwich means “I love you.” I’m learning to stop saying “I’m sorry” and just say “thank you.” I’m learning that accepting help is a way of trusting and honoring my friends. It’s a way of being strong, not something for which I should be ashamed.
Many of my friendships are still in woeful disrepair. I have a list as long as my arm of people I should have called or written, like, yesterday. Friendship is a skill, and I’m bad at it. But friendship is a skill, and I can get better at it. I’m starting by making the choice to trust — and so much of this does come down to trust — that the foundations are solid. We’ll figure it out.
When I think about the ways I do feminism in my everyday life, cultivating and caring for friendship is one of the important ones. In a culture that pits women against each other and against men, intentionally forming bonds that we expect to endure is resistance. I think it’s important that we tell each other stories of friendship’s strengths as well as its dangers. Mean Girls is a truth, but it is not the only one. We should let each other know that it can get better: we can expect better; we can do better for each other and ourselves. I celebrate friendship as a feminist as well as a friend.
Thank you for writing this post – I can really relate to it, and it gives me hope. From the age of 12 to the age of 17, I had strong self-hatred and social anxiety due to body-shaming and being despised as an overweight kid and ridiculed for having a very poor education. All of that made it impossible for me to befriend anyone, because I firmly believed that no one would ever like me.
Facing all of that awful loneliness made me realize how important friendship is. Even though now I’m 18, have much higher self-esteem, and not affected by body-shaming as much as before, I still have yet to make friends in real life. But I’m doing my best to eschew the rest of my useless and harmful self-hatred and linger social anxiety in order to get better at it. I’ve also been learning how to trust people, and one way of doing that, I have found, is learning how to trust myself. It’s been a painfully slow process for me, but like you said, friendship is a skill. And it’s far from impossible.
Whoa, your 18? I always saw you as around 32. Weird.
Yes, I was shocked when someone told me that mxe354 was only 17 or 18. He is mature far beyond his years!
Well, i was mature too when i was 18. Nowadays, not so much, sadly.
And for the record, i thought mxe is middle-aged woman.
Word.
I never knew that I came off as a middle-aged person to some people. o_O That’s the last impression I can imagine giving someone.
It’s a compliment! I also assumed you were a mature person in your thirties. (Which is technically not “middle aged”anymore).
Oh, I don’t mind it at all; it’s a little flattering to hear, in fact. I’m just surprised. But then again, someone once got the impression that I was 19 at the age of 15, so I shouldn’t be so shocked.
Lovely, very lovely. Friendship has been life or death for me at times, and it’s a skill I was not taught as a child, or not well. My parents were academic transients, my father moving us from one non-tenured job to another, when we were young, which affected my brother and me’s ability to make friends, but even more profoundly affected my parents’ abilities to build a community of friendships, acquaintances, and coworkers to spend their time with. My mother’s friends she spoke to less than once a month by phone; my father might see his best (and only real) friend once or twice a year, if that — and they never wrote or called.
So I have had to learn how to be a friend long distance, an agonizing task. It’s been painful to learn which friends are happy to know me when I’m nearby, and which friends want to know me even when it takes an effort – but I’m grateful that I have any such friends at all. It has also been a pleasure to learn that my mother’s old maxim, that women just can’t be close friends with men unless one or both are gay, is not in the least bit true. Having close male friends has exposed me to a diversity of masculinity I otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to — the idea that being a man doesn’t have to revolve around red meat and football, that there are many ways of being.
Going from the small, closed, at times claustrophobic world of my isolated family into a larger world of friendship has done wonders for me.
I’ve seen neither of the shows (movies?) you mentioned at the start, but have discovered some of the same things about friendship. What struck me most was at the end — that if friendship is a skill, I can get better at it. Thank you. It is a reminder I need, and often.
I’ve never read that book or watched that show either! Nevertheless, I really enjoyed Anna Holmes’ review of How Should a Person Be, which is where I got that quotation. I highly recommend it.
I don’t really have any friends of my own outside my partner and her circle. Now what?
I strongly recommend Captain Awkward’s advice for all your interacting-with-other-humans needs. I’d start by checking out her posts tagged “making friends.”
One piece of advice she gives that works well for me is to find activities you like that also happen to be social, like art classes or poetry readings or what have you. Don’t go just to make friends, but be in places where you’ll find people who have things in common with you, and be friendly toward people who seem interesting.
Also, what mxe354 said above is important: trusting yourself is key. So is liking yourself. That’s one reason that building friendships around activities can work really well. Doing things you’re interested in will make you feel interesting, which will make you a better friend.
One last big thing (which Captain Awkward also talks about at greater length) is the importance of making time for yourself and your friendships apart from your partner. If you’re not in the habit of it, this can be hard. But make sure you’re setting aside both time to be alone and time to be with other people without your partner. It will make you happier and make you a better partner.
Also, improving self-esteem and being honest with yourself are essential to trusting yourself. Being honest with yourself directly improves your ability to trust yourself, because very often, honesty is the basis of trust.
But trusting yourself is only one thing you can do – and sometimes it’s not enough. If you are someone who is unable to trust most people, then you need to push yourself a bit. In other words, the ability to trust people sometimes requires a bit of courage. You don’t need to do anything drastic; you just need to push yourself at whatever rate you are comfortable with.
And of course, forcing yourself to trust people is a terrible idea. You aren’t obligated to trust people that make you feel unsafe. If your gut feelings tell you that someone is suspicious, acting in a creepy way, potentially dangerous, etc. then you should trust those feelings. But if you’re just uncomfortable with someone for reasons that have nothing to do with being concerned with your personal safety and boundaries, then it won’t hurt to push yourself a little bit.
You should also see whether you have social anxiety. If so, then your most important objective is to eschew thoughts that tell you that everyone around you is judging you.
Doing so will also make it easier to trust people. But if you don’t have social anxiety, then things should be much easier for you.
I hope that helps.
Alexandra: I know where you’re coming from. I’m one of those transient academics, except I’m single so it’s just me travelling from one place to the next, and each time it feels like I’m starting from scratch. It’s not just meeting new people, it’s also learning the new place, finding out about events, venues and so on where you can meet people (including online – people in different countries use different websites). You do also have to be proactive if you want to stay in touch with your circle of friends back home – you obviously can’t come to the usual gatherings so you need to find other ways of staying on the radar.
The last few years have also been a learning experience when it comes to friendships with women. I didn’t used to have many (a consequence of going to a single-sex school and a very male-dominated course of study/work), but of the closer friends I’ve made in the last couple of years, a majority have been women. The “straight men and women can’t be friends” thing is based on the reasoning that sooner or later one of them will fall for the other and that will ruin the friendship. Well I do fit half of this cliché in that I find a lot of my female friends attractive, but that doesn’t mean I value their friendship any less. More the other way around: the qualities that make them good friends are a big part of why I find them attractive. I think a lot of guys in the ‘friend zone’ need to wake up to how they benefit from the friendship, and more generally how much women contribute to their lives in a non-sexual context. The feelings can be difficult to negotiate at first, but it’s definitely worth it.
Thanks, Colin! I so agree about how worthwhile cross-gender friendships can be.
One thing I’m negotiating right now is a newly formed friendship with a guy I’ve met recently. He is married, and he and his wife have an open relationship. It makes me a little nervous to spend time with him sometimes because there’s always this niggling fear in the back of my mind — what if he makes a move? But on the other hand, he’s been perfectly respectful of boundaries so far, and is an interesting person and pleasant to spend time with. Balancing the ever-present cautious urges that come with being female and yet the desire for cross-gender friendships can be tricky, but I think it’s worthwhile.
Word. I’m tired of hearing people complain about being “friend-zoned”. I mean, I understand very well the disappointment some people have when they are only regarded as friends by the ones they’re romantically interested in, but is there anything really wrong with being just friends? People seem to have a very distorted view of friendship these days.
To me, if you have a problem with being just friends with someone you like, it implies that you have a very narrow-minded and shallow view of human relationships.
This post is lovely.
I grew up at the opposite end of the spectrum. Because I’m an only child, my mother was desperate to make sure that I was “well-adjusted” (whatever that means) and part of that campaign involved making friends. Lots of friends. Which, in retrospect, was probably great practice because even though I’m fairly introverted, I put a lot of energy into cultivating and maintaining friendships. I’ve never viewed other women as competition (at least, not outside of a work context, in which men are also competition!) although I definitely am aware of how our culture encourages that outlook.
I can think of 9 or 10 phone calls I should make and notes I should write…. and after reading this, I think I will. Thank you.
Beautiful post. My mom doesn’t have alot of friends- she has her sister, and a few friends in her area that she sees and hangs out with occasionally. She doesn’t seek that out though, and she knows them through her husband. So if there is a biker convention, like Sturgis, or a local cookout, she’ll go. It’s more of a “I’ll see you when I see you, and we’ll catch up then.” I do this play out with my sisters and I in some ways.
Because of my anxiety, (generalized) I’m actually a better person when I’m being social, with friendships. For the last few years I’ve been struggling at life, money, career, major decisions, and I didn’t maintain friendships which only made my growing anxiety worse. Now I’m doing better at that.
If not for the women in my life as friends, I don’t know where I would be. Friendship for me, is love. One of my best friends helped me find employment when I was struggling. My long distance best friend has offered to let me stay in her apartment for as long as I need, if I move to that state. She wants me to move out there, she knows I’m not really getting anywhere here, and she is completely willing to make her home, my home, just because. Even I can’t believe that almost 10 years after she moved, we’re even closer now than we were before.
I’m at the point to where when I’m talking on the phone to either of my best friends, we generally just sign off with “I love you.” It feels a little weird sometimes, but I also like the affirmation of non-familial and non-romantic love.
I’ve also gone through stages of feeling like I don’t need friends – but only to realise that I do. My friendships are extremely important to me, and I invest a lot in them. I’m lucky to have some very close friends, old and newer.
It does sometimes really bother me that friendship, and the type of love you have for friends, is often subordinated to romantic/sexual love, which is seen as the only real, significant, sustaining love. I think that’s silly – friend love is so important!
Common themes which keep coming up in that context are:
1. Definition of friendship varies in that situation. Sometimes, it is not really an offer of friendship so much as a “gentle rejection” and the one doing the rejecting actually never wants to see him/her ever again.
2. Differences in how friendships are defined by gendered expectations For instance, it’s stereotypically more socially acceptable for women to be open about their feelings with other female friends….especially negative venting whereas it’s socially frowned upon or even completely discouraged among male friends.
3. If #2 applies to a friend who needs to angrily vent….especially for long periods like 4-5 hours straight, this form of emotional support can be extremely draining and can drive those who aren’t used to providing this support to run for the hills for the sake of their own psyches. I personally experienced this with an older male friend who vented about all the crap in his life for 4-5 hours without letup and refused to take the hint that I needed a break when I walked out of his family’s home.
Ended up snapping at him when he continued and I reached my breaking point. Still wondering if this makes me a crappy friend or a normal human being who’s reached the maximum threshold for being a venting platform…
It’s very, very normal to have boundaries and limits and to work to keep friendships within those limits. The key here, though, is to (in Captain Awkward’s wise words) Use Your Words: “Friend, I know you’re going through a tough time and you need to rant, but when you share your pain with me for more than a couple hours I get really stressed and I really need a break. I want to be there for you, but I need to take care of my own mental health as well. I’m sorry I can’t provide more support right now, but I really can’t.” Or something like that. If you have reasonable expectations of what you can give a friend, and if you communicate that to your friend and your friend respects that, hopefully explosive fights can be avoided.
But that’s all a separate issue from the friendzone thing. Yes, friendships can get stressful if they overflow your boundaries – so reinforcing those boundaries is crucial. That’s also true of romantic relationships, though, and people don’t usually argue that that means they’re not worthwhile.
This post and the comments are reminding me how lucky I am to have so many close and wonderful friendships.
I really struggled in elementary school being isolated and feeling like no one wanted to be around me. It’s still something I’m really sensitive when I get into a new environment and have trouble making connections with people – my only experiences with depression have been triggered by feelings like this.
But I was super lucky to stumble into a small group of social misfits of just my own stripe in high school, and now have a lot of friendships that have outlasted a decade and have only gotten stronger and more intimate. I did struggle for a while with the Geek Social Fallacies (particularly #4 and #5), which isn’t uncommon I think for those of us who started out as super-insecure about people ever liking us, but the last five years or so have been a time of serious maturation. I went through some really hard period, lost or drifted from a few friends, and nearly lost one of my very best friends in the world, but in the end I have a handful of friends who are basically family. We’ve gone completely different ways professionally and geographically (thank god for social media), but the very best friendships are like savings accounts – you invest time and energy in them and it doesn’t dissipate, it grows and compounds. Even when we stopped sharing the same interests that brought us together in the first place in high school, just the fact that we’ve been there for each other for so long and have shared so much is enough to keep us going for a long time.
It’s never too late to make friends, though. I’m socially awkward as well, but I’ve bonded with people in a week or less just because we were able to be there for each other at the right time and had certain values and interests in common. And the friendships I’m making now as a twenty-something are much more rewarding right off the bat then then they were when I was a teenager. Maybe because I have an even deeper appreciation for the importance of friendships and having and contributing to social support networks. Looking at my mother and my aunts and the friendships they have either held on to or made in their forties, fifties, and older, I’m anticipating that this is a trend that will continue (my male adult relatives are more of a mixed bag – there really is a very different social context for men, though I have a lot of close male friends my own age who seem to have escaped that). Friendships, intimate ones, are one of those wonderful alchemical devices where the more you give, the more you have.
huh. this is a lot to think about.
are we trained to think of “girls” as being mean to each other? i guess i grew up also seeing it- probably more so- as normal for “boys” to be mean to each other. even though i have to deal with patriarchy as a “woman”, i still feel glad that i’m not a man because i feel like male homophobia, which does so much to make men/boys competitive and mean to each other, would be a lot harder for me to deal with.
this is about love in the end, i guess, and i’ve never really understood the idealization of sexual partnerships as a source of that. i mean, literally not an hour ever, ever goes by when near-strangers don’t fuck, so what do the two have to do with each other?
for me, i’ve been sorting through a lot of shit with my family, and the fact that lots of people will write me off as crazy if i assert that the dangerous, manipulative behavior of my parents was not “love.” the guilt trips that i’ve lived with since before memory, implying that i had to take others’ word for what love was, and was horribly ungrateful if i didn’t feel love in return, has probably been a really warping factor on my relationships to people generally.
there are women in my life whose presence i’m grateful for, but i struggle with often not feeling anything towards people at all. the people who i’ve really felt drawn towards- as a feminist i’ve felt kind of guilty that they’ve been disproportionately men. it doesn’t help that one of the people who i never wanted to sleep with but felt more closely tied to a few years ago turned out to be probably a sexual abuser. not of me, but still.
also there’s this doubt in my mind- when i want affection from men, is it because i’ve been conditioned to seek male approval? when i want it from women, is it because i’ve been conditioned to expect women to be more nurturing? but i think just accepting and having compassion for the relatively-few cases where i feel close to people is probably, at least for now, the best way forward from the place of being utterly burnt out and numb to people’s presence.
This is a beautiful post. I’ll bet a lot of people can see themselves in it as well.
I often think that I am a terrible friend. But mostly, I’m just bad at keeping in touch. Friends that I haven’t spoken to in months or years, I still consider my friends, and I hope that I’m still on their radar. I think facebook, for a while anyway, was allowing me to think I was keeping in touch, when I wasn’t. In my post-facebook years, I’ve started writing more letters, and postcards, and sending long emails.
Hopefully I’ll get better at staying in touch with the people that really matter, and love me back.
[...] a straightforward verbal exchange of any real depth with each other, still less with bosses/men. | Our society does a shitty job of teaching girls how to be friends or have them. | [...]