Own Your Friendship Mistakes

It's probably time to take a friendship inventory after watching White Lotus Season 3

“Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into non-physical, indirect and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name-calling, and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on victimized targets. Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making the aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to their targets.”

— Simmons, R. (2002), p.3. - Odd Girl Out : The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

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I will be the first to admit that I haven't always been a good friend and to declare that to people who bother to read my writing here may open me up to judgment that I am that way all the way, which isn't the case. It's a tough pill to swallow— contributing to the hurt of humans I genuinely care for. If I dig a little deeper, mainly because I didn't know how to implement better boundaries, adjust expectations, and refrain from sharing my opinions when they weren't asked for, alongside poor impulse control, while also not playing by the feminine social norms game in certain friendships, and like everyone else on this dying planet, unhealed trauma.

I did not always see the person in front of me,

and to be fair to myself, some of those

friends didn't see me either.

Owning how we have failed our people is a practice of being with the discomfort it brings up—the stuff we prefer to avoid or get defensive about. Avoidance and defensiveness are band-aid solutions. Patterns repeat there, and people often pull away from those who can't or won't take accountability for their actions, leading to resentment or a complete dissolution of the friendship, which brings me to my dream about a friend group of four from high school a few months back, probably because I had been thinking about my friendship failures as I gathered my thoughts to write this. In the dream, I was at an outdoor gathering, and my three friends sought me out of the crowd. The closest friend in our group tapped me on the shoulder and shared how I had been an awful friend to her. It was interesting to see them all together, as none of us are close anymore. It also felt like three against one, common in female group dynamics and reminiscent of my grade school foray into social hierarchy, the silent treatment, demands for giving over your brand new headband OR ELSE, and the pressures of siding with the dominant one of the group for fear of social exclusion.

I have been in the so-called "popular group" since grade one. I was the new kid after my family moved to a different city for my dad's government job promotion. How I got there? A killer jean dress, crimped hair, being good at sports, and keeping that social "status" into middle school and then high school.

Cue the latest White Lotus Season 3, set in Koh Samui, Thailand, and the cringe it most likely brought countless women, including myself, while watching the dynamics of Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate play out. I started writing this essay before I watched the new season, but because they are a perfect example of how we can be terrible friends, I thought I would mention it here, as I can't stop thinking about it since then and in truth, I have been the toxic and crashing-out one. I have been the friend who kept going back to her abuser and withdrew from friends because I was embarrassed. I have been the pushy friend, the traumatized one, confusing past hurt with minor issues, the judgmental one. I have made some friends feel like shit. I have talked behind backs and triangulated with others to make myself feel better. It was important enough to me to reflect on my shortcomings, and there were many. That also freed me from the need to be perfect in friendships.

What gets in the way of our desire to be a good friend that the humans we love for the long haul but crash and burn into a pit of unglamorous flames? Or worse, pretend our way through it?

The triangulation, emotional unpredictability, mired in muted hostility, resulting in old patterns resurfacing even in the best of times, like being on a luxury vacation on the most stunning islands in Thailand, which, for me personally, stirs up memories about the worst of times, where these type of relationships oftentimes implode at warp speed. I know intimately about unmet expectations and subtle punishments born of bone-deep resentments when over-identifying with a nostalgic version of ourselves and the friendships in which we invested our time, secrets, and youth. The sunk cost fallacy isn't just for economics or cults.

We hang on because of what we hope it says about ourselves, to avoid the fear it brings up if we are ousted from the group for not falling into the familiar patterns but, for many, detrimental, mistaking genuine friendship with familiarity. The desire for positive identity maintenance around friendship, a deep need to be perceived as a woman who has long-term friendships signals to others her goodness, providing her with social currency (even if it's performative.) and yet, choosing that over authenticity to maintain long-term friendships that may not be based on reality once honesty is on the table. Shared history can be the foundation of a life-affirming friendship and its demise. We come by it honestly. Our society is steeped in Patriarchal conditioning. It takes profound awareness to separate from a system that encourages and prefers women to be superficially "connected" and discretely competitive. I may even stretch that analysis to internalized misogyny and the impossible standard of being a woman. Translating that to a friend who doesn't ask for too much, is confident but not too confident, doesn't crowd the man in her life or rock the boat.

Deprioritizing friendship after marriage is another marker, subtle in some circles and not so subtle in others. Taking on a load of emotional and logistical labour of the family unit, leaving little capacity outside of it. Friendship becomes a non-essential afterthought—another killer of friendship.

Our social conditioning around shame is also preventive to self-reflect on our less favourable relational behaviours. Our culture is punitively cruel, which teaches people that their friendship mistakes are a personal deficit, a moral failing, something to move on from quickly. Hence, people do it without a second glance at the breakdown. The default setting is defensiveness, rallying others to validate our side and shifting blame.

What I've stopped doing is feeling the need to villainize people who I'm no longer friends with to make myself feel better about why we are no longer friends. Even if there was a valid reason for the split and hurt feelings, I have stopped conflating hurt with harm or saying that their lack of reciprocity means something more profound than it is. Sometimes, it just is. Unless they are a raging narcissistic d-bag, then, of course, harm is usually afloat, but that is something entirely complex and different when it comes to being friends with someone with this kind of personality disorder.

Am I going through a friendship dark night of the soul ? In 2019, when my friend and dad died so close together and went into a wounded animal mode, yes. I lost a lot of friendships around that time. It was messy, it was hard, and I went into a fairly dark depression because of it, but since then, I have landed in a peaceful place, and now, most of my remaining friendships have flourished or maintained a slow burn.

We live in a world where every second square tells us it's them, not you, but I am here to do the opposite. Framing it this way is not much use, and it also leaves you off the hook, thinking that introspection is unnecessary, but IT IS. Even if that leads you to realize that you do have many narcissistic friends in your life, the work would be around why that is.

A way to spot our bullshit around friendship is to own the ways we are sucking at it and why.

I woke up sad after that dream. Unsurprised there. But I also know facing my mistakes in failed friendships is a good way to change how I show up with my remaining and newer ones. We can have all the relational skills in the world, and that doesn't protect us from significant life transitions, death and the grief that comes after, an illness, how you weigh the importance of friendship, stressors of being a parent, a mismatch in effort or energy, mounting unresolved conflicts, communication style differences, social preferences, lifestyle differences, socioeconomic status, lacking deeper connection, mental health, attachment differences, unhealed wounds and trauma clouding our ability to connect in healthy ways. The list goes on. The keyword is difference and the importance of learning to relate despite them.

Now more than ever, we need women to be aware of their conditioning as our neighbour to the south (I'm Canadian) continues to strip women of their rights, establishing submissive gender roles in diabolical ways, demanding men be the center of their universe at the expense of themselves. As feminist women are blamed for the collapse of traditional family values and the deterioration of men's mental health, often this looks like giving select women a false sense of power or position of authority, which promotes the policing of other women around them, eroding trust between women has always been the cultural goal. It is the extreme version of what I wrote about above.

Understanding feminine cultural conditioning and the systems in place helps us make better sense of the wounds we carry that bleed into our friendship dynamics. We take our power back to forge meaningful, deep connections, have the awareness to know what isn't healthy for us, and find those who are, or at least trying to be, together. We owe it to ourselves and our friends.

Book Nook:

Sharing books that had an impact on me as of late

I read Witness to the Revolution : Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul by Clara Bingham:

This oral history chronicles the turbulent year of 1969 through the voices of those who lived it—antiwar activists, civil rights leaders, Vietnam veterans, feminists, and counterculture icons. Bingham captures a country in crisis and transformation, marked by protest, violence, idealism, and a profound generational reckoning. She shares how a deeply divided America confronted its conscience—and how that moment continues to shape today's nation.

Slow Practice is a free newsletter, so sharing it with your people can help support my writing. I am not consistent enough to ask people to become paid subscribers, so a share, comment, or like goes a long way. Having humans pump my tires on social media because I'm not there anymore would be a damn joy. Not that I will be able to see it! Please share in your stories with your friends or whoever you think you may get something from my newsletter.

If you're grieving the death of a loved one, you can read my book, Love Notes to Grievers, which is currently on sale at Amazon.com.

(I know, sorry—fucking amazon)

Alright, that’s it. Those are my hopefully non-cringy pitches

Ange