Rachel Simmons

In Rachel’s recent blog, Angry Status Updates on Facebook: Hot or Not?, she wrote “information is power.” I’d like to expand on that idea and suggest that withholding information or communication, rather than sharing it, is a tried-and-true, passive aggressive technique among girls that illustrates who has the power in a relationship.

One way girls withhold communication to feel powerful is in reaction to a friend’s accomplishment. If something bad or embarrassing happens to me, I’m the first to tell my friends so we can laugh about it. And if something great happens to me, I tell my friends, too. I recently told a friend I was excited about a program I had been accepted to and she simply did not respond. She changed the subject.

Good Girls are supposed to be good at everything, so we become competitive. But Good Girls aren’t supposed to feel competitive so we end up ignoring each other’s accomplishments.

When my friend disregarded my achievement, I felt unseen. She probably felt secure knowing that she didn’t show me that she felt threatened. But I’d rather hear “I’m happy for you but I feel like you’re bragging” than silence. Silence makes it seem like whatever is making me happy is dumb or threatening our friendship.

An unreturned call can be very confusing and hurtful. A call says “I want to share information with you.” Whether it be about a concert I want to go to, or what my day was like, sharing knowledge shows that you value someone. The person in the relationship who feels entitled enough not to reciprocate is powerful because she leaves her friend hanging.

Call me crazy, actually please don’t, but if I call a friend, I expect to hear from her. When a friend does not respond, I start to wonder. Are we in a fight I don’t know about? Is she tired of me? Or is her phone broken? You can drive yourself nuts hypothesizing.

Now that there are so many different ways to communicate, a lack of communication feels very scary. I think Drew Barrymore’s character in the film He’s Just Not That Into You said it best when she lamented, “I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

I get that some days are just too busy for phone calls. But one of my closest friends consistently responds to messages in an untimely manner. Jenny writes her own secret rules of communication that I am not privy to. It is hurtful to me when Jenny fails to return my call or acknowledge that she is returning my call days later. Jenny and I have a great time when we are together, so why should I feel lucky when Jenny returns my calls? If Jenny is upset with me, or needs her space, she can tell me that. Telling a friend that you need your space may seem mean, but it shows that you believe she deserves to know what is going on.

I think true friendships are based on mirroring. Instead of mirroring my behavior by calling, or texting, or sending smoke signals for all I care, Jenny decides when our friendship is a priority to her. Friends should not have to feel like their calls are messages in a bottle sent out to sea. Although it may not seem like it from this blog, I don’t need a lot of approval from my friends. It’s the lack of communication of positive, or negative, information that makes me feel like I am not a part of the friendship.

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