The Myth of the BFF: Helping Girls Face the Dark Side of Friendship
I often joke that if girls had to rank their life needs in order of importance, the list would go something like this: Friends, Air, Water, Food, Phone, Computer. Truth is, I’m only half kidding. Relationships are at the core of girls’ psychological health. To wit, meet the girls in the new PBS show, “A Girl’s Life,” whose peers both empower and undermine their development.
The ultimate prize of friendship in a girl’s world is the BFF or best friend forever. BFF’s are joined at the hip. They wear broken heart necklaces, fantasize about living next door to each other in twenty years – you know the drill.
But is there really such a thing as a BFF? Beginning around fourth grade, social politics say otherwise. As puberty arrives and girls start developing at wildly different speeds, friendships begin collapsing.
Well into middle and high school, you are as likely to see those BFF’s linking arms as you are to hear girls crying, “She stole her away from me,” “She won’t speak to me when the popular girl is around” and “She doesn’t play with me anymore at recess.” Those freshly besotted with shiny new BFF’s are googly-eyed and generally oblivious to their love-em-and-leave-em maneuvers. “Sometimes you just meet someone else and want to hang out with her,” a fifth grader gushed to me a few weeks ago.
When a supposedly BFF friendship ends, or changes, it can feel like the end of the world. Part of that is a genuine grief response, but I have found that girls often feel an additional layer of self-blame and despair that comes from unrealistic beliefs about friendship.
Part of the problem is our culture: Girls grow up in a world that defines a good chunk of their value in terms of how many friends they have. As a result, they believe their job is to be liked (and befriended) by as many girls as possible. Anything short of that, and you’re failing at being a girl – or what I call a Good Girl.
When it comes to the BFF, girls are sold a bill of goods about friendship that looks a lot like the rubbish we’re told about romance: There’s one person out there who is our match, and we’ll live happily ever after. The relationship with The One is supposed to be blissful, conflict-free and permanent. As a result, girls wind up with wildly unrealistic expectations about themselves and their relationships. And they blame themselves when reality bites, and the relationships shift or end.
As a parent, one way to combat these destructive myths is to turn to the world of dating. If you think about it, we have some very fair expectations in that department. Somehow, we know that the process of finding our mate won’t be easy. We generally expect not to fall in love with the person we’ll end up with on the first date. We realize we are likely to be dumped at some point and just as likely to reject someone ourselves.
Although we may blame ourselves when we’re broken up with, we sense that it’s part of life. How do we know? Every other song on the radio is about it, and there are a slew of books and articles at the ready to nurse us through the heartbreak. Most of us adults have learned, through experience or observation, that relationships come and go, people change, and, well, bad things happen.
Girls lack any such perspective about their friendships. There are no songs on the radio about being ditched by your best friend. To the contrary, almost every film they see about aggression in girls is a comedy.
As a parent, you can provide a much needed dose of reality by keeping your daughter’s expectations about relationship fair. As always, empathy is crucial. After you hug her and tell her how sorry you are, consider some of these more realistic takes on friendship…
I think this is so true- I had one (and only one) friend from kinder until year 7. Then, I made new friends. I thought when my friends ditched me it was the worst thing ever until i realised there are worse things and if they ditch you they aren’t really your best friend
I am still digesting so much of what you said today. I have felt that the reason I did not have friends in school was my own fault. Either I could not be or did not know how to be a friend. But somewhere in there is the idea that it was not really my fault and there is little I could have done to change the situation, EXCEPT to have confronted my so-called friends and honestly expressed myself. Why am I so bad at that? Anyway, thanks for the insight.
rachel i have been through so much i met this girl named riley and i mean we just became best friends we were inceprable till seventh grade it all started when she had bought one of those life waters and told me to give it to her on the bus well i thught i had thrown it away then when i told her first she got play mad then she got upset, the next day she had a note saying that she wasnt my friend anymore i was heart broken well we got back toghther again but that was only the start of a bigger problem. Just about three weeks ago riley offered to make me and my friend melissa earings well i told her i could help but she kept saying no so i wore them the rest of the day, then at about eight o clock at night she calls me and says we shouldnt be friends. well my mom was a little shocked so she called her and calmly asked her stuff like do u really want to throw away a friendship over earings, etc…so then her mom called and said it was personal because my mom yelled and made her cry(she didnt yell) so we met with a counselor and we worked it out but rileys mom forbid us to be friends so i was happy. then on a saturday i was going to a party wich riley was also invited to. well when i got there i was shocked she was still treating me the same way like wed never talked. so while i was skating she kept cursing me out so i pushed her she didnt fall os anything. so like 30min later she calls her mom then mine gets a text saying if your daughter touches riley again youll be sorry. and now every chance she gets she attacks me telling me im a loser who has no friends calls me a retard because i write about what happened in my . i mean people tell me just get over it but she was the the first person i ever really trusted she got me outta my shell she was like a sister i never had and always wish i had. Now im so angry and its affecting me at home its because i did everything with her we took her camping she practicly lived at my house and i gave so much to her mentaly and for her to just take that is just hurting me i mean i have other friends but im not as close as i was with riley and i want someone to fill the whole i want a bond with another girl but i know all the girls in my school i really want another bffl who will treat me right. Help me please rachel i am so confused. -corin
Well, it doesn’t seem like either of the Mums in this account had any perspective.
They do love their daughters, yes.
Riley seems to be angry at her Mum and yours as well.
Riley’s Mum seems to have really escalated it by saying, “It was personal.”
Corin, I do hope you find a friend who you treat right and who treats you right.
I feel like I can relate to this so much. Growing up, I always felt devastated when my friendships with other girls were ruined, or I felt pushed to the side in favor of more popular girls. Reading this article makes me realize how strange and unrealistic my ideals of friendship when I was younger (and even now, really) were.
Isn’t it liberating to stop blaming yourself for some of those friend divorces?
Thanks for writing!