A brief history of my worst ever female friendships (and how I ended them)
Because women can be utterly f**king ghastly, have you noticed?
I’m trying to get my mate M to ditch her mate, D. M is wonderful: cool, sweet, smart. D is awful, self obsessed, tricksie as hell, actively spiteful when life doesn’t go her way. I ditched D a decade ago, following an intolerable episode during which she just stopped paying every time we went out (for brunch, or drinks, or whatever). The bill would come, D’d get suddenly, instantly re-enmeshed in whichever trauma was plaguing her in that moment - there were many - sort of: smile regretfully at the waiter when they bought the payment thingamy, and I’d somehow end up covering the whole thing.
Again.
It wasn’t about the money, of course, not for either of us. It was a test of my nature, my boundaries, how ridiculously and obviously I’d debase myself, how much I’d serve D, how much was too much. D had been dumped by someone at that juncture (not unreasonably, if I’m honest) and (I think) was perhaps also trying to get me to act out some sort of trad husband pays-for-everything role by proxy, or… I dunno. Anyway. I was nearly two hundred quid down before I extracted myself from the friendship.
Some years earlier, however, I’d introduced D to M - D was my (awful) friend first, which makes me feel responsible for how badly D is now treating M. M is an infinitely better person than me, kinder and calmer and more patient. Anytime D does something terrible - most recently, she told M that the man M had started seeing, the one in whom M had tentatively started allowing herself to develop a modicum of faith, had also swiped on her, on D, but D had decided he wasn't very hot - M excuses it.
“Her childhood was so messed up,” M says (which it was). “She doesn’t understand how to have honest, good relationships.”
“Which is precisely why you shouldn't waste yourself on her!” I say.
Ugh.
So much has been written on the sanctity of female friendship. How wonderful is it. How solid. How true! How much deeper, more reliable, more enduring, than romantic love (which is actually part commercial pipe dream, part patriarchal plot anyway). It’s such a cornerstone of modern feminism, isn’t it? How just wonderful other women are, how endlessly supportive and mysteriously, lovingly witchy in their community, in their communing.
Less has been written on how f**king AWFUL women can be to one another, how some female friendships can half destroy you: drain you, exhaust you, batter and bruise you, demean you, gaslight you, put you in situations you’d never choose for yourself, not in a squllion years! Because: talk about that, and you risk outing yourself as (yikes) not-a-girls-girl. And maybe the problem’s with you.
But f**k me, I’ve had some long friendships with some awful women! As tough as I might seem, as intolerant of fools, as sure of my own mind, as flick-knife ready to assert myself - I’ve had a right blind spot for dodgy women, historically. Men? Nah. Men I could always handle. I could - still can - see them, their motives, their intentions, their bullish*t, so very clearly; could handle it, manage them, sort the sh*t from the gold, hold those who needed holding at arms length, dispatch entirely with those who weren't worth it, early and efficiently. Hang on to the good eggs. Simples.
But women? I was like a wide eyed innocent when it came to women. So desperate to see their good sides, I completely ignored or dismissed or denied the red flags many of them flew before themselves like heraldry; the blatant and unapologetic awfulness of them, until, after a good long while - two years on average I reckon, though sometimes, a lot longer - something relatively minor would tip me from that innocence, into a state of full glaring comprehension re the hilarious ghastliness of them, at which point, I’d ghost their arses, never to speak to them again.
Then I’d do the whole thing again, because I never learned.
Until I did.
I had terrible taste in women, basically. I mean, I had brilliant taste, too. Some of my women friends were, and remain, the dictionary definition of menches.
It’s just that, for the longest time, and for reasons I shall come to, I felt obligated to balance out those good, healthy, reciprocal friendships, with bad ones. Two shitty ones to every good one, appeared to be my preferred ratio.
The full array of female friend awfulness with which I dabbled included (but was not limited to):
The one so competitive, so status-obsessed,