How to cope when your friendship ends
When I was little I used to fall out with my mates all the time over who played with the Barbie for longer, a borrowed book not returned and often we had no real clue as to why weren’t best friends any longer, but we’d have a new best friend the following week and at some point we’d make our way back to each other. As a teenager my friendships lasted much longer, many of them to the present day, but female friendship in particular has often proven to be fraught with pitfalls.
It’s a long time since I have had to stop being friends with someone but here are a few suggestions should you find yourself in this situation.
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The Coup de Grace - When Your Friend Dates Your Ex
May 24, 2006 by The Tattoed Debutante · 5 Comments
It’s bad enough to lose someone you care about. The end of a relationship is emotionally draining, psychologically exhausting, and generally takes it all out of you. So, compound the stress of a breakup with the unthinkable, and you have what I will hence forth refer to as TUB (The Ultimate Betrayal).
I have ranted and raved about the evils of the female species, the undeniable ability of woman to sell her sister down the stream for a bit of security or a piece of ass. You have read my ‘what to do to be a good friend and what not to do if you want anyone to trust you again’. Well, I held back on what I consider the coup de grace. (That’s the correct spelling of the oft butchered coup de gras.) When your friend goes after your ex.
Now, I’m not talking about wanting to date someone that you dated years ago when you had braces and rocked out to NKOTB. I’m not talking about wanting to date someone that you hooked up with at some party on a night that you came home without your panties and with someone else’s shirt on. I’m talking about when, days, weeks, a month after a breakup, your ex and your “friend” decide to pursue a relationship. This is the TUB. This is what separates the friends from the women to avoid like the plague. And this is where my diatribe really begins.
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Female Friendship: When She Can’t Be Happy For You
April 14, 2006 by NML · Leave a Comment
The female friendship subject is something that has been cropping up quite frequently over the past while. I know I keep saying it, but I never fail to be shocked by the capacity for women to fail other women and to put dick consistently before friendship. I’ve had a new experience which symbolises that I am at different stage in life: when a friend cannot be happy for you.
I’m talking relationships but this is applicable to anything that is of enough importance for it to impact on your life, bring about happiness and create a change in your friendship. That’s new jobs, promotions, pay rises, baby, boyfriend, wedding, new car and other material items.
Obviously if what you’re happy about is something that’s a very sensitive subject, be sensitive about it! This doesn’t mean you can’t be happy or tell them, but do be diplomatic. If they’ve just got sacked for instance, they’ll probably struggle to be ecstatic over your fat pay rise and a promotion. Equally if you’re friend has just lost a baby, it’s not that she doesn’t feel happy for you being pregnant, but she’s very likely to be still grieving and still hurting.
But what if it’s just about their own discontent? Sometimes friends don’t know or just can’t be happy for us and they rain on your parade. Maybe they’re negative, maybe they ignore whatever it is that made you happy even if it’s smacking them in the face, or maybe they even ignore you. I’ve heard stories of women being suddenly frozen out and being unable to assimilate what they have done to be treated in this way.
I’m fortunate that nothing very bad has happened but I have found that I’m a bit stunned and my feelings are a bit hurt. It’s not like I’ve been rubbing any of my happiness in her face, but I’m feeling a bit of frost even though it’s not winter…
Friendship is something that should exist whether you are up or down. You should be able to be a friend whether you are both unhappy, both okay, you are up or she is down. It is not acceptable for you to only feel that you can be a friend and be happy for her, as long as you don’t perceive her to be doing better than you.
Sometimes it is hard to be full of the joys of spring when it feels like things aren’t going too great for you, but being happy for a friend is not about you, it’s about THEM, which means that genuine friendship should allow you to find it within yourself to be happy for them without grudging them. Yes, we’re human and this will be hard sometimes, but at this point, when you really can’t feel it, you either fake it till you feel it, or keep it zipped until you can find it within yourself to be genuinely happy for her.
If you’re a woman on the receiving end of a friend who can’t be happy for you and is not being nice to you, hard as it is, don’t take it personally. It’s not about you, it’s about her and with any luck, you can still be there as a friend whilst she comes through this difficult phase and she will see the error of her ways and get the friendship back on track. Gracefully. However, this difficulty can also be the marking of the point where you both take different roads and your friendship doesn’t survive it or eases into ‘acquaintance’ zone. Remember that friendship and the ability to be happy are not mutually exclusive. Your friendships can co-exist with your state of happiness or sadness – that’s what friendship is about!
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Girls v. Women: Revenge of the Y Chromosome
April 6, 2006 by The Tattoed Debutante · 1 Comment
I know it seems like I’ve been on a tear lately, but I suppose it’s because I have been. I would love to have become numb to the awful things that girls can do, but I am still shocked when girls do hateful, awful things to each other without a second thought. I have been swimming in a sea of sharks lately, constantly concerned about losing life or limb to the rows of teeth possessed by so many girls I know. I refer to them as girls because I would hope that real women would realise how insignificant and unimportant a man is in the scheme of things and that every time they hurt a girl for a boy, they are simply setting the female population up for abject failure. I have seen so much wrong lately, and so little right, that I’d like to point out some further behaviours that will keep you categorised as a “girl” and keep you from every being a “woman.”
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Friendship and Sisterhood
April 3, 2006 by NML · Leave a Comment
I always say put ten women in a room together, for instance, at work, and watch as the claws come out. We just can’t help ourselves which is why men in the room can balance things out. Whilst I am a girls girl, I love spending time around the various men in my life as they’re relatively uncomplicated. They have a laugh, and yes they do ramble on about sports, but in general their friendships are quite simplistic. The place where they can fall down is the emotional support as some men just struggle with talking about their emotions, or listening to someone else talk about theirs.
This is where women come in because the beauty of female friendship is that with the right friends, you can share in each other’s ups and downs, have fabulous girls nights outs and talk about the emotional side of life.
I do get frightened when I hear stories about so-called friendships because I wonder: What the hell has happened to sisterhood? To friendship?
- Women sleeping with their friends boyfriends
- Women sleeping with their friends husbands
- Women doing the above with a sibling or other relatives partners
- Women smiling and extending the hand of friendship to their face and talking about that same person as soon as their back is turned
- Women slagging off their female friends to other men – cockblocking in the worst way
- Women being nasty and unsupportive towards each other in the workplace
- Women treating their friends like lackeys or boyfriends and having too high expectations
- One way friendships – they drain and take support and give nothing back
- Women that ditch their friends entirely when they get a boyfriend
A lot of what drives bad friendship is the Dick Before Friends policy and whilst I appreciate that lots of people want to find a partner to settle down with, I think that we need be a little bit more considerate towards our friendships and stop the back-biting and back-stabbing. The whole desiring a man because he’s attached to someone else, particularly if it’s your friend or relative, making him approved, is nasty and pathetic.
I think that regardless of whether a woman is your friend or not, we need to learn to be more supportive of our species and stop flexing our bitch gene. It’s actually rather unattractive and if you need to understand it from a male perspective, men really dislike women’s pathological need to be bitchy to other women. It’s a cold, cruel world out there and our resistance to standing together and choosing to screw each over instead is the undoing of us. We will never achieve anywhere near as much as men or come close to standing equal as long as we think that slagging someone off because of what she’s wearing, how she looks, the man that she’s with, the choices that she makes should take top billing in conversations. Sometimes men do have the right idea and we could stand to learn a little something from their friendships.
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Tips for Good Female Friendships
Female friendships are a complicated affair, but here are some tips to ensure that you’re engaging in the right type of friendships and that neither one of you is taking advantage of the other.
Remember, these women are your friends, not your boyfriend. You shouldn’t feel that any of your friends are obliged to spend all of their time with you. If you have a life, work, family, personal interests, it shouldn’t be a stretch for you to allow some space in your friendships.
Friends don’t have to be in contact all the time. This will be a revelation but true friendships don’t rely on having to live in each other’s pockets. You should have friends that you see regularly and do speak with every few days, and friends that you speak with every few weeks or months. The moment that you hear yourself having a pop about the fact that she’s not calling you enough, the moment that you need to check yourself. And get out more.
Don’t even think about sleeping with their man.
Don’t sleep with her man and think that she should forgive you. Yes friendships last forever and boys don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should put that saying to the test by getting your leg over with her man.
If you have a problem, say it to their face, not behind their back. Bitching is very high school and why women feel the need to air out their problem with a person with anyone but that person and more often than not, that person’s other not so loyal friends, is beyond me. Grow up!
If all you ever do is slag off the person behind their back, reconsider why you are friends with that person and stop being friends.
Don’t ditch your friendships just because you have a boyfriend. Yes you won’t be able to hang out as much as you used to but that shouldn’t stop you from making the effort. And yes, it is you that has to make the effort because there is only so often that people will keep hearing no’s before they stop inviting you all together.
It’s really bad form to abandon all of your friendships and then whine when they aren’t on hand on your demand.
If all you phone your friends up for is to offload about your current man problems, check yourself and make the effort to talk about something different.
Don’t just ask your friends out when your boyfriend isn’t doing something – it’s very bad manners. If you really want to make the effort with your friendships, take a chance and make plans on a night that isn’t necessarily down to your boyfriends plans. If the relationship is solid, you can cope with it. You have no excuse for this behaviour if you don’t have any kids and you see your boyfriend 6 days a week anyway!
Don’t just be available when things are bad for your friend. Share in her positives. Nobody likes friend that thrives on other’s unhappiness.
If it feels like it’s all about you, you need to rebalance your friendship. If it’s ‘Me, me, me, it’s all about me’ you may be one of those people who is kept as an acquaintance and not as a bonafide friend because you’re self-absorbed. I know you think you’re delightfully interesting, but friendship is a two way street which means you do need to take an interest in your friends life.
Don’t belittle your friends life or choices. You may be a smug married or smug couple but it doesn’t mean that you have to come out with ‘It’ll happen to you someday just like it’s happened to me’ crap. It’s patronising and rude and it’s the type of thing that’s expected from people who you don’t know and like.
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Friendly Fire - One-sided attraction between friends
March 15, 2006 by Special Dark · Leave a Comment
Whether it happened in childhood or in your adult life, at some point an uncomfortable situation probably has reared its ugly head. The scenario: you have this friend who you are comfortable with and whom you like. Well one night you’re at the movies, the bowl-a-rama, or just hanging out at home and she gets a little closer than normal. You think nothing of it until her head’s on your shoulder. When you turn to ask if everything’s okay you see that she’s staring at you and her eyes are locked with yours. That’s when, even as a normally oblivious guy, you start thinking… uh-oh.
What you have here is a friend who’s developed the hots for you.
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The Keys to Being A Great Female Friend
February 16, 2006 by The Tattoed Debutante · 1 Comment
I’m gonna take a cue from NML and go with the Women/ Girlfriends theme. We have pointed out the flawed logic behind much female thinking and explored the manner in which women choose to attack and hurt one another. But, for fear that people may think my only female interaction is of the cat fight persuasion, allow me to expound upon the world of wonderful girlfriends. I have a few, close friends who have taught me the beauty of being friends with a woman, and I want to share some of those insights.
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On Being Friends with Your Ex
February 16, 2006 by Pocahantas · 1 Comment
Have you ever reached the point when you’re fed up with talking? When you’ve said all you have to say? Talked until you’re blue in the face…this is possible, I’ve done it, and all to no avail. I’ve found that some things can be hashed, rehashed, eaten, regurgitated, and, well you get the point…no resolution will ever be reached. Such is the case with every relationship I’ve ever had. I have always felt that I shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone with whom I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life. As a result of this, I’ve dated dozens of decent, desirable, and in some case delectable specimens in the course of my young life, and have managed to produce only two substantive relationships.
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Wake Up Ladies: We’re Not Fighting a War!
February 7, 2006 by NML · Leave a Comment
I talk a lot about guys, whether it’s ex’s, wannabe boyfriends or just men in general, and this week I’m switching the focus to the ladies. I’m lucky that I have a good circle of friends both here in London and where I was brought up, Dublin, Ireland. Some people I’ve been friends with for over eighteen years and in that whole time, I’ve probably only fallen out with about three people.
I cherish my female friendships and quite frankly, I don’t know what I would have done without them at times. My family are great but my friends give me a very different type of support that is irreplaceable and that is difficult for me to comprehend that other women would forgo. Yet I witness women all the time proverbially scratching each others eyes out and if I wasn’t mistaken, I would almost believe that we were fighting a war that most of us pretend isn’t happening.
The type of women that scare me are the ones that tell you what a brilliant friend they are and try to ram it down your throat with ‘Those who doth protest too much syndrome’, women that hate women and are only friends with guys, women that will do ANYTHING in the name of dick, and women that still think they’re at high school.
The ‘I’m the greatest friend on earth friend’ scares me almost as much as the guy that says ‘I’m a nice guy, I’m a NICE guy, I’m a NICE GUY’. Both very clearly have no idea what the hell either of these things and spend so much time telling people about it, as if saying it often enough will make it so. I tend to find that women who won’t shut up about what a wonderful friend they are, tend to be very much the opposite. They total up everything they’ve done and remind the poor woman on the receiving end of it about how much they think they’ve done. They often proclaim friendship when they don’t actually know the person very well at all and they are an exhausting type of friend to have that requires far too much maintenance.
Women that hate women crack me up. Some have very real trust issues that make it hard for them to forge female friendships, and they in retaliation to the women that they dislike so much, harbour lots of male friends, act like men, and are often alpha women in the office. They truly do believe that they need to grow balls to survive in a man’s world and scorn women that don’t operate the same way that they do because they represent everything that they think is weak about our gender. Some women have had some bad experiences with women making them feel that women are difficult to trust and to be fair, when you read about these four types of women in this article, who can blame them? However, I’ve had a several dubious relationships with men but I’m not about to start licking on both sides…. And there of course are the women that don’t have any real issue that has triggered their disregard of women, they just think that another women in their midst is an obstacle to dick.
Which brings me very nicely into Cockaholics, women that will do anything in the name of dick. These women are the scariest sort and God help any of you that cross their path. They will take off their earrings before they yank out yours and drag you by the hair. They’re the type of women that when they find out that their man is screwing someone else, they beat HER ass and take HIM back. They stab so-called friends in the back so that they can clear a path for themselves (Cockblocking minus the cock) and think nothing of calling their friends and women they don’t know whores, bitches, skanks, and ho’s with the caveat, ‘Yeah but you know I care about her really. But she is a ho…’ Everything is off limits for this type of woman and she will do anything to secure the man that she wants, with no regard for her friends. These women do hate other women to a certain extent, but it’s not because it’s a man’s world, it’s just because she wants a man in her vagina at any cost.
‘Yeah, but no, but yeah’ or ‘Like, Oh my God!’ women are like nails down a chalkboard, but not a patch on Cockaholics. They just haven’t managed to let go of the high school mentality and grow into fully fledged adults. They hang in cliques round the work cubicles which is their adult lockers, or at the tennis club or whatever their location of choice is, sniping at each others appearances and partners behind each others backs, but hugging and grinning face to face. Their friendships are very reminiscent of the type of friendships you have as a kid, and their ‘best friend’ changes all the time and they treat their female friends like property. One of them is probably sleeping with one of the groups men and has little conscience about it. They thrive on attempting to make other women insecure and no doubt make some people’s childhood nightmares and insecurities return. These are the type of women that turn up on reunion shows on Ricky Lake or Trisha Goddard, unrepentant about the poor woman’s life that they made a misery, despite her having spent a fortune on plastic surgery to get over her trauma of being bullied by women like this.
If anything about your own behaviour felt familiar whilst reading this, you don’t know where I live and I dare you to try and pull out my earrings! On a serious note though, the level of hate between women and the backstabbing is SAD and futile. We don’t have to be friends with everyone, but we don’t have to carry on as if we’re fighting a world war. Chasing dick at the expense of everything else is a futile exercise that will very rarely pay out the dividends that you expect. There is such a thing as karma and if you are a woman treating someone in any of these ways, there will be a whole lot of karma out there waiting to bite you in the arse.
Women can be a source of support as opposed to the enemy to destroy. Can’t we all just be friends? Probably not, but we could stop being bitches to each other and stop putting dick before common sense!
NML is the editor of Baggage Reclaim.
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