The Heartbreaking Truth About Female Friendships — and Why They’re Hard to Maintain

I’m 28 and I only have 2 female friends that I wholeheartedly trust.

One is a friend from college and another is my ex-student. 3 of us live in different cities so I usually meet them in person once a year.

With that being said, I’m mostly alone.

Do I feel jealous whenever I see girls on Instagram with that cute little picnic at the beach? Sure. But I also know most of them are fake.

So it’s no surprise when they complain about how lonely they feel inside — despite having “cool” friends they regularly post on Social Media.

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Where it all started

I was 17 — moving out to a bigger city after high school was fun. I didn’t have to live with my emotionally abusive aunt and had all the freedom to do what I loved.

So I had the time and energy to make new friends — as many as I wanted. But just as college life works, it forces you to belong in a group. I hate to admit this but I craved to be one of those “cool” kids.

So I joined this group of girls who were known as the nerdy but cool ones in class. They were smart, top of the class, and seemed to be the nicest people among other groups.

One year in and I treated them like my family. I gave away my secrets. I trusted them with my stuff and everything I had. No one knew me better than them.

5 of us went everywhere together. We did a bunch of fun photoshoots in the backyard of my house. We shared food as broke college students. People saw us as inseparable.

But like everything in life, happy moments don’t last forever.

One of them ended up stealing my laptop, wallet, phone — everything I had. I knew it. Everyone in the house knew about it. She never admitted it — regardless of the proof we had. Instead, the girl came to the group telling everybody how a big fat liar I was.

To my surprise, those girls took her side and left me alone. The last year of college was the darkest time in my life.

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Sometimes, a friendship breakup is more painful than the one you have with your partner.

The turning point

I was bitter for years over that breakup. I developed both trauma and trust issues.

The funny thing is, you’ll only change when bad things happen to you over and over again. Until then, you’ll more likely repeat your mistake. It took a couple more friendship breakups to make me realize what I truly needed in a friendship.

Lyss from one of her podcast episodes talked about how she wasn’t interested in having many female friendships because most of them are fake.

I feel the same way with some girls who claim to be my “friends”. They’ll post me on their Instagram and tell the world how great I am but then talk sh*it behind my back.

How they like to compliment my outfits and ask me;

“How are you with your boyfriend? tell me everything girl”

But a moment later they’ll go and tell the other friends how they think my relationship is f*cked up and I should’ve dressed better.

I’ve gone through it all and it was painful.

Backstabbing seems like a normal thing in female friendships and I no longer want to be part of the game.

The funny thing is, you could feel it when the backstabbing happens. Women are gifted with this strong intuition to sense if something isn’t right. Yet we tend to ignore it because society keeps telling us life’s better when we have friends.

So we keep them. We don’t want to let toxic people go because it means we’re going to be alone.

I knew that ex-coworker, for whatever reason, hated my guts. Yet we kept trying in making the friendship work because I was so scared of being alone in a big city.

I wish I could be more honest with myself.

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What I believe in now about female friendships

Some people like to keep toxic friendships because they need “networks and connections”.

Well, good for them. But don’t be surprised when toxic friendships bring more stress than peace.

I believe in having the smallest circle possible. It’s the quality that matters.

As getting older, you care less about what others think of you. You don’t care if you’re “cool” enough. And you don’t define your worth by how many friends you have.

I still believe that we can have a strong and pure female friendship though. I know there are women out there whose intention isn’t to compete with you or put you down.

But I’d say it’s rare.

So if you have one (or two), consider yourself lucky.

I know I am. And I’ll do whatever in my power to keep them.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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