Types of Female Friendship: Family or Exes
A friendship theory and some unrelated thoughts..
I’ve been thinking a lot about female friendships lately. From the bitches in Belle Burden’s Strangers that made it feel like divorce was a disease, to the internet chaos of Summer House, to my group chat that knew I was being bitchy and called me crank-fifi to get me to laugh at myself. Friendship is one of my love languages. Some of my greatest romantic moments, giving and receiving, have come from friendships. But some of the heartbreak and chaos has come from a friend breakup, or gentler, a friend fade out.
Here is a theory I’ve landed on. Women in friendships fall into two categories. They are sister or family, or they are exes. That’s it. There’s no third category.
Sister or family energy is an active relationship. Someone who is still in your life. You trust them. You see them with a good eye, ayin tova. You support them, you want the best for them, you are genuinely rooting. Their win lands in you like your own.
Ex energy is different. There’s a grievance in there, whether it’s been acknowledged or not. And the thing about ex energy is it’s not always the people who are gone. Some of your greatest haters are right under your nose. Not in your group chats, but close enough to watch. It’s that ex-type jealousy. Precise. Intimate. Someone who knows you well enough to make it personal, and does.
Some friendships come in hot, instant intimacy, matching energy, a feeling like oh there you are. And some end with the specific confusion of a friend breakup, where someone is furious at you and you’re standing there thinking, I’m sorry, did we f*ck? What is happening.
I have exes. I am someone’s ex, several people actually. It is not always balanced or even. Ex friend energy is haunting. Friends get into the deep parts of your soul. And when they’re gone, they still have little satellites in there.
Recently one of my best friends got upset at me and brought out the big guns, past resentments, the full arsenal from a birthday trip in 2021. It threw me off completely. But here’s the thing, we are family. So we got through it. Less than 24 hours later we were laughing about it, we had inside jokes about the infamous fight we had just had. Had we been exes, I would have screamed back with insults masked as resentments as fast as I could. Instead I was like, oh. So this is what it’s like to have a sister.
The ex is different. I had a friend who talked shit about me to our other friends. I knew it. I didn’t want to confront her, so I let it go. Then she moved away and I stopped keeping up and I didn’t see any missed calls on her end either. Here is something I’ve learned. If a friend doesn’t ask you questions and relies on you to just listen, that’s not a friendship. That’s an assignment. So we faded out. Then I see she unfollows me. I unfollow her back. She blocks me. And there you have it. We are exes.
You know what it’s like to have a friend feel like an ex even while you’re still in the friendship. Conversations feel tense. They are scanning you for secrets, for shadiness. You are edging back. The intimacy is still there but it has curdled into something that looks a lot like surveillance.
Here’s what I’ve noticed about ex friend energy versus family energy. Feeling left out or slighted and going silent about it, that’s ex energy. Family says invite me bitch and means it warmly and you laugh and you fix it in thirty seconds or however much time you need. It’s family. It will be fine.
If you are asking your friend for more than they are giving you, that’s ex energy. If you are at ease, with grace and comfort, that’s family energy. Family doesn’t need constant keeping up. You pick up where you left off. No pressure. And when there is pressure, you handle it. You don’t punish it. Family cancels and says ok love you and means it. Family calls you out and stays in the room. Family has seen you be wrong and they’re still not using it. Family doesn’t have an energy bill. Nobody’s tracking who owes what.
The ex goes lethal instead of logical. The ex treats a rupture as evidence instead of just a rupture. And here’s the thing nobody talks about. You could be friends with someone right now and not know which one they are until you get into a fight. That’s when you find out. Family fights and comes back. An ex fights and files it.
I used to put my entire sense of value into how good a friend I could be. Now I’m just like, I’m a person. I’m a good friend and I’m a bad friend and those things coexist in me without apology. I have friendships where I’m the ex energy. I know that.
But if you are chasing the high of the start of the friendship, good luck. Family doesn’t need that high. Family is quieter than that. It’s steadier. It’s less addictive and more real.
I still get a little ping of pain when I remember a funny line my ex best friend used to say. To this day I will watch a movie and think, she would love this. And I know it to be true, my wifi signal to her is still connected.
Names are not included here to protect the innocent, and that means all parties. Look around at your friendships. Savor the sisters. Have compassion for the exes. The ex in you that might never move on, or the ex in them that might never forgive.
And then when you find that instant, forever connection with someone, remember how lucky you are to have found your family.
If you are an ex reading this, hi.
A few other things on my mind
Speaking of exes, Twitter is an ex I still visit. We don’t play nice anymore. I scroll, I feel a little bad about myself, I leave. You know how it is. But I loved it once and I think about what it gave me. Short, stupid, silly, a little unhinged moments and a way to frame my humor. That’s just how my brain works.
Substack is doing a lot at once, newsletter, podcast portal, community. But the Notes section is giving me something close to what Twitter gave me and I’m here for it. It’s slightly giving Threads but I’m ok with it.
Books I need to read now that I saw this news. A tradwife influencer wakes up in 1805. I have never ordered a book faster. It’s called Yesteryear. Yesteryear
Anne Hathaway is producing the film. Obviously.
Poog is back to being Poog. For those who didn’t track the detour, it briefly became Berlant and Novak, which, respect, but Poog is Poog.
I am still doing To Be Magnetic and I am still a believer. The current thing I’m working with is nervous system resets, which is, I’m aware, the new somatic. Every few years healing gets a new word for the same thing. The thing still works.
My new Starbucks drink is the mango energy refresher. I am a teen. Dry freeze strawberries included. My Red Bull!
I have been writing from bed. This is not a confession, it’s a lifestyle and I like it.
I don’t do book clubs. What I do is read a book and then schedule one on ones with specific friends to recap. I know which friend gets which book. It’s a better system and I will not be taking questions, unless we are reading together.
That’s it for now.