Not your friend but not your enemy either

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I’ve been watching Love Island lately and I’ve got some notes. I think they should try a re-branding. Perhaps Friendship Island. Or better yet, Enemy Island.

Watching the formation of human bonds play out on the TV screen feels like an exercise in anthropological study, and it’s really got me thinking; what does it mean to be a good friend, or a good person? Is honesty the hallmark of a true friendship, even if the truth is an undesirable one? Or is kindness what makes a friendship, even if it’s inauthentic?

Then, what is a kindness? A compliment spoken to the face but disputed in the heart, a smile that might fade when the recipient turns their back, or is it honesty itself?

For me, being a good friend means that the end goal of your action is in collusion with the best interests of your friends. Whether a compliment will be the key to turning their day around, or a brutal honesty that will release them from a toxic relationship. Intention is currency.

In the villa, honesty versus kindness seems to be a key trope. Toni, Shakira and Yasmin have endeared half of the country, while the other prefers Meg and Helena. The trio of women always opt for honesty, whether it be kind or not. Their dislike of fellow islanders is well-documented. They stay true to themselves and own their arguments, with Shakira now telling Meg “I can’t stand you sometimes.” On the other hand, Meg prides herself on being there for all the girls, caring for each of them, despite the several clips that have been aired which prove otherwise. Another thing I’ve noticed is how the men react to this conflict. They sit silently, watching their girls go at it around the firepit. Drama is a pink job; it’s the women’s role. Men boast emotional maturity when really, they’re confusing it for indifference.

Truly, I think women just care a lot. Our emotions are tied up in everything we do, and when it comes to navigating spaces that aren’t well-defined, it catches up to us. For this reason, something as ambiguous as friendship, in the women’s sphere, becomes equated with messiness and drama. The privilege of peace is rarely gifted to women trying to make their way.

It is in a woman’s nature to label a friendship, to understand it. Because we care enough to do so. Understanding each other is such a key part of womanhood, and when that uncertainty arises, so too does bitterness. Even when they’re successful, ugliness arises. Friendships are labelled toxic; the trio is told they’ll never last.

Male friendships don’t seem to have the same extremes. They fly under the radar of critical analysis, born in ambiguity and content to reside there. Maybe it is naïve of me to say so, but it appears as though male friendships blossom from a blind loyalty that follows schoolboys into adulthood, even when they might outgrow each other internally. I’ve watched it happen with my own eyes. Growing up with a brother, I’ve watched them float in and out of each other’s lives, never breaking the friendship, but not always close. They’re allowed to be somewhere in the middle, in the space between. I’ve often heard the idea that male friends don’t really fall out, they don’t like the drama. I can’t help but wonder that it isn’t necessarily through preservation, but through a lack of definition. They’re content with the middleness.

Women, however, aren’t gifted with the privilege of uncertainty. In female friendships, there is no space in the middle between friend and enemy. You must pick a side because there is no place for ambiguity; whether this stems from our dire need to define everything or our intense affection, I do not know.

Truly, this insistence of such defined relationships is what destroys female companionship. The conclusion is automatically reached that if a girl is not your friend then she must be your enemy, which is honestly quite rarely the case. But it’s easier to explain an enemy than anything else. It’s easier to swallow because of the implied justification for why you aren’t friends; an enemy is easier to understand than someone who simply isn’t. At least an enemy has a reason. How do you explain that you’re just not friends with someone? One of you must be the problem. It doesn’t make sense.

On Love Island, this issue is so apparent. There’s such a pressure to be pleasant with each other, forcing these women together in close quarters despite their differing personalities, for fear of landing in the unknown middle. The desperation for public approval and viewer votes denotes the need for an explanation. Friends or enemies are the only options. Even enemies would attract more support. After all, everyone picks a side. Inside the villa, the girls are squashed together and painted as cruel for the lack of love between them, as if it isn’t a normal symptom of human co-habitation.

How do we know which side is right? Perhaps it is better to lie, as long as you do it with a smile. Hug her and tell her she’s pretty; you might just make her day. It doesn’t matter whether or not you mean it.

Women are constantly set up for failure by the system that categorises us. The insistence on the sisterhood makes it harder to understand what it is to simply not think of someone. It’s weaker than dislike, and yet harder to swallow. More difficult to understand.

Authenticity in friendships is only advisable as long as it’s palatable, but in every other walk of life, it’s the foundation. You go to lunch with a friend and tell her about your Hinge failures, met with her encouragement that the right one will come along, you just have to stay true to yourself. Our mothers repeat the same message. The right person will love you for you. Never change for anyone. Just be yourself.

We preach the importance of honesty so that we can attract the right partner, but we don’t seem to apply the same ideology to friendships. It’s unkind to be so picky, to have only the right ones. A bond between women is considered inevitable and not curated. An honest difference of personality is a betrayal, not authenticity. Loyalty lies not with the individual but the institution.

I feel the need to clarify that I’m a feminist, of course. Girls should support girls, without a doubt. But I’m lobbying for a pinch of nuance here. As the saying goes, ‘I still want to see you eat, just not at my table’. There can be room between hate and love where a lot of female relationships do reside. Not everyone is your friend, and it really is that simple.

Ever since I was little, I’ve loved my friends fiercely, but there’s never been lots of them. I spent primary school glued to the hip with my best friend. Friends with the other girls too, of course. We would walk the playground in a line, arms linked so that we could stay together while we talked and laughed. We recreated music videos for one birthday party where we got to go and record One Direction songs in a music studio. But only one of them was my best friend. Secondary school was the same. I floated for many years, lost in groups of endless competition and unspoken hierarchy that left us all exhausted. Part of a trio that promptly dismantled. Part of another that fell apart more slowly. Of the seven years I spent there, I retained one good friend, but that isn’t a complaint.

Now, at 23 years old, I could count on one hand the people I consider to be my friends. It’s never something that’s concerned me. If anything, I worry more about why I don’t mind that. Don’t I want a big friendship group? Don’t I wish there were more people in my life?

In all honesty, the answer is no. If someone were to become a friend to the same level as my others, then of course the increase would be welcome, but truthfully, I’ve never felt more fulfilled by friendships than I do now, despite the little number. You know what they say, quality over quantity. It really does ring true.

I spent too many years trying to be part of a friendship group that I didn’t gel with. Forcing myself to learn their humour, like a chameleon learning a new colour to hide in. It’s tiring to try so hard for things that are never meant to work, and I wish it were more acceptable to accept that some girls aren’t your friends.

I’m launching this campaign for selfish reasons, really. Normalise non-friends, so that it can hurt less when I lose them. Make it okay for them to be my non-friends so that I do not have to call them my enemy. Once she’s made her way in, I find it hard to cast her back into space, in the grey area that isn’t anything. People have hurt me, their names tasting sour on my tongue when I try to tell the story. I can no longer call them my friend for the things that happened, but I could never call them my enemy either. The absence of friendship does not denote a war.

I find it hard to let go. Maybe that’s why I’m complaining here about the binary of friendship between women, because I simply can’t handle the certainty that comes with them. I was forced against my will to push them out of the friendship room, and I can’t stand to watch them become my enemy. I look back with disbelief at the meals we shared and the giggles in our kitchen. The warmth of her arms that felt cold when we hugged for the last time, unknowingly. I yearn for there to be a third category that I can sort her into because while I can no longer call her my friend, it hurts too much to call her my enemy.

It will still hurt when my phone screen stays black on my birthday for the first time in years and I will have to convince myself that it’s okay and I don’t mind.

I will have to be calm and collected when her name is brought up by my mum so that I can neutralise the way it burns in my throat because how can I explain what she is?

I could try with saying that she isn’t my friend anymore, even if it hurts too much. But it’s okay because she isn’t my enemy either. I don’t hate her, and that’s the problem. She’s just a girl I knew once and shared all my smiles with. That’s all it will ever be now. A girl I shared a life with for a brief moment and who I will forever regard with fondness that will never again be love.

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It’s my birthday!!! I never got to take sweets into school to hand out to the other kids, so instead I’m handing out this piece! ✨

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