‘Friends’

These thoughts were triggered by watching reality tv…

I had the pleasure of styling my hair this weekend so I had about 14 hours I needed to kill. (IYKYK) For entertainment…I went through my list of unwatched go-to shows. The first one I landed on was Summer House Martha’s Vineyard and it was a good distraction from the circumstances surrounding my current emotional reality until I witnessed some top tier gaslighting that once again reminded me why I no longer believe in the idea of friendship. There were two ‘friends’, one who ‘dealt’ with a guy on the show and another who wanted to deal with the same guy. The one who had already been with the guy encouraged her ‘friend’ to talk to him because she claimed she didn’t care. But she failed to mention that they had hunched. Why this detail needed to be mentioned in order to sway the other ‘friend’ from engaging the guy is confusing to me because the line in the sand should have been drawn solely based on the fact that her ‘friend’ talked to him. Irrespective of what kind of talks were had. Unfortunately this wasn’t enough to deter her so she ended up getting her feelings hurt when the guy ultimately rejected her advances. Tragic.

The amount of gaslighting I witnessed on both sides was unbearable. Neither one of the young women had the ability to articulate their real feelings about the situation so they gas’d each other up by pretending not to feel how they clearly felt. By the end of the trip their ‘friendship’ was over. After sitting through the melodramatics all I could think about was how easy it is to gaslight someone. If there is an emotion that someone isn’t ready to ‘unpack’…a breeding ground for avoidance is birthed and no amount of logic can cut through the illogical reasoning of the avoidant. The girl who had already hunched clearly had feelings for the guy but she couldn’t openly admit that to her ‘friend’ because the guy had discarded her. The potential huncher kept saying she didn’t want to deal with a guy who had hunched on one of her ‘friends’ but still went out of her way to pursue her ‘friends’ leftovers. And neither could drop their emotional guards enough to tell the truth so the emotionally intelligent section of the audience had to sit and watch in frustration while they argued about everything but what they were really arguing about.

This is what scares me the most about human interaction because everyone has the ability to lie about their emotions when they feel no one knows they are lying. And these lies can be as simple as pretending not to be bothered by someone’s behavior when deep down inside it is causing you emotional atrophy. Eventually how you really feel is going to bubble up to the surface because everyone can consistently mask how they feel with their words but no one can consistently mask how they feel with their behavior. So petty disagreements will keep taking place among ‘friends’ until the real issue is addressed. By that time…the damage has already been done because all hands will have been shown. Those ‘hands’ usually include the reality that the ‘friendship’ involved two people who didn’t really like each other to begin with. If there was a genuine ‘friendship’ foundation…there would’ve been no need for either to pretend in the first place. We pretend when we aren’t comfortable being who we really are and saying how we truly feel. And in this world…99% of ‘friendships’ have some level of pretending woven into them. But because gaslighting is so easily undetectable…most people live in a make believe world surrounded by a bunch of ‘friends’…that they have to hide their true feelings from.

Love,

Choosy