Q. I am 36 and lucky to still be friends with a group of girls from school. We are all from working-class backgrounds and are an anomaly for our town, where few people move away or go to university. Most of us have gone on to have successful careers. However, as the years go by I am feeling increasingly alienated from them and their obsession with material things. Whenever we are all together, I feel like I have walked into a Stepford Wives simulacrum of constant one-upmanship: who has the busiest job, the nicest house, the newest car, the fanciest holiday, the husband with the biggest bonus. It’s emotionally exhausting and completely boring. I am making an effort to stay engaged in these friendships as some of the individual ones are precious to me and it is important to me to be surrounded by people from my past. How do I drown out the noise?
A. I think this is more of a common problem than you think it is: suddenly finding yourself feeling you are in a friendship group you don’t understand, despite knowing and loving each other for years. Because Sex and the City tells the Greek and Roman myths of our time, teaching us all the ways in which we can get it wrong and get it right, of course there is an allegorical episode for this problem. In series two, Miranda dramatically leaves brunch with the girls because, she says: “How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends? … Give me a call when you’re ready to talk about something besides men for a change.”
Now, The Speech is something that has to exist for TV and film to work. I’m not against The Speech in real life, but too liberal an application can go a bit wrong. I think The Speech should always be the last resort. The first thing I would encourage would be to proactively change your friendship group’s habits. I remember in our mid-twenties, my best friend encouraged our group to start a book club because she’d realised that all we talked about were boys, nights out, people we knew and things we had bought and returned from Asos. It worked. Once a month, we’d sit in a circle in one of our shared flats and dissect the book, which led to debates and big, revealing conversations about our beliefs and ideas. Similarly, in our thirties, we had the collective realisation that we needed to do more things together rather than just meeting up for a meal once a month to talk about our too-busy schedules of work, family and relationships. We didn’t want our friendships to be a place of reporting life rather than experiencing it together. This is why, unfortunately, the majority of my summer plans now revolve around open-air theatres.
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The second tactic you could try is neutralisation. Like you, I have an aversion to platonic one-upmanship. I hate it so much and I won’t stand for it in my close friendships. I feel like the adult world is always asking us to project the best version of ourselves. What is the point of close friendship if it’s not the time when you can drop the façade, relax and be yourself? Whenever I have felt conversations move toward competitiveness among close friends, I have always overcorrected in my reaction to prove a point. I will talk about how bad I am with money or the worst date I’ve been on or my professional failings. It’s like throwing water on a fire. No one wants to meet someone’s self-deprecation with self-inflation. It’s embarrassing. So try to lead by example. Which isn’t to say you have to put yourself down all the time; that’s also disingenuous and not the function of best friendship. But endeavour to bring a grounded, calming energy to each of these meet-ups — to speak truthfully and vulnerably, and with humility and good humour, and hopefully this will give permission to everyone else to do the same. When people show off it is normally because they’re feeling anxious or insecure. Help foster a culture of safety, where they won’t be judged if they talk about their lives as being anything less than perfect.
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The other way you could deal with it would be to accept that these friendships cannot give you everything you need as you all grow up and grow into different people. Treasure these friendships for what they can give you and look to others that satisfy your other interests. You’ll feel less frustrated with them when you lower your expectations.
I think I’ve said it before in this column, but to me the thirties feel like the Age of Envy. It is the era where we make decisions that are seemingly irreversible, and that engenders a panic on all sides. The people who have made those decisions really have to make a show to everyone of how right those decisions were, while those who have made different decisions have to do the same so nobody feels like they’re the subject of anyone’s pity, while we’re all quietly freaking out. This is a hard era for female friendship. The hardest, I think. You’re not alone. Not in a societal sense and, I would guess, not even in your own friendship group.
To get your life dilemma answered by Dolly, email or send a voice note to deardolly@sundaytimes.co.uk or DM @theststyle
