Maybe I Don't Actually Want a Group of Girlfriends

I've always been sad that I don't have a "friend group." But maybe I actually don't want one.

Photo by Ann Danilina on Unsplash

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If you’re reading this, you are probably well aware of my difficulties making friends. I wrote about a hellish work orientation that underscored those exact difficulties here. I also wrote about how it’s hard to get people to come to my parties, and diagnosed that my main issue is that I have a bunch of disparate friends, and not one cohesive group. Even as I intentionally taught myself social cues and effectively made a bunch of friends, prompting many to remind me that I’m “not beating the autism allegations,” the pattern remains: none of my new friends are friends with each other, and I get the sense that all of my friends have friend groups, of which I am not part. If I’m itching to see a friend, I can text one specific person out of many, but there is no group chat, no weekly brunch, no girls’ trips. And this isn’t because I’m a thirty-six-year-old mom and not a twenty-three-year-old professional; I’ve never really had this.

For most of my life, I always thought my cliquelessness was a bad thing, and it made me sad. I heard about women who went on an annual trip with their college besties, or women who could reliably meet up with three other ladies for margarita towers every week, and I felt like there must have been something wrong with me. In my twenties, I would just join my boyfriend (now husband) and his friends for nights out, never once having a group of girlfriends who could gussy up together in the bathroom and take shots from rose gold rimmed shot glasses. My husband’s parents would take us on trips to Sonoma for wine tasting, and we would be surrounded by gaggles of ten or more women my age, getting blasted on chardonnay while I followed my future in-laws through a barrel-making tour.

Why has this apparently so-natural thing not manifested for me? It seems to happen for other women so effortlessly—indeed, every friend I make already has a friend group and no matter how close we get, I’m never part of that group. It’s not that they exclude me on purpose, but the group usually originates from some community of which I was never part—a college, a high school, a workplace, whatever. I continue to be 1:1 friends with a bunch of people, but decidedly not part of any friend group, unless you include the twelve-year-strong group chat between me, my brother, and my brother’s best friend, which is called:

Anyway, I was inspired to write this after listening to the latest episode of the Feminine Chaos podcast. For those unfamiliar, I’ve always felt a slight parasocial connection to the two co-hosts, Kat and Phoebe, and I could never explain why. I mean, they’re both very funny, interesting and great writers, but so are many other women and yet I don’t rush to listen to their podcast episodes every time they come up. I don’t even agree with the Fem Chaos ladies on everything, nor do we have all the same interests. But in this episode, something came up that explained our connection, which I hope is not embarrassingly one-sided.

First of all, they discussed my articles about my troubles making friends, so my inner narcissist was activated, but also, they both related to my struggles. Apparently, neither of them have closely-knit friend groups! While Kat confidently declared she “isn’t a joiner,” doesn’t really care for being in a clique, and has never had a female friend group scenario end well, Phoebe mentioned feeling slightly wistful for the idea of a female friend group, but ultimately realizing that the reason she doesn’t have one is that maybe she doesn’t actually want to see the same group of women multiple times a week. (Ladies, forgive me if I butchered any of that.) Anyway, Phoebe’s comment especially stuck with me because after thinking about what a female friend group entails, I’m realizing that the reason I don’t have it is because maybe I actually don’t want it either.

I have had female friend groups before, but like Kat, they have historically not ended well. Usually these groups follow a particular pattern: a group of girls/women who already knew each other for a long time adopt me as their new friend group member because I’m funny. Dutifully, I perform my role as the “funny friend,” the wacky Kate McKinnon character of the bunch. At first they love it, but they either slowly tire of it and oust me, or my connection to the group slowly fizzles when it’s clear that doing a perpetual Borat character is the only thing I can do, and I actually am not well-suited for a group dynamic. I wrote before about my most traumatic ousting, which also happened with my most closely-knit female friend group: in seventh grade, my group of girlfriends blindsided me by staging a public Survivor-inspired ceremony in the cafeteria and voting me out of the friend group. Thankfully, most of my friend groups haven’t ended so dramatically. But they’ve all ended, usually within a year of beginning.

Part of the issue here is that I am really good at being friendly and outgoing, but historically haven’t been good at the give-and-take required in friendships. Early on, the only way I knew how to make friends was to basically do standup comedy at them. I probably still have this tendency, but I’ve tampered it down over the years. Many of my close friendships are between me and women who either really like this quality about me, or women who are similar to me, and behave the same way. My closest and longest-term friend is another mom in her thirties. We’ve known each other since we were six. At least twice a week, one of us will just text the other one pretending to be a British chav teenage boy. We’ve been doing this joke for about fifteen years now. This type of dynamic is obviously very fun for me, but you can easily see why it hasn’t worked out well in a group scenario that requires you to participate in ways other than showcasing your character work for an SNL audition.

Obviously, my close friends and I do things other than perpetual bits. We discuss serious things, and we support each other emotionally. But I find it much easier to do this with one woman at a time than in a group of women. I can’t fully explain why.

When I imagine my ideal friendship group scenario, I might think I’m imagining a group of close girlfriends—a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants type arrangement, if you will—but what I’m really imagining is a group of women I can conjure up just for fun experiences, while never having to really engage with this group as a community, with all its pesky obligations—traveling as a group away from my family, being guilted into sharing a mondo-expensive bill at a restaurant I don’t like, promoting their women-owned businesses, whatever. I have come up against this obstacle countless times, and I can safely say this is a “me” problem, and I shouldn’t blame anyone else for it.

One example would be my friend group in high school. We were all part of the same a capella group (also theater—one of them actually said “theater dorks unite” and raised her fist in the cafeteria like the Jewish thespian arm of the Black Panthers, and I was humiliated. A bad sign for my long-term connection to this clique.) We would have sleepovers at each others’ houses every weekend, have lunch together every day, and generally do everything together. The one problem, which I didn’t initially think was a problem, was that I was the only one who liked boys. A couple of the other girls were lesbians, and then others were just such late bloomers that they seemed either uninterested in, or completely terrified of, penises.

Whenever I dated a boy, this entanglement obviously pulled me away from my friends in a way that felt pretty natural—of course you’re going to hang out with your boyfriend a lot, right? But it pissed off my friends, because suddenly I was “ditching them for a guy,” which is easy to criticize if you have no interest in guys yourself. Eventually, I started ditching a capella practice entirely to hang out with my boyfriend at the time, an avowed Stalinist who wrote a song called “Violation of Human Rights.” (Not my first choice for a song title, bit on the nose.) Anyway, my friend group got really mad at me, and they were probably right to be mad! I wanted them for the sleepovers and casual hangouts, but ultimately I didn’t want to prioritize them above a guy—even a guy who was, frankly, a massive dork.

Another example happened in my early twenties. I infiltrated an existing group of girlfriends, and at first it was all fun and games (I suspected most of them didn’t really want me there, in part because I was six years younger than everyone else, and also because I was annoying.) Eventually, it became clear that this friend group had very high standards for connectedness and responsibility, which I couldn’t meet. My closest friend, in particular, expected me to provide free labor for her startup, be a customer of her startup, see her for coffee every week, come over to her house to comfort her after a bad date…the list goes on. It’s not that her expectations were unrealistic, because I know she would have done those things for me in a heartbeat. (When I was working on a book, she designed a cover for me without me asking—and it was good.) But ultimately, I just couldn’t be that kind of friend, especially not for an entire group. And, surprise surprise, the biggest sticking point for her was the fact that our weekly hangout had to exclude my husband, who up until that point also considered her a close friend. Again, we see the same theme emerge: I prioritized men (my husband) over friends. I didn’t want to do lots of things without my husband—some things, sure, but I didn’t want husband-exclusionary outings to be my norm. But isn’t that…kinda normal? Surely, your spouse should come first. Even a boyfriend, after a certain degree of seriousness, should come first. Or am I just crazy and dick-whipped? Many such cases.

I think I’m probably more attached to my husband (and to previous boyfriends) than your average woman, which is a major detriment when it comes to being part of a clique. This attachment doesn’t make it hard for me to make individual friends. For many years, in fact, my husband was begging me to make some friends so I didn’t insist on coming along with him every time he and his friends watched basketball. But my attachment to my husband does make it hard for me establish myself as part of any community that does not also include him. And yet, I was not born attached to my husband. I’ve chosen to spend lots of time with him (and now, my children) instead of female friends. Perhaps part of this choice is the fact that making any friends at all used to be really hard for me. Maybe I never developed the ability to prioritize something that seemed so intimidating and hard, so I laser-focused my efforts into my hobbies (writing—now my full-time job) and my ability to obtain romantic partners, then later into parenting. Ergo, when it comes to friendship I could be in a state of arrested development that might not have happened if I had learned social cues when I should have.

Or perhaps some women just…aren’t into cliques, or joining anything at all. Maybe I’d have been this way no matter what. The ladies of Feminine Chaos do not seem especially stunted or awkward, and yet, they both report more or less the same issue that I’ve had. I’ve never been much of a “joiner” in any way. At any workplace, institution, or community, I start off liking it but invariably start making jokes about how much it all sucks, and those jokes turn into my true feelings, and then I leave. I once got my dream job at my dream company, and after drinking the Kool-Aid for a couple months, I quickly became irritated with the whole thing, especially after they made us sit through a six-hour training about “manifesting a positive mindset.” By the time I had been there for eight months, I got into the habit of “scheduling meetings” with my one close work friend, and then complaining with her in a telephone booth for an hour straight.

In the same vein, I am incapable of enjoying any kind of team affiliation. I have no pride associated with my hometown, ethnic groups, or any other attribute that binds me to other people. The only things I’m “proud” of are things that I’ve personally accomplished. I know this sounds very Reddit-sportsball-guy, but the idea of getting emotional over a bunch of athletes (who may or may not even be from my hometown) playing a game vaguely on behalf of people in my hometown makes no sense. Even when it comes to politics, I find myself having a hard time joining any particular team. Yes, I’m a Democrat, but the more time I spend with fellow Democrats, and the more mainstream Democrat content I read, the more annoying I find Democrats (I challenge anyone to mainline Bluesky for a full three hours and not find Democrats at least slightly annoying.) Then, if I spend too much time reading contrarian heterodox stuff, I start finding them annoying too. So many of my oscillating opinions on feminism, the manosphere and whatever other gender slop stuff probably stem from feeling disaffected with whatever group to which I belong at any given time.

I would also be remiss not to at least bring up my OCD, because it’s increasingly difficult to tell what quirks are just part of my personality, versus “literally just mental illness.” I genuinely enjoy spending time with my husband (and now children) but one reason that I don’t like to spend time away from them is because I’m afraid something might happen to them if I’m not around—not that I could prevent it, but at least if I was there, there’s a chance I’d die too (I’m aware this is nuts, but this is with CBT, yes, I am trying.) I don’t travel without my kids, which has made it impossible for me to attend weddings because every damn wedding is located in Mordor now. Even the “child friendly” weddings (all two of them) involve multiple plane rides, shuttle rides, and ferries, so bringing my kids also means convincing my husband (who hates to travel for events) that such a trek would be worth it. Ultimately, going alone is not an option. Even before I had kids, I hated leaving my husband to travel for work, and I was fired at least in part for this tendency several times, even after only applying to jobs that specified no travel (they lied lol) and even after I was made aware that I could request a reduction in work travel as an accommodation for my OCD. Ultimately, no matter what accommodation I had on record, employers received the message that I just didn’t care enough about my job to risk leaving my fully grown, 160 pound husband at home unattended. And you know what? Fair. I didn’t care that much. It’s probably best for everyone that I am out of the workforce.

So, it goes without saying that I have never been to a bachelorette party, except my own which involved no travel, was padded with extraneous attendees because I didn’t have a friend group, and—I kid you not—was attended by my brother and husband as if I were living under Sharia law and needed two male chaperones to leave the house. I even missed my childhood best friend’s bachelorette party (yes, the one who does the British chav joke) because it required a plane ride and I was too anxious to go anywhere without my husband. I’ve missed weddings, I’ve missed girls’ trips. I’ve missed God knows how many things. And I don’t really blame these people if they don’t want to be my friend, or if they decide I’m more of an “occasional text” friend than a “core group” friend. After all, if someone stops RSVPing to my parties, I eventually stop inviting them too.

And as they say, if I wanted to I would. I wanted kids really badly, and when I found out we had a rare form of male-factory infertility that could only be resolved with IVF, I put myself through the whole IVF process, a horrendous several months that spiked my anxiety higher than a work trip ever could, and then did it a second time which ended in an early miscarriage, and then a third time for my second child. Although we had really good insurance coverage, it also cost far more money than it would cost to attend a bachelorette party in Mexico City. Clearly, I wanted children much more than I wanted to be part of a friend group! I was willing to inject my ass with progesterone in oil every day for ten weeks, multiple times over, I went under anesthesia multiple times for egg retrieval surgery, I was willing to experience one of my biggest triggers ever—waiting on medical results—over and over again, because I really wanted kids. So maybe at the end of the day, I just don’t want a core friend group that badly.

I don’t know if a friend group is ever in my future. I don’t know if it needs to be. I’m happy with the friends I have, even if I have quibbles about them being too spread out and unfamiliar with each other, and even if I can’t drag them to a fancy cocktail party en masse. At least I have friends—really wonderful women who all have different things that make them great! Maybe someday my priorities will change and being part of a close group of women will become important to me. I can only hope in that scenario, that some group of women forgives my arrested development and lack of experience and allows me to join. Until then, I’ll be texting my childhood best friend, “Your mum, innit?” every day.

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