Friendeavours: honesty’s not always the best policy

betrayal in friendship is a funny thing. One of my favourite things about I May Destroy You is the depiction of Arabella and Terri’s friendship – how lightly Terri’s ‘betrayal’ of Arabella the night of her rape is dealt with. So real. So painful. So brilliant. In similarly wonderful show (and book!) Little Fires Everywhere, it’s a betrayal that turns a burgeoning friendship into vengefulness. Just as real, but maybe the newness of the relationship between the characters means that it takes less to blow. A therapist once said to me, ‘The closer we get to someone, the less careful we become.’ You can get away with more. But there’s still obviously a breaking point. I’ve been thinking about that as I’ve been navigating pandemic friendship crises.

One of the challenges for friendship is romantic partners. Another person suddenly in the mix can rock the dynamics. This was the case in my twenties, when a lot of friends peeled off to settle down, which left me feeling a bit abandoned. My best friend and I struggled with each other’s choice of partner. They were never good enough. Or did we just not want our friend to have a new favourite? Then I had to interrogate my responses to friends’ break-ups, as there was a mean little childish part of me that secretly celebrated. They were mine again! Conversely, if they got back with someone, as much as I was pleased for them, that little mean childish part felt a little bit betrayed.

These days, I’m often mates with my friends’ partners, too. Still, I find myself advising friends about the undulations within their relationships, which has its perils. For example, things can be really bad in a friend’s relationship, so you advise them strongly, out of love and care. Then things get good again, and suddenly you’re the one on the outside, wondering whether you said too much. A friend of mine split up with a partner and told me she’d only give him ‘three out of five for cleanliness’. Brutal. So I adapted the lyrics of a Joan Baez song in honour of his cheesy penis. When they inevitably got back together, she told him. She was drunk and the song came on and she couldn’t resist. But, you know. Obviously, he still hates me.

Other times, I’ve advised friends to leave their partners who were cruel or controlling, and they haven’t left, and the friends still hold that knowledge in their hearts. A few friends deemed one of my boyfriends ‘not exciting enough’, and I never forgot it. Friends can be our greatest advisers, and also the voice of doom in our heads.

So, forgive me for being cautious these days. During lockdown, two friends broke up with their partners and, while I tried to be there for them, I didn’t trust myself to not betray someone. Maybe lockdown had acted as a catalyst for what was going to happen anyway, but maybe it was just because they’d had too much time together? I felt out of my depth talking to them. I know I’m rebuilding communication skills, and the big life stuff sometimes gets lost in translation. I recently saw a friend who’d lost someone and we were halfway through our meeting before I remembered to say how sorry I was for her loss. It’s like I miss the obvious, I’m so focused on the tricky minutiae.

It all boils down to two things: forgiveness and context. I’d rather my friends were honest with me, and living honestly means living with regrets. But grown-up friendship also means putting things in historical context and moving on. I still cringe when I hear that Joan Baez song, though.