Friendship

Friendship dynamics are competitive.

Maybe more for me than regular people, I don't know. Maybe it's just me that takes it too seriously but I don't think so. TO an extent maybe, when I used to ask "so if you love me this much, how much do you like so-and-so?" I do like being validated.

I have lots of good friends. Lots of best friends. I feel like the word best friend should lose some meaning really, but it doesn't.

"Best friend" isn't a position, it's a level of friendship. It's the no holds barred, bare your soul, comfortable to be yourself and change in front of them or ask for eggs for breakfast when they say 'do you want toast?' or be like 'you have plans today? no? oh good, then you're hanging out with me, fun right?" Best friends is like, being able to ask for things and it's the level when you don't mind shouting them something or keeping track of who owes who or sharing things.

I rack up best friends, its funny. I don't make friends easily but best friends comes easily to me. Maybe due to the competitiveness thing. "To be loved is nothing, it is to be preferred that I desire."

The way I see it though, it that I have 3 or4 ish people who have told me recently 'you're my best friend' and that's great, it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, but at the same time, the only level higher than best friend is boyfriend and most of my best friends have those so I need  more than one bff for the times when bff is absent.

My bffs are mostly by bffl, Mia. I spend a lot of time with her. We're convenient and we have a system that works for us. But lately I've realised (mostly through the fact that we had a sleepover last night and stayed up all night talking, that my BH (my better half) [I'm EH, evil half- these are really old nicknames] actually would like to hang out more and that she is actually quite lonely. She stresses over uni a lot and can be kind of unapproachable sometimes so we leave her to it a lot of the time but when she tells me that she has actually said to her boyfriend 'you are the only friend I have' because she feels that I/we are not being there for her, that sucks. We just need to put more effort in with her, because I love this girl, man.

Anyway, she now feels like a third wheel with me and Mia. And Mia feels like a 3rd wheel with her and our 4th friend. And I feel like a 3rd wheel when... actually, I don't. These are my closest friends and I got lucky, I reached ultimate comfort level.

Still, it's always competitive a bit, who slept over with who, who spent the day together, who works together, who has plans, who went up to Sydney and got a whole bunch of cute photos together and forgot to invite the others, who knows what secrets.

Then you have to be delicate about what you can reveal to the others. Like, if one friend is uncomfortable and you know why, but the other friend doesn't, how do you deal with that?

Then sometimes it's dealing with friends who are more popular than you, that have other friends. So they don't tell you about parties and things they're invited to, cos you weren't. I get satisfaction when I am invited though.

Anyways, this post was just something I was thinking about these last few days, cos I've been around my 3 besties in different combos a bunch of times and it's odd to realise the way people change around each other and that sort of thing.