I have two old and precious friends I’ve known since my late teens. We met as our adult lives lay just ahead on the horizon, and they have been a constant throughout my life. Despite the fact that our lives are very different now.
Bel* is a housewife and mother of two adult kids who left London in the year 2000. Caz* is a financially independent artist and academic, a divorcee now, and single mum who always seems to be living in a new exotic city. Me? Never married, no kids, a writer.
When we see each other, I should be so excited. As younger women, with far fewer cares, we used to live and breathe each other. We’d turn up to parties wearing the same clothes, as if by telepathy. We share a history way beyond anything I have with the friends I made later in life as a proper grown-up, those who are perhaps more similar to me.
Yet for many years, on the momentous occasions we would all be together again, there was excitement, sure, but something else too. Something like dread.
That’s the thing with old friends. You feel such intense conflicted feelings about them. Love – yes, I really will love them both until I die. But I also feel the weird push and pull of judgment – even irritation – of their life choices. (Stay-at-home mum? Highbrow academic? Really?) And, yes, some envy for what they have that I do not: children, secure finances, good bone structure, rare beauty.
Three can be a weird number, too; the two against one dynamic can crop up. For a while Caz and Bel were great friends while I barely saw either of them. Then they had a big falling out. I’ve never really got to the bottom of why. While they made up, I suspect we get together now more out of romance than earnest desire.
The complexities of female friendship is a main theme of the recent third season of The White Lotus, with Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate at the centre
Kate Spicer says her and her friends went separate ways in terms of life choices
The complexities of female friendship is a main theme of the recent third season of The White Lotus. The final episode of the hit HBO show offers a totally chaotic resolution to many of the characters’ dramatic plot lines. But it’s the far more humdrum climax of a dinner between three old girlfriends – Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie – that has resulted in the most comments and column inches.
I guess shoot-outs, white collar crime and patricide are not something most of us can easily relate to. But female friendships of decades’ standing – we all have those. Laurie, played by Carrie Coon, doesn’t fall back on the ‘love you guys’ meaningless crap spouted by her two friends with blonder, shinier hair. Instead, she reflects on the purpose and nature of long-standing friendships.
‘I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning, because time gives it meaning. We started this life together,’ Laurie says, ‘and I look at you guys and it feels meaningful.’
It’s a two-minute monologue. But those four words stick out: ‘Time gives it meaning.’
Those memories too numerous to mention have a phenomenal value, and the way I compare myself to Bel and Caz, frankly, is much less negative than it may appear written down. Because even though on paper our lives are madly different now, these women have known me since I was a child.
Being with your oldest friends forces you to confront uncomfortable feelings about who you are, what you’ve achieved, and yes, how you look. That’s what causes the tension that sometimes bubbles underneath the surface.
In our case, it’s not that I yearn for their lives. All three of us are comfortable having a good grumble about what’s gone wrong, as well as what’s gone right. It’s more that when you don’t see a friend often, the old ruler of success comes out.
That said, I am probably more the ‘real me’ with them than I am with any of my other friends. I like the fact they remember a version of me that was young, carefree, idealistic and only pretending to be cynical.
Every moment in the present with them is coupled with a really distinct and poignant memory from the past. It’s both lovely and weirdly painful.
That time we went looking for flats together when I couldn’t see anything positive in these bleak empty shells... If my friends hadn’t had the vision, I’d probably still be living in my student halls of residence.
That time we dressed up and sneaked into a really fancy private club and woke up with Hollywood movie stars. The time we all stayed in Caz’s dad’s fancy apartment and flooded half the place with bubbles by putting too much Badedas in the hot tub. The time they both turned up out of the blue in a remote hostel when I was travelling in Egypt.
There are so many memories. We were kids, tasting and exploring the world without any fear.
When I go through bad things, I never call on these girls. I go to my immediate friends. But like the complex old female friendships Laurie dissects, I value them in a very special and unique way.
Philippa Perry, psychotherapist and author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, says female friendship is one of her favourite subjects: ‘I never experienced this supposed “brutality” of female friendships – mine are full of joy, support and genuine connection. The idea that women are inherently toxic to each other is nonsense.
‘Any friendship can turn toxic, but that’s about emotional immaturity, not gender. Real friendship is simple: it feels good when you’re in it, and solid when you think about it afterwards.’
I moved a lot as a kid due to my father’s job in the NHS; sometimes I didn’t stay at schools for longer than a year. This gave me a great vantage point from which to observe the ferocious nature of female friendships, and an ability to walk away if anything became too difficult.
So I don’t have many life-long friendships like the White Lotus trio. Only Caz and Bel, and if I met them now, there’s no way we’d be friends. We’re so different, I’d walk on by.
As adults, we make friendships that are, well, more adult. Bel, Caz and I were together through those years when there really wasn’t anything more important than friendship and fun. They drove me mad; the intimacy was unlike anything I’ve ever had with my other mates.
I never felt the need to sit on the phone to my newer friends for hours on end. We don’t have the time, for starters.
When Caz moved to LA, Tokyo, Paris and New York, or when Bel got married and had her kids, I asked, ‘should that have been me?’
Perhaps as a result, when life and our choices pulled us further apart, I found them more and more, frankly, annoying. After all, as humans we like to see ourselves reflected in our friends. And certainly, my newer pals are more like the me I am today.
Old friends are very complex; in a way it’s a romantic connection, reliant in part on nostalgia. They know you – in some ways they know the real you – but they also don’t.
When you look at them, you see the myriad things you could have been or that you once were. It’s something precious and it’s something painful. As Laurie says, ‘time gives it meaning’.
Names have been changed.
