Girls Will Be Girls
Read more articles on Life's Nuances and Let Me Share With You.May 29, 2007
Posted by Karen Amato Schwartz
May 29, 2007
Posted by Karen Amato Schwartz
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Never is the female mystique so mystical as in the teenage years. The on and off friendships are something to behold.
People told me about this, but I really didn’t believe that my kid would be so unpredictable, yet it really does hold true: girls can become enemies in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps there are some young women out there who can maintain a sense of equanimity concerning drama, but I’ve yet to see too many of them. For the most part, two girls can almost instantly become “BFF” (best friends forever) and then, just as suddenly “hate” each other’s guts.
Do you remember this happening when young? If it did, it was not to the degree that it seems to have reached now. Girls back then did not have the opportunity to criticize or rave about others on AIM (sometimes anonymously) and to leave nasty or loving messages for the world to see on their profiles or MySpace. They did not have cellphones to chat with people unknown to parents (sometimes for unknown durations) or deluge enemies with costly text messages.
It appears that with all of the tools at our disposal nowadays for communications, kids still don’t understand people skills.
My daughter currently is on the outs with two of her oldest friends. (Usually when this happens, another girl is in the picture, or a boy has come between them.) Regardless or the reason, although the other girls have tried to make amends, my kid is having none of it. No matter how much I try to explain the big picture of compassion and understanding, her opinion is that she wants them gone from her life forever.
Now, she has never been on the other side of this picture, and I’ve a feeling once she is, she’ll have a whole different appreciation about the concept of forgiveness. But it makes we wonder about the female connection with other females…are we a species that just naturally runs hot and cold? Is it impossible for us to have many neutral associations? Does our preponderance for either intimacy or avoidance have something to do with our roles in protecting our young?
Hmm…I guess I could read psychological reference books to get the answers of professionals, but I’d find as many opinions as books that I would read. All I know is that this facet of womanhood is not exactly flattering, and I question if mature women still harbor these tendencies to the same degree.
Oh well, I hope that my daughter does retain a civility with these girls, if not outright friendship, and hopefully this, too, shall pass. In some regards, men really are the more easy going gender…they just fight and then go on their merry ways as good friends with their own identities. I guess nature has a master plan, but sometimes it’s a questionable one.
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