Q: I am super close with one girl in my friend group and everyone gets jealous that I have a best friend. We do everything together and quite often I get comments from my other friends in our friend group about how they weren’t invited or we excluded them. I love them all but we are not as close as me and my bestie. I feel really bad not inviting them but it goes from inviting one person to 5! I often have to hide my story from them and can’t post because I don’t want to upset them and I end up feeling guilty. What should I do? -Anonymous
A: Hey queen. I’ve totally been in the same situation with my best friend and the larger friend group. First thing you gotta remember: teen girls are insecure about their friendships with one another and with you. They feel threatened by seeing your strong connection with someone else, wondering why they don’t have that with you or with anyone… they wouldn’t care about you and your best friend if they were content in their other friendships.
If you’re like me, you spend too much time worrying about other people's happiness and feelings. Don’t be ashamed/try to hide a friendship because you’re fretting about someone else instead of enjoying your time with your top bae. It’s good that you have found an amazing bond with someone and the truth is that the rest of the group is just jealous of that. There’s definitely a difference between a lifelong best friend that everyone knows you’ve been close with since forever compared to someone you’ve only recently been getting tighter with. We can talk about both.
A few tips
Social Media
Social media is tricky. There’s no black and white answer. Be present when you’re with your best friend (just you two alone) and I wouldn’t say no posting but don’t go out of your way to be all over tiktok or snapchat with your friend. That just shows the world that you guys are bored and we both know that it’s unnecessary. I had some issues in the past with a friend being jealous that we posted so much without her. It made me realize I truly didn’t need to be posting as much BUT if I still wanted to, I could and should because it’s my life. In this era, feeling left out and dealing with exclusion are heightened by social media. If it’s not a billion private story posts, the others will stalk your snap maps or facetime you when you’re together. It’s always something. Don’t hide them from your story… I feel like that’s even worse. I guess all I’m saying is don’t make posting a personality trait.
Overshowy
When you two are with the rest of the friend group, try not to bring up inside jokes and obnoxiously spill about that one crazy thing from the weekend prior that no one else would understand…. That's just common sense but it’ll aggravate the group.
Branching Off
Try to plan fun group activities with your friend group and branch off from your bestie in those moments so you can connect with the rest of the group (you can even discuss this prior with your best friend but preferably you are casually talking to and enjoying time with the other girls). If you care about your friendship with the group as a whole, make a real effort to strengthen relationships with every individual too.
How to respond when confronted:
I remember once I was in a group setting and someone brought up how close I was to my best friend. All you can really say in that moment is ‘haha ya’ and brush it off. In my situation, my friendship with my best friend wasn’t something I needed to defend or explain… it was purely a known fact and everyone had to accept it.
This only becomes some sort of an issue on a more personal level. Explaining your friendship to someone left out is an intimate conversation that will most likely ever occur one on one. This is similar to the 3 person friend group post! Another friend could approach you about feeling left out. You say: “I love you. A lot. You know that. I also love one on one time. I have definitely grown closer with Sophia right now as we have french together and both are on the dance team. It doesn’t mean you matter to me any less or that our friendship isn’t important”.
Sure you could maybe post less or be less obvious about the friendship (which is up to you) but the friend group has to understand that you’re closer with your bestie and that’s not gonna change. because they want it to.
We got this,
Sophia