Tag: BFF
An Encore Post – How Being A Mother Can Sabotage Your Friendships
Mother’s Day celebrates motherhood—as well as children, flowers, candy, and greeting cards. But there’s a seedy side to everything—and motherhood is a known friendship-killer. Motherhood can challenge female friendships for a variety of reasons: You are a mother, and your BFF isn’t one and wants to be one. Her fertility problems are making her extremely [...]
A teen asks: How can I get my friendship back?
It’s common that friendships and allegiances change during the teen years but it’s still painful when it happens QUESTION Hi Irene I’m 14 years old and had an argument with my best friend this afternoon and I can’t help but cry! Because it’s so hurtful. We had been best friends forever until one day [...]
An inconvenient truth: She’s made you a second-tier friend
If you feel like a second-tier friend, it’s not a friendship of equals QUESTION Dear Irene, I’ve been friends with a woman for about four years now. As time progressed, we became closer, or so I thought. We both moved here from other areas and I introduced her to our neighborhood book club, my hairstylist, etc. The [...]
BFF finds its way into the Oxford English Dictionary
BFF n. (pl. BFFs) informal a girl’s best friend: my BFF’s boyfriend is cheating on her. – ORIGIN 1996: from the initial letters of best friend forever. Just a couple of days ago, I mentioned that friendship generally isn’t newsworthy. But for the second time this week, friendship is making the news. The Oxford [...]
Guest Post: OMG–Now Even the BFF Isn’t PC
By Diane Auer-Jones I read this morning in The New York Times that some schools, teachers, and even summer-camp counselors are working hard to disrupt best friend relationships and, instead, encourage youngsters to be part of big groups. Some schools and camps go so far that they intentionally break up best friends by, for [...]
Passed over as a Godmother: Dealing with the hurt
QUESTION Dear Irene, I am an only child and have a friend named Linda (who is also an only) whom I’ve known since first grade. She is due to give birth to a baby girl and two months ago asked me to throw her shower for 50 people with the help of her mother and [...]
The sadness of moving on and leaving a BFF behind
QUESTION Dear Irene, Over the course of my life I’ve had two or three best friends, relationships that ended for one reason or another. Although I have a good marriage with a wonderful man, I’ve always felt incomplete without a best friend. Four years ago I bonded with someone who had been an acquaintance for [...]
NYU Medical School Newsletter – When Fractured Friendships Don’t Mend
The latest issue of NYU News and Views includes an article about my survey research on female friendship. Women are told from the time they’re little girls that best friends are for life, and that one friend-just one-will become their closest confidante, their bosom buddy. But it’s not necessarily so, and when a friendship [...]
MWF Seeking BFF: Must Live in Chicago
Rachel Bertsche left her oldest and dearest friends behind when she moved to Chicago for love. Now that she’s settled in the Midwest, she’s on the hunt for a new best friend. She says if there were no such thing as online predators, she’d post a want ad on Craigslist: "MWF Seeking BFF: Must live [...]
A BFF that has stood the test of time
I don’t recall how I tripped over Jessica Kettle Kechian’s blog, Cougar Tales, but I’m glad I did. I was smitten by one of her posts on friendship. Jessica was gracious to allow me to reprint it here on The Friendship Blog as a guest post. P.S. I think it would be nice if every [...]
