The Best Friend Fallacy
Nearly every single TV show I grew up with reinforced the idea of a best friend. The protagonist of the show always had a friend that they shared everything with. They were often closer with this friend than with any other character on the show including siblings and family. SpongeBob and Patrick, Miley and Lily, Ron stoppable and Kim Possible, the list goes on.
This relationship was always peculiar to me. They were always at each other’s houses, were present for all of each other’s activities, and generally seemed attached at the hip. I always wondered how they had the time to do everything together.
In hindsight, I thought this was strange because I never had anything resembling this type of relationship growing up. I had close friends, but never the constant presence of one all-consuming BEST friend. It wasn’t that I thought it was a bad idea, but there simply was no room. Between classes, homework, sports, and extracurriculars, my weeks were jam-packed. And nowhere in there was a friend that happened to do all the exact same things that I was involved with which means I spent time with different people depending on what I was doing.
But I always lamented the fact that I didn’t have a best friend or even a constant group of friends that were always involved in each other’s lives.
However, when I look back at those shows now - all I can see is codependency - a very real problem in many real-life friendships. On TV, there would inevitably be some sort of story arc where the protagonist would want space from their best friend. Not in a malicious way, but maybe they had a secret they didn’t want to share yet, or they had an activity that they wanted to keep all to themselves. When the best friend finds out, this causes drama - “I thought we did everything together [insert doe-eyed emoji]” - and while the show somehow wraps up this conflict in under a half hour, it’s not that simple.
That’s why I never had my TV best friendship. Upon reflection, I got close a couple times. There were a few friends in my past who wanted to be extra attached but only because I provided them a platform to complain about their lives. Consequently, I never allowed it to get very far for a couple of reasons - (1) I am impatient. When people complain, there had better be a point. More importantly (2) I have boundaries in my relationships.
Boundaries are ultimately what have prevented me from having any insanely close friendships. And boundaries are also what I tend to respect in a lot of my current close friends. I don’t expect my friends to ever drop everything for me, to hold the same opinions as me, or be involved in the same activities as me. They have their own lives. I expect them to have all of their own things going on and admire them more for it. It also gives me confidence that our friendship is worthwhile to them since they still eventually make time to talk even despite their busy lives.
The aforementioned shows are aimed at kids so I can somewhat give them a pass since kids are still figuring out their own interpersonal relationships. But I do think the idea of an end-all be-all best friend is unrealistic. You will most likely go through multiple best friends, sometimes have a group of them, and they may change with the seasons of your life. Friendships are extremely important. There is literally data proving that having close friends leads to longer, happier lives. People tend to think of making friends as the hard part of this cycle, but setting boundaries with friends in order to maintain a relationship can be equally difficult.
Having one person to share everything with can be amazing, but it’s not necessarily the only way to organize your friendships. It’s not one above the rest, it’s the interaction of many different kinds of friendships that will round out your life and ultimately provide the best support system.
Some best friends I don’t get to see nearly often enough