Friendship Breakdowns

While the friendship breakdown between Issa and Molly has caught me off guard this season and has made me cringe, it is not surprising.

I have been in enough friendships to know that sometimes they breakdown. Sometimes the breakdowns can be fixed and sometimes they cannot so the friendship ends. Did this hurt my entire heart and soul back when I was 5 and the girl I thought was my best friend got a new best friend and left me hanging? Absolutely! Did it hurt in my teens when my friends and I would go days without speaking for dumb stuff? Of course. And when I had my first baby, were my feelings hurt when my friends that didn’t have kids acted funny style with me because of my newfound joy? Girl, yes but that was 21 years ago and I have learned a thing or 25 since then.

We are not taught the language at 5 to move on to the next friend without a word to the friend we drop. We just meet another girl on the playground and go laugh with her cause she is interested in something we are interested in. Hormones are raging as teens and our attitudes are on 10 so not talking for days is our way of getting through. Its the survival of the fittest time. Accept being ignored for days from your teen friends or get left behind if you’re in your feelings. Stay the course and on day 6, everything is back to normal because of hormones and PMS until the next round. This is teenage girl-land. At least it was for me. Lord knows what landmines exist with teen girls currently. As far as the friend who acted funny style after I had my baby, well she just could not come into my new world because it did not interest her and that was fine with me because I had a baby keeping me up at night and I couldn’t split my energy between the two.

Issa and Molly got each other until now. Molly has always had the upper hand financially and career-wise while Issa had the relationship upper hand. That’s how they worked. Roles have changed and there is some evolving going on and the girls don’t know how to deal. Issa has finally found her passion and purpose career-wise and because of it, can’t be readily available for everything Molly. Molly has entered a relationship that scares her because she actually likes this guy and challenges her. Instead of sitting with these new feelings, Molly is finding every flaw in Issa. She’s mad Issa finds a new friend in Condola. Given Molly’s situationship history, it is only fair that Issa isn’t planning a wedding for Molly and pointing out her patterns. Molly is taking this to be an attack and spirals.

This isn’t about who is wrong and who is right. It is about the tools that neither one of these women isn’t using. They both seem to be on the verge of breakthroughs but don’t know how to express them. They both want to set boundaries in this friendship but can’t express them to each other. Bottom line in this entire friendship breakdown is lack of communication. They’re 20 somethings so this is expected. The genesis of most breakdowns be it friendship or relationship is not allowing people to evolve. We are allowed to change and we have to give space to people’s transformations while still loving them. Breakdowns happen when we stifle.

I recently had a friendship breakdown and it didn’t make me sad. I saw it as a gift and I knew it had nothing to do with me so I did not take it personally. It is okay when people don’t want to rock with you anymore. I’m grown enough to know that there will always be someone who will rock with me and I can’t lose sleep over who doesn’t.

And yes Molly was wrong for going ham at Issa’s event and she can’t convince me otherwise. No way Issa could burst up in her office with that same energy and it be ok. Other than that, I hope this friendship will be saved because I love Issa and Molly. More importantly, it would be amazing to see 2 black women figure this out on TV in a healthy way.