Circles > Triangles

On female friendship, choosing your friends, and trusting in the power of the circle

Photo by Yanapi Senaud on Unsplash

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If frequently thinking about the Roman Empire is the millennial man’s compulsion, then frequently thinking about how the enneagram applies to daily life is the millennial woman’s.

I, apparently, am no exception.

The night I learn that Enneagram Ones are often referred to as “The Reformers”, I snap my laptop shut and turn to my husband.

“Did you know I’m a Reformer?”

He blinks at me.

I continue.

“It may sound noble, but it actually means I struggle to accept things for what they are and will run myself ragged trying to make them better. Doesn’t this make so much sense? Maybe this is why I’m so tired!” I exclaim.

More blinking. Some vague nodding. Probably he is thinking about the Roman Empire.

I flop back on the bed and think through my life, following this thread back and back and back. To be honest, some of my life choices begin to make a lot more sense.

A brief list for your consideration:

1. My vegan years (Trying to reform the meat industry while also attempting to avoid cancer and/or heart disease because that one Netflix documentary told me vegetables and tofu will cure and/or reverse everything).

2. My children’s homeschool education (Trying to reform public education by…opting out of it? Hm, let me get back to you on this one).¹

3. My marriage (Trying to reform who my husband fundamentally is with a kick-ass book list—that will do the trick, for sure!)

4. Myself (Trying to reform who I fundamentally am with a kick-ass book list—that will do the trick, for sure!)

5. My years trying to change people who don’t want to change (Trying to reform people who do not want to be reformed! Highly, highly do not recommend! Zero out of five stars!)

You name it, I’ve probably tried to reform it.²

There is something so appealing about believing, Yes, I can fix this!

If I try hard enough, I know I can make this system, this idea, this person into what I long for them to be.

Neuroscience shows that our earliest relationships are a blueprint for how to show up and what to expect in our relationships going forward.³

If, for example, we learn that chasing after people and trying to convince them to love us in the ways we need sometimes works, then we will continue to chase people who are inconsistently available in hopes of getting the love and connection we need.

Psychologists call this intermittent reinforcement, and it’s essentially a gamble. We may lose most of the times we play, but when we do occasionally win, the dopamine rush feels so damn good that we will keep going back for more.

The more we play, the more money we lose and the more addicted we become.

Pretty soon, it’s hard to think about anything else but the thrill of the cursory win.

I worry about guiding my girls through their female friendships, sometimes.

Certainly, boys have their own struggles with friendship, but there is something about female friendship that can get particularly twisty and mean. (Our culture knows this so well that we even made a movie about it. Twice.)

Just the other day, I came across a social media post from a fellow mother. Her daughter is struggling to navigate a female friendship triangle and comes home crying almost every day.

Her daughter is eight.

Last week, a girl at the playground told my oldest daughter she didn’t want to play with her because “she wasn’t wearing a pretty outfit.”

This girl was six.

More and more, I feel taken aback by how early friendship troubles seem to arise among girls. Perhaps I’ve been naive, but I thought my daughters had at least a few more years until their peers even had the wherewithal to begin making mean comments and forming exclusive groups.

“At what age does this end?” I ask my therapist one day, after unloading my own friendship woes onto her shoulders.

She is in her sixties, and one of the wisest people I know.

“Never,” she says. “Female friendships are always hard.”

“Well. Shoot,” I say. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” and we both laugh.

On the way home from the playground, I tell my daughters three things:

1. Sometimes girls can be mean, and that is not your fault. I wonder if something is going on for her at home or at school that’s making her feel sad or mad or lonely?

2. We don’t choose friends who make us feel icky on the inside over and over again, even if they sometimes make us feel good. There are many, many other friends out there who would love to play with you and treat you with kindness.

3. You get to choose your friends.

It’s the last one that gets me.

We are sitting at a red light, and I say it again, then again, and again, until my daughter says, “Uhhh Mom? I know that.”

But I’m not saying it for her.

I’m saying it for me.

Thirties are the decade I learn that I am not relegated to listening to the same old, tired narrative⁴—to living a life of chasing people, trying to convince them to love me in the ways that I need.

I had to do that, once upon a time. I had to do that, and I was really quite good at it, too. But I don’t have to do it anymore.

As Aundi Kolber says, I finally get to “work from love, not for it.”

There’s this thing that happens when you start to heal. You start to feel less like life is happening to you and more like you’re making choices for your life.

Less frozen and helpless, more sturdy and autonomous.

Less waiting for people to change, more trusting that people will show you who they are.

Less going along with what’s familiar, more looking in the mirror and saying:

Ah, yes. That’s right. I am an adult now.

I have choice and autonomy and power.

I get to choose my people.

In Christie Tate’s memoir, B.F.F., she explores the lies she tells herself about female friendship and how she moved forward—not without a lot of bumps and bruises, mind you—towards healthier friendships in her thirties.

The book references so many friendship triangles filled with envy, hurt feelings, ghosting, and miscommunication. But at the end of the book, something powerful shifts.

After a huge loss in her friend group, Tate witnesses everyone rallying together to care for one another. The image in her mind of a triangle begins to fade into something different.

Tate references this shift in an interview with

Nina Badzin

:

“I’d spent my life trying to discern the pecking order and rise or not fall down. And what I realized [after this big loss] and all of us coming together is that I was visualizing a circle where there is no hierarchy. I was like, oh my God, the solution is a circle. It’s a circle—that way there’s no jockeying. There’s just holding hands and moving around the circle. The triangle had softened into a circle and it couldn’t hurt me anymore. And that was because the shape in my head had changed. And then guess what? The way that I operated in the world also changed. I don’t know which came first, but I’m so glad that I arrived at the circle and was able to let go of the hierarchy and the triangle that had dogged me.”

When I read this, I felt the whole world expand in an instant.

What a beautiful reminder for our thirties—circles over triangles.

The power of a complete and full shape with an unlimited number of points.

The belief that friendship works better when we trust in abundance, not scarcity.

The ability to open our hands, unclench our jaws, and say—

Hey, scoot over. There’s room for all of us here.

There is more than enough to go around.

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1. Julie Bogart has said several times that homeschool education is active education reform, so you may direct all questions and concerns to her, thank you very much.

2. Except DIY house stuff. You will never find me or my husband DIY-ing anything in our house. Like, ever. I’m sorry, but no.

3. This is the basis of attachment theory, and also likely a large part of today’s “intensive parenting” crisis, as recently referenced by the U.S. Surgeon General. As always, there’s nuance here.

4. Kamala Harris, if you’re reading this, I hope you don’t mind that I’m borrowing your phrase, tysm.