Spread your wings, social butterfly

Having a best friend is terrific: you have a certified wingman on a night out who knows all your likes and dislikes; someone who won’t get you absolutely wasted and find it hilarious to encourage you to hook up with your flatmates ex. You also have a person you can run and cry to when your flatmate sees the tagged photos of you mounting the person they thought up until last week, they were going to marry.

Friendship and the importance of having friends has long been a topic of interest in psychology. Theorists have defined the benefits of friendships to include the provision of emotional support, a basis for self-comparison (we know we’re normal because when we compare
ourselves to our companions we’re similar) the creation of a social identity and enhancement of social development.

Furthermore, scientists have also discovered that when people are placed in a stressful environment, the introduction of a friend significantly reduces the levels of cortisol (stress hormones) that the experience may have triggered. Essentially, our friends act as a buffer from stress and negative emotional experiences.

The benefits of friendship are clear and cannot be argued against. However, following the idea that the friendships we experience change as we grow older to fit the different needs we develop, introduced by the psychologist William Damon, this article goes one step further and
discusses just how unhealthy it could be to limit the growth of different friendship groups, in the presence of one best friend.

Leaving home and starting school for the first time opens us up to a whole new realm of secondary socialisation. Moving from an environment wholly centred round the thoughts, actions and social norms imposed by parents, you are suddenly placed in a pseudo-community: a school,
where you are exposed to a wide range of different children with different backgrounds and different values.

The interactions you have at this point in your life generally go on to shape not only the persona you develop within the educational institution, but determines the subculture you tend to socialise in. The more exposure you have to a specific person, the more similar you both become. Who hasn’t started using a phrase that their best friend suddenly started saying, after all?

The introduction of compulsory schooling disrupts the stability of home life and for some of us, clinging to the person we have the most in common with becomes the only way to avoid isolation and to some extent, counteract home-sickness. The younger we are, the more pressure we put on the concept of a ‘best’ friend. It goes from being a highly coveted title that would only be bestowed on the worthiest of contenders to being nothing but a chore.

As a child, I swapped best friends like I did unwanted food in my lunchbox, I didn’t understand how two people could go from being inseparable one moment to sharpening daggers for some good ol’ fashion back-stabbing the next. Rather than figuring it out, I simply moved on and started the cycle again.

Now that I’m older and therefore wiser, I finally realise that the idea of a best friend, a friend that ranks higher than all the others and knows enough of your secrets to banish you from ever showing your face again, is an unhealthy one. Sure, there are many positive attributes to having a ‘brother from another mother’ by your side, feeling like you are part of an altruistic society is great and so is having a guaranteed partner for pair-work but the dark side to the seemingly pleasant world of lip-gloss swapping and bodycon dress borrowing is full of negatives.

Firstly to loosely apply a sociological term, there’s no social mobility. Committing to the concept of a ‘best’ friend usually results in being stuck with the same person until the end of time. Although they may be on your wavelength so much that you’re practically professional surfers, the prolonged confinement and the constant interaction concentrated on the same individual soon turns the quirkiest of attributes into the most annoying habit.

Secondly, the requirements of the best friend relationship usually entails the sharing of deepest, darkest secrets, embarrassing anecdotes and pretty much all the things that stop you from taking a lie-detector test. Sharing these personal stories results in a large emotional
investment with high stakes if anything should ever go wrong. This of course is inevitable, as after all a best friend is only human and will at some point do something to let you down. The disappointment felt at this point is only heightened by the amount of yourself you’ve invested in the friendship, thus the betrayal is more poignant.

Thirdly, we are constantly growing and changing. Having one BFF increases the risk of outgrowing your friendship group and being stranded with your Bob Marley dreads and rainbow pants. A wider group of friends provides you with the flexibility to discover who you are
without offending your favourite confidante. You can explore every part of your psyche comfortably and without the worry of leaving anyone behind.

I know my views may sound ever so slightly pessimistic but a wiser woman than I once told me ‘you have different friends for different reasons’, by all means go into the world and find your friend equivalent of a soul mate, but don’t close yourself off from the possibility of meeting new people and developing equally important friendships with them. Ideally we should all have one friend for each part of our lives.

If you think about it, the friendships that go down in history are those that consist of more than two people. Take for instance, the television show Friends. I highly doubt we’d all relate to the characters of the show as much as we do if the plot revolved around solely Monica and Rachel.

My message is simple: although it’s lovely to have a best friend, it’s even lovelier to have a group of wonderful friends that each possess qualities that enhance you as an individual. Surround yourself with an array of individuals that compliment each other and let the good times roll. Spread your wings and fly. I mean, there must have been a reason Gunther tried so hard to become one of the gang!