“The Myth of the BFF and the End of Female Friendships”: Natalie Kon-yu

in the Guardian :

. . . My best friend and I had been friends for 20 years, and then, one day, nothing. She stopped returning my calls; she ignored my messages. She was living in another country so I had no way of reaching her, no way to confront her. Months passed and I realised that my best friend had stopped being my best friend. Had, in fact, stopped being my friend altogether. And I didn’t know why.

One of the things that bothered me most was the silence; not only my former best friend’s silence towards me, but also the fact that I felt that I couldn’t speak of what had happened between us to anyone else. It felt almost too trivial to mention. But I had to mention it, and did one night to my writing group.

They did not think it was trivial. In fact, as the night wore on, and we all shared our stories of the loss of once-close friends, we realised how devastating such breakdowns were; that there isn’t enough attention paid to the difficulties or complexities in relationships between women. And we realised that there were stories to tell about the break ups of close friendships, and that it was important to tell them. It was this that prompted Just Between Us, the anthology we have co-edited about female friendship.

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