I won't apologise for my serial attachment to catchy noughties music, because Destiny's Child seem to know everything there is to know about being a strong, independent woman even when your suitors might not be otherwise prepared in advance for aforementioned jelly.
The reason why I am telling you about this, is because through all my listening I have actually gotten to thinking. Destiny's Child's song 'Girl' particularly grasped my attention. For any of you that haven't heard this song it follows the premise of Kelly's group of friends intervening in her love life, warning her that her current relationship is bad for her.
However much I love the girls, a very valid point is totally ignored. As they sing repeatedly about how worried they are, and how much they love their friend, an important verse is ignored. It goes as follows:
"See What You All Don't Know About Him
Is I Can't Let Him Go Because He Needs Me
It Ain't Really Him It's Stress From His Job
And I Ain't Making It Easy
I Know You See Him Bugging On Me Sometimes
But I Know Deep Inside He Don't Mean It
It Gets Hard Sometimes
But I Need My Man
I Don't Think You all Understand
I'm Telling You"
Is I Can't Let Him Go Because He Needs Me
It Ain't Really Him It's Stress From His Job
And I Ain't Making It Easy
I Know You See Him Bugging On Me Sometimes
But I Know Deep Inside He Don't Mean It
It Gets Hard Sometimes
But I Need My Man
I Don't Think You all Understand
I'm Telling You"
Although Kelly stands her ground, it seems to be drowned out by the overwhelming advice of her friends. This made me consider, when our friends tell us how to run our love lives, are they doing it out of love? And do they really know what's best for us?
The way that I almost always perceive Kelly's verse is that she is simply making excuses for her man. Not just excuses that she has in mind, but also excuses that he seems to have made himself. Kelly is undoubtedly not the first girl to be fed lies about work stress and such.
She is also not the first to pass on said excuses to her friends.
There are a number of reasons why we do this. First of all, we don't want our friends to have negative feelings about the partner we have chosen. We want our friends to respect our choices as well as the people themselves. Aside from this, often we feel under attack when our friends start judging our relationships. Clutching at straws is almost all that we can do.
I was skyping my friend Nechama the other day, telling her about a guy that I had met in London. Now normally, I only ever rant when I'm drunk. This may not be a rareity, but it is a trait exclusive to alcoholism.
When speaking to Nechama however, I found myself in a frustrated tizzy of renouncing all men. As she started to agree with me, I suddenly began making excuses for said guy. It was at this point that Nechama started yelling at me 'Stop making excuses for him! Why does he deserve that when he can't even validly excuse himself?' It goes without saying that Nechama was, as always, right on the money.
Although Nechama's brilliance solved that situation, it is not always as simple. I believe that one of the reasons why our friends judge our relationships so much is that we only tell each other the bad things. I can't remember the last time one of my friends called me up to tell me that their boyfriend had taken them out for a lovely meal and then sat through Bridget Jones pretending he wasn't searching for blunt objects to end his misery with the whole way through.
*Why does she like this woman and her giant knickers?*
If we did notify our friends of how brilliant our guys were all the time...well we'd just be needlessly bragging. I only know one person who does this, a girl that will wake me up at 3am to let me know just how many orgasms she's had that night, but she is an isolated case of over-sharing that needs to be stopped.
Either way, we lean on our friends for support. It seems that although we place the trust in them to confide our deepest worries, we always run the risk of them building an inevitable judgement of any and all of the men we're involved with. This means that when our girlfriends judge us, it's possible that they are basing it on an uneven proportion of positive to negative information. After all, no one truly knows what happens behind closed doors.
Even if our friends don't know the full story however, they do know us. Samantha Jones once said that you can tell how a relationship is going by the expression on your face. Although a seemingly trivial concept, it makes sense. When you find yourself frowning whenever talking about the person you are seeing, it is as big a warning sign as any. You would think that we would be aware of something as obvious as the expressions on our own faces, but we're not. When blinded by love, most of us can't even tell the time, let alone anything else. That is where our friends come into the equation. They feel that it is their place and duty to look after us, because they do know us well enough to need to see little more than the expressions on our faces. Take Frida Kahlo for example. Frida did not express her tumultuous love life through her face, but rather through her paintings.
When happily married to Diego Riviera, she painted this:
But when torn between his American influences and her Mexican upbringing, she painted this:
You can see the difference between the warmth and vibrancy in 'The Love Embrace of the Universe' to the dismal portrayal of her torn self in 'The Two Fridas'. This just shows how easily a persons heart can affect what they project outwards to those around them.
No matter what our friends say and why, ultimately none of it really matters. Those of us who truly know how we feel will always follow our hearts. Just as Frida followed her heart with Diego, we will almost always choose what we feel is right for ourselves. I believe that love is the antithesis of fear, and so when there's an opportunity for love, we cast all fear and judgement aside. If we put ourselves in this position of fearlessness, what we should fear the least is those who care about us the most. Even if our friends try to sway our decisions; whether we make the right ones or the wrong ones they will still accept us in the end, just as we accept them.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and will be looking forward to your opinions
Olivia Jane
xx
I would agree with the start to your conclusion "No matter what our friends say and why, ultimately none of it really matters." However, the truth is that your friends should not even be commenting on your relationship. A relationship is something experienced completely internally and therefore they would have nothing to comment on from their external position. Yes, they do have the information you've given them but, as you say, that is pretty much always just the negative stuff you've told them. Your friends should listen. That is all. Perhaps help with small decisions, but any large decisions can only be made by you.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, but I think that sometimes we can be too blinded by love to see if someone is treating us badly and our friends almost always get themselves involved when they feel like they have to. I totally feel that ultimately we should follow our hearts, but sometimes as people who care about us, our friends sometimes have a better idea of what's best for us.
ReplyDeleteLove you and miss you xx