Date Yourself Instead - Why are female friendships so hard?

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

I got a DM that hit hard: How do you make friends to easily in NYC? Just like other relationships, female friendships can be toxic. If you always gravitate toward masculine energy, maybe you can relate to this. A lot of what I have experienced in the social media space has been superficial, but in this episode you’ll hear about how I balance surrounding myself with genuine, empowering people and wondering, am I the problem? Connect with the Date Yourself Instead Movement: Website | Instagram Connect with Lyss: TikTok | Instagram | YouTube

Welcome to day yourself and set. Day yourself and set. What does it mean to do yourself and set? I'm just gonna learn how to love myself and that's it. I got a DM on Instagram from a girl the other day that asked me how I'm able to make friends so easily in New York City. And I immediately opened the message and replied to it

because honestly, this direct message really hit home for me. I have struggled with meeting genuine real people that I wanted to keep around and in my life for my entire life. I always had trust issues when it came to meeting women in my life in particular, but I never really spoke about it openly with anyone because I was terrified that one no one would be able to relate to this topic at all and they'd think I'm the problem and that I'm crazy and two, I thought there was something actually wrong with me that I was not able to properly bond with women in the way that I wanted to and the way that I saw it being portrayed all over social media all the time, or just walking past a bar restaurant in New York City on the weekends and just seeing groups of women bonding and hanging out and having wine. It just looked like everyone was so close and had the best friendships and I was just always on the outside.

close and had the best friendships, and I was just always on the outside. But what I didn't realize is that what you see on the outside is not always what's actually happening on the inside. And I figured that out because of TikTok. I would see a lot of women start posting about these toxic female friendships on TikTok and how they couldn't trust their own best friends. And it really struck a chord in me

because I was like, wait, am I not the only person who's actually felt this way? Maybe people just don't talk about it because they don't wanna seem like that crazy psychobitch that has no friends. And I realized as I was digging through these TikTok videos and kind of watching people's experiences around female friendships and how they could turn into really toxic situations, I realized that this is such an issue just as much as toxic romantic relationships with men.

There are so many women who have fake friendships with females and there's this tension brewing between them and their best friend that you wouldn't see on the outside because they're posting cute pictures together online all the time and you're like, wow, these girls are like best friends, they're inseparable. But then you actually start to unpack it and you realize that a lot of these friendships are not what you actually think. And that's what inspired this episode because I really wanted to just dive into this topic and be open and vulnerable about my experience

with female friendships and why it has been so difficult for me to create authentic bonds with other females. And I really just want to tell you a little bit more about my experiences with females and why I always kept my circle really small. I also want to mention that I do have some amazing close female friends but very few and I don't think it's about quantity and what I said to this girl that DMed me because she was asking me how I have so many friends in New York and how I'm able to make friends in New York, I told her that I don't have a lot of real true friends that I keep around in my life. I actually love to

keep my circle as small as possible because I truly believe you only need a couple of good friends that you trust and that you genuinely connect with in order to be happy and successful. You don't need an entourage of 200 girls in order to be happy and in order to feel satisfied and fulfilled. I also think this stems back from early childhood. I just struggled with making connections with women because I had this fear of competition with them where if I was really successful at something in my career or I just had things going really well for me in my life, I felt like if I shared that with a female, they were not particularly happy for me. I am very intuitive and I could read body language and I could pick up on people's feelings, even if they're saying the complete opposite on the surface. So I could tell if someone's actually genuinely happy for me or not. And more often times than not, I would have a female friend who

would find out about something great that happened to me. And then she would tell me that she was happy for me and tell me how proud she was of me. And I would just feel like she really felt the opposite. And I could read that her body language and what she was saying was not particularly realigning with what she was telling me. Like, it was pretty obvious. And it's happened to me a couple of times.

So I just felt like that really closed me off and closed my heart off to connecting with women because I felt like everything was suddenly a competition between us. If I had things going well for me and she did in or she wanted what I had, there was this weird tension between us. I've had this happen more than once, so it kind of conditioned me to believe that all female friendships would end up like this, so I kind of started to shy away

from female friendships in general, and I always ended up surrounding myself with men instead. To give you a little context and background on my life, I grew up with two older brothers, so I was used to that masculine energy around me. And I got along with my brothers for the most part growing up. So being used to that and being the only girl in my family

and not growing up with sisters and also having a particularly close relationship with my dad as a kid versus my mom. Even though my mom's relationship and I is different and like, now it's closer, I think growing up, when I was younger, I was closer with my dad. So I think I was just more comforted by masculine energy because I didn't feel any sort of competition

or anything weird between me and men. So I always just had a boyfriend. I was fine with that. My boyfriend's were always genuinely happy for my success. And I started to bond a lot with male energy versus female energy. And it just made me feel better. So that's what I gravitated towards. And I also don't think there's anything wrong with this, but I also wanted female friendships, but it just felt like I was blocked and I couldn't actually maintain those connections in the same way I could with men.

Now, maybe some of you can relate to this, and maybe some of you can't. And if you can't, I'm sorry. Maybe you think on that crazy psycho bitch that you wouldn't want on your female friend group. I don't know. All I know is that this is my experience and I know that there has to be at least a few other women who've experienced this before. So if I could just help that niche group of people, then great. If I can't, I'm sorry, maybe this episode isn't for you. But I just struggled so hard with having female friendships. And I also felt like having a very limited amount of female friendships came with having

to explain myself to people when they would kind of touch on the fact that I didn't have a lot of friends. And it was hard for me because I always felt like I was the problem and that I was doing something critically wrong that made it impossible for me to connect with other women. So when people would ask me like, oh, who are you friends with? Like who are your friends? I just always felt put on me, like, oh, who are you friends with? Like, who are your friends?

I just always felt put on the spot, like, oh, I only have two girlfriends. And it made me feel like there was something wrong with me. So I know there are other people who have experienced this, but I really did feel it on a whole other level because a lot of my life is in the public eye and on social media and I post a lot and then I would get messages and comments and questions surrounding who I actually associated with and who I was actually friends with.

There was this thread on Reddit where someone commented about me and apparently this person knows my whole life story, which they got a lot of the details completely wrong, but they were writing out my whole life story on a Reddit thread. And one of the comments said, she has no friends. I feel really bad for her and sorry for her, because she's always going to events alone in the social media space. Like this person who was commenting this apparently works in the social media industry and has seen me out at events completely by myself. And my response to that is like, no, actually,

I just don't fuck with a lot of people from the social media industry in general because I've been backstabbed and betrayed before. And people are fake as fuck. Like, I get along with some people of course and I'm always trying to keep the peace and I'm friendly to everyone and I don't have any bad blood with anyone

in the social media industry. I avoid drama for a reason. I'm not a dramatic person and I don't like confrontation at all. But I just don't find myself bonding and connecting with people on a really authentic level in the social media industry because a lot of it is for cloud and views and likes and attention and engagement and collaboration purposes. And that's fine. Business is business. A lot of these girls that you see taking photos together on social media,

I mentioned this in the stop comparing yourself episode. A lot of these celebrities and influencers take photos and videos together and post so much together because of engagement and because they want the hype and the cloud. That doesn't mean every friendship is fake. I'm not saying that at all, but a lot of it is fake. And a lot of what I've experienced has been very superficial. So that's why I kind of keep to myself and I have a few close friends, but they're not even on social media. So yeah, that's my personal decision.

I feel like a lot of the women that I would try to get close to ended up being some sort of competition, or they were talking shit behind my back. And things got super toxic really quickly. So when these things would happen, I would physically and mentally check out of the friendship. Like, I wouldn't want to participate in any friendships that involved a female because I was afraid they weren't going to like me secretly and they would talk behind my back and pretend to like me on the surface. And there have been so many instances where this did occur.

So once you experience something more than a few times, you start to question if either one, is it you? Are you the problem? I'm thinking of Taylor Swift's single, like, Antihiro, with, like, hi, it's me on the problem. Like, that actually plays in my head all the time, because I'm like, am I the problem? Or do I just not, like, conflict and confrontation and drama

and these women do? And maybe that's just where we clash, because I just love keeping the piece as much as possible. I never wanna step on anyone's success and if they feel like I'm a threat to them, maybe we just shouldn't be friends because I wanna surround myself with people who are happy for each other's success.

And when there's this tension brewing between you and another person and you feel like they're saying they're happy for you but they're really not, that's a fake friendship. Like that's not genuine and real. Or you have to hash it out and really communicate and maybe it'll evolve into a healthier dynamic. But I struggled with that. I just struggled with feeling like I was always up against someone else in my female friendships. And it was hard for me to trust the other person because I sensed that maybe they weren't really,

truly happy for me. I read this article online that discussed why female friendships can be a little more challenging. And it said, female friendships face more obstacles because they often involve more emotion, more expectations, and more potential for conflict, which I believe is actually true. I think it's like there is more potential for conflict unless you're at a super mature point in your life where the other women around you too are also super mature and you can handle conflict really well.

There's always going to be some sort of tension at some point in the friendship or relationship if you're not communicating and open and honest with each other at all times. And I have a fear of confronting situations that make me uncomfortable. So I think this is where a lot of my friendships have ended because if I felt there was tension brewing between me and another female, it would be so hard for me to speak up and actually confront the problem.

So I would just run away from it instead in fear because I was afraid if I said something, it would turn explosive and it would be this dramatic, crazy fight, and then I would be in a fight with someone. And I'm just not that type of person. So if something started to feel off in my female friendships, I would kind of shy away from it and run away from the friendship altogether. I would physically and mentally check out because I thought that was just the easier option. But as I've gotten older, I realized a lot of it comes with maturity and understanding. And even if there is a conflict between you and another female, it can be

resolved very easily if you're both on the same page maturity-wise. Like if you're both able to communicate properly and be open about your feelings, it's easy to clean things up and maintain a really healthy friendship. But I'm just realizing this now at 30. I'm two months away from being 30 years old, and I'm just realizing all these things now that it's okay to have conflict as long as you and the other person are able to talk about it in a healthy way. But in the past, if I felt a girl was not happy for me

or not happy for my success, or she didn't really like me, or something, I don't know. Whatever I would feel, and I didn't speak up about, I would just check out, and I was like, I don't want to deal with this. And then I would just lose that connection with that person because I didn't want to deal with the drama that could possibly come with it. Sometimes having female friendships would just take away from my happiness.

I'm going to be completely honest. It would take away from my happiness and drain me. So I would just define not maintaining these friendships by saying, why would I want to continue a toxic friendship? If I constantly feel like I'm up against someone else or I'm being bullied behind my back, it's better to just stay in my own lane and have a boyfriend or have male friends because it'll just make my life a whole lot easier and less dramatic. And I didn't realize that maybe I was just surrounding myself with the wrong people. Maybe I was just surrounding myself with women that were not

right for me. And there are other women out there that will be happy for me and will support my success. And we can have a close relationship without any drama issues. To just realize this now is pretty wild and pretty crazy because I feel like being 29, almost 30 is like, you're at a really mature point of your life, right? I know a lot of the people listening to this podcast and who follow me on TikTok and Instagram are five years younger than me

or even younger. I think my age demographic on my socials is from 21 to 25 for the most part. So if you're listening to this and you're like, damn, she's old, she's a grandma, how is she just figuring all these things out now? I don't know, I can't tell you. I just know that it takes a lot of experience and it takes a lot of years to understand who you are and understand the experiences you've been through. Like I am so much more knowledgeable and wise and mature in a totally new way, like over the last two years.

Like from 27 to 30, those years are so prime in maturing as a person. And yeah, I'm just realizing all these things now about myself and like what I want out of my friendships and what's actually important to me, et cetera. Like, and that's okay. Like if you're younger than me and you're still confused and you're in toxic female friendships,

and you don't know how to find real genuine friends and people in your life, that's okay. Because I'm just figuring all of this out now. So if you're in the same boat and you're younger than me, you've got time to figure your life out. Don't worry if you feel like you have no friends or you're in the same boat and you're younger than me, you've got time to figure your life out. Don't worry if you feel like you have no friends or you're not bonding with anyone or you're not clicking with anyone in the way that you want to because these feelings are

also valid and totally normal. I'm going to tell you an experience I had with some girls in my college. I was bullied for being ugly. I was bullied for starting my Instagram page because at the time I was in college, Instagram was a brand new social media platform and no one even knew what the fuck Instagram was. Literally no one at my school had Instagram yet. I started my Instagram when I was studying abroad in Australia, and I think it was more popular in Australia at the time before it hit the United States.

I don't know if I'm 100% right about that, but I just remember working on my Instagram in Australia first. And no one had any issues with Instagram there. People were on it, people were using it, and I felt very happy and motivated and excited about what I was doing. I get back to college the following year, I think it was my junior or senior year of college, and the bullying just started.

Like, I had went on this app called Yik Yak. I don't know if it's still around, but it was this social media forum that's kept anonymous. And people from different schools can write things in this forum about students, about teachers, whatever you want pretty much. And at the time, there was a specific forum about me telling everyone how much of a loser I was because I had this Instagram page I was working on and I thought I was cool I thought I was famous and

all this made-up bullshit. I was using Instagram as a means to get myself out of a huge period of depression. I was miserable studying abroad which I'll get into in another episode because was miserable studying abroad, which I'll get into in another episode because I just realized that that whole situation is so podcast worthy. I had a really fucked up experience studying abroad. You always hear these like amazing studying abroad experiences like an eat-pray love type of situation where you go to Italy and you meet this like hot Italian guy and you're riding on a riding on a Vespa and you're living your best life for six months. No, that was not my study abroad experience at all and I'm going to talk about that at another time if anyone's interested. But I was just really depressed and isolated when I was studying abroad.

So Instagram became my outlet to create something new for myself and just distract myself until I could get back home. Once I got back home, I was full force in Instagram making money already. I was monetizing my account. I was selling workout programs and I was documenting my fitness progress using Instagram. And people would rip on me like you have no idea. Guys and girls, it wasn't just females, okay, but it was mostly females. It was sororities that would comment mean shit in this forum about me. And I could tell they did not like me and wanted nothing to do with me.

I also felt like my relationships that were solid and that were healthy came from my acapella group. I was in a singing group in college and I had female and male friends in that group and those were my real friends. And these women in the group were so chill and like loving and kind and normal and they were happy for me and yeah it was just a totally different dynamic but then I had this other side of my life where I would go back to my dorm room and there were these girls ripping me apart on this thread anonymously so I never could figure out who was actually writing these things but I know it was coming from sororities because

One of my friends who was in a sorority she was probably my only friend that was in a sorority in college she actually Message me and told me that someone in her sorority had wrote the message and she was she like basically was saying she had my back and was defending me, which I appreciated, but it was crazy because I felt like I was a target for a couple of years and it made me feel like very excluded and very on the outside. And it made it hard for me to trust women. Once again, these experiences made me, it almost made it feel impossible to trust another female. Now luckily, as I mentioned, I had another group that I was a part of.

It might be a little nerdy, but it was like the best thing ever to actually have people who had my back during this time because otherwise I don't know if I would have even stayed in school. Like I don't know if I would have felt okay enough to continue college. But luckily I had a really empowering acapella group that made me feel like I was accepted. So that saved me during college, for sure. But tying this back into the episode, just being bullied by sororities, like, I am, this is also not shitting on sororities. Like, in general, this isn't like a sorority thing. I know that there are so many nice, amazing, genuine people that are part of sororities. So I just wanted to clarify that. It's nothing about the sorority, but it was just the fact that there were

actual groups of women ganging up on me for no fucking reason. Literally didn't even know them. Wasn't friends with any of them, knew nothing about them. They knew nothing about me other than what I posted online. So it was traumatizing. Like I got over it and I dealt with it and I handled it because I truly believe that I was so powerful and confident in what I was doing that I couldn't listen to the noise. But I think it would have been a totally different situation

if I didn't have other people supporting me throughout that whole process. So yeah, it was a really interesting time in my life and it shied me further away from making genuine female connections because I felt like I was on the outside of something and I wasn't accepted or welcomed or I don't know, I just felt this constant tension with other women for no reason at all. And the truth is, I didn't realize other women even experienced this regularly or even felt

this way until I had TikTok, which was like recently. And I started seeing all these videos about toxic female friendships. And I saw these women posting about how they feel like they can't even trust their own best friends, so they'd rather just be alone and have no friends. So that's why I made this episode because I was like, oh my god, maybe this is really something that a lot of people have dealt with and have experience

and have felt at some point in their lives. And they just didn't want to talk about it because they didn't want to feel like crazy and like say like, oh, like it's hard for me to have friends because that's a vulnerable, weird thing to say. Like if you're telling people you basically have no friends, they're gonna think something's wrong with you. Like that's why I never even really spoke about it

because I felt like I was the only one. And then I realized that I wasn't. So if this is helpful to any of you, that's amazing. And if you can resonate with it in any way, that's amazing. If you can't and you think I'm a crazy person, that's okay too. But yeah, I hope you guys liked today's episode. Feel free to DM me anytime on Instagram at lists. If you want a chat, if you love the episode,

I would love to hear your feedback. If you didn't, feel free to message me that as well. I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Date Yourself Instead and stay tuned for next Monday. next Monday.