Have you ever spent a night tossing and turning, swallowed by feelings of loneliness, worry or sorrow? Although you have close friends in whom you spend hours pouring your thoughts, feelings and experiences into, lying awake at night: does anyone truly know your true self?
The New York Times recently ran an article about the way that girls communicate and how it is so often negative. The article is backed with psychological studies on co-rumination. While the fact that this article centers on it the stereotype that “women just love to talk” is forever worthy of eye rolling, I think there is truth to the idea that women’s relationships are based on communication. What this article points out is that we talk and talk and talk…in circles. Nothing gets solved, and this obsessive talking leads to deeper problems. What the article did not touch on and what I have found to be true is that women and teenage girls especially (with reason: hello Mean Girls!) are scared of being honest with one and other.
As you tell your friend for the third time this week that your heart is hurting, and ask: “Why is he such an asshole? Why do I still love him?!”
Do you receive honest curiosity from your friend? Or is it more like: “You poor thing, I’m so sorry. You deserve better” or “Well let’s dissect him and come up with every reason why he is fucking scum. I hate him too!”
Where is the true curiosity for your experience? Where is eagerness for the why? –Why is this happening to you? What is at the root of it? How can we try to stop this from happening again?
How would you feel if your friend delved that deep and curious into your hurting? Perhaps it is scary, I think many times the tales we yarn are just noise. We come up with a million stories as to why we are feeling sad or anxious so that our close friends cannot get close to that real despair inside of us. This is pointless of course because often they are trying to not see it anyway.
Naturally this conversation works both ways. If you are sharing your “feelings” with a friend but are justifying what you feel with secondary emotions and are telling stories as to why you feel this way, you are diverting your friend from the real problems inside of you. We tell these stories and we do not even realize we are doing it. When you tell your friend you had no idea he would turn out to be such an asshole, it feels good. As you convince her of how true the story is you begin to believe it is real yourself. It is hard to let our defenses down, to truly give into becoming vulnerable with friends. Have you ever tried saying to your friend right in the moment, “I feel _____________. I don’t know why.”
I am reminded of an episode of Sex and the City, from season two called “The games people play” (AKA the one where Carrie sleeps with Jon Bon Jovi.) Carrie and Big have broken up. Carrie babbles incessantly to her friends telling this story of “Why she is okay and why this is better. And he didn’t deserve her!” Her friends blatantly ignore her, rolling their eyes and stepping away from her as if she were toxic. What if instead, one of them had said something like “Carrie, I’m not interested in this. If you want to talk about how you are feeling and explore what is going on for you emotionally right now, let’s do that. But I am not going to listen to any more of this anxious story telling.”
What does happen in this episode is that the girls end up sending Carrie to therapy, which is not necessarily a bad thing: I think that Carrie Bradshaw could really use some therapy. Yet this seems hasty, cold. Her friends did not try in the moment to be honest, vulnerable and strong with her at all. Saying “I suggest therapy” is fine for a co-worker or some other semi-stranger telling you their problems, but a best friend deserves an honest and open conversation. Sending her into therapy is an easy answer, just as the stories she wove about Big were easy answers. Easy answers are where personal growth, discovery and intimacy stop.
In the New York Times article Amanda J. Rose, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri, says “Teenage girls are more prone to co-rumination problems because of the many stressors in adolescence.” Since my experience of adolescence was of a time of constantly being on edge, of trying to simply survive and to get the hell out, this rings true. A lot of teenage girls are involved in cliques whose foundation is built on not being honest and vulnerable with each other. In my own teenage years I experienced this lack of true openness and on a pop culture level I would equate my teen experience more with “Ghost World” rather than “Mean Girls.” This reference also adds up. In Ghost World, Becky and Enid are fairly open and vulnerable with one and other, yet boundaries with truth telling still exist. Their friendship begins to unravel when Enid refuses to tell Becky how she feels about their moving in together. What if instead, Enid had said as they were searching apartments “I am feeling really anxious right now.” Of course if Becky were actually Enid’s friend she would be eager to know why her friend was anxious, would try to help and her and understand and that if their looking at apartments is making her anxious, why?
While it is easy to see how girls in fascistic cliques would be frightened of being real with one and other, Becky and Enid’s fear of honesty is more beclouded. Still yet why are grown women with “mature” relationships scared of saying what they feel in the moment to their “best friends”?
So often we are afraid because we already know what will happen before we even begin open our mouths to release that raw vulnerability. Many times we are fearful of how this will effect us immediately, as it can bring up hard to handle terrible truths within our lives. We are also innately aware of what our so-called friend’s reaction will be.
By mulling this over you may find that you have a lot less true friends than you thought. Though true, deep friendships based on honesty are infinitely more meaningful than a group of hot, fun friends that you can go to parties with. To find only one person in your life to be honest and unafraid with is more rare and fulfilling than the relationships most people will discover in a lifetime of friendship.
The Times article ends on a quote from Toby Sitnick, a Brooklyn psychologist who works with adolescent girls: “They often do this with their mothers as well. It certainly does seem to be a female behavior, and grown women do it, too, ruminating about certain issues and experiences. It can become a mutual complaint society.” As a feminist, her description of women’s interactions as a mutual complaint society makes me want to run to the defense of girl culture. Yet I cannot deny my experiences, I cannot deny what I know and what I have felt in nearly all of my friendships. Little girls are not taught to be honest, we are not taught to express in the moment how we are feeling, especially if it is an undesirable “bad” emotion. We are taught to be passive, subservient.
Though the beauty in all of this is that you possess the capacity for control, for change over your relationships. This change can be made now, suddenly and adventrously, as revolutions are.
for more information on this school of thought please visit freedomain radio and for a detailed guide into honest and loving relationships please check out Real Time Relationships written by Stefan Molyneaux, highly recommended by me.
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4 Comments
Insightful! I bet 9 out of 10 women would agree.
Great post.
Although it is not dealing directly with co-rumination I would like to focus on communication in gener and staying within pop culture references, there’s a scene in Fight Club where Marla and Narrator, Ed Norton’s character, are speaking about how in grave situations, people actually listen as opposed to waiting for their turn to talk.
Too many people in general love the sound of their own voice rather than being a good listener. The key is to not tell the person how they should feel. By asking questions, as you said, “why do you feel this way?” you can open up the truth and create a sense of comfort and honesty. Without comfort and honesty, we aren’t going to open up to be able to help each other.
Some women are just reticent and more conservative. They don’t need to wear their hearts on their sleeves all the time. Some parts of our lives can stay private.
K, your blog is probably the most excitingly interesting thing I have read in ages, you have Klaus Nomi on it!! Total Eclipse ftw!
This piece is very useful, though I got into the habit of rumination thanks to my father and his obsessive depressive ranting which never gets resolved. I could leave the house, go out all day and he would still be pissed about the same subject when I got back.
Brilliant to see this topic written down!