When it comes to BFFs there are a four types of people:
1) People who have a BFF, love her, and don’t want anything to change.
2) People who don’t have a BFF, love that, and don’t want anything to change.
3) People on the search for a BFF, to fill a vacancy or supplement existing besties.
4) People who have a new BFF everyday.
This last type of person is who we will be talking about today. Back in college there was a girl—let’s call her Bathsheba (why? because we can)—who loved taking new friends under her wing. She was never without a partner in crime. She’d give her BFF-of-the-moment presents, pay for her lunches, invite her away on family vacations. She and said BFF would walk arm in arm, as if announcing to the world that their friendship could not be broken. They were Best Friends Forever.
But forever never lasted long. The following week, or month, or two months, there’d be a new BFF by her side. A new pal from whom she was absolutely inseparable.
I guess this isn’t so different from the red flag friendships I wrote about last week—the pal who leaves a string of ex-friends in her wake is likely to always find new ones. The difference is the way Bathsheba spun it. She didn’t broadcast yesterday’s friendship, complaining that someone did her wrong. She just took up a new BFF, focusing her energies on that one friendship until she was bored and wanted someone new.
Of course, this didn’t win her many admirers. Each “dropped” best friend felt, quite legitimately, wronged. And hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Well, that might be dramatic. No one came fighting back with a pitchfork or anything. But the “dropped” friends did bond over their common ex-friend. And eventually Bathsheba worked her way through all her options, and ended up with no one.
Writing that, it seems like a real cautionary tale. A regular bedtime story for the ladies…
I tend not to use the phrase “social climber” because I feel like it’s lost all meaning. But that term comes to mind when I think of people who devour BFFs like I devour episodes of Friday Night Lights or Harry Potter books. Because what’s the point of having a new best friend at every turn if not to see what and where it can get you? Maybe I’m missing something, but the new friend every week routine seems childish and superficial. Isn’t the best part of having a best friend the stories you retell years later? One can’t build those up in mere months.
Have you ever come across someone like this? A serial monogamist of the friendship variety? A BFF player? Anyone know the intentions behind this behavior?