Reply to Breaking up with my toxic mom group (Ashley Tisdale essay)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't know one womens group that doesn’t eventually break up or splinter, for various reasons.

Even if they get together on occasion they are one big happy organism feeding positively off each other. They are many groups of 2 or 3 loosely connected to others.

Also friendship wax and wane that is life.

How do you get past 25 years old and not understand this. [/quote]

Yeah.  I kind of thought she really shot herself in the foot here by breaking off with every member of the group.  She should have just spent more time with the people she got along with and less time with the larger group.  [/quote]

It’s weird to be half in and half out with a group. Better to have a clean break.[/quote]

No group does everything together. We have a large friend group in our neighborhood and not a single event has everyone at it because people do have other things going on in their lives. I can also do things with some of the members of the group if I want. It's not a monolith. [/quote]

Depends on the vibe of the group. Not every group is like your friend group.

I feel like people are missing that this group was "toxic." To me, that means stuff like this:

- There was a hierarchy and one or more "queen bs" who other people in the group sucked up to. There will also be people who are low in the hierarchy and might even become punching bags for the queen bs. The dynamics of this SUCK and impact who gets invited to what and how everyone feels about it. A gathering without one of the queen bs will be deemed lame by a lot of people, and it might be hard to get people to come to something unless one of those women has blessed it with her RSVP. Meanwhile, if one of the queens has told people she doesn't like one of the fringe members of the group, this person may be left off invited intentionally to please the queen (and make it more likely that she comes to things). It's just a miserable cycle.

- Gossip. When people get together, they just talk about other members of the group, group dynamics, etc. Sometimes this is actually understandable because when you have these toxic dynamics, people in the group are often just very stressed about the ongoing drama and feel a strong need to discuss it with others. But the result is to just deepen the negative dynamics, people get paranoid about how they are discussed when they aren't around, and it spirals.

In a group like this, no, you cannot just hold onto friendships with one or two of the people in the group. You will get drawn into the drama. People will accuse you of being a "wannabe queen" because if you are hanging out with a couple people and avoiding the rest, they will view this as a power play to exclude people rather than just an effort to spend time with people you are actually friends with. The people you hang out with will want to just gossip about the group because they are still in that weird cult, so these hangouts might not even be enjoyable (or if you go ahead and gossip and participate, you ARE continuing to participate in the toxicity of the group).

The only way to liberate yourself from these dynamics is a clean break from the group. No more hangouts, no more gossip. Move the eff on.

If the group isn't toxic in the first place, then sure, you can just hang out with some people and note everyone and it's no big deal, because you don't have these weird hierarchies or gossip dynamics to begin with. That's not a toxic friend group. Ashley is talking about a toxic friend group.[/quote]

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