The final Salon of the year was a no-moderator, no-holds-barred, I'm-just-gonna-say-it dissection of friendship-- and I loved every minute of it

I had too much to say on this juicy topic (of my 4 pgs of notes and this repurposed TH&HM poster board, I didn't get to but 25% of the material I prepped)--but I had to kick off with a caveat, which is that "while this talk will skew negative I am reverent of the institution of friendship." This was not about bashing friendship or diminishing its importance. I recommended Stegner's Crossing to Safety as a perfectly calibrated non-gushy ode to friendship.

You can see the main topics on my posterboard but some of the nittygritty things I dug into were:

• Jorydn Woods/Kylie

• Ashley Tisdale mom friend group PR war

• how we're encouraged to 'communicate' in romantic relationships but this messaging doesn't really carry over to friendships (which is maybe why most conflict resolution between friends is passive aggression)

• downgrading friendships

• the denial of existence of friend hierarchy-- until you see it on full display via wedding seating

• madonna whore complex re: friendship

  • we love either the image a pure/sacred friendship of perfect amenability (BFFs forever)

  • OR the toxic ugly friendship fallingouts -- when in reality the in-between Will&Grace style of friendship is the most common (sometimes toxic and co-dependent but also rooted in genuine love)

• "communication" doesn't solve everything - if someone is asking for "evidence" of why you want to break off the friendship and you're delineating their sins, it's probably too far gone at that point

• inertia friends

• how Paris Hilton and Kim K have THE most transactional friendship

• possessive friends (who want to outrank your other friends)

I took polls. By show of hands--

• who has been betrayed?

• who has actively broken up with a friend ("we are over")?

• who has had a TRIP damage a friendship?

• who has had a wedding damage a friendship?

• have you ever told someone they’re on probation?

I wish I had asked:

• who currently has a capital B Best Friend? (do we age out of this)

• why did BFF become BSF? genz please weigh in

The things I thought would be most controversial were actually not controversial at all-- 1) friendships are transactional and 2) that we all have tiered friend "castes". Most seemed to agree that this is, in fact, the reality and the negative connotation of the word "transactional" is where the stigma lies (I suggested "reciprocal" as a more accurate and less hackles-raising word). I theorized that our fear of being seen as "transactional" when breaking up with a friend ("this friendship no longer serves me so I'm jettisoning it!") leads to tolerating terrible behavior longer than one should. You want to be irreproachable when you tell the story of why you had to drop someone, so you need to have "proof", so you let them act out to a point where there's no choice but to walk away. If we didn't feel the need to justify leaving a friendship as much as we do, if we didn't fear the label "disloyal" so much, would it be easier to end friendships before they completely unravel?

The question I posed to the group was: Are we doing ourselves a disservice by pretending that friendship isn't transactional?

In the small discussion groups, my eavesdropping yielded the following tidbits (some related to the prompt, some not):

• relationships SHOULD be transactional

• do you call your friends with no warning? facetime?

• 20 person friend groups are IRL reality tv

• it's more socially acceptable for romantic relationships to end than for friendships to end

• but what is the definition of 'transactional'? what if the transaction is care? or kindness?

• tolerating someone in the group that you don't like for the sake of the group's cohesiveness

• is the transaction different in long-distance friendships? do you have to let them stay with you?

• how many warnings do you owe a friend before ending it?

• we don't question a high-status/low-status romantic pairing as much as we do a HS/LS friendship (social climber accusations)

• maybe we should do periodic check-ins ("how is this friendship going for you?") the way we do in our romantic relationships

• low-maintenance friendships are the ones that survive

• when does the transactional part cross the line to exploitative?

• Bad Texter essay

Thank you to everyone who attended. It was a great convo. I might need to do a Part 2 because we had so much more gas in the tank⛽️

Suggested friendship-related reading I shared before Salon:

• npc boyfriends reel

• the hidden cost of having UES mom friends reel

• Is It Rude to Ask Friends to Stay With Them? nyt

• Your friend has an evil job. Should you cut them off? dazed

• Please, Stop Telling Your Partner My Secrets VOGUE

• The Story of Caroline Calloway & Her Ghostwriter Natalie

• Carrie and the money situation with Charlotte reddit

• roi on making new friends

• Etiquette for Befriending a Friend’s Friend cazzie david for airmail

• 5 friendship fallacies

• telling your friends their art isn't good

• "i went to my best friend's wedding" tweet thread

• Both Sides of a (Friendship) Breakup the cut

Other media I have scarfed down like a greedy content-goblin:

• SKIMS advent calendar is so bad they are refunding BBC

• will books survive GQ

• The Real Reason We Hate MFAs the walrus

• The Anti-Cosmetic Surgery Essay Every Woman Should Read substack

• Jeremy O. Harris confronts Vanity Fair Global Editorial Director, Mark Guiducci

• Is Mike Wazowski Jewish or Polish?

• Is The Left Planless Because They Confuse Privilege with Power? substack

• We’re living through an explainer epidemic

• the creative con of the middle class jacobin