Why the hell is it so hard to make friends as an adult?
Maybe it’s because we’re already so set in our ways. We’ve got our go-to spots and our crazy work schedules and a serious lack of spare time. Maybe we’ve already outgrown so many other friends and we don’t have the time to take on anyone else’s bullshit. Maybe we’ve gone through so much drama that we’ve completely lost faith that anyone new can just be normal. Maybe we’ve realized how nutty people are and how hard it is to find a reliable person that we can actually count on. Or maybe it just seems impossible to think anyone could genuinely care about us without trying to get something out of us.
Finding new saltmates is a complicated task. You’re looking for someone who likes to bitch and gossip about the same things as you, but it’s hard enough to work around your busy adult schedule to squeeze in even one new happy hour. The older we get, the more we just want to be old hermit ladies who never leave the house and watch people out the window. That might be why we started our podcast. We can talk to and engage with millions of people every week, but actually be face-to-face with no one.
The truth is, you don’t need a million friends. Popularity is overrated, and adulthood isn’t high school. You don’t need everyone to vote for you to be student president or prom queen or most likely to succeed. If you have one friend that you can call if something gets truly messed up and that you can rely on to love you and support you through thick and thin, then you have more support than most people do.
But we can’t stress this enough: it’s extremely important to have friends outside your relationship. Everyone wants their lover to be their “best friend,” but you are also going to need someone to put you back together during a fight, a breakup, a stolen credit card, infidelity, or divorce, y’know? So don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
The fewer friends you have, the less you can fuck up a friendship. It’s actually harder to have a lot of friends and constantly be dragged in a million different directions. The older you get, the more life happens to you, and the less free time you have to hang out. If you’re too busy to see or text a friend for a month, you should be able to pick up from where you left off, whenever that may be. Friends are supposed to be your support system, to put you back together, and to be your unwavering rock. Friendship should never suck you emotionally dry, and it should never be too difficult. You should never have to make excuses for a friend, fight for a friend, or resent a friend.
Most important, friends are not like beach cover-ups. They are not “one size fits all” for all aspects of life. We have certain friends for different seasons and occasions in our lives, we have certain friends we turn to for specific problems, and we rely on certain friends in different ways.
The best kind of friends are childhood friends, the ones who have known you the longest. They can look at you and say, “That’s such a you thing.” They might know you better than you know yourself, because they’ve been watching you grow and evolve for a lifetime. They’ll love you no matter what, even if you live in different states, have grown apart, and only check in once every few months. This kind of friendship is a deep sisterhood. It’s a bond that can’t really be replicated, and you understand each other on the most basic human level.
Then there are your ride-or-die bitches. These are the friends who will answer your call at three o’clock in the morning. These are the friends who will pick you up at the airport. These are the friends who will help you move. And, most important, these are the friends who will call you out on your bullshit. They are the only friends you can accept the truth and criticism from. Your ride-or-dies can say, “I still love you, but here’s why you suck right now.” But they will also let you puke in their clutch in the back seat of an Uber. That’s how much they love you.
There are your work friends. They might know more details about your everyday life than your ride-or-die bitches, but you’ll never see them outside of work except during a happy hour. They would rather listen to you vent about your shitty boyfriend than do their actual job, so take advantage of this fun objective perspective. They’ll never meet anyone really significant in your life, so they’re kind of like free therapists.
And there are your party friends. These are the friends you want to get blackout drunk and forget about life with. They’re not reliable at all for any real-life shit, but they’re a damn good time. They’re probably more immature than you, but they know the fun bars and will always be great wingwomen for an eventful night. You can cry to them after a few tequila shots, but don’t expect them to ask how you’re doing on a Tuesday afternoon.
As you get older, your friends become more and more circumstantial. Friendships stop being about bracelets and matching tattoos, and more about…are we in the same place at the same time? Maybe you have a two-year-old and you meet someone who also has a two-year-old, and you need someone to bitch about mom life with while your kids eat Play-Doh. Maybe you spend a bunch of time with your husband’s best friend’s wife because they live two blocks away. Maybe at the gym you meet a new acquaintance who has the same days off as you and also loves a dry rosé. But don’t be fooled. Keep your friends in their respective lanes, and don’t try to turn your party friend into your ride-or-die. Doing that will always lead to disappointment and heartbreak.
At the end of the day, in order to hang on to a couple good friends, you have to be a good friend in return. The best way to be a good friend is to be sure you and the other person have similar expectations for a friendship. If you’re emotionally high maintenance and always need a nine out of ten from a friend, you can’t expect a chill independent gal who only requires a two out of ten to be on your level. Your neediness levels have to be equal, or one of you is going to be bummed out. But if you’re on the same page, communicate and understand each other, then your friendship will grow into a beautiful flower.
(Not) Sleeping with a Friend
I’ve been pen pals with a man for twenty years. This sounds like the plot of a romantic comedy in which a young Drew Barrymore would play me (obviously) and I would eventually end up giving up my “big-city life” to settle with this man at a lake cabin, where we would cozy up under blankets and he would wear turtleneck sweaters while he chopped wood for the fire. But no, it’s just three cheap notebooks, twenty years of writing, and thirty-plus years of friendship.
Besides my dad and my brother, he’s been the most constant man in my life. I’ve shared my deepest, darkest secrets and my biggest fears with him. We’ve shared clothes, a subway card, meals, and countless pots of tea. We’ve attended a Halloween party in a couples costume (Janey and Jeff from the ’80s dance movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun), and we’ve even shared a bed (we both love flannel sheets, even in the summer).
This is the part of the “my best friend is a guy” story where I get asked if we’ve slept together, kissed, were in love with each other once, or where my friends are convinced that he is somehow in love with me and has been waiting all this time for me to come around. The answers are: nope, never slept together, never kissed, never wanted to sleep with or kiss each other, and this guy was never waiting around for me to be in love with him. No one believes us, but this is 100 percent true.
My best guy friend and I have known each other since we were five or six years old. We were family friends, and his sister was in all my childhood dance classes. He also took dance at the studio (like a lot of kid brothers), and he ended up sticking with it into his professional years, with multiple comparisons to a young Fred Astaire. For the first thirteen years or so of our friendship, we sort of hovered around each other’s worlds. Once he got his driver’s license, he would drive me home from our classes, and we would listen to Tori Amos on full blast because we were “artists” and no one understood us. I would talk about boys I liked, and he would talk about girls he liked. He was the first person I ever told about eating only apples for weeks on end in preparation for a big ballet exam. He was the first person to tell me that my first serious boyfriend was a “bad guy.” We had this really special honesty with each other from the start. We never defined our friendship, and we always had other friends.
When we both launched into professional touring dance careers as adults, in a time without email, Facebook, or cell phones, he came up with the idea for our shared journal. Instead of writing letters and mailing them to each other, we would share a journal. We would write entries for a few months and then send it to the other person. Inside, we taped ticket stubs, photos, and stickers. It was like a scrapbook of our lives, just for the two of us.
The first entry ever was December 22, 2000—he was telling me that he had broken up with his girlfriend—and in my first entry back to him on February 2, 2001, I talked about how much weight I had gained in my new professional dance job. We both used a ton of quotes from the musical Rent.
2002: I met my future first husband, my friend almost moved to Toronto, and I was told to lose seven pounds in a week because I was too fat to be a dancer.
2003: We both moved to New York City, and I wrote some very angsty poetry called “The City Is Calling Me.” Insert eye roll.
2004: An entry in which I admitted I didn’t like being married (I had been married for four months at the time). My friend told me my marriage was hard because I was a dynamic person. He said to me, “You live hard. It’s not just something you do. It’s who you are.” Basically, marriage number one was doomed to fail, and we both knew it but neither of us was saying it. I became a Radio City Rockette, and my best friend wrote a beautiful note in the journal congratulating me. “I’m so proud of you for your passion and the beautiful way that you dive into life.” I felt seen in a way that no one else in my life understood me.
2005: There’s eating cheap pancakes at the Moonstruck Diner in Manhattan, days we both need hugs, and a love triangle with a girl he was nutty about and a girl who was safe and loved him back. Gavin DeGraw song lyrics from the CD I listened to on repeat and his response back in Damien Rice lyrics. I discovered my first wrinkles, and at the end of the year, life got so hard that I drank for two weeks straight.
2006 (VOLUME TWO): A WILD year. I dated a Christian folk musician with a studio apartment, and my friend wrote, “This guy is going to hurt you, Keltie” (and he did). There was more about me being broke, and I was deeply into glitter pens. I danced on the VMAs for the first time and wrote pages about how small all the celebrities were: Jessica Simpson, Fergie, Jack Black. I wrote about how my best guy friend came from Queens to help me move into my new Manhattan apartment and we ate Rice-A-Roni at 2:00 a.m. I had flown to Europe on a whim to make out with some other music guy (he wrote, “This seems like a questionable idea, Keltie”). We celebrated my best guy friend’s birthday and decided his mouth was crooked and that our favorite quote was “If at first you don’t succeed, see if the loser gets anything.” In June, he wrote a message that started with “Let me get this out of the way, I am shit-faced right now.” WILD.
2007: I found my first gray hair and plucked it out and taped it inside the journal. I used the quote “Nothing heals a broken heart like an ex with a stupid haircut.” I watched The Secret for the first time. There are many many entries from me trying to come to terms with the fact that I had a boyfriend at the time who would say things like “She’s not really my girlfriend” when I wasn’t around. My best guy friend would constantly call out this idiot, and I would know that he was right but still dig my heels in deeper anyway. Young love. There is a big letter I wrote to the guy after we broke up that I never sent, because I just had to get all my feelings out, but the only person I trusted to read it was my best guy friend. He was dating a redhead at the time, and his entries were mostly about that. There was my first time trying magic mushrooms, and I wrote some poetry.
2008: He lived in New York City, I was on tour, and we talked a lot about airplanes, airports, and James Blunt.
2009: When the relationship my best guy friend knew was bound to fail miserably actually failed, he flew out to be my date for the opening night of my big Las Vegas show. We wrote about that. I talked a lot about heartbreak. I promised to quit drinking Diet Coke.
2010: My best guy friend went to Japan, I started dating online using Match.com, and I moved to LA. I made a large and embarrassing post about my celebrity crush on Matt Nathanson, I promised to stop drinking Diet Coke (again), and he got his first ever set of “naughty pictures” from a lady friend. We got to hang together in NYC and we wrote about that. His sister almost died in a car wreck.
2011: My friend shared his idea that a woman isn’t a woman until she turns thirty (I now agree). His grandpa died. It was St. Patrick’s Day, so he wrote in green ink. I was depressed and without health care and wanted antidepressants. I wrote about wishing I didn’t hate myself so much.
2012: I was writing about getting over my need to make “impossible things possible,” and he was trying to convince himself he was in love with a girl who I knew wasn’t his forever person.
2013: My best guy friend was leaving NYC forever, and I flew to New York to spend one last epic week drinking tea, writing, and drinking beers in his apartment with him. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like I wouldn’t know how to function when I came to NYC if he wasn’t there. I held on to the journal for a long time during this year. I moved, got married, and got a new job. My next entry was on November 30, three days after his birthday, and the first time in my life I had forgotten it. I behaved really selfishly this year. At Christmas, my best guy friend and my husband took a guys’ trip to climb Mount Everest. I was slightly jealous that I had to share him, and also worried that my friend would tell my husband some of my secrets or things from my past that only he knows.
2014: My best guy friend signed up for online dating. I received my first entry about his eventual wife. He was introducing her to his family. I was excited because I only worked from 5:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (Ten hours was considered a short day.) I complained a lot about being tired. Our entries this year were six months apart.
2015: The first entry of the year started with my best guy friend saying, “Keltie, I am really worried about you” (I was spiraling), and then he bought a new house in our hometown.
2016: My best guy friend got engaged. I toured Africa. I ended the year by admitting that the better we become at being adults, the worse we become at journaling. I was writing at the time because I was the most hungover I had ever been in my entire life. He got married. I admitted that I tried to drive my car into a wall during a breakdown.
2017: I had to put my beloved dog Hobo down, and my best guy friend wrote me the most incredible journal entry about her and grief. I went to an adult rehab program to quit sugar, and I wrote admitting that I stole an apple on day five of the juice cleanse because I was so hungry. I wrote that I’m not ready to talk about my dog because I’m in denial that she’s gone. I ended 2017 by calling it the year of death. I buried thirteen people and one dog. I was so over 2017.
2018: I was in a terrible car accident and learning to write again, so my handwriting was terrible. My husband was also having a terrible year, and I wrote about not being sure we were gonna make it. I couldn’t stand him. My best guy friend had a baby girl and recounted every detail of her growth.
2019: There’s a series of entries about how busy we are, our responsibilities, and how excited we are to spend some time together again soon. I’m nostalgic for the days we used to get a tea and sit in Central Park for hours.
So, basically, we have written for twenty years about nothing and everything.
These journals are my most prized possessions. I recently wrote a will and, besides my diamonds and some money, they were the only thing I cared about. Hundreds of pages filled with mostly pointless musings on twenty- and thirty-something life in New York City and all the other places we’ve been. Lovers, sex, confusion, and regret. Strength, memories, song lyrics, and poems. Photos, backstage passes, ticket stubs, and subway cards. A hundred types of pen ink and a hundred different versions of myself. These journal entries show me that life is mostly pointless, but at the same time, life really only matters if you have people beside you to witness that you were alive at that time. After twenty years, the memories of the way things happened and what I was feeling at the time have faded into the past and become less important. Mostly they have become the stories I tell at dinner parties, the stories that inform who I am as a person now.
My parents knew me until I was a teen, and then I moved to New York. I’ve had a handful of loves in my life that have known me for spans of years. I’ve had friends at different stages. I’ve had work friends, dance friends, castmate friends, and internet friends. But having someone in your life who has witnessed it all, even the terrible and embarrassing parts that you wouldn’t dare tell anyone else, is really meaningful. When I see this friend, it’s like coming home in a way that couldn’t possibly exist with a lover or even a family member. We didn’t stay in touch because we had to, or because we had the same last name. We are each other’s chosen family. I have a deep love for this man, and I am in love with all of him, but he’s not my lover.
People have a hard time understanding how this could be. When we were young, it was like having an older brother to confide in. When we got older, it was like having a nonsexual backup boyfriend who actually treated me nicely, who was there to dry my tears when whatever asshole I was dating and sleeping with broke my heart. As an adult, he’s been a sounding board, a voice of reason, and a supporter. He’s the person who doesn’t care at all about anything I am accomplishing in my career, and who also doesn’t care about any material possessions. I don’t even really think he knows what I do for a living. It’s a friendship of the soul. When he told me my husband, Chris, was a good man, it was the only opinion that really mattered to me. When I met his now wife, I instantly knew that the twenty years of crushes and the handful of one-night stands were meaningless in the story of his life. He had found his forever.
For all these reasons, I know that girls and guys can be just friends. I know that it’s possible to have lifelong friends if you invest in them. I know that it’s meant the world to me to have my best guy friend at my back. And I know it’s important to keep friends around who knew you before you had it all figured out.
RIP, Girlfriend
People always say that you find out who your real friends are when life gets complicated…or when someone dies.
After my boyfriend passed away in 2014, I was definitely shown who my forever friends were and who it was time to let go of. Don’t get me wrong, no one majorly fucked up—not even the cast member who joked with me at my boyfriend’s memorial that he was only there for the free food. (Yes, that actually came out of someone’s mouth. But, hey, people are awkward as fuck around you after your boyfriend dies.) It’s not like Matt passed away and I expected everyone to handle it perfectly, because there’s no rule book out there stating the perfect things to say and ways to act around a grieving individual. Some things that may be comforting to one person may be extremely offensive to another. Believe me, I understood that my friends and family were navigating a minefield, so I tried to be understanding.
I realized that I wasn’t allowed to write off people who loved me during this time just because they couldn’t read my mind or gauge exactly what I needed, but their responses when they did (unintentionally) hurt me were when their true colors really showed.
Here’s a story of two of my closest friends and how I became even closer to one of them after the tragedy, while the other is now dead to me. Okay, kidding, that was harsh. But, in all seriousness, she had to go.
ELLEN
Ellen and I had been friends for about eight years. She was the friend who gave great advice and pep talks when I needed them. She was my biggest champion and cheerleader. It felt good to be friends with Ellen. Of course, Ellen had her flaws (as we all do), and sometimes she would get a little too self-righteous and judgy, but I just always aimed to be on her good side when those qualities presented themselves.
A couple weeks after Matt passed away, I started to get very overwhelmed with the constant check-ins from my friends and family. I knew all these people loved me and were just worried about me, so I was never annoyed or resentful, but I simply needed a break and didn’t want to feel obligated to respond instantly or feel guilty for not responding to everyone. My best friend, Kat, offered to send out a simple text to everyone and just ask that I be given a little time-out from the attention, and that I would reach out if I needed any of them and when I was ready.
About a week after that text was sent, I received an email from Ellen. It was addressed to me and a few other close friends. Ellen had gotten married four months earlier, and she decided to resend us the photos from her wedding because, as she stated in the email, “a few of us had asked her to send them again.” There was also some other bullshit in there about how she wanted to “relive such a magical weekend.”
So here I am, the sad, grieving, chain-smoking disaster of a human that I was at the time, being sent a gallery link of my dear friend’s happily ever after. I felt like I was being metaphorically punched in the gut by another shitty reminder of how I would never be so lucky to have such a “magical weekend” with Matt. But this reminder wasn’t the same as the Hanes commercial with the adorable couple rolling around in bed that DIRECTV didn’t know to shield me from during this difficult time. It was an email sent specifically to me, by someone who cared about me, which I had to open, and it caused me to feel the sinking pain that comes from the reminder that you’re alone and the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with is buried six feet underground.
I knew that Ellen had a tendency to be a little self-centered and a little too much of an exhibitionist at times, but I never thought it would equate to (what I felt was) such blatant insensitivity toward one of her best friends. I decided I needed to take a time-out from this friendship and that this cheery, self-obsessed newlywed was not who I needed to have in my orbit at the moment if I was going to survive the hardest experience of my life. I made the decision to take some time away from the friendship without wanting to get into it with someone who was so obviously tone-deaf.
Now, Ellen is the type of person who can’t really handle ever being “put on ice,” so I should have known that this approach wouldn’t go well, but I was stupidly optimistic. She came barreling back into my life a couple months later with a voicemail that basically demanded attention and an explanation for my sudden need for space. I emailed her this:
Ellen,
My intention with this email is simply to explain my actions in recent months. I don’t want to vilify anyone or cause any more pain than either of us have already suffered. But I have to be honest about what triggered my distance in our friendship. I can actually pinpoint one specific event, and everything sort of snowballed from there.
Back in September, I went to New York for work and stayed with Kat. While I was there, I had, for lack of a better word, a major meltdown. I was literally hanging by a thread. Kat noticed that, on top of everything else, I was getting very stressed out about returning everyone’s calls and texts. She explained to me that I needed to take care of myself and that she would let all my friends know that I was taking some much-needed time.
It wasn’t more than a week later that I opened up an email from you in which you were resending the link to your wedding photos to some friends and family. To be completely honest, opening that email was like a slap in the face. It not only made me question your forethought, but it felt incredibly insensitive. I’m sure you can understand how the photos were a glaring reminder of how I would never have that day with Matt, as I thought I would when I was sitting at your wedding.
I don’t wish unhappiness for you or anyone. I want all my friends to be happy. But I thought that my closest friends might use a little more discretion in the short months following such a tragedy. I never thought that any of your actions were malicious or done on purpose to hurt me, but even without meaning to, you did hurt me. In order to get through this chapter of my life, I am surrounding myself with people who are aware and willing to make sacrifices in order to avoid causing me any more pain.
And in order to salvage our friendship, I simply need time.
Becca
One would send this email and hope to hear something along the lines of “I’m so incredibly sorry! I never meant to hurt you, but I understand how I did, and I hope you can forgive me.”
Instead, I received a string of texts justifying her (very stupid) reasons for sending the wedding photos, saying how she couldn’t believe I would ever think she would do something to hurt me, and asserting how hurt she was that I didn’t come to her sooner to let her explain herself.
At the end of the day, I realized that I had a friend who couldn’t admit when she was wrong, and I just didn’t have the space for people like that anymore. Ellen lacked the ability to swallow her pride and simply say “I’m sorry.” Sometimes excuses aren’t appropriate after apologizing. And sometimes, to be a good friend, you can’t ask the person who’s hurting the most to take care of your feelings and emotions. Unfortunately, those have to take a backseat when the other person is dealing with insurmountable pain and loss.
SARAH
Sarah and I had been friends for about the same amount of time as Ellen and I had when Matt passed away. I actually met Matt through Sarah and her boyfriend at the time. The four of us had talked about taking a big European vacation together the summer I lost Matt. Before his death, we had all decided the trip would be too complicated, so they planned their travel and we planned ours. Both trips, though, were scheduled for about two weeks after he passed away.
After the funeral, I needed to get the hell out of LA, and I went to Atlanta to be with my family. So instead of heading off to Paris with the love of my life, I was going to Georgia to sit on my sister’s couch and try not to take pills and lie down. (Sorry for the darkness, but we get real in the LadyGang.)
I stayed off social media for a while, for obvious reasons, but I picked it back up again in Atlanta because the depth of a fashion blogger (or lack thereof) was just the escape I needed at the time from my own depressing existence.
One day, I was scrolling through my feed, hoping I could gawk at the obnoxiously skinny New York City blogger, when my friend Sarah’s photo popped up. It was a picture of her and her boyfriend on their beautiful, romantic European vacation. I was officially triggered. I’m not saying it was justified, but for whatever reason, the slew of photos that continued from their fabulous trip felt like hell for me.
After a number of these posts, I decided to send a text to her. I said something along the lines of “I know you would never ever want to hurt me, but seeing these pictures is breaking my heart. We were all supposed to be in Europe this week, and I can’t help but feel devastated by these pictures.” Whether or not I was entitled to these feelings (and, in hindsight, it doesn’t feel like I was), I still felt like I really needed to put them out there.
Her response? EXACTLY the one I needed. She was devastated that she had done something that hurt me, and she said she was so sorry and loved me very much.
What Sarah did wasn’t bad or wrong or even insensitive if you ask most people, and she probably had every right to defend herself like Ellen did. But she didn’t. Taking care of her friend who was in excruciating pain was more important in that moment than her pride or desperation to “be right.”
If I could go back in time, I would step up and tell Ellen as soon as she hurt me, like I did with Sarah. But I didn’t. I think it’s because, deep down, I knew she would require me to take care of her instead of the other way around. Maybe I was too harsh, and maybe Ellen deserved a second chance, but her reaction spoke volumes to me about the type of friend she was and would probably always be. When your friends show you who they are, pay attention. And when you’re down, surround yourself with those who will pick you up. I love you, Sarah.
It’s Never “Just Friends”
There is nothing that makes me wanna puke more than when people refer to their significant other as their ~*BeSt fRiEnD*~. WE GET IT, you actually like each other. I mean, I would fucking hope so. This sentiment always made me want to roll my eyes into another dimension, and then…something happened to me.
I’ll preface my story with the fact that my early twenties marked the very peak of my emotional instability. I was insanely insecure and extremely fragile, and I could crumble into nothingness at the drop of a hat. A stranger could look at me the wrong way, and I would burst into tears. I felt completely misunderstood, and the only place I felt comfortable was in my room pounding out brooding stream-of-consciousness writings on my vintage typewriter while drinking Johnnie Walker Black Label and listening to Mumford & Sons on vinyl. I know, I was SoOoO edgy and super deep and not a stereotypical wannabe hipster doofus at all.
Looking back, I laugh because I have always had such a solid group of girlfriends who are still my ride-or-dies to this day. But, for some reason, I kept looking for something more, something deeper, a connection that tugged at my heartstrings. Okay fine, I’ll admit it. I was totally masochistic and I yearned for something painful.
So, like everything else in my life, this story starts on the Warped Tour (which you are familiar with by now) in the summer of 2009. While lugging 150 pounds of merchandise into my pop-up tent in Bonner Springs, Kansas, on the first day of the tour, I met a guy named Jared, a stocky, strawberry-blond guitarist in a band called The Maine. Jared was wearing neon-green sunglasses, an ugly pink T-shirt with a flying pig on it, and a swoopy emo haircut that was actually almost a mullet. As embarrassing and unattractive as that sounds, he looked like a SNACK to me. Jared and I exchanged a short hello, and I continued on my way to work. We kept bumping into each other in the following days, and the short exchanges turned into longer conversations.
You’ve heard me talking about Warped Tour before, so you know the drill. Hundreds of people traveling the country on a punk-rock music tour together, working and partying 24-7 for two months straight. And since I was one of the only girls on the tour, the whole summer was constant ADD-boy-filled heaven for me. Even though there was an endless supply of band dudes for me to flirt with, Jared and I started slowly but surely gravitating toward each other. Neither of us were really doing anything on purpose. I would just…take the long path to my tent so that I could nonchalantly pass his tour bus. And Jared would just…coincidentally happen to walk by my tent twenty times a day. Our subtle efforts soon turned into pretty shameless and obvious acts. We were both trying to find any and all excuses to accidentally bump into each other.
And how could you blame me? Jared was the literal best. He was goofy and thoughtful and lighthearted and an all-around fun-time guy. He was super smart, quick-witted, and extremely talented. He was sensitive and had lots of deep feelings, and he wasn’t afraid to talk about them. He never took himself too seriously, and he was always a good sport when I poked fun at him. We always joked that he was “the blurry guy” because none of his band’s fans cared about him, and he was always standing in the back of their photos, out of focus. I always thought that was so funny and ironic because he was one of the most interesting people I had ever met.
And Jared just got me. It felt like he understood me immediately and completely. Without saying a word, I could just look him in the eyes and know that he could read exactly what was swirling around in this messy little head of mine. He listened to me bitch about work and gossip about friends and gush about music and cry about boys. He talked me through heartache and held me through anxiety attacks. He made me believe that all of my feelings were valid, no matter how dumb I felt about them. He valued my intelligence and trusted my opinions. He made me feel like the most important person in the world. On top of that, he just made me feel good. He was like my human Xanax. He was everything my lonely, frustrated little emo heart was yearning for.
But there was one little problem. Jared had a serious girlfriend. So, from the very beginning, we both knew our fun little relationship ended at friends only. I respected his situation, and there were enough lead singers to satisfy my make-out needs for the summer. No biggie. I was grateful for my new best bud. But no matter how hard we tried to pretend it didn’t exist, our connection was magnetic and undeniable to anyone who knew us.
We spent more time together in those two months than you would with a friend over the course of two years. We learned about each other on the most basic and complex levels. We stayed up countless nights talking about life and love and everything in between. We had the quickest banter and would fire comebacks at each other nonstop. We had comfortable silence, never awkward silence. We pushed and challenged each other, and we saw each other at our best and at our worst. We never ran out of things to talk about.
That was one of the best summers of my life. Not only because I had a blast getting drunk and traveling around the country with my friends for two months straight, but because it was the first time I felt like I’d met someone who truly understood the inner workings of my heart. As much as I wished that we could have had something more, I was just as happy to have a best buddy I could turn to for anything and everything. But, of course, nothing is ever that easy.
Even though we had this undeniable connection, Jared wasn’t the greatest friend to me over the years. When that summer ended, our friendship became extremely inconsistent, and he would jump in and out of my life without notice. Even though we traveled around the world together numerous times after the Warped Tour, he ultimately became flaky and unreliable—and understandably so. I wasn’t dumb. Even though we were “just friends,” there was an obvious and unquestionable bond between us that was not appropriate given his relationship status. Because of that, he was fighting his own internal battle about his feelings for me, and my physical presence in his life didn’t make things any easier.
As I grew older, I started to walk away from lukewarm friendships that didn’t serve me anymore, so I started ignoring his random “Hi, how are you?” texts, and I bailed on hanging out with him when he was in town. I didn’t have time to waste on fair-weather friends, no matter how much he “got me.” I deserved better.
After our friendship crumbled, I had hopes that I would find that kind of twin-flame connection again. I was only in my early twenties, after all, and I had so much life left to experience. All I had to do was get back out there and meet some more people. But the older I got, the more I realized how special my best buddy really was to me. But, alas, he was dead to me. Whatever. RIP Jared.
Fast-forward five years and, out of the blue, I got a text from my old bud Jared.
“A little birdy told me you were coming to Warped Tour this weekend, is that true?”
It wasn’t true at all. I had no plans to go to Warped Tour, and it turned out Jared had just made that up as an excuse to text me because his band was playing. Pretty sly, dude. Lucky for him, he wrote me during happy hour on a Friday afternoon. After a few rosés, going to the very last Warped Tour at thirty-one years old sounded like the best idea ever. But first, I had a very important question, so I texted him:
“So…are you single?”
He immediately responds, “Yup,” with that snarky winky-face emoji, and my response was, “OH BOY.” We both knew what that meant. Shit’s going down.
At this point, so many years had passed since I’d last seen him. Any resentment that I had for him bailing on our friendship had dissipated, and honestly, my memory of that magical bond had faded a lot, too. I was at a point in my life where I was finally fully healed from my last disastrous relationship, I truly loved the person I had grown into independently, and I was actually excited to be single and able to explore my options. So, what the hell? Your girl was ready to sing along to her favorite emo songs and smooch some middle-aged band dudes!!! I decided to go.
To backtrack a little bit, the night before Warped Tour, I went on a date with a guy named Shad. Yes, SHAD. S-H-A-D. Chad with an S. He was actually really cool—and way less douchey than you would think someone named Shad would be. We made out and drank wine and played cornhole, and I was hungover as balls the next morning but super excited for a nostalgic day with my good old bestie, Jared.
When I got to the venue and saw Jared for the first time, I was already a little bit tipsy from bottomless-brunch mimosas, and I was feeling especially sassy. The first thing I noticed was his terrible fuckboi haircut. You know the one. Buzzed pretty much to skin on the sides, and long and gelled back on top. Once I got past the strawberry-blond catastrophe on his head, I felt warm. Physically, because it was 105 degrees outside, but also emotionally, because I had really forgotten how good this person made me feel. We spent the day drinking Bud Lights and reminiscing about the glory days, and it was like no time had passed at all. We sang our hearts out to The Used, ate cheeseburgers from the after-party BBQ, and made out until 2:00 a.m.
I left that night drunk and happy about seeing my old friend, but I didn’t really think anything of it. To be honest, I spent the next day texting Shad. Over the next few months, though, Jared fought for me day after day. He spilled his guts and made it very clear that he would walk on broken glass to be with me. Because I had been burned and bamboozled so much in my last relationship, I was hesitant at first and skeptical to the millionth degree. But Jared was patient and understanding and persistent, and he was hell-bent on succeeding at the task of proving himself to me, no matter how long it took. We have moved slow and steady, and let me tell you that the tortoise really does win the damn race. He has finally won me over.
It has been ten years since I first met that floppy-red-haired, neon-sunglass-wearing goofball. In those ten years, we both had a ton of work to do independently to even put us in a place where we could be ready for a healthy, long-lasting relationship. In those ten years, I’ve become less of an emotional mess and more of a stable, secure, independent gal. And in those ten years, Jared has grown into a pretty fantastic man himself. The coolest part of my relationship with Jared now is that I know him to his very core. I’ve seen him as a dumb kid, I’ve watched him make a bajillion mistakes, and, thankfully, I’ve seen that he has learned and grown from each and every one of them. Through it all, I can really appreciate the wonderful person he truly is today.
Jared is my security blanket, my big teddy bear, my shoulder to cry on, and my warmth. He still knows exactly what I’m thinking, which is annoying because I can’t be mysterious AT ALL anymore. He still listens to me bitch and vent and gush and cry, but now he has the tools to actually support me. He watches The Bachelor with me (and doesn’t complain!), he rubs my feet, and he knows when to stop cuddling me so I can fall asleep. He still holds me through anxiety attacks, and he adores me and tells me every day that I am the most important person in the world. He is stable and reliable and consistent and true to his word. He won’t bail. He’ll never be the blurry guy to me. And we still never run out of things to talk about.
Who knows what the future holds for me and Jared, or for anyone really. All I know is that life comes at you fast. And damn it, sometimes you do end up with your ~*BeSt FriEnD*~. Maybe your guy really is right in front of you. You just need to give him ten years and a new haircut.