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FRIENDSHIP CHALLENGES

Dealing with friendship betrayal, geographic distance, and attraction

Ashlee and Rachel were best friends throughout high school.⁴ As Ashlee describes, “Rachel was brilliant, confident, blunt, and outgoing. She liked to mock people, but she could make me laugh like nobody else, and she loved the same things I did.” After graduation, they were parted by distance: Rachel went to Stanford, while Ashlee attended the University of Washington. Although they regularly texted and e-mailed, they grew apart. The following summer they were reunited, this time as a foursome: Rachel was dating Mike (a friend from high school), and Ashlee was dating Ahmed, a Lebanese transfer student. The four hung out regularly, waterskiing, going to movies, and partying.

One day, after Mike bought a new iPhone, he offered his old one to Ashlee. Arriving home, Ashlee found that her SIM card wasn’t compatible, so she started manually clearing Mike’s information. When she got to his text in-box, she was stunned to see this message from Rachel: “Ashlee and Ahmed are the perfect couple: stupid sorority slut and steroided camel jockey.” As Ashlee describes, “My heart just stopped. I literally sat there, shaking. I thought it was a joke, until I scrolled down and found hundreds of similar messages.” Text after text slammed Ashlee and mocked Ahmed’s ethnicity. Later that night, crying hysterically, Ashlee summoned the courage to text Rachel: “I cleared out Mike’s phone and found all your texts about me and Ahmed. You two are horrible. I want nothing to do with either of you.” Rachel immediately texted back, “How dare you read our messages! Those were private! Whatever Ashlee—I’m sorry you’re angry but Mike and I were just messing around. You’re completely overreacting.” In the aftermath, Ashlee returned Mike’s iPhone, and refused all contact with Rachel. Back at school that fall, Ashlee received an e-mail with the subject line, “please don’t delete.” The message read: “I don’t even know where to begin. I know I messed up, but I can’t lose you as a friend. We’ve been best friends forever, and I’d hate to lose you over something this dumb. I know I’m asking a lot of you to forgive me, but please think about it.” Ashlee deleted the message.

To this point, we’ve talked about friendships as involvements that provide us with abundant and important rewards. Although this is true, friendships also present us with a variety of intense interpersonal challenges. Three of the most common are friendship betrayal, geographic distance, and attraction.