A friend and i used to share everything – make-up, rollies, a deep appreciation of RuPaul’s Drag Race... and, when she found love, her despair at her boyfriend’s lack of interest in sex. He wasn’t up for it much – which wasn’t an issue, except she realised how much she liked and missed sex, and then we’d talk about it and weigh it all up and I’d advise her as best I could. But something changed around the time she got engaged to him, when we were in our early thirties.
I asked her how her sex life was and she replied, ‘Fine.’ In that way people say that is not so much fine as ‘fin-al’. I felt like she’d shut me down. I spent the rest of that day wondering if I’d overstepped some mark. But no, this was my close pal, she knew there was no judgement with me – didn’t she? Or was it more that she’d made a decision – the engagement – that created a portcullis of certainty, slamming down between her impending marriage and any doubt? She’d made her (quiet, unruffled) bed, and had to lie in it.
An interaction with another friend recently got me wondering again. Val was pregnant for the second time and I asked her how her partner was helping at nights – because during the first pregnancy – well, let’s say he had trouble adjusting. He had parties in their lounge when she was upstairs trying to sleep. Yes, I’d have killed him, too. But she’s a very understanding person. Anyway, I was wondering how his nocturnal antics were going this time round. But when I asked – a simple, ‘Is so-and-so behaving himself ?’ – Val skipped over the question like it was hot coals. ‘I’m not fixating on that,’ she said. Fixating! Like it was an intrusion on my part. Was it? I felt batted off, like a wasp. ‘And are you sleeping OK?’ I said, scrabbling for intimacy. At which point she talked for several minutes about her new pillow spray. It was a swerve from confidence to basic housekeeping. It was a politician’s answer: a diversion. I realised I was being fed a party line.
Are we scared of presenting as failures, even to friends?
On the way home I analysed the conversation. Was she just a tired pregnant woman who couldn’t be arsed going into it? Or had something more fundamental changed in our friendship? This was, after all, a friend I’d never held back with. We’d known each other since we were children. We knew each other’s deepest desires and most shameful failings. And yet here we were, papering over the cracks, and saying WELCOME TO MY BEAUTIFUL HOME in some fake mantra of successful womanhood. Was it the fact it was her second pregnancy that had made her close ranks? Who, or what, was she protecting?
It seems I’m not the only one to have these concerns. In a recent interview, Phoebe Waller-Bridge discussed the lockdown that ensues when people start pairing off and nobody wants to admit what’s going on inside their relationship. Drama in your love life doesn’t feel like failure when you’re young, she said. ‘The stakes are so low. But then you choose someone who is in some ways going to define your life, and is probably defining or moulding who you grow to be because you’re with him all the time. And you want the best.’
Is this the done thing, then, when we get into serious relationships? Do we prioritise a notion of ‘the best’ over honesty? Are we scared of presenting as failures, even to friends? Or is something else going on? ‘I think it’s that we start trusting ourselves to make decisions,’ my friend Sara says. ‘Also, our partners become our confidantes.’
This is something I can relate to. Val hadn’t liked it a few years prior to her first pregnancy, when she felt I was clamming up about my dating life. I was seeing several men after a big break-up (and I was having A BALL), but then decided to be with one exclusively – and Val was suspicious. ‘I don’t think you’re sure about him,’ she’d say, over and over, fishing for trouble. In a way she was right. I wasn’t sure about him. But I also knew that being sure about him would take time, and there was nothing to be gained from a conversation with Val about it, because – much as I loved her – I sniffed an agenda. She’d been single for seven years. We’d been long-time party buddies. Maybe she just didn’t like that I was in a couple? I didn’t feel as though I was settling, compromising, or sowing the seeds of self-deception. I wasn’t fobbing her off with pleasantries. When I saw her, I just wanted to drink too much rosé and have a laugh. I wasn’t craving angst, drama or gossip like I used to. I wanted real connection, not theatrical substitutes.
Maybe it’s not so much the end of sharing as the beginning of wisdom. That sounds good, doesn’t it?
Plus, everyone got so busy. I feel like I’ve become less scattergun with what I tell friends – not because I want to save face, but because I respect their time and headspace. Increased responsibilities make for less free time, and nobody wants to be their friend’s unpaid therapist. It’s not like 10 years ago, when we could spend six hours of any given day analysing the punctuation of a single text message. So I’m not pulling up the drawbridge to solely protect myself, but to preserve the friendship. These days,
I am careful to always thank my friends for their time, however they give it. Maybe the shutter comes down as a mark of respect as much as seclusion.
The other crucial factor is that we start to trust ourselves more. Doesn’t life become less dramatic as we get older because... we get better at it? So maybe it’s not so much the end of sharing as the beginning of wisdom. That sounds good, doesn’t it? I think we do start to truly soothe ourselves. We make better calls. As the brilliantly wise author and psychotherapist Philippa Perry says: ‘Maybe we each find our own way and make up our own rules, which will be justifications for how we naturally behave, or to put it another way, we concoct post-rationalisations as rules.’
So that, looking back, we only see what worked for us, in retrospect. Philippa adds, ‘I would not be drawn on the wisdom or foolishness of anyone’s “rules” without knowing their past, present and their wishes, hopes and dreams. We are usually only partially aware of the rules we live by.’
One thing is for sure: the thirties are a time of transition. Our identities often shift and resettle as much as they do in our teens because of the sudden rise in stakes where life decisions are concerned. It’s the decade in which we often get serious about how to spend our time and energy. And while we might not have to share everything with our friends, this phenomenon might indicate we have more faith in ourselves. I’d take that over analysing a text for six hours any day.
Emma Jane Unsworth’s new novel ‘Adults’ is published on 30 Jan (£12.99, Borough Press).
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