Often, the most toxic part of female friendship is the words left unspoken or, worse still, the words spoken behind your back. Never is this dynamic trickier than when it’s between three best friends.
In the new season of The White Lotus – a show that does subtext immaculately – three ‘long-term, not old’ friends take a long overdue holiday-cum-catch-up. Jaclyn is a famous actor footing the bill for their getaway, Laurie is a corporate lawyer and single mother, while Kate appears to be the one stuck in the middle, until she lets slip to her liberal friends that she’s cosied in with a circle of Trump supporters – she’s even married to one.
There is something chillingly familiar about their toxic dynamic – all ‘you look amazing’ and ‘I’m so proud of you’ until that person calls it a night and goes to bed. Then the white wine-fuelled pseudo-psychological analysis begins, feigned either as ‘concern’ or ‘with the best intentions’.
As pop culture testifies, maintaining a healthy dynamic as a friendship trio is no mean feat, especially if those relationships were formed during teenage years. Take Mean Girls, where high school queen bees Karen, Gretchen and Regina were labelled ‘mean, meaner, meanest’ respectively. They might have used the iconic ‘burn book’ to write their worst thoughts about other people from their school, but they also made hearty use of the wire house phone to talk badly about each other. Or ’90s trio Cher, Tai and Dionne in Clueless, who were only a threesome because Cher and Dionne were in search of a makeover project.
The trouble with a trio is that is that it naturally gives way for a lot of unhelpful formations: gold, silver, bronze, the odd one out, three’s a crowd, the ringleader, the third wheel.
‘When I was writing BBF? The Truth About Female Friendship, so many women told me they’d had negative experiences as part of a three-way friendship,’ says author Claire Cohen. ‘All friendships naturally ebb and flow, but in a trio it’s more obvious when two of the friends are going through a stage of greater closeness, which can make the third person feel left out.’
Is there any way to avoid the ‘toxic trio’ trap? ‘There has to be a commitment not to disparage the third friend when they’re not around,’ says female friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson. ‘Are you talking against them or about them? The two are different. To some degree we will all talk about friends who aren’t around. It’s normal to talk through experiences to process how you feel about a friend.’ But, if it gets too mean-spirited ‘that breeds insecurity and paranoia – the friendship trio becomes a place that lacks emotional safety’.
To an untrained eye, the three friends in The White Lotus seem like they hate each other. But the show’s creator Mike White is smarter than that. The tension comes from their need to feel solid in their positioning in the trio, to have their life choices validated by their oldest friends – something all three of them have in common. Instead of discussing their ‘concerns’ maturely with each other or severing friendships that no longer serve them, they opt for the worst alternative… with plenty of paranoia to show for it.
Of course, not all female friendships are marred by competition and behind-the back bitching; that’s a tired trope many of us won’t recognise in our supportive circles of women. But there’s something about the particular dynamic of three that can make it harder to maintain equal footing. We know, really, that we should discuss any concerns maturely with each other. But let’s be honest, occasionally we’ve all been guilty of going a little White Lotus.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).