Have you ever been left stranded, floating in a raft out at sea, while your friend is jet setting off to boyfriend island?
I first heard the term “boyfriend island” on a podcast called Normal Gossip, which described friends who seem to drop off the face of the earth the moment they get into a relationship. I was immediately struck by how succinctly the experience was encapsulated.
On the surface, boyfriend island seems uniquely tailored to a straight relationship. It looks like a descriptor for a boyfriend-obsessed girlfriend. While the term definitely has undertones of the persistent societal pressure of women to center others (their partner, kids, etc) at the expense of themselves, boyfriend island knows no bounds. It can happen to anyone at any moment.
Ultimately, these friends are the subjects of The Last Thing I See Before My Homegirl Is Brutally Snatched From Me TikToks featuring Mike Wazowski with the curly f*ck boy hair or the drowned rat from Flushed Away. They are one of the closest people in your life, one moment, and the next, they suddenly disappear without a trace, and your usual hangout sessions turn into a space you scramble to fill with other things. The boyfriend island friend’s disappearance leaves a strange void behind, one that can feel unpredictably hurtful because it makes you question the strength of a friendship you had never previously doubted.
While boyfriend island can be extreme, such as a friend’s sudden and total disappearance from your life, it can also come in more subdued forms: Is your friend’s boyfriend always present at every single hangout? Does her relationship occupy a vast amount of space in your conversations? Is she willing to flake on your well-established plans at the last minute if an opportunity to hang out with him arises instead? Is she suddenly gentle parenting her boyfriend through every thought and emotion to the point where his emotions suddenly occupy more space in her life than her own? Do you feel the inability to articulate these feelings to her, fearing they will hurt her feelings if you say them aloud, or that maybe you are perhaps casting too harsh a judgment on the situation?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are you have been a victim of the boyfriend island friend. And she may have been an unknowing victim of boyfriend island herself.
My first boyfriend island Friend experience
Since it is not my first rodeo with a boyfriend island friend, let me tell you the lessons I have learned.
My first experience with boyfriend island was in high school, and it profoundly altered my perception of friendships. At the time, one of my closest friends became completely absorbed by her first dating experience and was seemingly sucked into the black hole of boyfriend island for a year.
At the time, I felt insecure that I had never dated anyone and had never had a man care about me in a way that held any actual depth. Thus, her experiences were not something we could bond over. It was clear she preferred her friends not befriend her boyfriend, keeping the two at arm’s length. This all left me feeling like our close friendship had not only been traded out for something better, but that I was a perpetual outsider to these dating experiences.
I tried to ‘fix’ the vast distance that had grown between us. I wondered whether I had been a poor friend or whether my own behavior had somehow caused a sudden deterioration in our friendship. I couldn’t understand how one person could take up so much of her time that our hangout sessions became a lower priority, or how such a strong friendship could suddenly become less important.
I attempted to reach out more, but it was clear that the distance would persist. I was struck by the fear that as we grew older, everyone else would disappear one by one into an abyss of romantic relationships, and I was suddenly saddened by the fear that friendships could fade into the background so quickly.
Boyfriend Island is a canon event.
I am not the only one who has experienced a Canon boyfriend island event. While writing this article, many people nodded along in agreement and described their boyfriend-island experiences. Others described having friends who almost exclusively discussed their partners, staging an intervention to tell their friend they would like to see them one-on-one again, or just being plain fed up with the fatigue caused by their friends’ relationships.
It is undeniable that being a friend of someone on boyfriend island can be sad, irritating, frustrating, and challenging. I heard one girl laugh at the memory of telling their friend the moment she got out of the relationship and escaped boyfriend island, how much she disliked her ex, only for her to get back together and relay it all to him.
Perhaps what makes this kind of friendship particularly difficult is one of the core characteristics of boyfriend island is those who are on it struggle to see how much it is affecting their friendships and other areas of their life such as academics, career, etc; they are oblivious to their own actions, choose to ignore the full extent of their sudden isolation, or brush off their distancing friendships as inconsequential.
Takeaways
At 21, in my last year of college, I can now safely say I have learned a lot from watching my friends navigate romantic relationships and from getting into one myself. I have witnessed my friends date, break up, stay single, hook up, and everything in between. By now, I have borne witness to more than one boyfriend island friend. In college, I have had friends who spend nearly every waking hour with their significant other, and others who have briefly fallen under the honeymoon spell before returning several weeks later.
I have watched my female friends in particular drag themselves through hell and back to appease their partners, carefully orienting their entire world around them and devoting eons of time to mending their boyfriends’ insecurities. I have felt irritated and frustrated at how romantic relationships have the unique capacity to transform people into alternate-reality versions of themselves, where their boyfriend can take over their entire day, month, or year.
On the flip side, I have also felt incredibly happy for friends who have found healthy and happy romantic relationships. Even for relationships that did not last or flickered out, I could see how much my friends learned from these experiences and how deeply their significant others enriched their lives.
In hindsight, I look back at my own first boyfriend island experience and understand it differently. When I initially encountered the boyfriend island friend, I let it build into a minor source of resentment, never fully acknowledging aloud the extent to which it hurt my feelings. However, I realize now that experiencing the boyfriend island friend offered me a pivotal moment of growth. The experience pushed me out of my comfort zone, forcing me to invest in a broader number of friendships, and has made me acutely conscious of how I treat my friends when I’m dating someone.
Similarly, the boyfriend island friend has helped me shape my own values. I have promised myself that my twenties will be my selfish years. I will never let my friendship, career, interests, or opportunities suffer at the expense of pedestalizing a romantic relationship. Furthermore, to me, the right person will always support you, push you to follow your dreams, spend time with your friends, and take advantage of everything that comes your way.
Since making this promise, I have always made an active effort to pour myself into every opportunity and person in my life. As a result, I have met some of the most amazing people and fostered incredible friendships that have enriched my life in unimaginable ways.
While I used to hold a lot of judgment toward the boyfriend island friend, I realized that the vast majority of my friends’ romantic relationships are not permanent, and that we will all undergo several transformations and evolutions as we progress through our twenties.
By the end of college, I had witnessed several people realize they themselves were the boyfriend island friend and watched them grow from the experience in their own way. Many leave their relationship with a newfound appreciation for how important friendships and platonic love truly are in their support system.
In a society that focuses so much on romantic love and has historically tied women’s literal monetary value to romantic relationships/marriage, it can be easy to lose sight of how valuable friendships, family, and especially self-love are in one’s life. Especially as a young woman.
As I have gotten older, I have accepted that, while to some boyfriend island is a permanent getaway, it is usually just a phase that many boyfriend island friends and victims alike will learn from. Going through the seasons of life together requires a lot of room for forgiveness, kindness, and self-reflection.
Similarly, friendships — particularly long-term ones that last from childhood to university and beyond — are constantly changing, undulating in closeness as the years pass. These friendships require perspective, knowing that as you both evolve, the nature of your friendship will likely evolve too.
However, these changes don’t mean that you are any less important to each other. In fact, in many ways, your childhood friends and the friends you made in your twenties will understand you in ways that the friends who come later in your life never will, because they have loved you through many versions of yourself.
So, for anyone currently stranded out at sea, remember that while your friend’s endless days on boyfriend island may seem never-ending, friendships and girlhood are forever.