I was busy thinking about boys… and is that so bad?
Every time we meet, my friends and I can never seem to stop talking about our experiences with boys. Once someone hits us with ‘spill the tea, sis’, it’s the cue for us to start yapping away for the next three hours – and we love it. Be it ghosting a fling or getting played by our Tinder match, we’ll overshare our stories down to the smallest details.
It’s not like we have nothing better to do in our lives; these are successful, intelligent women who excel in whatever they do. And yet, our conversations may sound superficial to some because it makes our lives seem to only revolve around boys. Some people might question why don’t we just focus on ourselves, instead of letting boys dominate our lives.
There’s actually a test that checks whether a conversation between two women can steer clear of a man completely. The Bechdel test went viral on TikTok recently as more people became aware of the representation of women especially in pop culture; it seems that women will always be presented as a sidekick to the main character, who is typically a male, and the narrative will just be dominated by him.
Upon hearing this, I became more sensitive about my conversations as I started to worry that my friendships might really lack substance, and that I may not know as much about my friends as I would like to. As someone who values quality time as my love language, it would be pretty ironic to realise that the time that I’ve been spending with my friends has not been that productive after all.
While I did try to go cold turkey with all the boy talk, it got really difficult at one point because all I wanted to do after every exciting boy encounter was to share with my friends. The dying need to tell them everything is derived from my unwavering trust in them, as I reached out to them for relatable experiences and helpful advice.
Sharing such intimate parts of our lives is how we build trust and develop bonds with one another. Whenever I share about my (traumatic) experience with boys, someone in my circle would definitely have gone through the same thing, and it gives me comfort that I’m not alone. Plus, it’s just inevitable that we would talk about boys when romantic encounters take up a significant portion of our lives.
Openly sharing about such intimate parts of our lives, allows me to be comfortable with my friends.. In fact, I find that opening up about romantic experiences is the signal that I’m ready to take the friendship to the next level. What might seem like mindless gossip to men is actually the key to forging tight friendships for some of us girls.
I’m grateful that I have a strong support system to fall back on whenever I’m stumped by life’s challenges; so even if our trust and bond is forged because of talking about boys, I wouldn’t trade my friendships for anything in the world.