Stop Firing Your Friends
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First comes the spark of affinity at the group hang: You loved the Ferrante novels too? Then come the bottomless brunches, if you don’t have kids, or playground dates, if you do. Together, you and your new friend weave text threads scheduling coffee and reassuring each other that you’re being normal and that those other people are being crazy. Periodically, the heart emoji interjects.
Eventually, though, comes a minor affront, a misunderstanding, a misalignment—then another, and another. They’re all small things, of course, but like, she always does this. And then, all too often, comes what is known in therapy circles as the “giant block of text.”
“Some of my female clients are getting these—you’ve probably experienced this—massive paragraphs of text about things that they’re doing wrong or perceived slights,” Shannon Barrett, a licensed clinical social worker in Germantown, Maryland, told me recently.
I experienced this. One
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