Why are we obsessed with talking about "fake friends" (and how do we find genuine female friendships?) -- Episode excerpt with friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson

If you meet a woman for the first time you guys are having a conversation, what is something that a new woman in your life could say or do that makes you feel like I could be friends with her. Like, if they're just genuine and nice, like I'll love them immediately. Like being real, you know, like authentic. If they have like a real personality and if they're fun but have you on the real cause a lot of people are fake. Picture this, you're having dinner with the friends, things are going well and suddenly the conversation shifts to talking about your former friends, your ex-besties and why those relationships dissolved. As you trade stories, you begin to notice a theme in what your friend is sharing with you. She's calling all of her former friends fake. She's explaining at the reason why those relationships dissolved is because they are fake. And while you have maybe had one or two situations that, you know, go back to a friend not being totally authentic, it's nothing compared to her mountain of disingenuous friends. And it's got you wondering, what's the deal? Is your friend just simply unlucky in the kind of women she's attracting? That is exactly the issue I want to explore on this week's episode of the Friend Forward Podcast. I'm noticing that it doesn't matter if I'm scrolling social media, talking to a disgruntled client, chatting with women on my travels and during the book tour, this issue of fakeness seems to come up. And first I want to be clear, this is not necessarily something that's exclusive to women. You also have men talking about fake friends, right? In fact, they're Spotify playlist dedicated to fake friends, like all the songs that are about fake friends. I don't necessarily know when you're jamming to that, right? You're like Siri, play my fake friends. I don't know. But why this fixation on identifying fakeness in other people? So let's anchor this conversation in two definitions. Let's look at the definition of the word genuine and the word fake. Create a shared understanding for our conversation today. Okay. When you look at the definition of the word genuine, it's defined as truly what something is said to be actual. When you look at the definition of the word fake, it says not genuine counterfeit. I want you to keep that top of mind because I want to share with you four theories that I have for why women are especially attuned to identifying fakeness in friends existing or new friends, whatever it is. I have four reasons as to why if you have other ideas or perspectives, please drop it in the chat so we can keep this conversation going. But I want to start with four things that I believe it to be a mix of. Okay. Here we go. The first reason I think that women really prioritize identifying fakeness in friends, new people that they're meeting is simply for safety reasons for safety reasons. Now I've mentioned this before, but women tend to integrate their friends into their lives to the degree of assembling men to the degree of a cousin. So we deeply involve and embed our friends into our lives. Well, if that's the case, we're trying to make sure from the very beginning that there wouldn't be a risk of letting the wrong thing inside of those intimate boundaries. So from the very beginning to ensure our safety to reduce risk of harm, we're trying to assess, is this person who she says to be into what degree will she cause me harm? So when we meet someone new and she's exhibiting kindness, we do find ourselves, at least some of us trying to determine, okay, is this genuine kindness and it's an extension of her character and her motivations or is she performing kindness? And she is pretending to be kind in order to advance some other goals that she has in mind. So when I was writing my book, fighting for our friendships, I had the honor, the privilege of interviewing Dr. Joyce Binninson, who's the one of the OGs when it comes to gender research and looking at the differences between the ways that men and women cooperate with one another. And she theorizes that the reason why women are so sensitive and highly attuned to certain social violations and risking things like that is because the woman has to be whole, right? Like if something happens to the man, whatever, but the woman who's carrying life, I'm being very loose with that, who's carrying life, like she is very important to the village, okay. So I have to be in her, according to her theory, I have to be a little tender and sensitive to harm. I have to be hyper aware because I need to be whole, right? And I had that thought when I was thinking of this because we have to make sure that the safety is there because we let women in and because there would be a great deal of harm that we would incur if we let in the wrong thing. That's three number one. Another reason that I think women might have like a heightened awareness or fixation on identifying fake friends is because women do pretend. Women do pretend a lot. That sounds bad, right? But we have heard all the things for research and the stories and you've had personal experiences where you have to pretend for your safety. And maybe it's not physically, although in some cases it is, but in order to not experience certain social consequences. So we pretend to be okay with the haircut because we don't want to look like we're being difficult. We smile and we're just kind of like, okay, yeah, because I don't want to look too angry at work. Like to some degree, we feel like we have to be on in order to survive or to not have social consequences. And so since I look at you as another woman and I know you're doing the thing that women do where we have to give this appearance of being cooperative and agreeable, right? We have to wonder if she's doing it with us. We're trying to suss out what's real or what's not. And we might be especially sensitive to it and on alert because we know that pretending is something that women often feel they need to do to survive and thrive in this world. Okay, if third reason why I think that we are on high alert for identifying fakeness early on in friendships is because of this growing commodification of community. Now I have written an article on this and put it on our blog so you can read it better. Pmail friendships dot com flash articles were sharing signs of authentic community, but what you often see happening is a lot of these brains, especially they're throwing out the word community where community here. This is a community. I have a whole other video coming on signs of authentic community, right? But because a lot of people are using that language in order to get something else from you. And it's not what I would define as an actual community. I think it puts us on guard, right? This person might be being kind. That's very friend adjacent behavior, right? She's being funny with us. She's saying like, oh yeah, girl, I got you. She's offering gestures of support. But because we know that people often do that to advance other objectives, right? She really wants to be in with me because she knows I have access to certain spaces that she wants access to or certain social groups she wants to be a part of or she thinks I can put her on in some way. Or whatever it is, since we're on high alert for people trying to pass off phoniness and counterfeit friendships for other objectives, because it's become normal to commodify friendship. Okay, but it doesn't reflect like true mutuality and goodwill for one another. That's not really what that is about. Then we have to be on high alert. Now the fourth reason might not go down as well. Let me just start by saying that. The fourth reason that I think that so many women are using that word to describe certain friendships is because they're misusing the word altogether. Remember the definition of fake means counterfeit. I think a lot of women are using the word fake for a catch all for times they're disappointed in friendship. I had certain expectations and my friend didn't meet them. She's fake. That is not the definition of fake. But since we see that word everywhere, that's what we reach for. And that's what we assign to a friend. She wasn't being fake. Let me give you some examples. I often see, you know, oh, she claims to be my friend, but she couldn't make it to my birthday dinner. Fake. Was she fake or did she have other obligations and you were really strict about having that dinner Tuesday at 8.30 at night? I'm just saying. Oh, she's so fake because when we were in a group, she needed a comment and it made me feel some kind of way. I think she was trying to humiliate me. What a fake friend. Was she fake? Meaning passing herself off as something else, misrepresenting herself. Or did she say something that she wasn't aware you had a sensitivity to? Or did you totally misinterpret that and you could have mediated this whole situation by simply asking her what she meant by that comment? We'll say, oh, you know, she didn't post about my business on social media. Oh, fake friend. Okay. Well, fake means I'm trying to pass off something fake is real. I'm not showing up the way that I claim to be. I'm misrepresenting myself. Is it possible that she's supporting her business in other ways and didn't know that this was a particular way that you like feeling supported? Now, could all three of those things be behaviors that are consistent with the friend who is fake? Absolutely not coming to your birthday dinner, making comments you don't understand. Not posting about your business. Sure. But is it also possible that all three of those situations are not necessarily representative of a friend who is pretending? Who's pretending to have certain motives, but is passing them off as sincere? That's fake. Fake is a person who is trying to pretend that there's something else, but they're not. And just because your expectations weren't met doesn't mean fake. Just because she disappointed you, just because she didn't show up in the way that you thought. Just because you wanted something more than what she could give doesn't make her fake. But hey, I get it. I think identifying thickness is always going to be something that's top of mind because there's actually research that I read about a year and a half ago. And it was all about the insults that women make to each other. And again, this is not oh, women are petty. We all make insults to one another. But when they specifically looked trying to understand the kinds of insults that women specifically get to one another, they notice that the number one attack we make on each other's personality is she's fake. It's like the ultimate accusation that we use. So it shows me that it must mean something that being genuine is something that we really hold to be a virtue. I mean, I think obviously like across genders, but especially for women. Now, the next question becomes, well, with all this information, how do I take that and position myself to attract genuine female friendships? I'm going to share with you three things I think you can do that will genuinely make a difference. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the friend forward podcast. Remember the full episode and analysis is always available exclusively on Patreon. We refer to it as office hours. So if you want to join us, we'd love to have you. You can visit better female friendships.com/podcast. We look forward to seeing you over there.