Don't Have Any Besties? Then Do This

“Be careful or you’ll end up in my novel.” These words, emblazoned on a T-shirt given to me by a high school friend, proved to be prophetic. In the six books I’ve written, I’ve appropriated aspects of my life — a recap of a meal in Barcelona, let’s say, or a pal’s pithy observation (“I decided I could either make more money or want less,” my buddy Bruce memorably said as he ditched Manhattan for Tucson.)

Small stuff.

In one novel, however, I reconstituted a whole hunk of raw reality. I speak of With Friends Like These: A Novel, a tale of warm connections gone awry among four women.

While I won’t disclose which slightly fictionalized brouhaha in the book mirrored my life, suffice it to say that the selfish b--ch — oops, the woman — who did me wrong is no longer a friend. In fact, given hindsight, I only mistook her for one, having learned the hard way that enjoying someone’s frequent company doesn’t necessarily mean you are kindred spirits.

The woman who shafted me was someone I ran with numerous times a week. I’d recently been laid off from a beloved job, felt crappy about it and admired her contagious energy and remarkable creativity. The contact high I got from hearing about her projects made me more optimistic.

But should I have shared information she could pass on to someone else and screw me? Hell, no. Sadly, I failed to notice that I was far lower on her friendship food chain than she was on mine.

“Women’s friendship is not a casual thing,” observes Sherry Amatenstein, a New York City psychotherapist. “Men are simpler creatures who tend to connect around sports and politics, but women don’t do surface. They see friendships as more primary than men do. We really talk. I’ve experienced betrayals from a female friend as a far deeper cut than those from men.”

Many factors influence why women are drawn to one another in the first place. She made you laugh. You share commonalities: Both of you have three daughters, one of whom is named Kate, and are the only redheads in Seattle from Nowhere, Kentucky.

I zeroed in on a mom during our kids’ second-grade visiting night in Manhattan, when I recognized her accent from Winnipeg, Manitoba, a city due north from my North Dakota hometown.  

Anita and I have now been chums for years. Perhaps the only surprise of friend acquisition is that we’re attracted to others who smell like us (and I’m not referring to a shared love of Flowerbomb). In a study published recently in Science Advances, researchers examining twosomes whose friendship clicked from the get-go found similarities in the individuals’ body odors.

After we’re beyond the first flash of attraction, however, how many relationships pass the long-term sniff test? That’s less obvious. As Einstein — or maybe my mother — famously declared, “It’s OK to make mistakes; just don’t keep making the same mistakes.” With this advice in mind, since I lived through the breach and with a little help from my friends, here’s one woman’s opinion on what to consider — and avoid — when committing to a bestie.