I Just Don't Clique

I've always felt that groups were dangerous.

As an elementary school kid, I was certainly always a part of a "clique" of friends. These cliques were of the utmost importance because to be accepted meant that your existence was relevant. Donning the freshest (90's) names like "Sister Posse 2000," every pig-tailed, corn-rowed, balloon suit, British Knight wearing little girl wanted to join our crew. But we were brutally selective about who we let in. Carry a cuter lunch box, have longer hair, or get more attention from the teacher on a particular day...then your odds for acceptance, at least for some time period, were slim. And when the leaders of the vicious pack (with humility and shame, I hereby admit my role as one of those leaders) relinquished some of their vanity, other desperate little innocents earned their passage into our screwed up sorority of insecure, prepubescent brats.

Then I became a middle schooler. And that's where the story of my days as a cliquester ends. Retrospectively, I attribute my journey into "solodom" to many milestones - the sudden death of my Daddy, feeling nerdy because of my academic excellence, the craters and hills also known as the acne on my forehead, my pot belly and size 8 shoe as a 12 year old, second child syndrome...should I continue?

I didn't think so.

Was I maturing into my Virgo tendencies of shying away from crowds, or was I blessed with Divine wisdom beyond my scope of adolescent comprehension? I like to think a little of the former and a lot of the latter ;-) Whatever the case, I began looking at cliques of friends as battle grounds for inevitable destruction. For the most part, I was right.

The three things I dislike most about friend cliques are the inability to maintain privacy, disingenuousness amongst its members, and the sacrifice of individuality.

Let's be real - our human nature tells us to run our mouths by any means necessary. If something is told to us - especially in confidentiality - we feel it our civic duty to spread the word to others. In cliques, I find it extremely unbecoming that Friend 1 knows every detail about Friend 4 just because Friends 2 and 3 can't keep their mouths shut. If Friend 4 didn't directly inform Friend 1 of the matters, then Friend 4 prooobably didn't want Friend 1 in their business.

Then there's good ol' fashioned back stabbing. Back stabbing between friends happens within and outside of cliques, but somehow the cut seems much deeper when those IN your "circle" are working together against you. It defeats the purpose when your support group doubles as your group of harshest critics.

The biggest friend clique flaw is the omnipresent phenomenon of "group think." Losing your identity - your goals, morals, and standards - to satisfy the group's interests and agendas is a problem. Conforming rather than risk taking is cowardly. Stifling your potential to accommodate your friends' egos deprives you of your life's true purpose.

As little girls, the group got jealous if you had a better Barbie house; as adults, they're envious of your big brick house. The group think of grade school yesteryear is the same enabling group think of adulthood - an impediment causing full grown people to seek validation from barely qualified peers.

I recognize that some girls and women enjoy idealistic, "Sex And The City," "Waiting to Exhale" group friendships where like-minded counterparts uplift, praise, and genuinely support one another. Dating back to elementary and as recently as adulthood, that has yet to be my experience.

So I have fully graduated from feeling the need to be a part of a clique of friends.

I have some very dear, precious friends in my life. And while several of my friends loosely associate with one another, I value the privacy that I have with each of them on a personal level.

And if those friends ever feel compelled to share my secrets, at least they share them with people I don't have to see or talk to every day :-)