Recently, I came across an Instagram post that claimed you need to keep your “strict” friends closer. The post claims that “friendship with a strict friend can be defined by unfiltered honesty, and the acknowledgement that they will always keep it real.” The post cites examples from our favourite TV shows and movies, like Cristina Yang from Grey’s Anatomy and Tiana from the Princess and the Frog. The post had some valid points, but the comments section was flooded with conflicting views. Some people wanted to highlight how often they’ve been hurt by mean words under the guise of being “strict”. Some people felt seen, because they identify as “strict” friends. Some people took this as the opportunity to appreciate their strict friends, tagging them and saying thank you. And yet, some people disagreed with this concept entirely.

If I had come across this post two years ago, I would have felt strangely validated and seen. I would have nodded along as I swiped through this carousel, feeling affirmed by simply being compared to Cristina Yang. But the version of me that saw this carousel a few weeks ago, the version of me that has spent the transition from her teenage years to her twenties grappling with how to navigate adult friendships where people are in such different phases, trying to make new friends in a new city while holding on to the people who held my hand through puberty and high school, that version wasn’t really amused at this post. Because as a retired “strict” friend, I have come to the realization that no one — especially not adults — needs a strict friend. That it doesn’t serve anyone truly. Not the strict friend, or the other party in this friendship. So if you’ll walk with me for the next few minutes, I’ll try to persuade you to lay down that title, or free your friend from the expectation to hold on to this title.

I think a strict friend is someone with high standards and expectations of life. Typically, they are Type A people — organized, goal-oriented. Perhaps severely ambitious. They are action people, they get things done. They’re direct communicators, and a real mark of a strict friend is that they are opinionated. They have strong opinions on what is right and wrong, who is a good person, and who is not. What is acceptable, or what isn’t. These traits by themselves, do not make a person better or worse than the next person. So if this sounds like you, I’m not vilifying you. It’s okay to be a strict person. To live by a set of rules and regulations and standards that you hold so tightly. It doesn’t make you crazy or weird, just normal. The crossover from being a strict person to being a strict friend occurs when you hold the people you care about by those exact same standards. That… doesn’t work.

So let me guess. Your friends come to you for advice about the tough things. When they need someone to give it to them straight, you can be counted on. They know that there are certain jokes they can’t crack with you, and for the most part they respect that. They know that sometimes you’ll say the thing that hurts their feelings in order to get them to face the facts. They don’t always take your advice, but they appreciate that if they are in a tough spot, you can and you will, move hell and high water to make sure they get out of it. You’re a good man in the storm, and everyone needs one of those in their corner.

But if this sounds like you, how does that make you feel? Be honest. Sometimes it feels good. The unique selling-point for being the strict friend is that you feel needed. Every time a friend breaks down in your DMs and asks you “what do I do?”, you do not relish in their emotional upheaval, but you relish in the fact that it is you, out of every single person they know, that they have chosen to pour their distress in front of. You are secretly pleased that they think you will know best. And so you lean into it. You craft breakup texts for the girl who has stayed with her stupid boyfriend for too many years. You show up to their place and help her move her things out while he’s away. You become the plug, you recommend a bank for the friend who needs to get his savings in check, you dip into your network and connect a friend with a therapist. You recommend the things that work for you to your other friends. When everyone is tiptoeing around the friend who is clearly struggling with an addiction, you say the hard thing. You do, and do, and do. And at every step of the way you feel like a saviour, it is the wind beneath your wings, propelling you to be stricter.

And then you offer up solutions when people only called you to rant. You become a broken record. You say the hard thing again and again till your friend hardens towards you. Till the calls stop coming through. And then what once felt good, what was cementing your place in their lives begins to feel like a burden. You look at their Snapchat stories and wonder why you’re never invited to their karaoke nights but you’re the person they call at midnight when things are falling apart. You start to question yourself; what is it about you that makes you only useful when things are going wrong? Why are you never called with good news? You begin to resent them, because even a good man in a storm needs someone to stand in the sun with them sometimes.

And before you blame the friend, for letting you do so much emotional labour without always giving you your flowers, perhaps consider all the times when it just felt good. Yes, you were strict because you felt that was what your friend needed, because you thought it would help. But subconsciously, didn’t it feel so good to be needed? And so when you are fatigued, when the situation is no longer making you feel good, I wonder. Who set that system up?

You did. You both did.

Maybe no one would ever make the mistake of calling you the strict friend. But you have one. You don’t know how they manage to do it, but they always seem on top of things. They push you to be better. They think you are capable of things you wouldn’t ordinarily think of. They hit you with that “tough love”. They say the thing that makes your chest burn, the thing that you have to sit with a while to see past the offence to the sense they’re making. They always know what to do. And so you lean on them. You know that even if the whole world is fanfooling you, they will tell you the truth. You call them in the middle of the work day for a favour. You let them connect you to a job opportunity and pull strings when you were too distracted to meet the deadline. You ask them, again and again, “what do you think I should do?”.

And then you get tired of the fixing and the prodding and the challenging. You crave simplicity, the company of someone who can sit in the mess without wanting to clean up after you. And yet they never keep quiet. The strict friend offers up opinions when they are not asked for. They offer solutions when you didn’t even think there was a problem. So you stop texting them the moment something goes wrong. You don’t want the solution and you don’t want to hear “I told you so”. You go out, perhaps to karaoke. The friends you’re hanging out with now, of course, they have their own issues. But there is something comforting in someone letting you see they’re a mess too. It’s an escape from the strict friend, a sweet reprieve. Because the strict friend is exhausting.

But before you blame your strict friend, for being so overbearing, consider all the times when it felt good. When it felt refreshing to hear the truth without filters. Didn’t it feel good to know there was someone there to do the heavy lifting? Someone smart to fall back on? And so now, when you are irritated, when you want to get their voice out of your head. I wonder, who set that system up?

You did. You both did.

Relationships and friendships are a type of dance, a waltz. One person leads and the other follows. One takes a step back, the other forward. Otherwise you would just step on each other’s toes all the time. Friendships are a type of play, a theatric performance where we create and design roles for ourselves and each other. Our personalities, our backgrounds and dispositions affect what kind of roles we naturally fall into. And the “strict” friend dynamic is just one of those roles that certain people fall into easier than others.

But nobody needs a strict friend, because too often it pushes friendships into a leader and follower position. Or, even worse, a parent and a child dynamic. Ask any parent you know, they love those kids to bits, but if there was any way they could have a long vacation from them, they’d sign up. Kids are exhausting. The strict friend is oftentimes the parentified friend, even in their own homes. They’re used to carrying others’ burdens. They’re used to telling people what to do.

The thing about adult friendships is, your friends just got out from under mummy and daddy’s thumb. They’re not looking for new parents. That feeling sours quickly. The other friend in this dynamic may enjoy having things done for them, or being babied at a point, but they do not want to be treated like a child. They may lean on the strict friend too often, in a way that usually lets them escape accountability or the real weight of taking responsibility for their decisions. If you run to one person to solve your problems, you’re stunting your own growth. And when you’ve both created a friendship dynamic where one is the fixer and the other the fixee, you deprive each other of the true mutual vulnerability that comes from adult friendships.

Share

If you’re strict, be strict. Be strict with yourself. Hold yourself to impossibly high standards and keep pushing yourself to do all the hard things you want. Be cuttingly honest, hold up a mirror to yourself and speak to yourself that way. It may not make sense to everyone, but this is a very real way that people are wired. And it’s okay to be yourself in friendships, but we have to understand that you’re dealing with a totally different person who can never be wired the same way you are. Nor should you want them to be. Your friends are not clay to be moulded the way you think is best, neither are they children you need to raise. Hold space for people, but do not be their crutch.

And if you’re not strict, don’t be. But don’t make it someone else’s problem. Don’t only go to your friend with problems, share the good with them too so they don’t see you as a project that needs working on. Ask for advice when you really intend on taking it, and if you just need to vent, be upfront about it. And, you know what may truly change your friendship dynamic? Ask your “strict” friend what they need help with. What are they struggling with? Because the truth is, they struggle too. They’re just not used to letting others see that side of them.

At the end of the day, in this dance of friendship, one person takes a step back, and the other takes a step forward. But if it continues that way forever, you’ll dance straight into a brick wall. But if the roles change, if you alternate, you can keep dancing on forever. The true mark of love is not just offering help, but letting yourself be helped too. It takes courage to not only ask for help, but to be of help. Friendships are wonderful, and sometimes weighty things. You know that saying “it takes two to tango”? We must all accept that we are participating in creating our friendship dynamics, whether actively or passively. We must figure out a dance routine that may look awkward or crazy to onlookers, but feels fun and real to those on the dance floor.

thank you for reading! I love spending hours thinking about friendship and relationship dynamics and then writing about it. this essay took a few weeks to brew in my mind and then it all came pouring out on a Friday morning. and when I sat back to read this, I realized I wrote my first novel about a very strict friend and the people who love them (I hope you get to meet my characters soon). if this resonates, let me know YOUR thoughts in the comments. be kind to yourself and your friends, okay? catch you later ;)

sincerely,

a girl with friends who call her Mummy 🤣🤷🏽‍♀️

That being said, I don’t think I’m so much of an obnoxious literary snob that I do not enjoy BookTok, the section of TikTok that recommends, comments on, reviews and essentially is all things books. Even within BookTok there are sub-sections, and so I find what works for me (women of colour who predominantly read literary fiction). But the way that BookTok works is that these days, you don’t just happen upon a book anymore. (Well, I still do when I go thrifting for books.) You hear about it online. Some books become cultural sensations, some get so much buzz that they seem to fly off the shelves and straight into producers’ laps, and boom, there’s a movie adaptation happening even before we’ve finished reading the book. Most bookstore owners will tell you that people usually walk in with a predetermined list of books they’re shopping for rather than pausing to browse the titles on the shelves. And who predetermined the book they’re on the hunt for? Social media.

I use books as the primary example because I am an avid reader and create/consume content about books myself, but substitute books for whatever your pleasure is — clothes, perfumes, food. Even hobbies or activities. The nature of the game in 2026 is such that your online consumption drives your offline purchasing and experiences. You try the new Chinese food restaurant not because you stumbled upon it, or a friend recommended it, but because the TikTok of their launch went viral. You obsess over a particular shoe because you’ve seen enough influencers wear it that you are convinced it will complete your outfit.

But this isn’t singular to our generation. Mimetic desire has driven the human experience since the very beginning. Mimetic desire is the psychological concept that we don’t desire things on our own; instead, we adopt our desires from others. Coined by French philosopher René Girard, it suggests our wants are imitative—we want something because a model or role model also wants it. We want something because we want to be associated with the kind of human being or lifestyle who has this thing.

I agree with Girard’s point of view, but I find mimetic desire to be morally neutral. There is nothing wrong with imitating desire, it’s human nature. If you’ve spent enough time around parents, they’ll tell you that children do what you do, they don’t do what you say. From the moment we’re born, we learn to walk, to speak, by imitating others. We have our own unique personalities, but even that is shaped by the upbringing that we were exposed to. Therefore it would be ridiculous to think that the things we desire in life are unique to us. It would be ridiculous to assume that the passion or desire for one particular thing comes straight from our imagination. Like the philosopher said in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.

Mimetic desire is the theory that has underpinned a lot of marketing and advertisement over the years, but I believe we are crossing the line from human nature to something more sinister. We are losing the very thing that makes us human — cognition, being sentient — by buying into a rat race when we lose our ability to critically question our desires and our own thoughts. When every human being starts touting the same opinions, having the same hobbies, desiring the same things, we have to raise our eyebrows and ask, “where the heck did our personalities and personal opinions go?”

I partly blame this hegemony on the rise of the word “aesthetic”. It’s not enough to like or desire a thing — you need to purchase a specific list of items, act in a certain prescribed way, so you can identify with the group of people who like the thing as well. Clean girl aesthetic (slick back ponytail, gold jewelry only, no makeup makeup, ballet flats). Reader aesthetic (expensive bookmark, tote bag that touts your reader personality, shelves of the most viral books). It goes on and on, and if you’re not careful, you become an archetype without considering for a moment that your thoughts, your likes, may differ from this archetype.

If everyone is thinking for you, and prescribing what and who you should be, if your nightly doomscroll is pushing opinions into your head — on politics, on books, on celebrities — that you subconsciously imbibe as your own and regurgitate to others without sitting to critique, how do you break out of this? How do you think for yourself?

I’m glad you asked. The first point; I’ve already made. Understand that on some level, we will always imitate what we have seen before us. Think about a hobby or passion you care deeply about. Do you genuinely believe that you invented that? Do you think you came up with that desire all by yourself without some sort of inspiration from somewhere else (however big or small, direct or indirect)? For me, it is writing. I started writing at age six. Of course, I did not invent the art of writing. While I’m sharing this essay with you, my primary focus for the past year has been writing literary fiction. I am conscious enough to know that while my book will be its own thing, because it came from me and only me, if you took a microscope to my work, I’d like to believe that you can see the influence of the writers I have studied and adored.

When we are conscious that everything we see influences us, we ought to be more careful about what we spend our time pondering on. I’m not going to tell you to delete social media (frankly, I think it’s a pointless approach to the real problems our generation faces), but curate curate curate. It starts with who you want to be. Your following list, your algorithm should reflect that. It should just as easily reflect who you do not want to be. And even still, there is a danger in that kind of aspirational scroll loop, which is why you have to limit your time watching other people live their lives, and spend more time living yours. You could be consuming the most well-thought out, intentional, helpful, motivational content, and it would still be harmful to you if all you do is consume and consume. You’re a cup that never gets full. Idea after idea. Advice after advice. You should aim to create more than you consume.

The boundaries and curation you apply to your online or digital life also run the risk of creating an echo chamber where there is no growth. Where you keep hearing people who agree with you, and nothing ever challenges you. You will not be equipped for the real world. I’m circling back to books and BookTok here: recently, I read Yesteryear and Strangers. If you’re in the reading community you’ll recognize these as viral books, and somewhat controversial. Yesteryear is a work of fiction that follows the life of a “trad-wife” influencer who wakes up in the 1800s and has to really live the life of the aesthetic she’s been flaunting. Strangers is a nonfictional memoir of a wealthy career woman who becomes a stay-at-home mother. It is her account of her divorce from her cheating husband, documenting his attempts to financially mistreat her, and the financial decisions she made in the name of love. Now, as a card-carrying member of the intellectual feminists club, you can understand why these books struck my fancy. The discourse was everywhere, everyone had hot takes. And I had to ask myself, with so many books out there that I want to read, do I really care to take the time to read these? The answer was yes. I’m curious about female independence, and these are genres I like to read already. So I got the books, and then I didn’t consume any more reviews or thoughts about the book before reading it.

In order to think for yourself, you must create the space and the time. Silence is necessary to hear your own voice. When your algorithm recommends something to you, whether it’s a book, or a new dress, or a point of view on race while watching the World Cup, learn to shut it off. To sit with your thoughts. We’ve all been there when we like one TikTok after a random search and it seems like the algorithm floods you with 20 more. These apps are designed to keep you going in circles, feeding your desire until you think it originated from you, when all along it originated from someone else, behind a screen. So, take a beat. Sit with it for a moment.

So, I read the controversial books. Devoured both of them in less than 24hours each. And wrote my personal review in my reading log. I sat with my thoughts long enough to know that they were largely mine. And because I was still curious, afterwards, I went back online and allowed myself to check out other people’s reviews and thoughts. Some people agreed with my opinions, some were so wildly different I wondered if we’d read the same books, and some raised valid points that challenged my own initial thoughts and made me re-think things. Do not consistently feed your brain the opinions of others before giving it a chance to think for itself.

In the end, I experienced these books, and in this case, the books represent an experience of a viral moment or trend in the subculture that I enjoy, and I walked away with my own thoughts. I could have easily watched TikToks reviewing the books and nodded in agreement to what sounded good, and then recommended it to someone else, or used it in conversation. A lot of us do this, and that’s how we have a whole lot of people saying things they have no idea about. Because they’ve spent so much time consuming other ideas that it almost feels like it came right from their minds. It did not.

I charge you to not let your personality be defined by a single aesthetic. To recognize that you are distinct and unique but that you are also human, and therefore you can be influenced. I ask that you make it more difficult for yourself to be influenced. That you have standards and barriers as to what information reaches you. I urge you to spend more time in your own mind than you do consuming soundbites of other people’s thoughts. I urge you to question everything. You have a brain, use it.

wow, I haven’t written on Substack in what feels like forever (I’ve been buried in writing my novel), but it feels good to be back. I’ve spent so much time thinking about what shapes what we think about, and this essay was born out of that reflection. I think there’s an even larger conversation to be had, especially about how generative AI affects our ability to think for ourselves. I’m going to do some more thinking and researching, but until then, I would love to hear YOUR thoughts. thank you for reading :)

I’ve always wanted a surprise party, but I’m too much of a control freak to believe it’s actually possible to trick me into one. Yet here I am, surrounded by familiar faces of the people I love the most in this world. At some point in between the gifts, food, and toasts, I look around at these people, and an odd thought pops into my mind - I’ve fought with just about everyone at this table before.

One of the most important things to me is having a community. A village, as they call it. And you know what they say about villages, you have to be a villager to have a village. You have to take active part in building the community you desire. And community, I believe, is built on a number of things - fun, love, trust, support. Community is built as much on similarities as it is on differences. It’s built as much on understanding as it is on conflict.

I constantly have conversations with people trying to figure out adult friendships. We’re all trying to figure it out. How do we make the time? How do we keep up with each other when life changes so differently for people in their 20s? I don’t have the answers, but if I could point to one of the building blocks for friendship, I’d say it’s conflict. It’s knowing when to fight, what’s worth fighting about, and how to fight well.

Society as a whole is worse off when we decide to forgo thinking for ourselves, and simply go along with what one person decides. Conformity is a killer of individuality. Friendships are weakened when we hide our differences, shoving them beneath the surface so we can perform this pretence of perfectly aligned and identical personalities. “Twin, where have you been?”. There’s a name for a group of people who don’t allow outside thoughts, just exist in one person’s absurd understanding of what is right and wrong - it’s called a cult. And the trademark of cults is that they don’t push people to grow. They shrivel up individuality till everyone is a bland mirror image of everyone else.

Your friendships will cause you to compromise - it can’t always be my way or the high way - but compromise doesn’t drive growth if there are no challenges. If the thing you desire is community, then you can’t surround yourself with yes men. There has to be someone in your circle who can challenge you. You have to be able to challenge them right back.

I don’t go around challenging everyone in my life. I don’t even bother to compromise with a lot of people. Sometimes I just let people have their way. I’ve realized that the people I don’t argue with are the people I don’t care to be that close to. Then, it doesn’t really matter if you know my preferences, or if we solve a particular problem, the emotional cost of the misunderstanding is minimal. This might seem counter-intuitive, but you only fight with those you love. If you’ve ever done the emotional labour of conflict, you know that it takes effort. And effort is reserved only for those we love, those we want to keep.

In Avengers Endgame, Steve Rogers is teary-eyed at the funeral of Tony Stark (greatest superhero who ever lived, by the way) and that is after the events of Avengers Civil War, when they nearly killed each other. Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang of Grey’s Anatomy brought the phrase “my person” into pop culture. They’re each other’s person, even after Cristina snaps at Meredith that she’s not a great surgeon anymore - she’s gone soft after having kids and getting married. In the TV show Friends, best friends Joey and Chandler argue in every other episode - over tacky jewelry, cheating girlfriends and supporting each other’s careers. And yet these popular depictions of friendships warm our hearts. We want what they have.

So I’ve made my case for fighting. And while I’m no communication expert, I’d like to take a stab at what I think it means to fight well, or to fight fair:

• Attack the problem instead of the personality.

  If you’re going to make it out of conflict with your friendship intact, your goal should be to solve a specific problem, not hurl insults and accusations at your friend. If the issue is certain jokes they crack that cross a line, discuss that. Don’t make it a discussion of all your friend’s perceived character flaws. Statements like “you always” or “you never” are generalizations that usually put people on the defensive (I learnt this valuable lesson in therapy). Try to clear the air - stating your case and demonstrating how that action made you feel.

• Objectively count the cost of the disagreement

  A question I ask myself often as it relates to my friendships and my relationship, is “is this really the thing that breaks us?” In view of the years we’ve spent together, the ways in which we have supported each other, a disagreement over which restaurant is more convenient to meet up for brunch is not the thing that is going to end our friendship. That would be ridiculous. When I put that in perspective, it incentivizes me to have the hard conversation or do whatever is necessary to make sure we come out of the conflict without doing irreparable harm. Some things are objectively bigger deals than others. Some arguments last for a brief phone call, some span the length of a week. But the focus, at least for me, is always that this brief moment of awkwardness and tension is necessary to get across to the other side, where we can continue showing up for each other.

• Remember their lore - don’t throw it back in their faces.

  This is one of the great things about growing up together - you know your friends’ backstory. It’s a little more challenging to do in adult friendships, but it has to be done if the friendship is going to get real and serious. If you’ve spent enough time opening up to your friends and hearing them out, you’ll know how their relationship with their mother affects how they see women. They’ll know why being called “silly” triggers you more than it does the regular person. In the heated moments, even though it’s hard, the friendships that survive conflict try to remember the backstory. This isn’t to excuse people’s bad behaviour, but to put actions into perspective. If you can do that, and refrain from digging your claws into those touchy areas as a way to deepen the hurt, your conflict will be more survivable. There’s almost nothing worse than opening up to someone about your insecurities and having those same insecurities tossed back in your face at your lowest moment. Don’t be that person. Love and trust are deepened when you fight with someone who knows your lore, who knows where to kick you so it hurts, but chooses not to.

• Don’t keep a record of wrongs - don’t let resentment pile up

  Some people are more averse to conflict, they’ll avoid a quarrel like their lives depend on it. Everyone has that one friend. (And if you can’t think of anyone, chances are, it’s you). Other people (like me) have “that dawg” in them. We’re ready to psychoanalyze and disagree and talk out our issues whenever necessary. The truth is, I don’t think avoiding confrontation is a personality trait - the way some people are introverted and others are extroverted. I think being able to handle conflict, and even initiate it, is a fundamental skill we must acquire if we are to have any meaningful adult relationships. No one likes conflict, but the consequences of harbouring ill-feelings are dire - resentment piles up until one day you explode. And in those instances, you’re more likely to do irreparable harm. To you, this issue has been building up over time, but to your friend, this information is brand new, you blindiside them. If care isn’t taken, you rob them of the opportunity to apologize or do better, because for you, this friendship is now beyond saving, whereas if the conversation had been had three weeks ago, there could have been a compromise.

• Forgive often.

  When I looked round at the table of my friends, I realized another thing. All the people here have had to apologize to me before. And at one time or another, I have had to say “I’m sorry” to them. At the end of the day, forgiveness is the hallmark of friendship. How do you keep the same friends for decades? You forgive them, and they forgive you right back. It’s easier said than done, but I believe it’s easier to forgive your friends if they fight well. If they can accept when they’re wrong. If they can tell you when you’re wrong. If they practice forgiveness themselves. If they don’t try to control your emotional response to a perceived slight, but instead let you feel your feelings until, with a clear head, you’re ready to move forward. If they see disagreements as opportunities to compromise and not as excuses to punch holes into your character.

Sometimes you will fight with a friend and come out on the other side closer, better. Other times conflict might cost you the friendship. The truth is, people come into our lives for a reason, and sometimes that reason is limited to a particular season. Growing apart from friends is inevitable. No matter how much you work on your communication and conflict skills, there will be times you say the wrong thing.

I haven’t always fought well in the past. I’ve called my friends names and yelled at them. My friends haven’t always fought well with me. They’ve given me the silent treatment and thrown my flaws in my face. But that sort of dramatic conflict is the hallmark of childhood and teenage friendships. The way we handle disagreements now is as a result of reiterations of our previous fights. We’re growing up, we know better so we fight better. No one ever fights well a hundred percent of the time. But if you’re looking online at people going on group trips, or wondering when you’ll ever have someone to call just to rant about your favourite TV show. If your question for the year is, how do I create meaningful adult friendships? The answer is in discomfort, in hard conversations, in conflict.

So, tell people when they have something stuck in their teeth. Accept feedback from them on that business idea you’ve been talking about. Be unafraid to initiate conflict, but always remember that you are arguing with a person you love. The end goal is you two winning over the disagreement, not one of you winning over the other. Remember the things that have happened in your friends’ lives to make them the way they are. Give them grace. Apologize often. Forgive frequently.

Thank you for reading. I’m aiming at writing on Substack at least twice a month, so here’s my second entry for January. I hope you’re having a wonderful start to your year.

Also, I was listening to the song “For Good” from the Wicked movie soundtrack as I wrote this, in case anyone needs a good rec.

For Good - Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande 🎶

And to my people, I love you deeply. You make me better :)

so, let’s get right into it, here is everything i know about love at (almost) 22:

love is shared brain cells. if you spend enough time in someone else’s company, observing them and fully experiencing them, more often than not you’ll find that you start to subconsciously and most likely unintentionally mimic them. you take enough walks with someone, eventually you start to sync up your steps. you crack enough jokes with someone, eventually you start to laugh even before the joke is done. you spend enough time looking at someone’s face, you can read the subtitles on their face that others can’t, and in a room full of people you’re speaking with just your eyes. soon you’ll be saying and hearing “i was just going to say that!” or “i was thinking that same thing!”. I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this, but whether it’s by bluetooth or simply airdropping brain cells to each other due to proximity, love makes you sync up.

love is playing Olivia Dean on repeat while getting ready for a date.

love is the scientific principle we learnt in class 5, “opposites attract”. love is the thing that makes the homebody and the social butterfly get together. the thing that makes the adventurous food lover and the girl who eats like a bird decide to share meals together. it’s the thing that makes absolutely no sense, and yet somehow works. because from the outside looking in, you’re as different as night and day. it might make people tilt their heads to the side when they see you together, a question in their eyes and a cautious smile on their face “how is this working?” it works because they bring into your life things you otherwise wouldn’t experience, and you bring into their life a fresh perspective. but the truth is, people are not magnets. and while opposites do attract, the thing that makes it stick, is discovering that at the core, you’re made of the same substance. love means understanding that you may move through life differently, but you value the same things — family, faith, fun.

what a blessing it is to be forced to grow by love you once thought was unattainable. for a lot of us, love has been warped. whether it’s because of how we were raised, relationship trauma, or paying too much attention to relationship discourse on Twitter by people on the hunt for Elon’s coins. we believe that love, a healthy love is unattainable. it’s not something that exists anymore. yet, by some miracle, when we do attain it, we realize that it comes with work, dedication and intentionality. but isn’t that the point, isn’t that a privilege?

love is community. love is people you don’t have to shrink around to feel that you belong. people you don’t have to explain the very essence of yourself to over and over again. the people who roll on the floor laughing at your dark humour instead of clutching their pearls. love is belonging.

love is someone speaking your language. I’m Ewe, and there’s a bit of my mother tongue sprinkled in my day to day speech. but to be honest, i speak a bastardized version, one that makes sense only to me. for instance, if you were asking “what happened?” or “what is happening?” in Ewe, you would say “nu ka edz)?” which in Dzifianu Ewe is “nukedzeezy?” i know, the gen-z-ification of our local languages, i’m sure my ancestors are rolling over in their graves. but it has become, as absurd as it is, a staple in my communication with my partner. because, out of the 7,100 living languages in the world and the countless more dialects, to him the most important thing to speak is the language i understand. love is coming up with your own secret language.

love is staying up late to hear your partner go over an issue that still hurts them, even though you’ve already given advice and already heard this rant several times before, and even though you have work the next day. love is holding space. love is compromise. love is sacrifice, over and over again. but, when you’re in it, when you’re really in it, you’re sacrificing for someone who would sacrifice anything for you.

love is a privilege and an achievement, and it’s okay to admit that. when we forget to be grateful for it, we lose its value. it’s not the only thing that matters but it’s a big deal to have found your person. have you seen all the mad people in the world? finding the one person whose madness complements yours is a big flex, okay?

love makes you incredulous. sometimes i find myself glancing around, looking for some hidden camera so i could talk to the audience on the other side of the screen that’s watching the romcom of my life, and i want to whisper to them “you must be surprised at my good fortune.” when it’s good, love can fill you up so much that you wonder, “what did I do to deserve this?”. you find yourself looking at people and wondering if everyone feels this same thing you do, the thing bubbling up in your chest and threatening to overflow. it feels like a rare thing that only you have discovered, and simultaneously like something too good to hoard, you want to shout it from the roof tops till everyone’s hearts are threatening to overflow too.

and yet, love is incredibly mundane. so much of walking through life next to someone else is routine and responsibility. could you get t-roll on your way? i’ve scheduled our date in the google calendar. could you order food for us? yes, the same thing we had yesterday. in choosing who to love, you’re choosing someone you’ll go on many adventures with, but also the person you’ll do the same thing with, over and over again. my advice? choose someone funny, someone who colours the ordinary with rib-cracking laughter. choose someone patient, someone who can sit and wait with you quietly.

i think love is not just the answer to the question “who stays when I’m at my lowest?” but also the answer to a second question, “who do I trust enough to be seen by, even at my lowest?” because if you’re not ready to be vulnerable, as uncomfortable as it may be, then you’re not ready for love.

love is a safe place to call home.

there’s a lot of advice out there that says that you must love yourself before you’re ready or deserving of another person’s love. while i believe that loving yourself grounds you so that your self worth isn’t tied to another person’s view of you, self-love, like most things, is a journey. you’ll probably never reach a point where you hundred percent love everything about yourself, you’re human, you have flaws. but i’ve learnt that love is a mirror. that when you let someone else in, they hold up a mirror that reflects yourself back to you. and if you’re ever going to love the person holding the mirror, then you have to love the reflection you see in the mirror they hold up.

one of the biggest insecurities that has marked my life has been the fact that my mouth is crooked when i talk (it sounds stupid when i type it out) but it really used to bother me. for some reason, when i speak, especially when i’m excited and talking fast, it’s just… crooked and tilted to the left. i used to hate it. as fate would have it, my partner suffers the same affliction, has a crooked smile, a crooked talk. it’s actually more noticeable than mine. and for some odd reason, i think it’s the most endearing feature. if my favourite face in the world has a crooked smile, then surely i can appreciate a crooked smile on my own face? i think being loved well makes you love yourself more.

love is friendship. if you have a friend then you have love. if you’re a friend, then you love.

love is not one thing. everyone’s experiences of love are coloured by so many different factors, which is why you should definitely not take relationship advice from social media, and probably only take advice on love with discretion, from people who have don’t only share that love is hard work and challenging, but also that there is joy in it. you probably shouldn’t take advice from someone who promises you that love is all fairytales and rainbows either.

love is consideration. i got this for you because i was thinking about you. i remembered you said you liked this. i checked out the song you recommended.

love is not the thing that gives you wings. love is not the thing that makes you great. that’s all you. love is the wind beneath your wings. the screaming cheerleader in your corner. someone who believes in you, in your dreams, in your passions, as much as you do. someone whose courage you can borrow on the days your self-belief is wavering. someone who wants to see you soar. and if you find someone you love, wake up every day and make the decision to not be the thing that holds them back or ties them down, but be the one to propel another forward. that’s love.

i often feel the overwhelming urge to thank the people that love me simply for loving me. it comes from many years of thinking that, maybe by some mutation, i require more effort to love than most. that loving me must be this Herculean task, that anyone who is trying to do this thing, whether they’re doing it well or not, that the very attempt requires never ending thanks. i must prostrate before you and thank you. and I’ve realized that while the feeling of gratitude never evaporates, i’m not difficult to love. someone loves me like it’s breathing. like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do. and at the same time he works hard at it. but so do i. i’ve learnt that everyone requires effort to actively love, but still the desire to do the work, that comes just as easily as breathing.

so, in case no one has told you this before, you’re not difficult to love.

i hesitated before writing this year’s piece, for a number of reasons, but primarily because at the end of last year’s installation, i wrote that love was about learning about the object of your affection, a never ending research project. and i’ve spent yet another year studying the same subject. it’s been an exciting year, because i realize there’s always more to discover about someone, about yourself, and that’s a joy. but i didn’t want this to be all about my research and subject matter, i could write an entire novel about how much we laugh together or the weird routines we’ve built as a result of sharing so much of our lives together, but this isn’t just about me, or the love story that God is writing for me. i hope that in these pieces you find encouragement, and the courage, to not only make observations about love but to experience it for yourself. so here’s another lesson about love, it bleeds into everything, seeps into every area. perhaps it’s what i wrote about sharing brain cells. and it’s a wonderful thing, but what perhaps is even greater, is the ability to be curious about and open to love as an innate quality, one that doesn’t hinge on the presence of another in your life. you deserve love. you always have.

here are the previous installations of this series on my Medium:

everything I know about love at (almost) 19

everything I know about love at (almost) 20

everything I know about love at (almost) 21

if you’re not Mr. Dzifianu, you can stop reading now😬

to my favourite of all God’s marvelous creations, thank you for being the wind beneath my wings. charley, e do aa.

we’re about to see an influx of video recaps - highlight reels of the year that’s just ending on our feeds. and as you see how many of your former classmates got married this year, how many trips to different continents your favourite influencer took, how many speaking engagements your industry peers booked this year, i want you to resist the urge to draw up a compare and contrast table to your own life, where you tally up your own losses against their perceived wins.

it won’t help you to frown, scroll past and pretend you do not care, that “the internet is fake anyway”, that the people succeeding and thriving must be faking it. that’s copium - things we tell ourselves to cope with our own discomfort. the truth is, you won’t know what’s real or what’s fake, you’ll only know what people choose to celebrate in public. you won’t know who made six figures this year but quietly walked through a miscarriage, you won’t know who bought a new car but had to cut off ties with abusive family members to experience financial freedom. you do not know the peaks of people’s wins and the depths of their losses. this is not an invitation to go snooping or immediately assign some sad story or imaginary obstacles to people’s lives. it’s acknowledging the truth, we will simply never know it all. and perhaps it’s for this reason that we should give up on assessing other people, and introspect on how we feel as individuals as the year ends.

because whether we feel excited seeing these highlight reels, or cringe - envy landing in the bottom of our belly like a bad meal - that’s more an indicator of how we feel about ourselves, than about other people.

i told my partner the other day, that 2025 feels like a “filler episode” of a year. that if my life was a show, this would be the one episode where nothing major happened. no crazy plot twists, no epic scenes where dramatic music swells and a big reveal is made, not even a lot of tragic losses that keep the viewer at the edge of their seats wondering how the heroine will overcome this. it feels like an episode you have to get through to get to your favourite episode, wondering why the show writers couldn’t just move the plot along.

i was reminded that even though i felt that way, it wasn’t necessarily true. there have been some plot twists - a career pivot no one saw coming (certainly not my parents), side quests that have landed me in the right places at the right time, unexpected purchases and gifts that have genuinely improved the quality of my life and work. the year might not have been my favourite episode, but it was definitely not a filler episode.

the thing is, dear friend, i’m an introspection-holic. i live most of my life inside my own mind, examining my own motivations and acts like i’m a specimen under a microscope. so i gave it some thought - why i felt this way about the year, despite whatever achievements or losses i’ve made. and it dawned on me, that more than half my wins weren’t things i put on my vision board, or in my Notion planner for the year. simply put, i had an entire script i had written for 2025, and it barely stayed on that script. nothing went according to plan - the good, and the bad. and it caused me to ask myself, can i still appreciate a beautiful life, even when it’s beautiful in a different way than i’d envisioned? can i still be grateful for things i didn’t plan for?

because as i sit to think about the year i’ve had, the most important changes haven’t been hitting milestones that make for great LinekdIn “I’m happy to announce” posts, they’ve been incremental progressions. and it’s as though we have been wired, as individuals, as a society, to celebrate end-results instead of journeys. what i had been looking for, was to cross some finish line. i was looking for the “announceability” of my accomplishments, because they’re more visible, more measurable. crazy pressure to put on my barely 22 year old self, to cross some imaginary finish line when i should be focused on running my race with endurance. life isn’t the 100m sprint at the Olympics, over in a number of seconds. it’s a marathon.

all this points me to the most important practice, especially at this time of year - gratitude. every day I wake up and I write in my journal 5 things i’m grateful for. it’s usually things like - discovering Olivia Dean’s music, seeing my friends this week, my new hyperfixation show, my partner, God’s provision. some things i remember to be grateful for every once in a while, and some things are constant, written in my journal over and over again, day after day. and what a privilege it is to have something, or someone you can be grateful for every single day, for 365 days. how could I have pages and pages of things i’m grateful for, and still think that nothing meaningful has happened this year?

i’ve realized that all these aches and pangs of a year drawing to a close are symptoms of a larger problem - a culture of everything is not enough.

we sit in our rooms in our favourite hoodies we’ve had for three years and watch influencers do Shein hauls every single week. we watch on our iphones that work perfectly well, as Apple unveils an orange monstrosity and think perhaps we need more. more. more. we make more money than we made the previous year and still feel stressed about finances because, let’s admit it, everything is expensive, and the only solution is to make more money. more. more. more. and yet if you’re reading this, then you’re alive. you can probably think of at least three people who love you. whether or not you feel like a success or failure, you can probably list three things you’ve done well this year - maybe not career “wins”, but the things you did consistently. consistency in pursuit of a larger goal itself is an accomplishment.

if you really think about it, you’re stressed at a job you used to pray for. you’re pinching pennies because you’ve spent money on the weddings of three friends - friends you are fortunate to have. you’re thirsty for more because you live in a city you’ve dreamed of for years. you are in answered prayers, and years ago that would have felt like everything, but somehow, everything is not enough.

as we wrap up the year, dear friend, lean into gratitude more than comparison. resist the urge to compare the reality of your life to another person’s life. resist the urge to compare the reality of your life to the imaginary life you thought you would have lived this year. learn to be grateful for everything as it is, right now. we’ll never cure the itch for more, but we must learn to indulge in gratitude for the right here, right now. we’ll surely always have an idea or plan for the life that we want to live, but there is joy in recognizing that there is blessing in the unplanned.

if we keep hoping for some imaginary time in the future where we hit several milestones till we feel like we’ve made it, till we feel like we have “everything”, then we’ll miss the truth - that all we have right now (the good, the bad, the could be better’s) was at one point the “everything” that our younger selves so desperately wanted. and everything is enough. for right here, right now.

Thank you for reading this piece, and the love for my previous article. I’m still falling back in love with allowing my thoughts to exist in plain text for everyone to see - without pressure and without a schedule. I hope you take it easy on yourself as the year ends, i’ll try to do the same with myself :)

Recently, I took stock of the people I communicate with on a semi-regular basis. The truth is, I needed someone to talk to. And as I scrolled through my recent chats, I realised that while we had spent days going back and forth, dropping fire emojis under each other’s Instagram posts, asking “omg where is that skirt from?” and endlessly complimenting each other’s face cards, none of these people had the context to have the conversation I needed to have. I could try, but that would probably mean scheduling a cafe date - at some fancy “new hidden gem in east Legon”, (no chain cafes, obviously).

In that moment I felt that the being a friend would cost too much - I’d have to spend money, leave my house, explain the situation. But friendships will always cost us something, won’t they?

Platonic love, just as any other form of love, requires our attention, effort, and time. But for some reason it seems like more work than it used to be. I work at home, at my desk, which is just a few feet away from my bed, every single day. My follower count might have grown, but my world (and by that I mean the real humans I interact with regularly) has shrunk, and so in the middle of a Wednesday when I needed someone to talk to, I called a friend from uni, I longed for the university days.

In university, I was almost suffocated by company. My flat was the chosen hang out spot for my friend group, so there seemed to always be someone coming in, stealing food from my fridge, talking for too long and taking over my bed. I acted annoyed while my heart always regained its full strength by spending time with them. It’s true what they say, about friendships healing you. On the rare occasion that no one was knocking on my door, I could walk less than a kilometre, barge in saying “if you’re naked wear dross!” and I would be in good company.

Of course those friendships required effort too, but your teenage years, your university years are probably the last time all your closest friends are in a 5 mile radius. You take it for granted until you’re all scattered across the country, your schedules so different that keeping the group chat active takes Herculean effort.

The thing is, you’ll romanticise this time in your life, and even if its been a few weeks since you’ve spoken, when you really need to get something off your chest, you’ll call them.

Adulthood demands more effort, time, and energy, to make and maintain deep friendships, but adult friendships in the era of social media demand something else out of us - aesthetics, Instagrammability, performance. My favourite memories with my friends involve a 25 cedi bottle of Coca Cola and plastic cups, lying on the cold tile floor of a university hostel room. And yet the world would have you think that in order to talk to someone, not only do you have to schedule it weeks ahead, but the meet up spot also has to be a restaurant, a new matcha spot, some activity that you’ve never tried before. Do you see it? We’re not only asked to respect each other’s time - which is a natural progression into adulthood - but we’re asked to respect the visuals of how this get-together will look. You arrive at the new hidden gem, realise that more thought went into the clean girl aesthetic floral mirror hanging on the wall than the food on the menu, complain about the traffic you had to sit in for hours which doubled your uber fare, and then you catch up on life for thirty minutes - how’s work, did you see this on Twitter, where did you get your hair done - yapping and blabbing, taking an aesthetic picture of the food - Instagram eats first - and  before you know it, you have to dash soon, you have to beat the evening traffic.

I’m not pointing an accusing finger, because I’m probably more guilty of this than most. In any profession or industry you’re expected to network, and as a creator, making the cross from online conversation to in-person interaction is a natural progression. A number of real friendships have grown from commenting heart emojis under each other’s content - but they took work, and it was messy before it got beautiful.

But the barrier of entry to friendship seems insurmountable the older you get. This applies to all friendships in adulthood I think, not just ones that start online. Because how do you open up to someone if it requires unpacking years and years of context? It’s doable, it is often times worth the effort, but sometimes you might discover that it’s unnecessary, that in the era of “personal branding”, some people only want to let their “brands” sit next to yours. That the thing that is alluring is the way you look together as opposed to the depth of the relationship. And you know what, that’s entirely okay, if we call it what it is.

So I’m going to tell you how I got my heart broken this year, which is funny because I’m in the happiest healthiest relationship, but that’s when these things sneak up on you, isn’t it? Friendship break-ups often hurt more sharply than any relationships ever do. I was trying to cross the gap, build that bridge between online friendship and real friendship, and I discovered (after a number of pretty Instagrammable meet ups) that while our online personas and aesthetics matched, we weren’t cut out for more than that - not really.

I’ll tell you who ditched work in the office to sit on the staircase for hours analysing and over analysing the hurt I was experiencing. My cheapest friend. I’ll call him that because if we ever plan to go out but it ends up being out of budget, I don’t have to “form” in front of him.  The value of my least expensive friendship is one I could never accurately measure, and definitely not with money. We don’t match each other’s aesthetics at all, but we go all the way back to nursery. He had enough context, about my life, about the things that have made me the way I am, about the way that I have grown, to make me laugh about a situation I had spent months crying about.

And so if I may be so bold, let me propose that the deepest and truest friendships are forged in the least appealing places. That the most beautiful friendships are beautiful because the affection between the individuals is, not as a by-product of the setting they find themselves in. That perhaps we need to stop exploring hidden gems and uncover, truly, the story of the person sitting across the room from us- they might just be hidden gems too.

Let me suggest to you, that embarrassment is the cost of entry for companionship. Let someone see the inside of your house, yes, with all the laundry piled in the chair. Let them learn that you keep so many plastic bags under the sink for taking out trash, but your dustbin is still overflowing on most days. Let them see what you look like without makeup, in an oversized shirt that you've spent all day in because you haven't showered yet. Bring back the lost art of visiting people in their homes.

Let it be ugly, and I guess that means metaphorically as well as literally. Have conversations lying on your bed with the ketchup stains on your sheets from eating in bed. Talk less about your achievements, ( the whole world will see that anyway on LinkedIn), and talk more about what it cost you to get there - the nights you stayed up, the impostor syndrome you’ve had to overcome.

Let someone disagree with you, let them tell you you’re wrong. Let them debate their positions with you, rather than swiping silently on your stories because they don’t want the mess of conflict.

This is not anti-making friends online propaganda, this is an invitation. And of course, not every friendship is the kind that makes you feel seen, the kind that requires and embraces the baring of your souls to each other - some people are just “mutuals” and “oomf”. But do not let those outweigh and outnumber the deeper, more meaningful friendships.

The internet will continue to bring more and more people into my orbit, yours too. If your feed is a mesh of your high school friend’s masters graduation photos and content from your favourite viral account, you’ll forget to engage. You’ll consume but not communicate. Do not passively consume the lives of the people you care about, you’re not an observer.

Make your friendships more about your presence than performance. And you just might find, that the next time you’re crashing out, someone will be willing to ditch work and sit on a staircase talking to you for hours.

My first Substack post and my return to writing after months, be nice❤️