Heroine Wendy Murman is an editor at a leftist magazine, living with her husband in Brooklyn and struggling to conceive. Her best friend Daphne is a flighty, self-absorbed, semi-employed beauty who shocks Wendy when she ditches her unreliable married boyfriend for a hot, successful arch-conservative named Jonathan. Soon Daphne is married, pregnant, and installed in a beautiful house, and Wendy is beside herself with envy.

A little jealousy is certainly normal, but Rosenfeld paints the relationship between Wendy and Daphne — and indeed, between Wendy and all of her girlfriends — as so negative and competitive that you wonder why any of these people spend time together. Her e-mail exchanges with frenemy Paige are unrealistically bitchy, as when Paige writes,

Meanwhile — f.y.i. — I just read a very interesting article about infertility among women in our age group. It turns out that most of the issues (tube blockage, lack of cervical fluid, etc.) have their origin in STDs. Which is not to say you have one. Still, it might be worth checking.

Wendy begins the novel by wearily disregarding Daphne's threat of suicide, seems to find her conversation annoying, takes every interaction they have as a chance to compare herself to Daphne and find herself wanting, and remembers countless times throughout their friendship when Daphne has let her down. She recalls, for instance, the night her first boyfriend dumped her, when Daphne promised that they could "go to the movies 'and forget about all [their] guy problems." Instead,

An hour later, Daphne was putting on her coat and saying, "I totally forgot I said I'd meet Josh. Are you going to be okay if I go out for a few hours? I promise I'll be back soon." (Face squinched up.)

Face squinched up? Given this and basically every other scene between Wendy and Daphne, it's hard to see why Wendy doesn't just find better friends — or at least friends who make her feel better.

Unless Rosenfeld's point is that female friendship is inherently toxic. She says on her website, "every woman has a Daphne in her life — a so-called "best friend" whose seemingly effortless successes never fail to make her feel like a Huge Loser." Really? Everyone has a best friend so fake she deserves quotes? And for whom her jealousy outweighs her joy? Sadly, reviewers seem to concur. Publishers' Weekly calls I'm So Happy For You "a dark, hilarious and painfully accurate view of the less-than-pure reasons why women stay friends." And Zoe Heller calls it "a finely observed and witty account of the jealousies that lurk within even the kindest female hearts."

Rosenfeld's Double X advice column, Friend or Foe (tagline: "Boys are easy. Friendships are hard.") adds fuel to the girlfriends-totally-suck fire. Her most recent column implies that a friend's disappearance after the birth of a child must be the result of envy. She also writes about dangerous friend archetypes like the "Instant Best Friend" who dumps you at the slightest provocation (and who quite easily recognizes herself and lashes back in the comments!), or the "Time Energy Suck [...] who dins and sniffles in your ear for hours at a time about first dates who never called again and ex-lovers with whom she broke up eight years ago-'it's just still so hard.'" Friendships can be hard, but are they really so hard that we need names for different bad ones? Doesn't this just perpetuate a sad stereotype of women as catty bitches who undermine each other?

There is, however, a slightly more hopeful way to interpret all this. As Wendy descends further and further into insane jealousy of Daphne, her husband Adam offers this explanation of her behavior:

You're never satisfied. That's just who you are. You felt deprived as a child, and there's nothing anyone can do to make it up to you. You could marry Bill Gates and still think you were getting fucked over.

It's harsh, but also feels true — a lot of Wendy's problems seem to come from her constant sense of being worse off than others, and her inability to appreciate what she has. Only when she stops comparing herself to Daphne can she finally be happy. It is possible to read I'm So Happy For You as a cautionary tale against the kind of jealousy that makes every baby, every relationship, every apartment, every job into a mere data point in a constant status accounting. If it's Rosenfeld's point that this is no way to live your life, more power to her. But why does she have to make it sound like every woman lives this way?
I'm So Happy For You [Amazon]
I'm So Happy For You [Official Site]
Friend Or Foe [Double X]

The invitations began to flow: concerts, dinner parties, gallery exhibits — none of them involving my friend, of course. It made me uncomfortable. I don't know if Emily just didn't want to put in the sourcing work, whether she trusted her friends' judgment more than her own or whether she just needed the validation of making their friends hers, but I would come to learn that this charming and seemingly innocuous young woman was a blatant snatcher — befriending, inviting, and dating her friend's friends until the webs were complex and uncomfortable.

"Social Poaching" seems to fall under the category of "human behavior that sociologists really don't need to waste their time on" but that said, it is a phenomenon that most of us have probably encountered in some form. The article goes on to relate numerous anecdotal accounts of social poaching and the ensuing heartbreak and fallout, of "hurt feelings and broken friendships." I am of the school who keeps her circles separate for the most part, if only because they are so wildly disparate. But some people even go so far as to "intentionally avoid introducing their friends to each other because they like to keep their relationships separate."'

Okay, but what's the difference between just meeting someone through a friend and the sinister "social poaching" phenomenon? After all, when you trace the histories of most relationships, there's a middle man involved. Perhaps the difference comes in the sense of purpose, and the deliberate bypassing of the mutual friend. A social poacher, presumably, wants the new friend for himself, to somehow usurp the original friend's position. There's also the sense that such a person wants to bypass the normal process of getting to know one another and be instant friends right now. Luckily for you, Jio goes on to present the guidelines for "ethical poaching" — otherwise knows as making a friend. "Thinking about poaching?" the article asks. "Experts chart the path of crossing a friendship boundary." The rules, by the way, include honesty, inclusion and being "prepared for hurt feelings." In other words, not being creepy or psychotic. Like many "phenomena" this seems to fall into the trap of overthinking basic human stuff that's always gone on. But it can't be denied that social poaching is probably facilitated by modern life. The article mentions social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook as facilitators, and certainly these things allow people to pursue the most tangential of relationships with a new impunity. But even more than this, it seems like the fractured nature of people's lives, especially in urban centers, leads to a natural segregation of social circles that makes this kind of crossover more dramatic and, potentially, more hurtful.

What the article doesn't mention is that sometimes social poachers, in their naked avidity, are simply off-putting. Take Emily, the pseudonym with whom I started this. Her pursuit wasn't flattering; it felt indiscriminate and overly intense and I really just wanted to avoid her without being rude to our mutual friend (another tricky element.) People will always be strange; sociologists will always waste time coming up with names for the things we do and articles like this will pretend that people have no common sense. But you don't need a neologism to know when to back away, slowly, and go on with your life.
When 'social poachers' snatch your friends [CNN]

Related: What's Wrong With Having Frenemies?

Dear Jezebel,

My dilemma is with the "What's Wrong with Frenemies" piece. Dodai's opinion is an indirect and passive aggressive response to Cherkinoff's article. Her conclusion "My answer to the question 'Why do women act this way?' is: Because we're evolved" is quite inconclusive actually.

"When a human being is upset by another human being but doesn't want to upset the delicate balance of his or her immediate community and therefore smiles through the seething hate instead of clawing the offender's jugular out, that is advanced sociopsychological behavior." Incorrect. If the main concern is upsetting a community's delicate balance, in layman terms, what's being implied is an inherent fear of having others think differently of you after having seen you in emotional pain. That is insecurity. Dynamic human beings are not so selfish in their nature. Immature human beings with parental issues, however, are. This bottling of emotions is called acting, and perhaps advanced make-believe.

"Why waste time and effort in confrontation and conflict over a so-called friend stealing champagne from your house when you can just vow not to speak to her for three months and then have dinner with her in six months?" Do you realize that this statement contradicts the point being conveyed in the preceding statement: "Wars can be avoided by learning the refined skill of diplomacy." Wars do not begin sporadically. War games are played prior to the beginning of a war. These are typical intimidation tactics: the testing of egos, patience, and manipulation of emotional weakness. That is not diplomacy. You are doing your "friend" a disservice by not addressing how said friend has upset you. If a friend steals things from you, and you think you'll teach them a lesson by ignoring them, you've allowed them to steal from you in the future. This friend doesn't respect you enough to apologize for stealing from you. If your intention is to allow time to instill guilt within this friend, that will not work either. Any adult petty enough to commit childish offenses against you will never feel the need to apologize. You are doing yourself a disservice by perpetually mishandling conflict. This will not solve anything long term.

Please allow me to paraphrase that quote I just used. "Why waste time and effort in confrontation and conflict... when you can just vow not to speak to her for three months and then have dinner with her in six months?" Time and effort? A direct confrontation does not last three to six months. By implementing the strategy to avoid conflict, an even bigger conflict is created. In this strategy, the ego is inflated even more. This approach does not sacrifice pride, nor is it humble/diplomatic in any way. This is how wars truly start. Wars waste time and effort, as we've learned over the past five-and-a-half years.

I am a male. When I'm upset by somebody, I have no problem voicing the pain I feel they caused me. This doesn't make me a warring individual at all. It makes me eager to restore peace through immediate discussion. Does this make me perfect when I handle conflict? Hell fucking no. I've made mistakes, and I continue to. I'm imperfect, but I try my best. I've learned that direct communication works if you're mature enough to handle it. Expressing discontent is not inherent of one sex only; it's human. Quite personally, I respect a woman that puts her feelings of mistreatment out on the table immediately.

This piece has indirectly claimed that one supposedly gender-specific behavior trumps another. I fail to see the merit in applying any relative validity to such an absolute falsehood. Conflict mishandling is just that, regardless of its methods. Relationships still end up irreparably damaged, and sensitive people still end up irreversibly provoked. That is simply what happens when people in conflict choose to ignore the problem instead of addressing it.

So here goes Jezebel, talking in circular contradiction yet again. Henceforth, this site continues to wallow in the stereotypes it claims to abhor.

Dylan White

ps
I don't use block quotes because I'm informal and progressive, just like you! I'm really smashing taboo, aren't I?

"Bridesmaids — who may quietly seethe about unflattering dresses — are surprisingly willing to pay for cosmetic enhancements," the Times' Abby Ellin writes. "'Most women, when they come in here, they want it,' said Camille Meyer, the owner of TriBeCa MedSpa. 'They know they’re aging.'" And if all your friends are getting botox, and none of them are going to have crows feet any more, it probably takes an abundance of self-esteem to own your crows feet unapologetically.

Sure, at first you might stand strong with your hard-earned wrinkles, but after the third person has asked you if you're really "tired" on your girls night out, your resolve might fade a little. We are all, whether we like to admit it or not, deeply affected by our peers' behavior. When I was in high school, it never occurred to me to pluck my eyebrows. They weren't particularly fuzzy and I really never noticed them. When I got to college, however, my good friend cornered me in her dorm room with a pair of sharp tweezers and said, "Honey, you really have to deal with this." I wasn't at all offended, either. And yes, there is a difference between a bit of eyebrow pluckin' and actual cosmetic surgery, but the impulses involved are similar.

That said, the woman who told her mother-in-law, "‘You should do Botox for the wedding!" is a damn fool. I'm sure your husband's mom is going to love you from now on, lady. Have fun at Christmas!

It’s Botox for You, Dear Bridesmaids [NY Times]

Engaging in frenemy or player hateHER behavior can be "an outlet for aggression and negative behavior," explains Long Island-based psychologist Dr. Jean Cirillo. "Sometimes a woman is continuing a bad relationship with her mother or a female friend."

And there's a reason we keep our frenemies close. "It makes for good gossip with your friends," says therapist Stacy Kaiser. "It's why we like reality TV or we rubberneck when there's a traffic accident - it is literally like that person is the traffic accident. It's so shocking that you want to watch it. Until the pain gets too great."

Hear that ladies? You don't hate that chick who slept with the guy you liked even though she knew you liked him and then continue to see her socially because you have your pride and refuse to let her get the best of you. No, it's because you have mommy issues or problems with some other female, says the female shrink. Or because you're a drama queen who loves gossip, says the other chick shrink. Deep breath.

Here's my theory: Having a "frenemy" is actually not a problem. Having a fremeny is the civilized and polite choice. Having a frenemy is not the exclusive domain of women. When a human being is upset by another human being but doesn't want to upset the delicate balance of his or her immediate community and therefore smiles through the seething hate instead of clawing the offender's jugular out, that is advanced sociopsychological behavior. Wars can be avoided by learning the refined skill of diplomacy. Why waste time and effort in confrontation and conflict over a so-called friend stealing champagne from your house when you can just vow not to speak to her for three months and then have dinner with her in six months? My answer to the question "Why do women act this way?" is: Because we're evolved.

From Frenemies To Player HateHERS, Women Just Can't Get Along [Daily News]