The "turkey drop," according to NPR, is a breakup that occurs over the Thanksgiving holiday, typically between college freshmen who return home for the first time and finally pull the plug on a high school relationship, though as Dan Savage notes, adults can fall victim to the "turkey drop" as well, due to a desire by one partner to split before the pressures of the Christmas-New Year's-Valentine's Day season kick in. "Thanksgiving is really when you have to pull the trigger if you're not willing to tough it out through February," Savage says.

Savage has a point: it's pretty rough to break up with someone at Christmas, and even harder to ditch a relationship right around Valentine's Day. But at the same time, it's even crueler to stay in a relationship you'd rather not be in just to protect someone's feelings throughout the holiday season, isn't it? I'd imagine that racking up all of those Christmas and New Year's memories is just adding fuel to the post-breakup fire. (Though I have known couples who have stayed together through the holidays, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of their children and/or family members.)

Still, some "turkey drops" are unavoidable: I actually went through it during my freshman year of college, breaking up with an on-again/off-again boyfriend whom I suddenly had nothing in common with after being away for three months. He was relieved, actually, as he felt the same way. It's quite strange when people you've known for years become strangers; I'd go so far as to guess that many people go through "turkey drops" of sorts with friends during this period as well, due to realizing you're not the same person you were mere months earlier, and neither are they.

So what say you, commenters? Have you been through a "turkey drop?" And do you think it's ultimately cruel or kind to initiate a breakup during the holidays?

Want To Break Up? 'Tis The Season, So Better Hurry [NPR]

[Image via Natalie Dee.]

The letter-writer, who signs herself "Thanks for Rescuing Me After I Was Drugged and Left for Dead-Not!" and whom we'll call "Thanks" because "TFRMAIWDALFDN!" sucks, went to hear some music with two old friends (both female). The last thing she remembers is leaving for the bathroom — someone had drugged her drink, and a police officer later found her lying alone on a sidewalk. Figuring she'd just left, her friends had left too, without looking for her. Thanks writes,

Later, when I called them from the street, sobbing in hysterics and asking for help, they told me to go back to the club and that they would have an ambulance pick me up there. When my mother-who lives 2,000 miles away (and hopped on a plane the next day to be with me)-later called these two friends of mine to beg them to join me while I was recovering, they refused. It wasn't until I told them that the hospital wouldn't release me until I had someone to drive me home that they came to pick me up. They then angrily drove me to my car, and I drove home alone. By then, it was the next morning.

Sounds shitty, right? Not to Rosenfeld. She says,

Wow, that's a tough call. A spouse or even a boyfriend? Yes, it would be his or her duty to haul ass to said hospital at 4 a.m. But your single female friends who are already, presumably tucked in their beddy-bies? I have to admit that, if I got a call like yours (or your mother's) in the middle of the night, I'd do what I could from home, but would be hard-pressed to jump in my car until morning.

Ouch — apparently if you're single, and don't have a willing mom, you are SOL if you need middle-of-the-night help. Or, as commenter L.S. Newfarmer eloquently puts it, "The message of your advice seems to be: if you expect to have someone there for you, find a boyfriend or live close to your mother." I have to admit, when I've been in relationships, I've tended to dial my boyfriend first if I need a difficult favor (like a ride to the hospital late at night). That said, I've also relied on my friends during both single and non-single periods for everything from midnight reassurances to last-minute apartment visits in faraway cities, and I think this might actually be healthier.

While it's nice to have someone who will drive you to the ER at 4 a.m., this isn't necessarily the best basis for a romantic relationship. Plenty of people, myself included at times, are willing to stay with a partner for the safety he/she provides — but friendships can provide this safety too. And being the only person your significant other can rely on creates a lot of stress in a relationship. Maybe one reason for the famed isolation of American life — and the equally famous (if slightly specious) excessive expectations American place on marriage and coupledom — is that too many people believe, like Rosenfeld, that you can depend on a boyfriend but not a friend.

Thanks might have been wise to make an agreement with her friends before the show that they would leave together. She might be wiser still, as commenter Newfarmer says, to "find friends who love you as much as you love them." Many Americans live far away from their moms, and many don't have parents who are alive or able-bodied enough to hop a plane. But the best solution isn't to get a boyfriend who's sexually obligated to respond to your midnight call. I'd much rather take Newfarmer's advice and build a network of people who take care of each other, so that my single days — and since we still generally outlive men, odds are that lots of a woman's days will be single ones — aren't filled with worry. And so that when I'm with someone, it's for love — not a ride to the ER.

Friend or Foe: My Friends Ditched Me When I Got Drugged! [Double X]

Whenever female friendships are portrayed on the big screen, they usually fall into to the straight woman/wacky best friend pattern, or the sassy girlfriends crew, or the underminer best friend plot line which basically presents female friendships as time bombs that stand in the one of one's career or eventually happy ending with a man. It's a shame, really, as a more honest depiction of female friendships—particularly the difficulty many of us have in making friends as we get older—could be quite interesting to watch.

Rachel Dickinson of Smithsonian.com notes that roller derby, currently in the spotlight once again due to Barrymore's film, is popular with women not only for the athletic and theatrical elements, but because it provides a "a kind of athletic sisterhood that's tough to find once you leave high school or college."

And she's right: the insta-friend factor (or, at the very least, insta-acquaintance factor) that comes along with organized sports, or dorm floors, or various extracurricular activities is hard to replicate after school comes to an end, and roller derby, open to active women of all ages, provides that type of bonding experience. Roller derby, I suspect, is not only popular because of the thrill it brings, or the exercise and empowerment it provides, but also, if even just a little bit, because it offers a chance to make friends, which, for some of us anyway, is harder to do as you get older.

I have moved three times in the past five years, and most of my college friends are scattered around the country. I am a terribly shy person, and organized activities at school always provided a kind of structure that made it much easier for me to make friends, as there were set goals that everyone shared and people involved were generally like-minded. But now that I'm older, I find it harder to push myself to show up to anything if I don't have a friend to tag along with. It's a pretty frustrating cycle for the socially anxious among us: when you're new in town, you look to such activities to try to meet people, but at the same time, it's so hard to show up alone. However, pushing myself to do so has paid off, in that I've met many lovely people as a result. I'm not going to lie though; it's tough.

Often enough I feel like a complete weirdo for getting as nervous as I do over such things, but at the same time, I don't think there's anything incredibly unusual about this, as many of my friends, also displaced to new towns filled with strangers thanks to various job offers and the whims of life, have gone through similar experiences. Perhaps if there were more films like Whip It! which celebrated the love, empowerment, and support of female friendships instead of sassy zingers and man-trappin' trips, those of us who find ourselves hesitating would all be a little less afraid to just get out there and jump in.

So what do you think, commenters? Do you find it harder to make friends as you get older? And what steps do you take to meet new people?

Roller Derby's Sisterhood [Smithsonian]
Box Office: 'Zombieland' Rules As 'Whip It,' 'Invention' Bomb And 'Capitalism' Fizzles [NYPost]

Please note that when I talk about a "witchcraft phase," I'm referring to the period wherein tweens decided to "be witches" for a few months. It has nothing to do with actual Wicca, or the legitimate practice of the Wiccan religion; it's based solely on Hollywood stereotypes of witchcraft and the idea that we can suddenly become legitimate witches just by slipping on a pentagram from Claire's and lighting a scented candle. Many of us, myself included, went through this Faux Coven phase. When you're twelve years old and a bit lost, there is something quite powerful in this notion; though your parents seem to control your life and your classmates seem to overlook you, you can still connect with something deeper and dangerous in the comfort of your own home, surrounded by your best friends and a bag of Chewy Chips Ahoy.

The sleepover party is the center of all things fake witchcraft; my friends and I never actually took the time to research or practice Wicca the way it is meant to be practiced, mostly because we were 12 and simply into "making things happen," which essentially meant lifting our friends up off the ground while pretending our "Light As A Feather" chants were working, lighting special candles and making wishes, and playing with the Ouija board for about 4 seconds before we freaked out and put it away—not because we didn't believe in it, we argued, but because we knew how powerful a tool it was and we just didn't want to mess with it.

We made love potions out of various creams and perfumes and slathered them on before going to school, where we most likely drove our fellow classmates away by smelling like a rose-vanilla-lavender-jasmine mess, and we completely fudged our way through tarot card readings, making sure our dreams would come true ("You are going to marry David Bowie when you are 48") by neglecting to actually learn to read the cards properly. Eventually, our terrible run as fake witches faded out, and we moved on to other things.

By the time The Craft hit the scene, I was 15 and scoffed at the eleven year olds who were calling the corners while drinking Capri-Suns on the playground. Secretly, I was a bit jealous, because they were still in the realm of make believe; the place where they could scream, "I made that leaf move!" after shouting, "Move, leaf, do as I say" for twenty minutes in a row. For a while, they'd get to rule the universe, until the novelty wore off and they were forced to face an uncertain world again.

Of course, as I grew older I began to understand the deeper historical and sociological connections between women and witchcraft and was clearly able to differentiate between Hollywood witches and legitimate Wicca, and looking back, I laugh at my failed attempts to put a spell on Bobby Taylor in 1993. But I wouldn't trade my dumb fake coven days for anything, as they taught me to believe, if nothing else, in the power of my friends and our abilities to create a world outside of our own. Sure, we never actually made anything happen, but we had a lot of fun imagining a place where we could make anything we wanted come true, and that kind of confidence lasts, even after the candles go out and all of the magic dust is washed away.

Bush Officials Objected To Awarding Medal To JK Rowling Because Harry Potter Books Promote Witchcraft [ThinkProgress]

In her paean to heterosexual female-on-male friendship (appropriately titled "Guy Friends Rule"), Williams does make some annoying generalizations. She writes,

My guy friends [...] will hang out for an entire evening and never once mention anything to do with feelings. If one of them forwards me an e-mail, there's an 85 percent probability it involves "Star Wars" and zero chance it contains a quote from Maya Angelou. If a man I'm not sleeping with tells me I'm beautiful, I believe him. I have had guy friends gallantly toss me over a shoulder and carry me through big puddles. They have, when I've been blue, asked if I needed somebody's ass kicked. My guy friends have never asked to split an appetizer because they were really trying to stay in the Zone, nor looked at me like I was a war criminal for ordering dessert.

At times in my life when I've had more guy friends, they've been wonderful confidants about feelings (note to current guy friends: you still are). If a woman "looked at me like I was a war criminal for ordering dessert," I probably wouldn't be friends with her. None of my friends tend to e-mail me about Star Wars, but if an e-mail includes sharks, there's an 85% probability it came from my mom. Williams also commits what I'm now christening Geek Deadly Sin #6, using the word "frak" in a context not related to Battlestar.

Stereotypes aside, though, Williams makes some good points about the value of dude friends for straight women. She writes,

You want to have good relationships with the opposite sex? Get to know a few members of it. That's what friends are for. To hear you out. To keep you in check. To make you a better person. And your girlfriends and wives and boyfriends and husbands will thank you for it.

If you let guys into your life and your heart, you can't hear the phrase "there are no good men out there" without recognizing it for the stupid sexist bullshit it is. You can likewise toss out the male canard that they're all just booty-chasing simpletons as the smokescreen that is as well.

Especially if you've been burned in romantic relationships, there is no quicker recipe for a hopeful attitude toward future relationships — and a continued appreciation for half the human race — than a male friend who treats you well and doesn't try to sleep with you. Bitching about men with your girlfriends is a time-honored (at least on TV) activity, but it can become an echo chamber of bitterness, clichés, and, frankly, sexism. I'd argue that all women, not just straight ones, can benefit from friendships with men, if for no other reason than the fact that these friendships force us to recognize that the problems of gender roles in our society are a lot more complicated than "men are pigs."

My dad once said, of someone who didn't read books published after 1950, "why would you want to cut yourself off from so much interesting stuff?" I feel the same way about guys. So although my recent woman-centric years have been wonderful (I used to be one of those girls who "didn't get along with other girls," which, as many commenters have pointed out, also sucks), I'm trying to get better at calling my old guy friends. Because although it may be harder to maintain female-to-male friendships as you get older — after college, it's tougher to become close with men without giving off a datey vibe — it's totally worth it.

Guy Friends Rule [Salon]

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]

A friendaholic, writes Daum, is someone who takes the view that, "a friend is someone on your Facebook page or in your Twitter circle" and that "friends have been assigned value not necessarily because of anything they've actually done with you or for you, but because, well, they just exist in the world and so do you." She continues,

The idea of friendship, at least among the growing population of Internet social networkers, is to attain as many of these not-really-friends as possible. Hence, the alcoholism analogy, which I don't make lightly. Like cheap wine, "friends" provide a high that can only be sustained by acquiring more and more of them. Quantity trumps quality.

On the one hand, if I never see another article on the pernicious effects of Facebook, it will be too soon. Ever since the Internet became mainstream — and perhaps before that — journalists have been randomly pasting the names of applications into a mad lib of social hysteria. Maureen Dowd talked about "Googling and Bikramming to get ready for a first dinner date" in 2005, and as the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, references to it just get lamer. Growing up with this kind of tech-trend writing has made me sort of a reverse-curmudgeon; I don't believe the Internet can change anything. When Daum writes, "you have to keep Twittering, instant-messaging and texting lest you become a bad 'friend,'" I automatically doubt that such people exist.

However, I do admit that the study Daum references creeped me out. It claims that for every "extra" friend you had in school — according to Daum, someone who lists you as a close friend but who wasn't actually close enough to make your list — you can expect an extra 2% in salary. I'll admit that this study made me count up my friends, not because I ever expect to make a fat salary, but because the findings implied that those with more friends were somehow more effective, more successful, better at life.

Which is, if you think about it enough, a soul-destroying concept. The sheer act of counting up your friends devalues them a little — it implies, to quote Daum, that "quantity trumps quality," and that friends only have merit insofar as they add to your number. It also transforms one of the most intrinsically good things in life — being close to people — into an extrinsically good thing, something that is good only because it will get you other things. The outlook that everything good — friends, food, sex, going outside — should be good for something may not be new, but it's terrifying. And it's just as ubiquitous as Google — open any women's magazine and you'll see how, say, a good night's sleep will make you more effective at work, as opposed to just making you feel good. If everything in life is a means to an end, that end should be pretty sweet — but at the end of life, everyone dies. To forget this, and to treat everything fun as a tool instead of a treat, is way scarier than spending too much time on Facebook.

The age of Friendaholism [LA Times]

Earlier: According To Study, Friends Are Money

According to Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine, a study of 10,000 US residents showed that those who had the most friends at school made the most money later on — each extra friend added 2% in salary (we assume "extra" here means friends above the average number, but we still wouldn't want to be someone's "extra friend"). The average person apparently has about 150 friends — anthropologist Robin Dunbar says this is "the number of people that you know as persons and you know how they fit into your social world and they know how you fit into theirs." Geoghegan says, "it may sound like a lot, but think of your Christmas card list - 50 cards to 50 couples = 100 friends," thus assuming that we are 1) very popular and 2) very organized and 3) for some reason uninterested in single people.

Geoghegan breaks this group of 150 down further, writing,

They usually consist of an inner circle of five "core" people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people - some will probably be family members - who are your central group and then outside that, there's another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside.

He says the limit for close friends is probably between six and 12, and tells the story of one man who told a woman "he had no vacancies for friends," then sent her a card six months later notifying her of an opening. All this is interesting, but the explicit linkage of friendship and wealth, along with the carefully quantified tiers of friendship, makes a person's relationships with other people sound like an investment portfolio. This outlook encourages people to see friendship in terms of what people can do for them, rather than as a good thing for its own sake. And these days, isn't it more comforting to think of friendship as one thing that doesn't have to do with money?

What's the ideal number of friends? [BBC]

The 19-year-old from New Jersey was left outside in the cold for an hour wearing only a dress and one shoe, having lost the other one as her three friends dragged her from the car on January 16. The woman flagged down a driver who took her to the hospital, but she may need surgery for frostbite on both feet. The friends wanted revenge because the victim sued one friend's auto insurance carrier after a car accident. The three attackers now face kidnapping, assault and conspiracy charges and are free on bail. [AP]

Vera Turner and Dorothy Luxton met in 1918, at the end of World War 1. They were both toddlers at the time, but they were neighbors and spent their days playing together. Their friendship grew as they went through school together, and the two were finally parted when they both married (in the same year, 1939) and Luxton moved away to live with her husband. Yet distance didn't slow their friendship down; Vera and Dorothy stayed connected through the years, something that may seem fairly easy now, with our Facebook profiles and cell phones and nationwide long distance and email addresses, but required a special sort of attention, love, and devotion to keep up back in the day.

At times, I'm sure, we all take our friends for granted. And as the years pass, we lose friends and gain new ones as we change and our lives take us in weird directions. Yet there is something lovely in Dorothy and Vera's story; after their children were grown and Dorothy's husband retired, she moved back to the town where her friend Vera was living. The two women are now widows, but they still, as always, have each other, and spend their days taking "walks together that people 20 years their junior would shy away from," according to Vera's son, Roy. "They walk from Barn Hayes to the library or seafront, walking along with their shopping trolleys."

The world is often cruel and strange and unpredictable, and this year is no exception. Yet through wars, the Great Depression, distance, time, children, husbands, and deaths, Dorothy and Vera have always had each other as a source of comfort and happiness. So even though you might not be able to afford a decent gift for your friends this year, and you might not be able to fly home to visit, you might just want to send them a little note to let them know that you've got your shopping trolley all shined up, and that you've got a walking date on your 93rd birthday. In other words, this Christmas, get on the phone and sing them this:

Two Women Who Met At End Of First World War Still Best Of Friends [Telegraph]

"The problem with Facebook is it's all about acquisition and this is an addictive process. Acquisition of friends is like any other fix but it's competitive — you judge yourself by how many friends you have online. You go out of your way to amass friends and that means people bend out of shape and become something they are not. To appear successful, you go and put yourself in credit card debt by buying clothes and handbags. I see patients who are on Facebook and my response is 'get yourself of it.'"

Smallwood warns that at least 10% of the population is at risk for this kind of "friendship addiction," but doesn't anyone think this is rather alarmist? Sure, some people are all about "collecting" friends on social networking sites, but if you're an addict, you're an addict: Facebook is not to blame. Painting this problem as a women-are-so-needy-and-out-of-control issue is something the Daily Mail does well; but one has to wonder: Why do some people find the need to competitively "collect" "friends"? What's the allure in having a high number of "friends" on Facebook or MySpace? What does it prove? Most people know you don't actually know and hang out with all of those people. Having lots of "friends" can't get you a better job or more money or true love. So seriously: What's the point?

Facebook To Blame For 'Friendship Addiction' Among Women [Daily Mail]

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?

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]

The point is, there is this thing we'll call Late Onset Rocksnobbery, the shingles to the chicken pox of an "alternative" youth, and I was reminded of it when a friend made a MuxTape, only to be greeted with a dis regarding his inclusion of Mazzy Star, to which he took grave offense.

The whole affair made me grateful to be a girl, because basically, although I still refuse to date "regs"; the only time in the past year I have ever seriously judged a friend's music taste was when Jessica told me she just figured everyone liked Nickelback, which obviously makes no sense.

Once I went out drinking with an old friend from high school and her "cohort" of business school classmates during Wharton first year orientation. "Let's go around the table, what's your favorite band?" asked one guy. Stones, Stones, Zeppelin Pearl Jam, Earth, Wind and Fire (?)… anyway it came to my friend. In school she'd liked the Cure and P.J. Harvey. I think I'd have to say Dave Matthews, she said. BUT WHY???????? I screamed from within. Because she makes money and I do not and really my memories of shows and car rides and that feeling when you are standing next to a jukebox with someone and there are maybe three minutes before you get to start making out are really ALL I HAVE.

Do you think a 500 lb. woman doesn't know that she's obese? Do you think that a woman gains 50 lbs. without noticing? The Post's Marina Vataj writes, "While friends tell friends and loved ones to stop smoking, drinking, shopping and even sleeping around, addressing a friend's weight remains taboo." Damn straight it does. Drinking and smoking are vices you can live without. Eating is required for survival. When does overeating become a problem? When is eating an addiction? Surely everyone is different and the tipping point is different for each individual. But with all of the weight-loss ads, hyperthin celebrities and calorie-cutting segments on the news, it's hard to believe that any woman would be oblivious about being overweight. Even if framed in the "I'm doing this because I care" context, the fact remains that ones body and what one puts in it is extremely personal. So isn't choosing to "discuss" a weight problem with a friend actually choosing to announce your problem with a friend's weight? Do you even go there? What do you say?

Who's Your Fatty [NY Post]

I don't think I have to say that I like women, that some of my best friends are female, that my sister rocks in unimaginable ways and that a girls' night out is tons of fun. But. When I was four years old, my best friend was a boy who lived down the street. We jumped on the trampoline, played doctor and watched cartoons together until I moved away. And there have been numerous successors ever since. Some of them were gay, some of them were straight. Some were older, some were younger. But having a guy as a close friend — as a best friend — is a feeling I've always known. There's something about the dynamic between two adults who don't want to sleep together and yet have different gender perspectives on life. Being girly with the girls is one thing; having a burger and a beer with the boys (or dumplings and champagne with the gays) is another. What is it about getting close to a man (in a totally non-sexual way) that's so appealing? (And am I the only one who loves having boys as besties?)

Always a Bridesmaid, Never the . . . Groom [Washington Post]

But if it's total nonsense, then why did Wright go out of his way to point out that he didn't see Barack Obama in church enough? And how exactly was making the best political speech of this generation on the subject dearest to Wright's heart a betrayal to anything other than Jeremiah Wright's ego? It's sort of like when you have two friends who used to date, and then one gets mad when she finds out you still talk to her ex, and she's sort of within her right, because he is the one who cheated on her, but that was like 53 years ago and he's not the one who gave her that STD that put her in this foul mood, and can't we all just get along already? Yeah it's sort of like that, only with Biblical undertones.

"We'll Find Out," Part II [The Page]
Revenge Is Sweet For Betrayed Pastor [NY Post]

"It's ridiculous that you should be afraid to call your friends when you're lonely." And that's when I realized I had, somewhere along the line, developed a fear of calling anyone I didn't know from high school or Philadelphia with whom I hadn't corresponded via IM in the preceding 5-10 days. It is actually a lot easier to simply commence corresponding via IM with someone I don't really know — but who is probably mutual Facebook friends with someone we both used to hang out with until 10 days ago or whatever — and go for drinks with that person, and then, either have sex, or use the meeting as an excuse to get back in touch with our mutual Facebook friend who's suddenly grown so disturbingly distant, maybe just because s/he has better things to do now.

Friends Indeed? [Washington Post]

A story in the New York Times a few weeks ago reported that the pressure among men to be "one of the guys" can be overwhelming and create a conflict between being loyal and doing the right thing. (Take all those unreported sexual assaults in Iraq!) The paper quotes Jackson Katz, who writes on issues of masculinity: "[Katz] said before acting, men often weigh the risk of ostracism and loss of status. 'Guys make calculations all the time that it's not worth it,' he said. Men 'have this notion that you try to prove yourself as a man.'"

But what about female friendship? According to the Times of London, some female friendships are so close, they're basically sexless marriages. The singer Kate Nash has a best friend called Laura, and, Nash explains, "There's a part of us that just wants to hibernate together for ever". Adds Laura: "My boyfriend knows I have four types of love - for my family, my friends, him and Kate." Though these platonic friendships can end badly — one woman quoted in the Times of London says that her ex-best friend would "get jealous if I went for lunch with a friend and she couldn't come." — these women seemed blissed out on female affection. The paper also quotes famous BFFs and sometime-lovers Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West; of Woolf, Sackville-West wrote, "I do love her, but not b.s.ly [backstairsly, or homosexually]. One's love for Virginia is a very different thing: a mental thing; a spiritual thing, if you like, an intellectual thing."

Do you take Rihanna's tack by being mostly friends with men? Or do you find non-backstairs love with females? Or do you take people on a case-by-case basis and simply see what happens?

Rihanna Favors Male Friends [Oh No They Didn't]
We're Friends, Right? [New York Times]
Are You Too Close To Your Best Friend? [Times of London]