Prologue
It should have been a perfect weekend. The entrance to the spa was a white mission-style building with a wide arched doorway and the words “Natural Baths” in relief above. Beyond it was the real draw, an Olympic-size mineral pool with licks of steam slowly peeling off it. The scene was ringed with hills and palms. And as the Northern California sun dipped behind the pines, there we were: two women sitting on parallel beds in one of the picture-perfect cottages on the property. We were each wrapped in a fluffy white bathrobe. Ann was on the phone ordering a pizza and a Caesar salad, and Aminatou was deciding what movie to watch. The only thing on the schedule for the next 48 hours was a series of side-by-side spa treatments—with plenty of time for floating in the pool.
The emails we sent in advance of the trip were all exclamation points and promises. “Totes getting a mud bath but feeling conflicted about body scrub. Maybe a facial??” “Oooh, the mud bath is included!” “Y E S to free mud bath! and to this lil getaway.” Once we arrived, we texted cheerful updates to mutual friends who weren’t on the trip: “Hi from the spa in Napa!” On social media we posted cute photos of our matching animal-print shoes and beautiful scenes of the sun glinting on the surface of that 92-degrees natural hot-spring pool.
By all outward appearances, we were two healthy, wealthy women on a gorgeous getaway. This was the stuff of stereotypical “girls’ trips,” the sort of extravagant vacation we had dreamed about taking when we first met as broke 20-somethings. Years deep into our friendship, with so many of our professional aspirations starting to come to fruition and big pieces of our lives starting to snap into place, our unhurried hours at the spa should have been every bit as idyllic as the photos made it out to be.
But we were miserable.
We were miserable in that pretending-you-aren’t-miserable way, lonely behind our respective emotional walls. Just a few hours in, the trip was feeling like an awkward family reunion or a sad couples retreat, the sort of trying-too-hard getaway designed to revive a fading relationship. We were not a romantic couple or estranged family members, but the stakes were just as high for us.
We had met five years earlier and had quickly become essential in each other’s lives. You know that clip of Oprah talking about Gayle? (“She is the mother I never had. She is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person.”) That was the level of teary-eyed appreciation we had for each other. We knew each other’s secrets and snack preferences as if they were our own. Most of our friends considered us an inseparable duo. We had also started a podcast together, so lots of strangers now thought of us that way too. In the past, nothing about our friendship felt forced. We loved being—and being known as—each other’s core person. But over the last year, a space had opened up between us. This trip was an acknowledgment that our friendship was failing. We hoped that some bonding time and superficial luxuries just might save it.
The next day at brunch, we struggled to find things to say. We had quickly agreed to stay in and watch a movie the night before because it meant a few hours when we didn’t have to carefully choose which anecdotes to share about our lives as we avoided topics that felt too loaded. But now here we were in the light of day, sitting across from each other. We talked about the weather. The food. The baby-smooth quality of our post-spa skin. The banter felt forced, and we both knew we weren’t comfortable enough for deeper topics.
Later, when it came time for our free mud baths, we were shy about disrobing in front of each other. This was a first. We’d been in spa settings and in thrift-store changing rooms together countless times. As we sank into our respective tubs, Aminatou exhaled in relaxation. Then she glanced over and noticed that Ann was struggling with the heat. (Ann is basically a lizard. She’s always either freezing or boiling.) Aminatou, a more experienced spa-goer, realized she had forgotten to warn Ann that the mud bath feels very hot and claustrophobic. Aminatou hadn’t done it on purpose, but she was convinced that in an earlier, better time in the friendship, she would have remembered to check in with Ann about this. Suddenly Aminatou was not so relaxed either.
It felt like a metaphor for our dysfunctional dynamic.
At dinner that night, we acknowledged that things between us had gotten bad and that we wanted them to be better. There were long, uncomfortable pauses. Usually our conversations relied on us knowing everything about each other, and we had stopped offering up those details many months ago. Ann didn’t get into her financial woes or the knot of feelings she had about moving in with her formerly long-distance boyfriend. It wasn’t until the ride back to the city that Aminatou mentioned to Ann that she had been dating someone she really liked—for months. This was the first time Ann was hearing his name.
On the ride home, we told ourselves that things felt better than they had before. That this was progress, the beginning of a return to the time when our friendship felt like steady breathing, both natural and crucial, important and on autopilot. At least we admitted to each other that our friendship needs work, we both thought. It’s a start. We didn’t say these things out loud, though. Lodged beneath our rib cages was the truth: We had both been dreading this trip because we suspected a beautiful, distraction-free setting would highlight just how wide the space between us had become. And we had been right.
We didn’t have the words for what was happening to us or what had happened to our friendship.
If you listen to our podcast, you are probably screaming right now. Not only because we are women who seem to have a lot of words for everything else but also because our show is premised on us being tight-knit besties. (Stay sexy and don’t fake your friendship to keep your podcast afloat!) You might feel like we played you. But the truth is, like any long-term intimate relationship, a friendship like ours is complicated. It’s far more accurate to say we played ourselves by spending so many months pretending that things were OK when clearly they were not.
This isn’t the only time we have lacked a vocabulary for the dynamics and milestones and ups and downs of our relationship. In the past, when the world failed to provide a label for something we were experiencing as friends, we often supplied our own words for it. We came up with our own shorthand for the powerful decision to invest in our friends the way we invest in ourselves. (It’s called Shine Theory! Such a great concept that everyone from Victoria’s Secret to Reese Witherspoon has tried to co-opt it.) We talk about our messy, beautiful, interconnected social groups as a “friendweb.” The good stuff? We have always been adept at finding ways of describing it.
But it has been much harder for us to find a language for the difficult parts: The frustration of giving more to a friend than they’re giving back. The unbridgeable gaps in even the closest of interracial friendships. The dynamic of pushing each other away even as we’re trying to reconnect. The struggle to find true peace with a long-term friendship that is changing. We even lacked a name for the kind of friendship we have. Words like “best friend” or “BFF” don’t capture the adult emotional work we’ve put into this relationship.
We now call it a Big Friendship, because it’s one of the most affirming—and most complicated—relationships that a human life can hold.