Friend Friction

Friendships rock, right? But it’s not always rainbows and giggles when it comes to you and your friends. Tiffs happen.

Here, we break down the deets of some typical bud battles. Then we give you some tactics for dealing before things erupt into a full-on blowout.

“My BFF doesn’t want me to have any other friends.”

“My friend Mandy and I were best friends since first grade,” says Abby, 13. “But then she got really mad when I tried to hang out with other people.” Thing is, Abby has a right to spread her wings on the social scene.

The real deal:

Some girls don’t realize that friendship love doesn’t divide -- it multiplies. So just because Abby chooses to hang with other girls, it doesn’t mean she loves Mandy any less. She just likes someone else in addition to her. Get the math here? But if you value your BFF, you’ll assure her that she’s still important to you -- because what this is really about is her fear of losing your friendship.

“One of my friends thinks I like her BF.”

Ah, things aren’t always as they appear. Peyton, 14, can attest to that: “My friend Rebecca was going out with this guy Bill, and someone started a rumor that I liked him. Truth is, I didn’t like Bill. But Rebecca was being, like, all quiet around me and avoiding me.”

The real deal:

Once Peyton got wind of the untrue gossip, she confronted Rebecca about it. “I just told her, ‘Are you going to believe some idiot, or are you going to believe me?’” Rebecca chose to trust her friend, and the two were able to smooth things over because they communicated about it maturely.

“I have this friend who competes with me.”

“My friend Courtney was on the softball team, and she was trying to teach me how to play,” says Katie, 10. “But whenever I got better at it, she would have to top me and say, ‘Oh, you’re not as good as me.’ It was so annoying.” Having a friendship throwdown is never fun.

The real deal:

Turns out, Courtney didn’t even realize what she was doing until Katie pointed it out to her. “I said, ‘If you’re really my friend, you’ll let me be proud of my accomplishments without trying to beat me.’” Game over!

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