Three seasons into The White Lotus – Mike White’s thesis on privilege, performance, and self-delusion – I’m still fooled by his emotional bait-and-switch. Each instalment begins by daring us to mock the oblivious, morally compromised characters – all heightened versions of familiar archetypes. “Thank god I’m not like them!” we're invited to gloat. But as the story unfolds, he quietly peels back their layers, and by the final episode, little glimmers of recognition leave us awkwardly asking, “Wait… am I?” Sneaky stuff, Mike.

Rather than one clear audience surrogate, we’re offered fragments of ourselves and our relationships scattered across the ensemble. And this season, for many, the sharpest reflections came in the form of long-time friends, Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate.

After weeks of scoffing at the antics of the trio, I was struck by the finale. It offered a refreshing – and honestly, confronting – counterpoint to the idea that all messy female relationships are inherently ‘toxic’.

I had gleefully watched these three Gen X women through a familiar, judgmental lens. The extent of their gossipy, jealous behaviour allowed me to sit a comfortable enough distance from them to feel unchallenged, and conveniently detached. But Laurie’s monologue – her half-defensive, half-vulnerable admission that she’s “just happy to be at the table” – pierced through that veneer. Suddenly, their dysfunction wasn’t cringeworthy, it was recognisable.

In the final episode, instead of imploding or even hinting that the trio might drift apart post-vacation, they reaffirm their deep loyalty and affection for one another – complicating what we’ve come to define as healthy friendship in the age of TikTok pop-psychology.

As a younger millennial woman, I’m caught between the relentless girl-boss perfectionism of the 2010s and the morally dogmatic wellness speak of the 2020s. Somewhere along the way, the punishing self-optimisation we once reserved for our careers was repackaged as personal growth. This corporatisation leaked into our friendships with the idea that a bond must always “serve you” or “add value,” otherwise it’s fair game to cut it off.

Buzzwords, co-opted from very real and necessary frameworks like “boundaries”, “emotional labour” and “attachment styles” are used to define the terms of a friendship. A potential win for self-awareness, but also the opportunity to feel like we’re navigating a rulebook rather than a relationship. I’d argue that this mindset – rooted in individualism and stripped of nuance – flattens the emotional texture of real relationships.

Clarity around what you will and won’t accept in a relationship is a positive thing, and prioritising your own mental health is important and empowering. But the rigid boundaries we’ve started to place around dynamics within our friendships threaten to oversimplify the complexity of connection.

What if jealousy can reveal parts of ourselves that we've long denied? What if gossip – not the malicious kind, but the kind rooted in shared curiosity and emotional processing – can be a form of intimacy?

By forgetting that relationships are meant to be lived in, not audited, it feels as though the curated standards we apply to friendships are warping our experience of closeness. At its heart, friendship is a mutual, sometimes messy commitment between imperfect people choosing to stay.

Granted, I wouldn’t be scrambling to be friends with these women (but sign me up for a poolside negroni with Chelsea any day). Jaclyn is deeply insecure, putting her need for validation over her relationships. Kate is so conflict-averse that she’ll change her opinions to suit her company. Laurie’s unprocessed resentment erupts as defensiveness, spite and jealousy. But if you held a mirror up to any of us at our worst, chances are we’ve been all of those things too. To be brutally real with myself, I might be a Kate with a Jaclyn rising and Laurie moon. 

As Laurie admits, when she’s with people who’ve known her forever, “it’s just so transparent what my choices were, and my mistakes”. Nothing is more exposing than time, and knowing someone for long enough guarantees a front row seat to your most unflattering moments. But to reveal the worst parts of ourselves and still be accepted is one of the deepest forms of trust.

While it might be easier to believe that skipping out on a friendship at the first sign of discomfort is an act of self-preservation, it can also be a way to avoid the work of real connection. Being human isn’t enough to absolve us of accountability, but it is reason enough to extend each other grace.

Nobody (except Mike White, I suppose) can truly say whether it would have been healthier for the group to go their separate ways. We don’t know if Laurie’s admission came from a place of resigned self-pity rather than genuine humility, whether she was masking resentment with graciousness or performing gratitude to avoid more conflict. Maybe this was a quiet negotiation she made with herself to stay included in a social circle with cultural capital. But what I saw was someone holding onto a friendship not because it was perfect, but because it still mattered.

This isn’t a call to arms to slag your friends off, succumb to your pettiest urges and stay in a friendship that has soured purely for nostalgia. But rather a reminder that friendships – especially among women – are allowed to be fraught, emotional and still deeply valid. 

If the goal of life is to be constantly evolving, growing and improving, maybe we can take respite in the arms of our nearest and dearest. In truth, some of my friendships aren’t perfect, pristine or tension-free, but I’m still happy to be at the table.