Were you the “secret friend” in school? The downside of friendships for girls with ADHD
When I was younger, there was a show I watched on TV, The Wonder Years. In one episode, the protagonist, Kevin, a young boy in middle school, gets paired up with a girl named Margaret that everyone else in the school thinks of as “odd”. She wears three braids, says whatever is on her mind, and, in the words of Kevin’s sister, “is a little different”. His classmates and siblings tease him mercilessly about his association with her, and he is mortified to be in her company. She also does not pick up on social cues when she stops by his house to chat and he tries to make her leave. Nowadays, we would refer to her as “neurodivergent”, perhaps with ADHD or on the Autism spectrum. So he spends some time with her and finds her interesting. He likes her curiosity, her knowledge about animals, her spirit. But her social status is nil. The next day at school he proposes a scheme to her to have his cake and eat it too: “We can still hang out. Just no one has to know about it. We can be secret friends!” She got upset when she heard this, and she said, “You don’t want to talk to me…How can we be friends if you don’t want to talk to me?” His friends saw the exchange and started jeering. She got upset, said, “I thought you were different”, turned on her heel, and stomped off. As a grown man, he reflected on this friendship that could have been, had he the courage to pursue it. "The truth is, in seventh grade, who you are is who other seventh graders say you are…The funny thing is, it’s hard to remember the names of the kids you spent so much time trying to impress…But you don’t forget someone like Margaret Farquar, professor of biology, mother of six, friend to bats.”
This episode was painful to watch because it hit home. As it likely does with many girls with ADHD who are a little different. The only part I didn’t resonate with was her reaction. She was angry and let him know it, snubbing him. I never had that level of self-esteem or good boundaries at that age. When I was two years younger than Arnold and Margaret, I had befriended a girl in my class who was feeling the same embarrassment about being seen with me. So when we passed by a mutual classmate’s house, she instructed me to “duck when we walk in front of her house, so she doesn’t see that I am with you.” I obliged. She said it was because she didn’t want the other girl to get upset that she didn’t schedule time with her, and on the surface, this seemed reasonable. We would keep someone from getting upset, and I would get to spend the afternoon with this fledgling friend. I was hungry for the friendship, so I acquiesced.
But over time, it couldn’t last. She had to be my “secret friend”, not hanging out at school, only occasionally in private. Pretty much for the same reasons as Kevin snubbed Margaret. When you are the weird girl who speaks her mind, follows her (sometimes less popular) interests without apology, that is the price you pay for your authenticity. Then, she moved away, calling me a few weeks later, asking me to visit her in her new home a plane flight away. My mother had witnessed the pain I felt at this girl’s underhanded criticisms and public shunning and (in my opinion, rightfully) decided that she would not allow me to go. The “friendship” ended due to physical distance, but over time, it would not have survived. She was too embarrassed, and eventually, I would have gotten annoyed at continuing to take on the role of “secret friend”.
It got better as I got older, as it did for many people, I suspect. We start to mature, grow into ourselves. We take a bit longer to learn effective filtering, but we get better at it. We find the interests and the people that value us. But we often feel the effects of thinking of ourselves as misfits, “not good enough”. In her autobiography, I’m the One that I Want", the comedian Margaret Cho spoke of a particularly vicious abandonment by two former friends at summer camp. “I went on to make good friends, and I was constantly surprised that I was never betrayed again in the same way”, she said. These traumas affect us even as we grow.
We gradually develop a sense of who we are, but often, we carry the remnants of feeling “not good enough” to be in a relationship with others unless we are helping someone in some way. Yes, it is good to be a caring person, but sometimes, we run the danger of being “foul weather friends”, or the person others call for help but not necessarily to socialize. In our intimate partner relationships, we may do the same thing, putting a partner’s needs before ours as a matter of course, not noticing that our needs are not being met, our wants not being reciprocated. We give time, money, sex, a couch, a listening ear, in exchange for having others tolerate our storytelling, our tendency to interrupt or to pay attention in spurts. At work, we may avoid groups, having had difficult experiences of being teased or bullied for our tendencies to space out, to be political liabilities because we are often not afraid to speak out. I don’t think it is a mistake that woman with ADHD, in my experience, often hate office politics, feeling that they get thrown under the bus. I have often seen this behavior in the children of people with addictions or mental health issues, too, the sense that we need to “earn” the relationship by being a caretaker. The core issue is the not feeling that we are good enough being ourselves.
Some people are natural caretakers, to be sure. People who truly feel pride and pleasure and a sense of purpose in caring for others. I love to make a good meal or give something nice to people I love. What we need to look out for is whether or not we feel drained, frustrated, overwhelmed by a situation. Whether it is benefitting all parties, or whether it feels parasitical in some way. That is when we may need to step back and say, maybe this isn’t working, and I am not a horrible person for wanting more. This can be anxiety-provoking, too. Will we be called selfish, will we hurt the other person, or be abandoned? It is not always easy, but the authenic self that we have been, the self that we had to work to hide, can be the part that can also guide us toward the relationships we need. Look out for those who treat us differently in public than they do in private, for they have something to prove. Pay attention to what is important. It can be hard, but I also try to give some grace to this secret friend, because her shame was so much stronger than her desire for connection, and that had to be painful for her. And to be fair, we can all be annoying sometimes, and people are allowed to feel that. Slowly you will find your people at home and your niche at work, though it may not take the linear path that it seems to with “attention-surplus” people. In short, hang in there. Only you can decide whether it’s ok to stay a “secret friend”, or if your relationship is worth seeing the light of day.
