Tonight, we went to see a show at Theatre Row called Di & Viv & Rose, a play about three women who were roommates in college in England and remained friends through adulthood. All three are very different in terms of their life outlooks and personalities, and throughout the play, we witness a lot of arguments over many misunderstandings, assumptions, and gaps in knowledge that each has about the other. In the final argument between the two remaining living women, I realized how real the argument they were having was. I think the majority of all the arguments I’ve ever had with my female friends have been around some misunderstanding, assumption, or misinterpretation stemming from a conversation, e-mail, text message, or some other form of communication, and it really made me think… geez, are we women so complicated and convoluted.

One yells at the other for never calling on the anniversary of her rape. The other says, I had no idea you wanted me to call, but I thought about calling you. The first replies, It doesn’t count that you just thought about calling me because you never actually called in the end; you should have known to call me! Well, why didn’t she just communicate that to her, then? Sure, it’s easy as someone looking in to make a statement like that, but I know I’ve had similar situations where I’ve gotten mad at my friends over assumptions I’ve made, and they’ve done the same with me. We want our friends and lovers and family to be mind readers, to know what we want, even if we haven’t explicitly communicated it to them. Then, when they don’t do what we want which we never voiced, we get angry at them for never doing said action.

I don’t know how we became this way.