As seen in popular teen movies such as Heathers, Mean Girls and the Bring It On series, rivalries can quickly poison friendships. Competition between two or more people is only natural, not only in films, but in reality as well. Whether it’s about grades, appearances or crushes, it’s difficult to form a close bond with someone without also creating some level of animosity in the process.
For senior Alli Foster, however, any contest between her and her friends has been generally good-natured.
Foster describes herself as competitive, someone who befriends people who are either very similar to or very different from her. Over time, an amiable match sometimes develops about nothing particularly significant.
“I had a competition with one of my friends. She’s Catholic, and I’m Baptist, so we had this ongoing argument over whether or not Catholics added books to the Bible or Baptists took them away,” Foster said. “We ended up getting both of our pastors involved and bringing in outside opinions, and it was a big argument for a while. That’s kind of just a stupid example.”
That particular strife made the friendship more fun, Foster said. In general, she feels if she were to keep all forms of competition out of her friendships, her friends would never get to know her that well. Psychologist and author of “The Dance of Anger” and “Why Won’t You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts,” Dr. Harriet Lerner agrees with Foster, saying it’s normal for friends to feel at odds and even jealous of each other sometimes.
“Friendships suffer not from jealousy and competition, but rather from the denial of it. When we deny real feelings because we can’t tolerate them or believe they are unacceptable, we run the risk of acting these unconscious feelings out,” Dr. Lerner said. “For example, we may ignore a friend, insult her, gossip about her or otherwise operate at her expense rather than admit to ourselves that we feel envious or competitive.”
Although senior John Swift doesn’t deny the fact that a cordial rivalry exists between himself and his brother, he said his desire to be like his brother, 2012 alum Billy Swift, is something the two never really talk about. Despite this lack of acknowledgement, John Swift said that by trying to reach the academic standard his older brother has set for him, the two have grown much closer emotionally.
John Swift has an almost identical course schedule to the one his brother had, has the same grade point average (GPA), has applied to many of the same colleges in order to see whether or not any school would prefer him over his brother and strove to get the same ACT score. While these efforts to be like his brother may seem tedious and excessive, John Swift said they’ve taught him to appreciate everything his brother has achieved.
“[The competition] has helped me see how hard he worked when he was my age, and as a result, I think I have a lot more respect for him than I would if we didn’t compete academically,” John Swift said. “Also, because I’ve followed a very similar course to him, he kind of knows what I’m going through when it comes to school and knows how difficult it is. He’s told me how much he admires what I’ve accomplished because he realizes how hard it is to excel academically when you’re in a lot of AP’s and extracurriculars.”
While Foster also appreciates her friends for the hard work they put into their grades, she said she found it difficult to root for their success during her preparation for last year’s PSAT. Set on earning a score that would place her in the top one percent of her class and secure her a semifinalist position for a National Merit scholarship, anyone else’s gain was her loss.
“[The PSAT] was a big deal for me because if I got finalist status, that meant a full tuition scholarship to the college I wanted to go to. So I was very competitive with that in the sense that the more people I knew of who did well, the worse it made me feel,” Foster said. “It wasn’t like the ACT, where you could get a 36 and all of your best friends could get a 36 and everyone’s happy. You have to be in the top one percent, and that means 99 percent of the people have to do worse than you. If you see that someone gets a bad score, that makes you kind of happy, and if you see that someone gets a better score, it makes you kind of sad or apprehensive about it.”
This anxiety led Foster to bring up her concern over the PSAT to her friends a few times, but she managed not to let it infiltrate and disturb her friendships. Dr. Lerner said when relationships become tense, it’s helpful to step back and evaluate whether or not a particular friendship is actually beneficial and under what circumstances to get out of it.
“Everyone has to decide for themselves when to end a friendship. In general, I’d say that if interactions with a particular friend usually leave us feeling down, smaller or unworthy, it may be time to think about ending the friendship or taking more distance,” Dr. Lerner said. “If the friendship is important and has some significant history behind it, it’s worthwhile to try to talk frankly to a friend about your feelings rather than just cutting [him or] her off.”
Despite the stress his competition with his brother may cause him, it would obviously be much more difficult for John Swift to get out of that relationship if he wanted to. Some of his aspirations to be like Billy Swift have proven to be particularly difficult and have caused him to sacrifice some of the fun aspects of high school.
“People are always surprised when they find out I have a 4.0 [GPA], and they ask how I’ve kept it. I always say the same thing: ‘I don’t really have an option. Billy was valedictorian, and it’d be so hard to live with myself knowing he was valedictorian and I wasn’t.’” John Swift said. “And having a mindset like that is really hard, not just because keeping that GPA is so difficult already, but also because you’re under this constant added pressure that you can’t escape or beat, which means you’re always stressed.”
Do your friends compete like this?