My Frenemy Died, But I Realized I'm a Frenemy Magnet and Can Attract More and More!
My very first best friend's favorite game was "Let's Beat The Shit Out Of Genevieve." Friendships only went downhill after that. (But hey, at least some of the shittiest ones died!)
Hello, hello, and hello again!
Wow, so many of you are new here! It's thoroughly exciting to meet all these fresh, sweet, gorgeously unblemished subscribers! (And don’t take that to imply that the rest of you, you geniusly prescient, forward-thinking early adopters, are any less stunning and appreciated - What can I say to you? You’ve aged so well!!)
So if this is your very first ever email from me, I hope you like Genevieve's story today and I also hope you will go to the AJPT homepage and check out everything else I’ve been pouring my heart and soul and precious sleep hours into for these months before you even knew we existed (or that we had been resurrected from the death of my last publication). There is so much good stuff there and new stuff coming out all the time. Stop by as often as you like. You will simultaneously be doing a good deed by keeping me company in the comments, because that’s where I live. You can also always write me with anything and everything, including your own stories that you would like to see published (and monetized!) to jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com.
Most of all, have fun and have your Sunday just the way you want it!
Love always,
Jane
By Genevieve Sage
I’m currently going through a friend breakup, and it sucks. This person was deep in my "bestie circle," one of my ride-or-dies. I loved her so much I would’ve hidden a body for her, Dateline-style, with Josh Mankiewicz narrating in his soothing someone-was-murdered voice. But things got sticky, boundaries blurred like a bad Instagram filter, and eventually I started feeling unsafe in the friendship—so now we’re on a break. Or maybe a full breakup. Time will tell.
She recently found big, capital-L Love, and I was genuinely thrilled for her. I know new love means a friend temporarily disappears into a sex haze and Pottery Barn shopping sprees, but... time dragged on. Then came the slow fadeout: ghosting, canceled plans, and helpful tips like, "Your apartment’s dusty, you must hate cleaning," and "You should really try an Orange Theory class," — delivered in a Judge Judy tone but with better hair.
Then, like a rogue lightning bolt zapping a kiddie pool, a rift split wide open. She reached out by email — curt, weirdly moody, like an AI bot – and severed me from our shared life. What started as a minor tiff detonated into Cold War–level silence. Out of my inbox, and apparently, out of my life.
All this emotional demolition sent me spiraling into deep friend-inventory mode—the way normal people tear through their pantry after spotting a single rat turd. What I found? Generations of rats, nesting for decades, leaving little droppings all along the span of my storied friendships.
Was this now ex-friend actually a Frenemy? And I had been a Frenemy magnet for my entire life?
In my spiral, I traced my Frenemy magnetism all the way back to age 7, when I met my very first "best friend," Ashley. She had a unicorn-and-rainbows bedroom, which I naively thought meant she was emotionally safe. Nope. It was like assuming a guy with an acoustic guitar is automatically sensitive. Big mistake.
I wanted to play Barbies and restaurant. Ashley wanted to play a game called Let's Beat the Shit Out of Genevieve. And I kept showing up for more, like I was trying to win an Emmy for Best Child in a Lifetime Movie About Bad Circumstances.
Then came Lisa. Fifth-grade gymnastics partner by day, emotional terrorist by night. She once 'cut my bangs' in her kitchen — tiny scissors in one hand, passive-aggressive wisdom in the other:
'Maybe Dave’s just not that into you.'
Smash cut to Lisa dating Dave, while I sat there with janky Björk-baby-bangs and the slow, cold realization that I was her psychotic teen experiment in mean-girling.
Once, in seventh grade, Lisa told this boy Joe that my sweet little coral ESPRIT blouse was simply velcroed together, like a stripper outfit designed by Fisher-Price. Joe, being a seventh-grade boy with the moral compass of a drunk possum, ripped my shirt open in the middle of a packed lunchroom, flashing my training bra to 300 future-frat boys.
So, fuck Lisa (currently polluting Alaska as a mom — the horrors — and a teacher) and fuck Joe, who, incidentally, is dead now.