How To Know When You Should Break Up With A Childhood Friend

If You're A Serena...

You Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve

One of the best things about Serena is that she lives and loves with reckless abandon. She might have secrets of her own, but she embraces new people with a warm smile and makes everyone feel like they're welcome. That might get her into trouble sometimes (unfortunately not everyone is as nice as they appear), but that doesn't stop her from loving others time and time again.

People Have A Lot Of Pre-Conceived Ideas About You

Serena is the talk of the town when she returns from boarding school in the Gossip Girl pilot. Gossip Girl herself starts a lot of these stories (just like today's social media adds to our own IRL rumor mill), and everyone has an opinion on why she left, where she went, and why she came back. Regardless of whether or not the rumors are true, she tackles the doubt head-on and doesn't back down from a fight when it comes to the people she loves.

Nothing Stands In Between You And Your Goals

Once she zeroes in on exactly what she wants, Serena's shiny disposition and persistence help her achieve her goals. If you consider Serena a kindred spirit, you're probably focused and driven. A word of warning — be careful not to step on people along the way.

You Don't Mind Being The Center Of Attention

Serena is without a doubt an extrovert. She rarely turns down a good party, and is always making plans with friends and family. While it might appear she just loves to soak up attention, she's really seeking love and affection from the people around her — who love her just as much.

If You're A Blair...

You Have A Crazy Work Ethic

Blair also isn't afraid to work for success, and she'll do what she has to to get there. She's also got plenty of perseverance because her resolve doesn't stop after she reaches a goal. Whether she gets a job at a magazine or starts her own fashion line, she works hard.

You're Hesitant To Trust New People

People are drawn to Blair, but she has a hard time actually letting them get to know her vulnerable side. Considering how many people have hurt her, it makes sense that she finds it difficult to let her guard down. However, when she finally meets someone she trusts (like Serena), they end up knowing everything about her.

You Love To Celebrate The Finer Things In Life

Blair loves a lot of things — fashion, Audrey Hepburn movies, macarons — and she isn't afraid to let the world know it. Sometimes that translates to buying the beautiful dress you've had your eye on, and sometimes that translates to taking the long route on a walk so you get to look at more flowers. Blair would approve of both.

You Love Fiercely

There's a ferocity in everything Blair does, including when she loves someone. She will bend over backward to protect her friends, stick up for them, and defend them when she needs to, a fact she reminds Georgina Sparks in season 1. "Haven't you heard? I'm the crazy b*tch around here."

Understanding Interpersonal Needs

We all have needs and motivations around other people, such as the need to belong, the need for influence and control, and the need for intimacy, but we're all different in how important these needs are to us. Relationships can falter when we assume our friends have the same level of need as we do, or when our interpersonal behavior confuses them. The FIRO (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation) framework is a useful tool for understanding interpersonal needs. It looks at three aspects:

• Inclusion or involvement: Our need to belong, to be included or involved, and to include others.
• Influence: The extent to which we try to influence and control others, and how much we want to be in an environment that provides us with clarity.
• Connection: Our need for connection and intimacy with others on a one-to-one basis.

Why You Might Be Confusing Your Friends

Crucially, the FIRO assessment looks at both the extent to which we show or express each of these and the extent to which we want each of these. For example, let’s suppose someone scores high on how much involvement they express, but low on how much involvement they want. They will come across as very outgoing and sociable, enthusiastically getting other people to join in with the activities that they set up, but they are likely very choosy about which invitations they accept from others.

Other people can find this confusing, or even hurtful, and this can harm relationships. But if the individual realizes how they behave, they can explain this to others or modify their behavior. Or take someone who has the opposite result — low expressed involvement and high wanted involvement. They want to be included but their natural tendency is to wait for others to do the inviting. In the post-COVID world, they may need to change this aspect of their behavior in order to form new friendships. Of course, for many people what they express matches what they want, but that isn’t the case for everyone.

Forming New Friendships: Extraversion And Introversion

Once you have a clear picture of your interpersonal needs, you can start to figure out which are (and which aren’t) being satisfied, alongside which of your relationships satisfy each need. When you're starting new friendships, this will help you to realize what you're looking for. But to get at how you might go about forming those relationships, then also knowing your personality type is really useful, in particular your preferences for either Extraversion or Introversion.

In the MBTI framework, Extraversion or Introversion is all about where you get your energy from, and where you focus your attention. People with a preference for Extraversion tend to focus their attention on the external world, while those with a preference for Introversion focus on their internal world of thoughts and feelings. It’s important to remember that this is a preference, rather than a prescriptive, rigid blueprint. Extraverts do have an inner life, and can spend some time on their own, though this will sap their energy after a while. Introverts can and do enjoy spending time with others, though they may then need to go away and quietly recharge their batteries by themselves.

Tips For Extraverts

If you have a personality preference for Extraversion, it’s likely that you enjoy meeting others and are happy to introduce yourself and strike up a conversation with people you’ve never met before. So at face value, making friends shouldn't be an issue. But it’s important to remember that not everyone is the same as you are. If you want to make friends with an Introvert, or keep that friendship alive, here are some suggestions:

• Give them space. If they don’t respond to what you are saying immediately, it isn’t (or isn’t necessarily) because they don’t understand or aren’t interested; they may be thinking through how best to answer before they say anything. Pause, let them think though what they are going to say and give them time to say it. Don’t talk over them. Be a good listener.
• Don’t be afraid of getting into deep, meaningful conversations. Introverts may not be big on small talk. Maybe find a shared interest you can talk about.
• Start off your friendship with one-to-one activities and small get-togethers. Don’t be surprised or offended if they don’t want to come along to big, crowded events.
• Allow them to recharge their batteries. Don’t be offended if they need some time to themselves, temporarily vanish during a big get-together, or don’t always want to spend time with you.
• They might prefer emails, texts, or other messaging to phone calls as a way of keeping in touch.

Tips For Introverts

If you have a personality preference for Introversion, it’s likely that you have a set of close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances. But it can be useful for one or more of this select group to be an Extravert; this can open doors and help you meet new people. Here are some tips that might be useful:

• Recognize that you might need to step out of your comfort zone. Try to engage in small talk with a new acquaintance; to some extent, this is a skill that you can develop. Go along to bigger, noisier events on occasion if these seem important to an Extraverted friend.
• Express your needs. Let others know that you will need some tome alone to recharge your batteries. Extraverts may not realize this unless you tell them! Don’t be afraid to say things like, “Let me just think about that for a moment,” when asked a question.
• Be a good and active listener. Show interest in what is being said. Use this as a basis for having a conversation with the other person.
• Find a connection. Don’t think that you "should" have a large number of friends; making a smaller number of meaningful relationships is likely to suit you better.
• Respect other people’s preferences. You may want to communicate by text, but sometimes you may need to meet up in person!

As a Power of Women honoree, Mariska was recognized in regards to her work as an advocate for sexual assault survivors. She took the stage and used her platform to discuss rape and assault conviction reversals, shining a light on the recent overturned ruling in Harvey Weinstein's landmark NYC case. Here's what she said:

Today I want to talk about reversing convictions, and more specifically I want to talk to you about how impossible it is to reverse mine. It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that survivors matter. It is impossible to reverse my conviction that what happens to us matters, and that our society must respond to survivors with a more a compassionate, holistically, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of what healing means.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that after a trauma, survivors can reclaim lives of hope, of possibility, of audacious risk, beautiful intimacy, and glorious, glorious abundant joy. And I stand before you as evidence of that statement.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that we must listen to survivors as experts on what justice means. It is extraordinary how little their voices are consulted, let alone incorporated, in the process of deciding how to repair harm. Justice is not a one-size-fits-all journey.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that patriarchal impunity has to end. Patriarchal impunity is when a male-dominated system exempts perpetrators from punishment. Studies show that only 20% of all rape cases in the U.S. are reported to the police, and that between 5 and 0% of all rapes result in a guilty plea or a conviction. So why do 80% of victims not report? Because they're met with a system that grants impunity to perpetrators; a system that blames victims; a system that accepts only those victims who are experienced as "real" rape; a system that completely misunderstands the neurobiology of trauma, which causes behavior in women that doesn't fit the picture of how a "real victim" would act.

Is that change needed that victims should just pull themselves together? Just buck up and report anyway? No. No, it's the system that receives them that needs to change

It is impossible to reverse my conviction — and the conviction of my extraordinary team, The Joyful Heart — that the backlog of untested rape kits can be brought to zero; that the testing of all new kits must be mandated; that we need a statewide kit tracking system; and that survivors have the right to access the status of their kits.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that grammar — yes, grammar — that we use when we speak about rape must change. In the sentence, "A woman is raped," there's a crime and there's a victim, but there's no perpetrator. Where's the perpetrator? Where is he? Statistically, as we know, most likely he's walking free. He's so free that he doesn't even appear in the language about the crime that he committed. Is that not extraordinary? It's extraordinary that in the very grammar, the perpetrator goes free. Reintroducing perpetrators in the language of rape will make some very unwieldy grammar, but that's the nature of change. It's unwieldy, it's messy, it's uncomfortable, but it's necessary.

Hargitay continued on in her prolific speech to describe that rape shouldn't be considered a "crime of passion" because it's "not simply the next step in the trajectory of his passion" when a man takes a consensual hookup too far and assaults a woman against her will. She stated that it's "an exercise of power," doubling down that the language we use is important.

The speech went on to address that rape is both about power and control, as a "construct" that was "built, and assembled, and reinforced over time." She noted that there are people with these positions of power — and she specifically called out those in the entertainment industry — that could make a difference and aligned themselves to victims and survivors.

After this and some other remarks, Hargitay specifically called out the Weinstein conviction reversal. She said:

I do want to say something about the Harvey Weinstein conviction, specifically about the reason that it was overturned: too many women's voices. Too many women's voices were allowed to speak. Hallelujah! Amen! I can't imagine anything more beautiful than that. The Daily podcast episode talked about how it was so risky for the prosecution to have that many women testify. Risky to let women speak? You're damn right it is!

Too many women speaking brings change. Too many women speaking shakes the establishment. Too many women means we get listened to more, and people might actually hear what we have to say. Look what happened when women started saying just two words, right? Me too — just as an example — a tidal wave of change. Me too.

And then of course, there was the response: the Me Too Movement. The backlash. The examination of whether the changes that have come are lasting, or are even positive. Of course there's a backlash! What did they expect? For women to speak repeatedly, loudly, together, with a purpose — for there to be no backlash? The backlash is evidence of how powerful those voices were, how powerful those voices ARE.

Watch Mariska Hargitay's Full Speech Here

Turns out that your TV heroes really can be your IRL heroes after all. Long live Olivia Benson! Long live Mariska Hargitay!