“I’ll be there for you”–Why your friends group shouldn’t be like one from a sitcom
- Nandini Rohela
- Jan 6
- 4 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Turns out the healthiest friendships rarely follow the script of your favourite sitcoms.
Besides swiftly exchanging witticisms and bringing us laughter and comfort, sitcoms like Friends and Sex and the City sold us a dream- when we grow up we’ll find a group of people who will become our ride-or-die for life. We imagine a Monica who’ll let us crash rent-free in her grandma’s apartment or a Miranda who’ll come sprinting from her office to rally by your side. But for young adults today, it’s hard to find a real-life Miranda Hobbes or a Monica Geller.
If you believe that your friend would drop everything and come rushing to you because you’ve just been ghosted or brusquely dumped, then my friend, like me, you have fallen victim to the unrealistic portrayals of friendships that sitcoms like Friends and How I Met Your Mother have fed us over the years.
The all-or-nothing approach
Sitcoms have portrayed an idealised image of what friendship dynamics should look like, also distorting our perceptions of real-life friendships and relationships. It is highly unrealistic–and frankly emotionally draining–to have your entire friend group orbit around the same people, the same coffee shops and the same apartment 24/7. Catching up with friends over the weekend? Yes, why not? But losing track of time and ignoring personal equations over friendships? Not done. Hey, nobody is suggesting that you abandon your friendships; everyone needs a social life, but striking a healthy balance is key!
Sitcoms are only a glorification of omnipresent responsiveness. In reality, you navigate scheduling clashes, cancelled hangouts, and polls in group chats to find a suitable date and venue.
Dr. Marisa G. Franco precisely conveys this in her book "Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make -- and Keep -- Friends". Her vivid storytelling conveys a fundamental idea: that the quality of your friendship depends less on constant contact and more on reliable responsiveness.
The blurry boundaries and cloudy edges
The unrealistic availability isn’t the only impractical thing being shoved down our minds. Sitcom friends don’t just stop at always answering calls and showing up at 2 a.m.– they almost always insert themselves in the romantic lives of their friends. Think of all the times Miranda, Samantha and Carrie meddled in Charlotte's love life, telling her who she should (and shouldn’t) date or the times when Ted’s friends staged multiple interventions about his girlfriends.
It makes us laugh when we see it on our screens, but if it happened with you in real life, you know you’d probably find yourself cutting them off. This ‘butting in where they don’t belong’ approach that TV shows use is often portrayed as loyalty in sitcoms, but in actuality, it might contribute to ending more friendships rather than saving.
You don’t need to always have an opinion on every aspect of your friend’s relationship. You probably wouldn’t like being told to break up with someone just because your friend got an ‘ick’. Being enamoured by the unhealthy portrayals on screens, we missed another casualty that sitcoms tried to sell us: monogamous friendships. The kind of friendship dynamic that demands you to fulfill every role—from a therapist to a soulmate, an unwavering bond where only one of your best friends must fulfill all the needs you have.
These descriptions put pressure on people to spin all the plates at the same time, forgetting one's flaws, imperfections and different dynamics with different friends. It's like wanting one person to play the director, actor and the screenwriter at the same time. But is this actually possible?
Shows like The Bold Type, Seinfeld, Friends constantly propagate the idea that a tight-knit friend group can spend a big chunk of their lives with each other, even if they have differing political opinions, core values, beliefs and ideologies–that too without growing apart.
Our cultural obsession with these sitcoms highlights how often we tend to gloss over the dichotomy between what makes a good television series and what makes a healthy friendship. We tend to forget that such shows need reliable and recurring characters to build a foundation, which explains the impractical relationships.
The image of lounging with friends on an aesthetically unappealing couch in a stylish yet messy apartment—discussing life with a Chinese takeout box in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other at the absurd hour of 4 a.m.—is tempting. However, no ordinary person has the energy to script friendships around a 24/7 laugh track or treat them like a full-time job.
In conclusion
It's time to unsubscribe from the notion perpetuated by our beloved sitcoms—the idea that lulls us into categorising friendships into neat trope boxes we can tick off one by one.
Sitcom friendships may appear cool and cosy on screen, but in reality, we don’t need our friends to co-direct our love lives, social lives, or every messy decision and mistake we make. They simply need room to breathe. Perhaps they won’t always be there for you, and maybe that’s exactly how it should be.
Also Read: Soft ghosting bruises harder than you think