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The Art of the Bitch Fight

I’d be lying if I said that every moment of living in the sorority house was pure joy. Sure, 99% of it was, but there were also the moments where I absolutely hated my life. .9% of the time, I was a little irritated by the fact that I actually needed to sleep in order to get up for a huge exam in the morning, but I was woken up by the drunken screams of my sisters, at 3:00 am on a Tuesday night. Elementary education majors can still go out every single night of their lives with little repercussion on their GPAs since their courses required them to write word problems about Johnny giving apples to his friends. I’m fairly certain that every sorority girl has had moments like that, and I know it’s not a big deal, it’s college. But the other .1% of the time, I was hating my life and dreading being home because of the worst thing to ever happen to any roomie scenario: I was fighting with one of my BFF’s.

It’s common knowledge that girl fighting is tactful, calculated, and above all, passive aggressive. When your pledge class consists of 50+ girls, it’s a little unrealistic to assume that you’ll be automatic BFF’s with all of them. I mean, I love all of my sisters, but there are some I don’t LOVE, but who doesn’t feel that way? Generally, when something less than ideal happens and causes me to be annoyed with someone, I tend to take the passive aggressive route and just “forget” to text someone about how we’re meeting for happy hour after class, or try to just sit a few rows away from her at chapter. However, fighting with a BFF is a totally different scenario. It’s nearly impossible to avoid her, especially when she lives in the same house as you do. Also, it’s easy to ignore someone that isn’t necessarily in your clique until the whole situation blows over. But ignoring the girl you go out with EVERY night you go out, the girl you split the handle of vodka with while you pre-game, the girl who has half of your wardrobe because you share clothes so often? Impossible. So what do you do?

Well, you could be an adult, and sit down and talk about exactly what’s bothering you and solve the situation like the mature adults you are. Or, you could go my route, which I totally recommend, and have an all out bitch fight about it.

Bitch fights are, in my opinion, the only way to ultimately settle a score. Whether she told the new guy you’re talking to the wrong thing, gave your number to the creeper at the bar you did NOT want to have it because she thought it was funny, or whatever crime it may be, your bestie made you mad and it’s driving a huge wedge between your friendship. Playing the passive aggressive card for too long can end a friendship completely; you ignore each other for long enough, and pretty soon you drift away from each other to the point that a year later you end up getting drunk together again and forgetting why you ever stopped being friends in the first place. Sure, you wind up becoming best friends again, but then you’ve spent an entire year without each other that way. Facing the problem head-on results in the most confrontational, but beneficial, method available.

The rules of bitch fighting are simple:
1) Focus on the reason for the fight. It’s easy to let other minor issues build up and get brought up, which can be super counter productive because then the entire situation just snowballs and you wind up hating each other.
2) Don’t get other people involved. Making a house choose sides in an argument is the worst way to settle things. First of all, you put yourself at risk of getting hurt by who chooses which side, and second of all, that always invites the nosy girl who likes to be involved in everyone’s drama take it way too far.
3) Don’t resort to bringing up past issues.
4) Make sure ENDING the fight is the ultimate goal. A successful bitch fight involves a lot of yelling/accusations, but ultimately results in crying, hugging, and apologizing on both ends. For example, last week I got into a HUGE blowout with my little, and I actually told her she was a bad friend and a bitch…(sooooo sorry by the way) over what wound up being something stupid. Anyway, by the end of it, we hugged it out and seriously are still so close it’s as if nothing happened…mainly because, hours after the make-up, I sent her a text saying, “I’m sorry for earlier…you’re not a bad friend at all. But you are a bitch, and that’s fine, because we all are.” See. I’m such a pacifist, at heart.

I think the most important thing to remember is that when you actually reach the point where you fight with your friends as if they are your actual sisters is the point when you’ve reached a new level of friendship, one that is just a reality of being in a sorority. We only yell at each other when we’re upset because we actually love each other to death. It’s the passive aggressive fights that mean you don’t care enough to risk hurting someone’s feelings temporarily to permanently fix a problem…think about it.

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