Why I have never gone on a girls' holiday 🏝️

I am the 'island friend' and I am very much OK with it

Photo by Tsairrong Shew on Unsplash

I have never been on a girls’ holiday. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve never been on holiday with friends full stop, apart from a hen do two years ago and a weekend in the Cotswolds with James’ friends. I’ve often wondered if this is a tad strange, but then I remember that there are several very legitimate reasons behind why I haven’t packed my bags for a beach club in Ibiza:

• I am an introvert who needs her own space to recharge and reset

• I often find interacting with different people and energies draining rather than energising

• I am a homebody at heart, who just bloody loves being at home. If I’m totally honest, I would almost always rather be on my sofa than anywhere else

• I don’t actually have a ‘friendship group’ per se; I have several little pockets of friends from different areas of my life, who I generally spend time with on a one-on-one basis.

But there’s another reason why friend holidays just don’t do it for me, and it harks back to my aversion to friendship groups altogether. Until I met my partner James, who subsequently introduced me to his tight-knit friendship group (he met them at school and they’ve actually stayed friends into their thirties. I know, weird, right?), I had spent my entire adult life avoiding friendship groups like the plague.

When I was 17, my school friends wanted to organise a trip to Germany to visit one of the exchange students who studied at our sixth form college in the UK. At the time, I was part of a large group of girls who I first met on our first day at secondary school. In my desperation to make some new pals, I enthusiastically befriended the girl I ended up sitting next to in our first assembly; by the time the lunchtime bell rang, I had been inducted into a friendship group that would shape the metrics of friendship that I live by for the rest of my life.

We spent hours chatting about our German adventure on Facebook, planning what we would do and where we would stay and how we would get there. That evening, I felt so anxious about the impending trip that I couldn’t eat my dinner, pushing congealed pizza around my plate as my fears swirled around in my stomach.

Unsurprisingly, I ended up confessing to the other girls that I couldn’t go, probably telling them that my mum said I couldn’t (sorry mum), and the trip never happened.

When I recall this particular moment, I remember feeling very uneasy about the idea of going away with these young women, who I had known since we were 11-year-olds with huge rucksacks and oversized school jumpers. Despite the relative longevity of our friendship at the time, it occurred to me that I had never felt particularly understood or seen by them.

Reflecting back on it now as an adult, I realise that I simply didn’t feel safe. Their friendship wasn’t a constant warm glow, it was hot and cold, and I was always the one blowing on the embers trying to keep the fire going. I didn’t want to leave the country with women who had never even tried to understand me on a deeper level, or value my friendship beyond being one of my top five on Bebo.

Fast forward to today, and group dynamics still make me feel anxious. The volatility, arguments and cliques that I experienced as a teen still shape how I approach my friendships in the present day. For me, it was an incessant feeling of unease, the underlying fear of not knowing if you’ve inadvertently upset someone or said the wrong thing. It was asking myself ‘am I in or out today?’ on a daily basis. Once, I forgot to wear the matching friendship bracelet that my best friend at the time and I had bought together from Claire’s Accessories, and she didn’t speak to me for a whole week.

I have come to realise that I am an ‘island friend,’ a term that I recently came across in a Stylist article by Vicky Chandler. The article profiles eight women who generally avoid group dynamics, preferring to form deep, meaningful connections and spend one-on-one time with friends rather than going on large group outings. These women cited a variety of reasons for their island tendencies, from finding groups too overwhelming and distracting, to experiencing heightened feelings of introversion or claustrophobia post-pandemic or not wanting to engage in surface-level friendships - but none of them talked about avoidance of group dynamics as a result of difficult friendship experiences in childhood or at school.

The truth of it is, I actively avoid big friendship groups in my adult life because of the stress of being part of one at school. Unlike those who gravitate towards group dynamics for comfort and community, I associate large groups of friends with unpredictability, a sense of not quite fitting in, never feeling comfortable, accepted, loved even.

And you know what? I’m OK with it. Our experiences shape who we are, and now I see that I am a more caring, loving friend because I know what it feels like to be excluded or misunderstood. I can only invite one or two friends on to my island at any one time, an exclusive little club where we can be seen and held as we are, and I love that for me and for them.

So, no, thank you, I won’t be joining you on your girly weekend in Prague, but I will gladly live vicariously through your Instagram stories from my comfy sofa while sending podcast length voice notes back and forth with my bestie - because I am thirty years old and frankly, the FOMO is long gone.

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Are you an ‘island friend’? I’d love to read about your friendship experiences in the comments 🥰