What Love Island Can Teach Us About Friendship
As much as Love Island is about finding your soulmate, it’s also a program that shows the power of friendships in the villa, particularly among the bromances and the girl groups.
Whether it’s Lucie wanting to be friends with boys, the support of Amber and Anna towards Yewande, or the bromance (or romance?) between Tommy and Curtis, these are 6 lessons we’ve learned about friendship from Love Island this season.
1. Don’t sacrifice friendships for a relationship
As much as Love Island is about relationships, the fan favourites are always the people who have a strong relationship and strong friendships, and this is for good reason. When it comes to friendships and relationships, you can have your cake and eat it, too!
You do not have to sacrifice friendships for a relationship, yet often times people do because they lose track of things with romantic tunnel vision or because they’re in a toxic relationship.
You will be a better partner in a relationship if you have friends to lean on during the good and bad times, and maintaining friendships will help keep things in perspective when you’re in love with someone. As we’ve learned from couples who spend all their time with each other, like Lucie and Joe, not only do other people disapprove of it but it can hurt your relationship as well.
2. Be understanding, not judgemental
With Maura and Elma as well as Amy and Lucie, we’ve seen friendships suffer simply because of misunderstandings and previous judgements. Because Maura held the preconceived notion that Elma broke girl code and Amy held the belief that Lucie didn’t want to be friends with the girls, any conversation to reconcile things was nearly hopeless because the girls were judgemental instead of understanding.
When you’re struggling with a friend, keep an open mind and be sure to completely listen to their side of the story. You don’t want your judgements to tear down your friendship, and most arguments aren’t even worth losing a friend over anyways, so tread lightly and ultimately be respectful in any friend disagreements.
3. Stop holding grudges
After Lucie and Amy’s conversation where they determined that the girls love Lucie and Lucie just isn’t a “girls’ girl,” they still struggled to rekindle their friendship because they were holding onto grudges, as evidenced in the food fight. However, if you haven’t forgiven someone, how can you expect them to move on?
If you want to keep a friend in your life, stop holding grudges against them and work to turn a new page and forgive and forget, as it will benefit both of you to not continue living with a grudge. On the other hand, if you truly can’t overcome the grudge you’re holding, maybe it’s a sign that the friendship isn’t meant to be, so consider this as well, too.
4. Friendship is about compromise
A relationship is still a friendship, and the relationship between Joe and Lucie demonstrated this when Joe felt uneasy about Lucie’s friendship with Tommy, as Lucie nearly chose Tommy over Joe in the re-coupling.
However, it’s important to remember that you’re not the only person in a friendship, and compromise is essential to maintaining healthy relationships with anyone in your life. Between Joe and Lucie, Joe could have compromised by trusting Lucie and her feelings, and Lucie could have compromised by spending less one-on-one time with a past fling if it upset her current partner.
Without compromise, friendships are one-sided and selfish, and that doesn’t benefit anyone in the friendship.
5. Being a good friend will always pay off
Even if it’s difficult, being a good friend will always pay off in the end, as demonstrated with people in the villa like Curtis, Amber, Anna, and Anton.
Though Anton has struggled to find love so far in Love Island, he’s consistently been a good friend to others and has developed a positive reputation in the villa, which will certainly benefit him with the new Casa Amor arrivals and in the rest of his life. While Curtis is in a couple, he has been a good friend to others as well and will benefit from this on the outside by demonstrating his good character to the world.
Meanwhile, while Anna and Amber received some flack for how they treated Danny after Yewande’s exit, they ultimately demonstrated their loyalty to Yewande and will benefit not only from how people in the villa view them but also from a continued friendship with Yewande outside of the villa.
Even if you think no one’s watching or it’s not worth it, being a good friend will help you develop character, loyalty, and positive traits that will benefit other aspects of your life, along with your friendships.
6. True friends want the best for you
Finally, it’s important to remember that true friends want the best for you and they don’t want to see you get hurt. While sometimes friends may hit you with some tough love, it’s important to remember that even that is still love, and it’s only demonstrating that they care about you.
When the villa came together to help Yewande be more affectionate towards Danny, or when the guys told Danny he could have treated Yewande better, they did so because they cared about their friend and knew that telling them certain things would help them not only in the present moment but also in future relationships and other aspects of their life.
