Some girl squads are just that: groups of girls who hang out together. But then there are Girl Squads — the kind that move like a curated Pinterest board through the city’s hottest brunch spots, glowing with the latest trends and sipping mimosas. The kind where girls never post unfiltered photos.
Nesh was our beauty guru, always ready with lashes, wigs and nails. Her handbag was stocked with three perfumes, emergency lash glue and a power bank for those long content creation days. Pesh was the Instagram strategist, capturing angles before you could blink and adding captions such as 'Soft life over stress, always'.
Ivy was the backbone of the squad. She was the oldest, owned a car and was well-connected. She picked the brunch spots, curated the playlists and often picked up the bill when we ate out.
Ciku was chaos and charisma, adored by men in ways we never fully understood. One week she would be crying about some guy from Dubai ghosting her; the next, she would be laughing about him accidentally sending her money.
And me? I was the observer, holding coats and being told, 'Babe, you tried', when my outfits missed the day's vibe.
Sundays were reserved for the girls, with activities ranging from brunch and sundowners to weekends out of town. We posted reels with hashtags such as #HealingEnergy and #BookedAndBusy, wore coordinated outfits, lit candles and shouted 'periodddt!' whenever someone spoke the truth.
Yet, as the observer, I slowly noticed the subtle cracks appearing in our squad. Ciku borrowed money 'just till Friday'. Pesh had endless girl-power quotes, yet she never called when someone missed brunch. Ivy was quietly falling apart under the strain of work. Nesh appeared happy, but cried in toilets over her boyfriend. And me? I smiled on cue, posed and posted, but was edited out of the frame one too many times.
The final straw came one Sunday, when we planned a picnic shoot themed "brown tones and neutral peace." Pesh arrived late, Ivy forgot the speaker, Ciku stormed off in a huff over a misspelt name on the snacks board, and Nesh remained silent, her eyes fixed on her phone. Despite this, we took the pictures, and later that night, I stared at our reel and felt like a guest star in my own story. The superficiality of it all overwhelmed me...
So, I ghosted the girls. I thought they would reach out to me, but my phone stayed silent except for one tag in a new brunch photo captioned 'Real ones only'. For a moment, I questioned myself, wondering if I had failed the squad, if I wasn’t providing enough 'slay', loyalty or energy.
She told me that she had lost her job at a marketing agency, long before I stopped talking to the girls. At first, she said she was missing brunch 'because of meetings'. Then she stopped replying. In a voice note later on, she admitted, “I could not afford the lifestyle anymore. Not the Ubers, the outfits, or even pretending I was OK.” She left the group shortly after that, too.
Ivy met a man, got engaged and then fell pregnant. Brunch became 'maybe next month', and trips were traded for 'baby appointments'. One day, she plainly stated in the WhatsApp group: "I love you guys, but my life has moved on. I cannot keep living like I am still single in a group that acts as if nothing has changed.”
That's how the group fell apart. There was no drama; we simply fell away as our lives took different turns. Perhaps the 'vibe' that brought us together wasn't strong enough to see us through the different seasons of life. Real life, not Instagram feeds and lives....
Milie Rono, a psychologist, says that friendships are more likely to collapse if they are based on lifestyle rather than emotional connection.
"Friendships held together by routine, aesthetics or a shared social identity become far more vulnerable to life transitions such as job loss, marriage, pregnancy, relocation or financial strain," she says. These changes reshape identity, priorities and emotional capacity,” she says.
She refers to this as 'selective proximity', whereby people are not less loving, just less available to the version of themselves that the friendship was built around. Often, friendships aren’t broken by conflict, but by an inability to adapt to personal growth. “Many people experience guilt, resentment or rejection when friendships change in intensity, yet this is a normal part of psychological growth,” adds Milie.
She notes that many adults remain in draining friendships out of fear of loneliness. 'People often outgrow certain relationships long before they leave them. But because modern culture places so much value on having a visible social circle, many people continue to perform closeness even after the emotional connection has faded.”
This can be exhausting, particularly in friendships that rely on appearances or social media validation.
"There is pressure to keep the group looking happy and intact, even when people are privately struggling. Eventually, this creates emotional fatigue because individuals feel they are maintaining an image rather than experiencing a genuine connection.”
Milie emphasises that healthy adult friendships require emotional safety, adaptability, and maturity to allow change without interpreting it as betrayal.
"Real friendship is not loud or showy; it is quiet, consistent, and often inconvenient. The truth is that most of what we call friendship today is just companionship dressed up in vibe culture — overrated at times, but definitely overly filtered,” she concludes.
Now, when I scroll past old photos of us — five women in matching tones, laughing without a care in the world — I feel something quieter, a recognition that we weren't fake, we were just temporary.
Some people are only meant for certain versions of ourselves, and when life changes, so does the nature of our connection.
My squad is smaller now, just two women and sometimes my cousin, who turns up uninvited but brings fried cassava. We don't coordinate outfits or take photos of every meal. But when we laugh, it is loud and unfiltered. And when we disagree, we talk; we don't subtweet.
