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Is it time to get rid of the bro/girl code?


Black-female-friends-african-hairstyle
Photo credit @theshootingbeauty

I once found myself in the very uncomfortable position of falling in love with a friend’s best friend. There had been no spoken rules but things got weird really quick when it came out. Apparently, it was an unspoken rule I broke and I think deep down, I knew it was wrong so I hid it for as long as I could. Bottom line is that, I broke a girl code that determined the course of our friendship from there. There was no friendship after that, actually. Things fell apart because I overstepped certain unspoken boundaries.


Friend groups are generally known to have unspoken and sometimes spoken rules that allows for transparency in all their dealings. This is popular among single sex groups like a male group or a female group. They are usually called the bro/girl code. These codes are mostly centred around the dating lives of the group.


There are some rules that usually cuts across but a lot of groups tailor their codes to fit the members. Some general ones for men are that they cannot sleep with their friend’s sisters, sleep with someone they are in love with etc. For women, they cannot sleep with their friend’s partner, make a move on someone they are interested in etc.


Black-female-friends-in-red
Photo credit @blachaz3

Naa, when asked if she has a girl code with her friends said, they do. Their code is to never get involved with anybody that one of them has already had sexual relations with. They should never get to a point where a guy is causing a rift between 2 or more of them. They always have to cover for each other and nobody can text the other’s partner without letting others know.