The word “fiction” originates from the Old French word “ficcion,” meaning a ruse or fabrication. Yet, when we consume media like shows and movies, we often forget this detail and compare our very real lives to these fabrications. 

Popular TV shows like “Friends,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “Sex and the City” led to my conclusion that adult friendships hinged on two criteria that I must abide by. Firstly, I needed a core friend group that gossiped for hours, attended all of each other’s milestones and held on tight through a crisis. Secondly, we needed a regular hangout spot, whether it was a coffee shop, a bar under one of our apartments or the newest restaurant in the city. 

While I have the location picked out — a wine bar downtown called Good Clean Fun — I was missing the other  — some would argue the equally important — component: the core squad. 

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Having had this tight-knit friend group in high school — just substituting the wine bar for the mall behind school — I struggled even more to wrap my head around the new reality of not having one in college. Despite having multiple individual friends, I felt alone at college, as if I was the only student without a certified girl gang. I guess I had a new reason to be jealous of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) apart from her shoe collection.

Never one to admit defeat easily, I invited all my individual friends to hang out together. Alas, these attempts were short-lived because apparently people just don’t magically fall in love with each other and want to spend each waking moment together — weird. 

Forcing this wasn’t working, and I admitted defeat because having a core friend group is difficult in a dynamically changing environment like college: The person you had lunch with every day of freshman year is now the person you avoid eye contact with while walking to class with your new best friend. 

I wasn’t the only one in this situation though. Elizabeth Earnshaw, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told SELF that TV shows create this image of friend groups in people’s minds, but they don’t exist because of the way society is structured today. Many people’s social network consists of individual friendships or smaller groups. 

The more I thought about this, the less sense having a core friend group made — no one set of friends wants to do everything you want to. Hear me out: Friendships are like a USC hoodie. The hoodie is warm enough to wear when it’s cold outside yet is too suffocating to wear in early August. It isn’t nice enough to wear to a fancy dinner but is too nice to wear while doing chores. This one hoodie can’t satisfy all my needs, so how can I expect one friend group to share all my interests and satisfy all my social requirements? 

I realized that I don’t need one friend group to spend all my time with; rather, I can have multiple individual friends or smaller groups that share specific interests of mine. The friends I call over for movie nights aren’t the same friends I go on spring break with, and they aren’t the same friends I brunch with. 

Changing my perspective on this situation filled me with so much gratitude for my individual friends who would go to the ends of the Earth for me, but I felt guilty because, in my obsession with finding a core group, I didn’t appreciate the friends I already had. I needed to stop equating my entire social life to having a core friend group because, even without it, I could still develop meaningful relationships and have a good time. 

I’m not denying that having a core friend group has its perks and is a great option, too. But that isn’t meant for everyone. I personally enjoy having these smaller groups that match my versatile interests, and not spending hours with my squad isn’t the end of the world. So, next time, when you are feeling insecure about not having a core friend group, just remember that Carrie Bradshaw also had multiple pairs of shoes that matched her different outfits. 

Edhita Singhal is a junior writing about life lessons she has learned in college in her column, “Thinking Out Loud,” which runs every other Wednesday.