Why Female Exclusion Still Hurts in Adulthood — and Why So Many Women Recognise It

Why Being Left Out by Other Women Still Hurts — Even as Adults

From playgrounds to group chats, being excluded by other women leaves a mark. Sparked by Ashley Tisdale’s comments on mum-group exclusion, this is a personal look at female friendship, trust, and why opting out of “mean girl” energy is sometimes necessary.

BY HARRIET ISHBEL SWEENEY/ 21 JANUARY 2026

Photo Credit: Tiana Michele Photo

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There’s a very specific kind of exclusion that women recognise immediately. It isn’t loud or obvious. It’s quiet. It’s the whisper you’re not meant to hear. The eye roll you catch just a second too late. The sensation of being watched, assessed, talked about — but never fully let in.

Recently, Ashley Tisdale spoke about feeling excluded from mum groups and female friendship circles. What followed was depressingly predictable. Instead of curiosity or compassion, there was a rush to discredit her experience. To imply she must be exaggerating. To suggest she was misreading the situation. To subtly position her as the problem.

Which, of course, is exactly how this kind of exclusion survives.

Ashley didn’t describe anything dramatic. She described something far more familiar to many women: being edged out. And that distinction matters, because being edged out is designed to be deniable. No single incident. No clear villain. Just enough distance to make you doubt yourself before you ever doubt the group.

For me, that pattern started early. I was bullied by my best friends at primary school — the people who were supposed to care about me, protect me, be on my side. Then it happened again with a second group of best friends at secondary school. Different faces, same dynamic. I learned, painfully quickly, that the people closest to you can turn on you too — and that when they do, it rarely announces itself.

It’s the quiet whispers. The shared looks. The burning awareness of eyes in the back of your head.

I remember break times spent trying to figure out where to stand, what to do, how to look occupied enough that it didn’t register I was alone. The humiliation of feeling surplus to requirements. Even now, as an adult, I still have nightmares where I’m being silently excluded — present, visible, watched, but never chosen. That feeling doesn’t fade with age. It just goes underground.

What does fade, eventually, is your trust.

I struggle to trust women in groups, and I’m honest enough now to say that without shame. Not because I don’t value female friendship — I deeply do — but because I’ve learned to recognise the moment when dynamics start to shift. I can feel when the worm begins to turn. When warmth cools. When someone becomes a problem simply by existing.

That awareness stays with me even now. I beat myself up for having a small circle of female friends. I question myself for it. But every time I’ve been in larger groups, the sudden shifts, the undercurrents, the unspoken hierarchies have made me deeply uncomfortable. So I learned to exit left. Quietly. Early. Without explanation.

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This summer, that instinct returned in full force. I could feel myself being edged out of a group of women, and the reason — though never said out loud — was clear enough. Years ago, at university, I had slept with one woman’s husband, long before they were together. When I realised the discomfort she was feeling, I addressed it head-on. I was honest. I reassured her. I made an effort to build trust. I stayed consciously distant from him. I did everything you’re told to do when you’re trying to be respectful and transparent.

It didn’t matter.

In her eyes, I was still a threat. And in group dynamics, perceived threat is often enough. No accusation needs to be made. No conversation needs to happen. The exclusion does the work on its own.

What’s striking is how often women are taught to manage their own discomfort by redirecting it onto other women. Instead of confronting insecurity, fear or jealousy, it becomes easier to isolate. To edge someone out. To restore a sense of control by deciding who belongs and who doesn’t.

I have a close friend who experienced something similar on a larger scale. She discovered there was a thread about her on Tattle — women dissecting her life, her motherhood, her relationship — fuelled in part by the fact that she has a significant social following. Strangers, many of them women, tearing her apart under the guise of commentary. She told me how it made her question herself, her worth, her ability to trust. How she beat herself up for not having many friends, while simultaneously feeling unsafe opening herself up to more. Her experience mirrored mine almost exactly.

This isn’t about individual cruelty. It’s about what women are being taught — explicitly and implicitly — about power, belonging and competition. Somewhere along the way, many girls learn that closeness is fragile, that affection is finite, that safety in groups depends on alignment and compliance. That if you don’t conform, you risk being frozen out.

Emma Watson has spoken before about how female competition and exclusion harm women — how being pitted against each other erodes trust and confidence, and keeps us small. Isolation is not neutral. It is a form of social punishment, and it works precisely because it’s quiet yet harmful.

What makes this especially painful is the expectation that women should know better. That female spaces should automatically be kinder, safer, more supportive. When they’re not, the betrayal cuts deeper — because it violates an unspoken promise.

Being left out by other women still hurts because it reaches back in time. It taps into younger versions of ourselves who were trying to belong and failing quietly. It reminds us how early we learned to scan rooms, to read tone, to anticipate rejection before it arrived.

And when women rush to discredit experiences like Ashley Tisdale’s — to insist it couldn’t really be that bad, that she must be overreacting — it reveals how invested we still are in denying this behaviour exists. Because naming it would require accountability. It would require us to ask harder questions about how we treat each other.

I’ve learned to stay away from what I call ‘mean girl energy’ now. Not with bitterness. Not with drama. With clarity. When I sense it, I leave. I don’t wait to be proven right. I don’t stay long enough to internalise the damage. Ashley should do the same.

Because exclusion between women isn’t trivial. It’s tribal. And choosing to step away from it — even when it hurts — is not weakness. It’s self-preservation.

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