Yes, your friends are talking about you. And other lessons from the 'White Lotus Three'.

I have a friend who thinks I'm not always the best mother.

She thinks I'm a bit slap-dash. A bit inconsistent. That I'm not across the details enough, and that for children, details matter. She thinks that out of guilt, I indulge my kids a bit.

She's right.

I have a friend who thinks I can be a bit selfish. That emotional labour isn't my strong suit, and it wouldn't kill me to lift my head and organise a birthday dinner every now and again.

She's right.

I have a friend who thinks I make my life harder than it needs to be. That I can procrastinate to the point where problems become crises.

She's 100 per cent right.

The old friends who know you best do not think you are perfect. In fact, they know, with absolute certainty, that you are not. Just as you know that about them.

The people who've been embedded in your life for a long time also know all the things you got wrong. The relationships that should have been flings. The flings that belonged to someone else. The lies you got caught in. That time your boss made a clumsy pass, and you didn't slap them down. What you say about your mother when you're drunk. That you flirt when you're feeling insecure. The hairstyles you thought were hot but made you look like a thumb.

They know all that. Ideally, they know when to remind you of these things, and when to swallow them. But not always. Because they're not perfect, either.

Any woman lucky enough to have friends knows all this.

And yet. When we depict female friendship in culture, if there is anything other than perfection, any hint of complexity beyond blind cheerleading support, we have some words at hand: Toxic. B**chy. Catty.

There are two dominant pop-culture tropes about women friends. One, they just secretly hate each other. Two, they are selfless angels who sacrifice all for 'the girls'.

This year we've been gifted a new model in the genre that dares to suggest the truth might be more complex. Fancy white ladies elbowing out the Sex And The City women as the dominant friend group. I'm talking about Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) of The White Lotus, who, over the course of eight episodes, went from geysers gushing shiny positivity — "You look fabulous!" "No, you look fabulous!" — to sniping concern-trolls — "Did you see how much wine she drank at dinner?" - to truth-tellers — "You haven't changed, remember when you flirted with her husband at my wedding?"

Watch: One episode of The White Lotus where Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate leave the resort. Post continues after video.

In the penultimate episode of The White Lotus, the women fell out. Sort of over a man, but really over themselves. In the finale, they made up. And if you are not a woman, with complicated, long-lived friendships, that might look strange to you, the way they kind of talked about things, and kind of didn't, and how one of them was truly honest, and one of them hardly said a word, and then they all stroked each other's hair and snuggled.

The words came out. Toxic. B*tchy. Catty. But many, many women knew exactly what they saw. Something recognisable. Something real. Something like family.

Our old friends are tricky mirrors reflecting a version of ourselves we're not sure is accurate, might be outdated, is probably unflattering, but overall is pretty true. And our old friends are also windows, views into lives that have things in common with ours but are completely different. Varying inputs and choices we wouldn't or couldn't have made. Luck and chance and fortunes all shaken up and scattered to add up to a different result.

When Jaclyn told her friends that at least they criticised the real her, and not an idea of her, and Laurie admitted that, sometimes, the other two's apparently 'perfect' lives made her feel s**t about her own, it was clear that we were wrong when we looked at them arriving at the resort in a cloud of cocktail enthusiasm and empty compliments and said "These women aren't real friends."

They are real friends. They're imperfect friends for imperfect people. Vain. Insecure. Competitive. Loving. Forgiving. Loyal.

The kind of friends who can talk s**t to each other about each other, because they know each other's s**t. But to the outside world, women like these are a closed shop.

Kate (Leslie Bibb), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) in The White Lotus season 3. Image: Max.

In my fan-fic version of the characters out in the wild, I feel it in my bones that if Kate or Laurie were at a party in Austin or New York, and some snarky young thing fished for gossip about Jaclyn Lemon, their famous, beautiful friend, they would tell her, "Yes, she's as lovely as she seems." "She works so hard." "We're so proud of her." And smile and walk away.

You can bet that even though Kate thinks Laurie makes her life harder than it needs to be (hi, my old friend), she would open up her beautiful Austin home to her if she needed to run from it. Although she might not introduce herself to the church ladies.

That when Jaclyn's supposedly sexy marriage fades into something ordinary, it will be Laurie who calls for advice about divorce.

And that Kate, who votes "independent", will not be blamed by her friends for the callous chaos of Trump's America, even if she's the closest they'll get to understanding why he won.

Female friends — imaginary, real, yours, mine — will talk. Your life will sometimes be fodder and entertainment. Sometimes it will be a cause for celebration. A cautionary tale. A sliver of delectable gossip.

You will feel differently about all kinds of things — parenting and work and love and sex and politics — and you'll tiptoe around whether and when you choose to step into those.

But as Laurie put it, there's depth to just being around the people who've known you forever. A depth that can withstand a little inner-circle gossip, a contested fling with a handsome Russian masseuse, and even a visit to the 'old' people's pool. Because people who've known many versions of you don't have to pretend that this current one is perfection. They just have to love you regardless.

Even if, actually, they think you're not always the best mother.

Want to read more about The White Lotus? Check these stories next:

• Everything we know about The White Lotus season 4, so far.

• These deleted White Lotus scenes will change how you watch it.

• The one piece of information The White Lotus cast needs you to know before the finale.

Feature image: Max.