Just started reading The Odd Girl Out, and it brought me back to some difficult memories from primary and secondary school.
But more importantly, it gave me language for something I’ve been trying to understand for years.
The book dissects relational aggression: the indirect, psychological ways people hurt each other instead of confronting conflict head‑on.
Because of how girls and women are socialised, this often becomes our default mode of conflict.
We’re taught to be “nice”, to avoid open aggression, so the hurt comes out sideways through exclusion, gossip, passive aggression, and slowly chipping away at someone’s self‑esteem.
Sometimes I wonder if things would’ve been easier if the norms allowed women to be openly confrontational.
With men, conflict often feels more direct. You call it out, cut them off, deal with it and move on.
With women, it can be a completely different game. The psychological warfare can ruin you from the inside out.
And here’s the uncomfortable part: I’ve been both victim and perpetrator.
Looking back at my dynamics with my best friend in secondary school, there were moments I was deeply hurt.
But because I was scared of direct conflict, I communicated that hurt indirectly.
Passive aggression. Subtle digs. Small behaviours that chipped at her self‑esteem. It wasn’t intentional.
I genuinely didn’t know better then. In that environment, it felt safer than simply saying how I felt.
Another pattern was triangulation.
When I was unsure about my perspective, I’d confide in another girl to validate it.
Of course, she’d tell another, who’d tell another, and somehow an exaggerated version would make its way back to the original person.
“Why didn’t you just tell her directly?”
But we were all 11‑year‑olds operating under the same unspoken rules.
Reading The Odd Girl Out confirmed what I already suspected.
No matter how feminist society claims to be, there are still deeply internalised norms about how women and men are expected to behave.
There’s a real fear of deviance.
It takes maturity and conscious self‑work to break out of those patterns.
I’m grateful for the Self Realisation Mentorship this year (SRM) for breaking out of certain patterns.
Another idea that connected deeply for me came from 12 Rules for Life: the concept of a pecking order.
If you’ve been bullied once, there’s a real probability you internalise that position and unconsciously carry it with you, which can make you a magnet for further bullying.
This is why healthy self‑esteem and strong boundaries are so protective.
It’s not just about defending yourself in the moment.
It’s about not carrying a victim position in your body and behaviour.
I’m sharing this because so many of us carry scars from these dynamics without having the language to name them.
And because being honest about the ways I’ve participated in harm, not just the ways I’ve been hurt, feels necessary if we actually want to break these cycles.
Grace Omolola Odukoya
