Not long ago, I threw a going-away party before moving to Los Angeles. It was a dimly lit, wine-soaked send-off in the basement of a Croatian restaurant on Lower East Side. By hour three, I had consumed one too many glasses of orange wine and somehow ended the night without my top. It felt like an appropriate farewell to New York: chaotic and overly intimate in that particular downtown way.
I invited an ex-lover—or rather, someone who was my ex in every way except by official title. I wasn’t clinging to anything unresolved. I was in a happy relationship, and it felt adult, even generous, to offer a friendly goodbye to someone who had once been part of my life.
The next day, he texted me: Would it be okay if I asked out Marie?
The phrasing was considerate. The sentiment, less so.
Fast-forward a few months, and they’re now dating. My best friend and my ex.
At first, I tried to think of it anthropologically: How fascinating, this modern entanglement. But in reality, it has changed our friendship in ways that I could have never anticipated.
The second time this happened, I had just finished scuba diving in Hawaii. I emerged from the water—less Baywatch, more Loch Ness Monster—and checked my phone with sopping fingers. A text from another close friend: Would you care if… You can guess the rest.
She wanted to hook up with someone I had dated semi-seriously the year before. “It’s not that deep,” she assured me. Of course, it already was. As it turns out, they’d been seeing each other in secret for weeks. She’d just been too scared to tell me.
At first, I thought: Am I cursed? Is there something about me that makes people think I’m chill with this? Have I given off some kind of cool-girl, boundary-less energy that screams, “Sure, take my exes, take my leftovers, take my toothbrush while you’re at it”?
But then I remembered: I’ve done it too.
At 15, in the hormonal soup of high school, I kissed a boy a friend had dated the year prior. Back then, the term ex was mostly honorary; relationships were loosely defined and rarely lasted past third period. Still, I remember the look on her face. At the time, I didn’t understand what I’d done. I hadn’t yet had a proper boyfriend or the gut-punch of a breakup.
Now I know.
I used to think that what’s commonly known as “girl code” was simple: You don’t date your friend’s exes. You just don’t. It wasn’t about jealousy or ownership; it was about respecting your friendship enough to sometimes mark someone else’s past paramours as off-limits, regardless of the romantic potential waiting there for you. It’s one thing if you and your friends have reached some understanding that made an ex fair game. Otherwise, it can feel like a transgression and a sign of a simple lack of empathy.
So when people ask if girl code is old-fashioned—some quaint, millennial relic left behind somewhere between Delia’s catalogs and Hollister stores—I’m not so sure. If anything, the current dating landscape has made the idea of girl code more essential, not less. We’re living in a cultural moment shaped by hyper-individualism, when the mandate to “do what’s best for you” can easily become a license to disregard other people’s feelings. Relationships are increasingly transactional; exes reappear via algorithm; emotional boundaries are softened by irony, therapy-speak, and a general disdain for anything that feels too earnest.
In that context, girl code—however flawed or informal—is one of the few remaining social structures that quietly insists: Maybe we should still think about how we treat each other.
Of course, the phrase girl code itself is imperfect. It implies a monolithic set of rules based on an outdated male-female binary, and real life is messier than that. Timing matters, context matters, communication really matters; if you’re willing to engage in an actual conversation with your friend about wanting to date their ex, you might find that your bond grows all the stronger for it. But more and more, I’m observing a social tendency to skip the hard part altogether and simply ask for forgiveness later, if at all. And once someone has crossed your emotional boundaries in service of their own needs, it’s hard not to wonder: Are there boundaries they won’t cross?
Gender politics is at play here too, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. For all our collective progress, many heterosexual women are still taught, consciously or not, that romance is the ultimate achievement; that a partner (even a mediocre one) is a prize worth collateral damage; and that friendship, while lovely, is always a little more optional.
But here’s what I’ve learned: Real friendship isn’t optional, it’s foundational. It deserves the same caution and care we’re taught to give romantic love, if not more. A moment of desire, however electric, shouldn’t trump years of loyalty. I’m not saying we should all sign blood pacts swearing never to date anyone who’s ever grazed a friend’s dating history. But I do think it’s worth asking: Is a romantic connection really worth the quiet, often irreversible loss of trust between friends?
Because sometimes, the guy isn’t worth it. But the girl? She might have been.