Closed mouths don’t get fed.
That is the simplest way I can find to say that if there’s something you need in your relationship—professional, romantic, and platonic—you won’t get it without opening your mouth and saying something. That said, you still won’t get it if you open your mouth to the wrong party.
Before we could even watch the latest season of Real Housewives of Atlanta, Shamea Morton, a familiar face but new peach holder, was being transparent about the fact that her longtime friendship with RHOA starlet Porsha Williams had found itself in a rocky place. During an interview with Angela Yee in March, right around the premiere, Morton addressed comments people have made claiming that the friendship seemed one-sided. Their enthusiasm about the relationship didn’t seem the same, nor did their effort.
“I try to be the best friend that I can be to my friends and hope that it’s reciprocated. And when it’s not, there’s only so much I can do about that,” she said. “I can just continue to show up and be the person that I know how to be… a loyal friend, one that is gonna ride for their friend. And sometimes that’s a fault of mine.”
It was easy then to feel for Morton, and assume, that maybe her new full-time status and overall status as the wife of a very wealthy man in a seemingly healthy marriage led to some friction. Williams’s private life, as we know, has been upended by a nasty divorce proceeding with Simon Guobadia (who was previously married to former friend of the show Falynn Pina). But since the season has gone on, I wouldn’t say that there was “only so much” that Morton could have done to keep things copacetic. One big thing she could have done was go to Williams with the frustrations that left her feeling like her efforts were in vain.
As this Sunday’s episode revealed, Morton went to her co-star, Angela Oakley, about her feelings regarding issues with her best friend. This off-camera conversation covered problems regarding Williams not going to Morton’s wedding in Kenya, past rumors that Williams didn’t want her to be a star on RHOA, and the feeling that she came off as a lapdog to her best friend. Such a revelation, when shared with her, left Williams in tears. And as messy as it was that Oakley went to Williams with Morton’s lingering feelings, perhaps as a get-back at both women (Williams for “joking” about sleeping with Charles Oakley, and Morton for not checking that comment as a married woman and being defiant about it not being her responsibility to do so), it was also not acceptable that Morton felt comfortable to open up to her new co-stars versus her childhood BFF.
When confronted during the Pampered by Porsha event, where Williams’s energy was sour toward her friend, Morton managed to flip things around, making Williams appear to be the bad gal for taking in the information shared by Oakley. “I love Porsha, and I consider her like one of my sisters. I just can’t even believe that she would even allow a conversation like that to be had and not even mention it to me. That sh-t hurts,” she said during a confessional. She never denied that she was indeed afraid to go to Williams about her feelings, and instead, felt that Williams should have come to her immediately after getting all that intel from Oakley.
When forced to explain the feelings she had that she didn’t go to Williams with, Morton simply said, “I’ve always chosen to give grace.” Williams responded condescendingly: “Thank you for your grace.”
While that sounded like a jerk of a reply (because don’t play about grace and mercy, now), I can understand why she’d go there. How are you showing grace if you go to other people with your grievances? That doesn’t make you someone above the drama. In fact, it just creates more.
And that is a big problem many women have in relationships. If you are going to move on from something that occurred in your relationship that you didn’t like, move on. Don’t keep a tally. But if you don’t feel at peace about it, the sooner you bring it to the person you have the issue with, the better off you’ll be. Even if they don’t respond in the way that you hope, once you’ve put the matter on the table and released your feelings, you’ve made the necessary effort to improve your relationship. The ball is in their court. And as friends, as partners, whatever the title, it’s not another person’s responsibility to read our minds and automatically fix themselves. We can all fall short, hurt feelings unintentionally, and if we’re not checked with love and true grace, then there should be no surprise or anger if the hurt party sees no positive transformation for the betterment of the bond. Again, closed mouths don’t get fed.
I once had a friendship that mattered a lot to me come to an end because a friend had a laundry list of issues with me that she put in an email. Not a phone call. Not a face-to-face conversation, which we’d lovingly had the last time I’d seen her before things went sour. (Fear of confrontation in close relationships, as Oakley mentioned, is real.) She brought up specific conversations, some of which I had no recollection of, with no set end goal in sight. What I mean by that is, when I told her I acknowledged her feelings, though I disagreed that every situation had actually played out in the way she recalled, she gave me a hard time for not responding in the way she wanted. I was shocked and hurt. So for me, watching Morton become upset because Williams was hurt by what was shared with Oakley felt a bit ridiculous (and a tad manipulative).
That said, neither party is a saint. I do think there’s been some jealousy in that friendship. Perhaps Morton has been pining for an opportunity to shine as a peach holder and felt a way about always being a friend of the show. Perhaps Williams was jealous of Morton’s lifestyle, her marriage, and family life. As the elevators and massive closet have shown, she is a well-kept woman (she also, by the way, acts, sings, and does hosting work, so she’s got coin on her own). Maybe her BFF getting to step in the spotlight did create tension. Lifelong friendships, just because they’re lengthy, don’t always mean they’re healthy and something to envy. Think of it like long hair. You may have had it past your shoulders for years, but split ends can halt the growth potential and weaken it.
Both ladies have, including in previous seasons, sat by while other people talked poorly about their friend, from Kandi Burruss to Phaedra Parks. Both ladies have put some color on things they’ve heard and the way situations have played out before taking it to one another. Both women have dropped the ball, whether in communication or showing up for one another. There’s work to do on both parts, as is the case in every friendship. So while it has felt as though Morton has been something of the aggrieved party in this high-profile friendship, they both carry a lot of hurt. Growing pains, stardom, motherhood, relationship woes, and more can do a doozy on a friendship. We can fail one another. That’s why we always have to be in communication with each other. Not others. And for the record, being on this show certainly doesn’t help. In fact, it likely just pulled the issues out of the closet to expose the holes that have been there.
Both women have a lot of issues they need to work through, and the fact that they haven’t spoken about their relationship as a defunct one shows that there’s some hope for resolution. As Janet Jackson said in Why Did I Get Married Too?, “FIX IT!” But if fixing it, by chance, involves either one of them stepping away from the series, well, good luck with that…
