Wise Women Say, Only Fools Rush into Adult Female Friendships

After a lifetime of struggles with female friend groups I’ve recently met a new club of like-minded woman. This time it feels very different…

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash

For the past decade I’ve written features, blog posts and even a book chapter for a collection of essays on my struggles with female friendship. The narrative arc has always followed the same rough pattern (recycling ideas, who me? 🤣). Firstly, I detail how I’ve never been able to maintain a group of girlfriends and how much that has, at times, pained me. Do I lack the gene for holding on to those without a Y chromosome? And as there’s only one common denominator here, what exactly is it that I’m doing so differently from everyone else? I then usually segue into exploring the circumstances which can lead to living sans girl squad. For me personally, that includes my family moving away from my hometown, an early divorce and having a younger partner (I’ve also considered whether it’s just because I’m just an asshole, jury’s still out). The accounts all conclude by reaching a point of surrender and celebrate the kind of women who are good at one-on-one friendships, but flounder in a crowd. Not all of us are made to be in each other’s pockets or business. We don’t all necessarily thrive in a gal gang, and the reality of finding a whole group of different women, with their myriad experiences, to keep step with your evolution isn’t anywhere as easy as Netflix makes it look. As the politics of female groups have always intimidated me, I resigned myself to the fact that I was better off out of it.

Yet suddenly, I find that the circumstances have changed. Suddenly, it seems I’ve started making some new friends who are all also friends with each other. It’s been building all year and now feels like there’s no denying it. We speak most days; we see each other often. We make plans which I really look forward to, but we also drop in on each other, or go on random park bench walks for a mid-week weep. I’ve been trying very hard to sit back and let things unfold and not suffocate the blossoming of these organic relationships with aggressive red flag seeking. But equally, I haven’t jumped in eyes closed with both feet as I once would have. This is one of the lessons I’ve learnt through my years of failed bonds: do not entwine your life with anyone else’s until you really have their measure. It could prove disastrously toxic for you, but you could also really hurt someone once the penny drops and you find yourself edging away. Just take your time. That may sound like PTSD, but wise women say, only fools rush into adult female friendships.

Until this moment, it’s true that I seem to have missed every opportunity to build my ‘community’. It wasn’t long before I left school and Uni that I lost touch with the groups of people I rubbed along with. I didn’t fit into any clique at the different magazine offices I worked in (that’s seven), even though I was in profession made up of 98% women. NCT was a bust. I didn’t meet anyone at playgroups, at soft play, at nursery. I did really try, especially when my first son was little. I took women’s numbers on the bus, I slogged through coffee mornings and once even ended up in a Mormon prayer circle. Admittedly, I probably had a light whiff of eau de desperation about me. And you know, there are some circumstances where dressing like an extra from Cabaret really does thin your audience.

I have been told on so many occasions that such and such moment would be the time to find my people, but until now that has never materialised. I have to admit that I fully presumed the school gates would be yet another friendship desert, but life seems to be proving me wrong. While I cannot yet confirm whether my new attachments are here for a reason, a season or a lifetime (and I say this knowing they will be reading 🤣), it feels closer to finding friends in the multiple than any other time in my adult life. Another lesson learnt over my four decades of seeking one, is that a community does not just spring up when it’s convenient. You can’t choose it to appear when you most need it, nor can you magic a group of friends into existence through merely the force of your personality. Chemistry is unpredictable and it often takes a perfect storm to bring you together in authentic connection. I will never forget the lonely years of pushing a baby around Westfield on my own, bereft of anyone in my address book going through the same life stage. For anyone in similar shoes, I want to reassure you that I did survive. We don’t need a community of pals on speed dial, but that doesn’t mean I don’t massively appreciate their value.

I’ve definitely had to grow up to find my own values and the values I find important in others. For the record, mine are generosity with clear boundaries, kindness without martyrdom, curiosity, accountability, and true (not just for the hashtag) self-acceptance. A penchant for the craic and a worrying lack of shame also seem to help. It’s not a long list, but it is fundamental. Perhaps you’ve never thought about your own list, but I would really suggest doing a deep dive, because it has so helped me see where things were going awry. I have been an appalling judge of character in the past, something my family has mocked me for mercilessly over the years. Part of that was down to wanting to be liked by everyone…at times, anyone…but part of it was also that I was never clear about what a good friend looked like. There have been moments when I’ve been almost unhinged in my tolerance for all sorts of dodgy behaviour, and I suppose that came down to what I felt I was deserved. I would never have taken it from a man and now I won’t take it from a friend either.  The desperado era is over.

One thing I’ve noticed is that starting to build this collection of confidants in my neighbourhood has made me feel geographically anchored to a corner of this city in a way I have never experienced as a Londoner (if you include zone 4, that’s about 34 and a half years). For someone who has test driven the capital’s four compass points trying to find my place, that has been incredibly grounding. I do know that this bourgeoning sense of belonging won’t necessarily last forever. People relocate, couples split, life just changes on a heel spin, even when you yearn to hold on to a moment of serendipity for eternity. Learning to enjoy the good times, however short they may be, and how to release people when those waves of change crash into your reality is another part of my education in friendship. It’s also why you should consider keeping the door open– beware of the ‘no new friends’ policy, because without a shadow, I can promise you that the old ones won’t always be there in the same way they are now. C’est literally la vie.

As for all my bijoux selection of individual friends, each unique and jewel-like, I will never take them for granted. Just because they share precisely zero in common with each other and have different lifestyles to me and just because they happen to live in LA, NYC, East Ham or their own planet doesn’t mean I love them any less. It’s just a different kind of friendship from the doorstep sisterhood I’m slowly welcoming in. Because popularity is neurologically baked into our psyches as an indicator of social pecking order, it can feel embarrassing to admit struggling with companionship of any kind. But I’m telling you now, there are so many more vivacious, and fun women who struggle at times with loneliness and don’t have a core group of always-accessible friends to lean on in their day to day lives than you might ever believe. But even if you’ve been burnt in the past, and quake at the thought of a new coven, don’t rule anything out. Just steer clear of the matching tattoos for at least the first decade.