Female Friendship Part 2

Earlier this month I talked about my early history with female friendships. In short, I didn't really have true close friends when I was growing up. Luckily that changed in my 20s and I was fortunate to develop a great group of friends.

In the Midwest, most women get married in their 20s. It's just the way things work out around here. That clearly did not happen for me, so as I moved through my 20s, I relied more and more upon my friendships in the absence of a romantic partner. However, as my friends started to get married, I started to feel a little bit "left behind." This is not a knock against them. I was very, very happy for them when they got married and started families. But I really needed to find women whose lives were more similar to mine.

Luckily, blogging was the answer to this need as I met a group of women with similar interests, values, and lifestyles. My friendships with these women were and are very special because they were developed based on common interests, like running, reading, and traveling. There's also something special and different about a relationship that initially develops through the written word. There's a vulnerability that comes with sharing your life through an exchange of emails.

I also met women whose path - being single in their 20s and early 30s - more similarly resembled mine. There is one woman that stands out. She met her husband in her 30s and they had their son in their mid-30s. It was really encouraging to meet someone whose timeline of milestones was different from all the other married women I knew. I saw her as mentor and someone I could talk to about the frustrations I experienced through dating.

Luckily, I did eventually meet the man who would become my husband and we were married when I was 36. It meant so much to have so many of my friends and their partners present on our special day. These women had seen me through so many challenges - dating ups and downs, job changes, cross country moves, etc. I had several different groups of friends at our wedding - college, book club, work, blogging, etc. It meant so much to have those ladies there to witness my union with Phil. They were part of my past and, God-willing, they will be part of our future.

College friends

URL turned IRL friends

Even though I have less time to dedicate to friendships these days, I still value them. I do need to work on reaching out to my far away friends more often, though. Most of them have children of their own so they understand the stage we are in. But I don't want any of them to think I have taken their friendship for granted so I need to be intentional about checking in over email or text.

In Text Me When You Get Home, the author shares the following observation about  the evolution of marriage:

"Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide."

I firmly believe that I can't rely on Phil to meet all of my needs - and I can't meet all of his either. That's what friends (and family) are for. I will always need my girlfriends. I'm forever grateful for the tribe of ladies that have my back.