We met through mutual friends in 2011. At the time, I was an office drone, living with a dubious boyfriend in a converted office near Old Street. She ran her own fashion line. I’ll never forget the night I first saw her: she arrived at a party we were throwing and joined me in drinking sour Sainsbury’s vodka from a magnum bottle which was intended to make everyone believe its contents were, in fact, Grey Goose. My favourite carpet was the victim of multiple fag burns that night.
We became friends at a time when both of our lives were just really beginning. We were transitioning into adulthood painfully and messily, shedding our skins and not quite ready to put down roots. Or, at least, not deep ones. Except, with each other.
Since then, we’ve gone through it all. Sick parents, bad break ups, catastrophic break ups, ill-advised one night liaisons, existential crises, promotions at work, unemployment and periods of not really being sure WTF we want from life. The best bits, which at the time often seem like the worst bits, don’t make it onto Instagram.
Female friendship is often fetishized and romanticised by the media, even with the pseudo realism of shows like GIRLS. (Of course, that’s when society isn’t encouraging women to see one another as enemies and competitors). On screen, everyone has a BFF, friendships have good lighting and all the lines are perfectly timed. Real life, of course, isn’t like that. We’ve picked each other up off the floor of clubs and pubs, booked each other healing workshops, gone on holidays hoping to find whatever it is we don’t even know is missing, served large helpings of tough love and real talk and had weeknight sleepovers just because we can.
There is great pressure placed on women and our friendships, if films, songs, celebrity Instagram accounts or sitcoms are to be believed there are two kinds of friend: the good and the bad. If you fall out with a friend, you’re probably a bitch. If you don’t roll deep in a massive girl gang, you might just be unsisterly. If you’re not totally in love with all of your friends, then your heart is probably made of stone. If you’re ever inclined to be a bit selfish and put yourself before your friends, you probably don’t deserve to have any.
Nobody ever wants to be mates with a Jessa. If you know a Hannah, you might get frustrated but you’re expected to ply her with eternal forgiveness and understanding. If there’s a Marnie in your circle, whatever you do, don’t be cruel enough to tell her like it is. The truth, though, is that no friend is ever solely good or bad. We’re all in a constant state of flux as we try and work out what sort of people we want to be. That’s a process that continues throughout your life, not just in your teens or twenties. IRL friendships are as messy and complicated as they are fulfilling and brilliant. They’re love stories and like off screen romance, shit gets really, really difficult sometimes. People forget their lines, understudies have to be called in, underwhelming performances happen and sometimes you get really bad reviews.
For me and the women I know, our friendships are the bedrock of our lives. They can provide emotional support systems, intellectual stimulation, intimate ballast and, even, economic support in more ways than one. Recently, as I’ve watched the news cycle turn into a feedback loop of chaos I’ve started to think about the complex core values which really underpin real life female friendships: honesty, fairness, tough love, support, empathy, understanding and forgiveness. With my friends, no problem is insurmountable but if a battle isn’t worth fighting the consensus is that there’s no shame in walking away.
The true beauty of my best friendships is that they are scrupulously fair, romantic yet platonic, fun and serious, honest but kind and supportive while remaining realistic. What I find in my female relationships is the ability to evolve and be accepted. There’s no pressure to remain the same, there’s space to change and move forwards. We don’t go to the pub to rehash old memories; we come together make new ones and plot our futures.
The very concept of female friendships which today forms a cornerstone of our society was, until a few centuries ago, ignored at best and dismissed at worst in western culture. As Marilyn Yalom writes in The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship, up until recently ‘only men, the reasoning went, had the emotional and intellectual depth to develop and sustain these meaningful relationships.’
Every single bit of classical philosophical writing on friendships was written by men. For Aristotle, it was through friendships that humans developed our morality and explored our rational powers. Friendships were, in his view, an intimate and personal exercise in ethics which would benefit wider society and public life as a whole. However, as The Social Sex discusses, women weren’t part of Greek life and, as a result, in philosophy, our friendships were of little or no interest.
It wasn’t really until the turn of the Twentieth Century that women’s friendships took to the public stage. There’s no doubt that our bonds existed, but in the private sphere of the home or the drawing room while men separated to smoke and drink together. The Social Sex points out that the stock of women’s friendships has been rising cultural for the last 150 years. What if we could draw on the power of women’s friendships? What if we could tap into the way we live and work alongside one another collaboratively? What if we made these values a blueprint for the rest of society? How would the Brexit negotiations change? Would Donald Trump still be a world leader? Could we finally have an honest conversation about the gender pay gap and, you know, do something about it?
It won't be long until a decade has passed since she came to my party. In that time I'll have learned more from her, about things I didn't know I was interested in and about myself, than anyone else. Others in our group may have come and gone, but the support system endures. There we find compassion and reason as well as freedom and enjoyment.
Think about what has been achieved by the women’s rights movement, by women coming together, campaigning together and challenging the status quo. There’s no doubt about the world-changing power of female friendships. We can but continue to dream and plot and remain in the state of constant evolution that we find in the very best friendships. Those in public life could do a lot worse than to draw on the private world of female friendships.
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Follow Vicky on Twitter @Victoria_Spratt
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.