Please Stop Telling Me to Get Girlfriends
Female friendship is one of the very ~in~ things right now. Along with flower crowns, swan pool floaties, and those culottes that are flattering on absolutely nobody’s calves, it’s trendy to have a group of pretty female friends. It’s also trendy to do things with these girlfriends, such as: complain about the patriarchy, post adorable group pictures, and go out for margaritas, but only to the point where you get a cute, giggly drunk, not black-out drunk like I get by myself on my couch every night, thank you very much. It’s always been a token of the popular girls to have Best Friend necklaces (or bracelets or hats or jean jackets) with a bestie or seven, but now there’s flair too. There’s Taylor Swift’s goddamn squad that we all hate-follow and the internet is a broken record that Women are the Best! Women friends are all you need in this world! No one can love you better than other women!
You’re probably right. Female friendship is a beautiful thing. Only other women understand exactly what’s so awful about being catcalled. Only other women are honest with you about how your dream hair color really won’t go with your skintone. Only other women can empathize with all eight of your concurrent emotions as you laugh/cry/throw something at the tv show you’re watching. Women care better, support better, listen better. We’re just better. And we’re beautiful creatures. I love a good drunken bathroom friendship, exchanging compliments and making sure each other’s hair looks great as we wash our hands. We’re thoughtful and funny and smart as hell.
The point is that I’m happy for you all that you’ve found your friend soulmate(s) and she/they are always there for you, but you need to stop making it sound like my life is less-than because I don’t have the same thing. I’m tired of feeling bad that I don’t have girlfriends. I’m tired of seeing pictures of cute friend groups going on cute weekend trips or adorable date nights at adorable restaurants, or just getting each other sweet, thoughtful gifts for birthdays and push presents and any old regular shitty day. It never ends. The essays and the tweets extolling female friendship overpower my feed and I don’t know of any filter feature that allows me to mute any/all media involving the words “bestie”, “squad”, or “sister from another mister” (which honestly should have died decades ago). It feels like propaganda for growing your own home garden during WWII and I’m the poor housewife who’s stuck with an infertile backyard. I want female friends too! I’d love to have a chatty clan of girlfriends with an ongoing group text and consistent pedicure appointments, or a go-to reason to get out of the house when my hot husband gets to be too much for me and I gotta jet before I pull a hammy jumping his bones. Hell, I’d take just one friend. Find me a woman within a 15 mile radius that I can watch Netflix with in my sweatpants and you’ll be the lucky recipient of our first batch of brownies.
The problem is that it’s not always easy to make girl friends. It’s not always possible. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it’s hard to find a good female friend. Just so you know though, I’ve done it before. I’m not just some bitter, friendless bitch. I’ve always been a one-woman woman, going hard with one friendship, full of loyalty and inside jokes and sharing clothes. I’ve had a history of monogamous best friendships, in high school, college, and then studying abroad (¾ of them born on June 16th, oddly, a nod to my consistent taste, if nothing else). My current/forever best friend is my sister, which is wonderful, but we live 1,200 miles apart and I can’t just pick her up for a Target run whenever we please. Forget having someone to talk me out of another throw pillow. I’m drowning in throw pillows. It’s a friend drought.
We’re mysterious creatures, we women. To be friends with us, first you have to meet us. How the hell is that supposed to happen? I took for granted what a great pool there was to choose from in college, with literally thousands of girls my age all looking for someone to share their 4-year stint with. Out here in the wild, we need to just hope for some kind of meet-cute. There’s no Tindr for friendships in most cities and it’s hard to turn a drunken bar bathroom compliment session into anything real. If you don’t have the money for daily Spin class, it’s hella hard to meet new people. You’re stuck with the people you work with, where they may or may not be DTF(riend).
Then, even if you do meet someone and you somehow secure a coffee/alcohol date (which is a hard thing to ask of a female stranger if you and they are both heterosexual), there are steps. It’s a vetting process with us, really. It takes time. A good bulk of female friendship is talking and sharing personal stories, but you can’t just jump in with those. It’s small talk and joint activities (drinking, shopping, talking shit) before you get to the point where you feel comfortable filling them in on your parent’s messy divorce and your real relationship background. Not everyone gets to this point. Some women you meet up with and have fun, but you don’t have anything in common. Or they have a really stupid sense of humor. Or they’re into sororities and red wine and you hate organized groups and prefer your alcohol on the rocks. I admit that sometimes I, and other women, can be picky, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If we’re going to be spending time together, we should like each other, right? But I think of this, too, when I’m trying to find a new friend. I remember no one is perfect and I’m certainly not always fun to be around, but then I remember that I am. I’m a fucking hoot.
It takes time to establish the kind of trust involved in female friendship and that’s the other hard part. Time is the most important investment in a friendship and it’s sometimes the most expensive currency. There are the witty banter texts, the nights out drinking, the texts the next day to commiserate about the hangover from the night out drinking, the shopping trips, the emergency runs to her apartment to help pick out an outfit or clean quickly before her mom’s surprise visit. There’s months of Christmas and birthday and just-because gifts and being there for each other for celebratory happy hours and drowning-your-misery ones too. It takes time to make friends. My problem is that I haven’t really been in one place long enough for that kind of time commitment. In the four years since college, I’ve moved five times and one of those was halfway across the country. I’m somewhere just long enough to get a few months into the process, if I’ve even met someone, and then I gotta jet. That makes guy friends all the more enticing- I go out with my husband and his co-workers, we all have a few beers together, and if they’re not a dick, we do it again. There’s no commitment with guy friends. You play some darts, make fun of them a little bit, and move on with your life. They’re easier to get and easier to leave behind.
So while I appreciate the fact that the whole entire female internet is pairing off and being pals, I need to be content with what I have. My husband and I crack each other up, we can meet up with his array of male acquaintances when we need someone to drink with, and I can text my sister or an old friend from school when I need help picking out an outfit. Maybe someday when we settle down somewhere, I can build up a Sex and the City foursome, but for now, my dog is my main bitch. I do get lonely, but I have a mountain of throw pillows to soak up my tears, so who’s the real winner?
