Sex And The City was selling a romance of female friendship that was pretty hard to evade. KeepInlineId¬7v59yDisplayStyle¬1]
There's something particularly delightful about 'unlikely' friendships - those that pop up when (and where) you least expect them and thrive on dissimilarity. It took me an ungodly long time to learn that, though. When I started a postgraduate course at 28, I interpreted the saying 'friends are the family you choose' literally. More than anything I wanted to make female friends just like me. They'd be bookish and gregarious and love to get drunk and discuss ideas and relationships and whether or not I should get a fringe. I wasn't so far gone that I thought we'd do this over expensive weekend brunches, but Sex And The City was selling a romance of female friendship that was pretty hard to evade. For good reason: at a time when the traditional nuclear family was morphing into something more fluid, the show's fantasy friend template, a tight quartet of BFFs, struck a collective chord so deep that it endures today on Girls, Real Housewives and teen shows like Pretty Little Liars.
Soon my social life was a loose group of women, all fellow aspiring writers, all roughly my age. We hosted wine-soaked dinner parties, shared our secrets and wardrobes - until, invariably, complications arose. One friend accused me of 'cock-blocking' her on a job I didn't even know she wanted. When another applied for a fellowship I was desperate to win, I blew up in irrational outrage. As time went on, the petty rivalries and betrayals thickened like ice on a windshield, until it was impossible for us to see each other clearly.
My 'aha' moment about these relationships came courtesy of my old friend Michael from college, now an English professor, during one of our marathon telephone conversations. I was narrating some fresh indignity when he mused aloud, You know, I've never understood this. It's as if you're so fixated on your idea of these friendships, you don't even see how unhappy they make you.
I'd always considered loyalty a cardinal rule of friendship, but Michael's words sunk in. When she of the cock-blocking accusations struck again, I told her I couldn't continue a friendship with someone who refused to trust me. After I got tangled in yet another miscommunication with another, I told her I had to take a very, very long break.
The aftermath of my separation from them was as painful as I'd feared. For months I longed to call them up and apologise, to see if we could sort through our differences and salvage the best of what we'd shared. But as time passed I noticed that, as much as I missed them, I also felt a lot lighter and more available to other people in my life. Given that neither tried to win me back, I can only assume they were equally exhausted by our cycles of mutual rivalry. Still, I felt as if I'd failed not only them but myself as well. What kind of idiot walks away from a decade-long friendship?
I called Carlin Flora, author of the book [link url=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Friendfluence-Surprising-Ways-Friends-Make/dp/0307946959/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468409219&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=friendluence]Friendfluence[/link], for her perspective. The impulse to befriend people who are similar to us is a natural drive, she assured me. But it can be limiting as well. You can get into a headspace where everyone is thinking so similarly, you lack fresh air and perspective. She explained it can also create a breeding ground for what Freud called the narcissism of minor differences - the paradoxical tendency to feel threatened by and envious of those we are most like.
Recently a US organisation called [link url=http://www.getlifeboat.com/thebook]Lifeboat[/link], devoted to saving the endangered art of making and keeping friends, issued a report on the state of friendship that found women tend to have more intimate friendships than men do, but also hold them to higher expectations. Lifeboat, like Flora, warned against looking for 'another you'. The alchemy of friendship is deeper than that, the authors wrote. In the search for a group of close friends, don't cast the net too narrowly.
My wider net has served me well. These days my social life is less a fixed constellation than a sprawling universe of connections with women and men of all ages. I feel a deep bond with my former colleague Johanna, now a historian in London, though I see her once a year at most. Like Thomas, who brings me lemons when I'm sick (he lives in my block, down the hall), she's quite a bit younger than I am.
[QuoteBy letting go of what I thought friendship should be, I was finally finding the friendships I needed.KeepInlineId¬k1o2zDisplayStyle¬1]
Gillian, who happens to be my exact age, travels so much for work that months pass without our even emailing, and then out of nowhere we'll make a plan for dinner and a sleepover at my place and talk until we're hoarse. And after I interviewed Maria, a filmmaker a decade my senior, for a magazine, we struck up a cross-country friendship so satisfying that she was the first person I called when my boyfriend and I broke up during a trip to LA. Her response, when I phoned her from the hotel: Get over here as fast as you can and stay as long as you need. She's how I met Stoo.
The first time Stoo and his wife, Naomi, had me over for dinner, just the three of us, I was greeted with a handwritten sign taped to the door: Bolick Night at the Hamples. Given they had four or so decades on me, I'd assumed we'd fall into a grandparent-granddaughter dynamic, but as we ate and drank, laughing and talking intimately about everything under the sun - from how they'd first met to fights they'd had; the ongoing drama of my on-again, off-again romantic relationship - our age differences vanished. By letting go of what I thought friendship should be, I was finally finding the friendships I needed.
Kate Bolick is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Her first book, [link url=http://www.katebolick.com/spinster/]Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own[/link] is out now.
<h3 class=highlight>So, what do your friendships look
like? Radio 1 presenter, Gemma Cairney, and our own GLAMOUR editor,
Jo Elvin, share the pivotal moments that shaped some of theirs[/h3]
<h3 class=subheading>We realised we were unshockable[/h3]
[link url=https://beautysale.store/gemma-cairney]Gemma Cairney, Radio 1 presenter[/link] (bottom right) with friends Camilla Doyle, a freelance event producer; Claudia Grant, actress; Beth Clayton, a freelance radio producer; and Sarah Hamilton Baker, actor and playwright
Gemma I met Camilla, Claudia and Baker (all I know Sarah as) at The Brit School when I was 16. A few years later we swooped in on Beth when she was going out with a boy from a wider group of friends. She was sharp witted and knew how to party.
Camilla We had a few Kevin & Perry Go Large moments and realised that we were all unshockable with each other. It was a goer.
Claudia A pivotal moment for me was when my family moved abroad and the girls really became my family.
Gemma Yeah, there's a family-type love there, a never-ending support and advice network. We might not always like how well we know each other, but we know each other inside out.
Camilla An average get-together looks like this: We'll get a text on Saturday morning from Claudia saying 'BBQ on the roof - bring food and drink'. We all stagger over and climb through an unusually high window to a piece of concrete in the sky we all call 'a roof terrace'.
Sarah We all have lots to say, so it's loud…
Claudia Camilla is the events organiser, Gemma the talker, Beth the cynic and Sarah the joker.
Gemma And Claudia is the one who always remembers the birthdays and thinks long and hard about the gift.
Claudia We have a loyalty and a bond that you can rely on no matter what - but it feels effortless.
Sarah We've shared houses, baths, clothes and in some cases boyfriends. We admire each other, have laughed and cried together. It's a bit like a marriage: for better or worse.
<h3 class=subheading>We understand the challenges we face[/h3]
[link url=https://beautysale.store/jo-elvin]Jo Elvin, Editor of GLAMOUR[/link] with friend - and rival - Lorraine Candy, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE
