“Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women”
-Dolly Alderton
At the beginning of this year I read the non-fiction book “Everything I know About Love” by Dolly Alderton and it changed my perspective on all the female friendships in my life. Although I’ve been surrounded by female friends most of my life, I don’t think I’ve truly valued their love and support until this year.
Whether they’re listening to you rant for the tenth time about the boy that broke your heart, sharing clothes with each other for a party, or screaming GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo together at 1am, it’s a special bond that can’t be replaced. But it also runs deeper than this. In life I was under this idea that while I had great friends, my partner will be the one to love and support me no matter what and be there for me forever. But this is not entirely true.
Your friendships in high school are different to your friendships in your 20s. In high school you spend almost all of your time with your girlfriends , eating together, taking the same classes, and seeing each other every school day. I went to an all-girls high school which complicated my friendships with other girls. I constantly felt like I had to be pretty enough or compete with them and being surrounded by them all the time made me appreciate the value of female friendships less.
In your 20s however, life is constantly changing. Your 20s are filled with career changes, breakups, flings, and quarter-life crises. Your female friendships are going to be there for you through it all and you always find them when you least expect it. For example, I met this girl in a store about a month ago because we were buying the same outfit and now we constantly get boba together and go on downtown drives while blasting Taylor Swift and talking about anything and everything. This semester hasn’t been the greatest for me personally, but I know for a fact chai tea dates with my sorority sister, sleepovers with my freshman year roommate and yoga classes with my closest girl friend has helped me cope with my chaotic life as a 21 year old.
In retrospect, female friendships are one of the best things you can invest your time into in your 20s. Dolly Alderton ends her book by saying “When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage, but it will listen to you, inspire and restore you. It will hold you when you cry, celebrate when you’re happy, and sing with you when you’re drunk. You have so much to gain and learn from this kind of love. You can carry it with you forever. Keep it as close to you as you can.”