THE 5 QUESTIONS EVERY WOMAN SHOULD ASK HERSELF ABOUT HER FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS.

I’d like to talk about friendships. I know I have a whole category for the topic of friendship on the blog. This time, though, I specifically want to talk about female friendships. As a married woman, I can’t stress it enough how important it is to have a strong core group of female friends. The main issue, is, I’ve learned, is that society, which is mainly the media, puts too much pressure on female friendships and their meanings.

I grew up watching television shows like ‘Friends’ and ‘Sex and the City.’ Both shows show strong senses of female friendships, but SATC was especially all about female friendships and female empowerment. There was even an episode where the four women meet for coffee after failing to celebrate Carrie’s 35th birthday together and Charlotte suggests that they live in a world where they be each other’s soulmates, and have men be the icing on the cake.

A lot of YouTubers who I’ve seen analyze the show, and that scene specifically, had some not-so-nice things to say about Carrie’s reaction to Charlotte’s testimony. Carrie Bradshaw has been portrayed as a character who craves drama. She can’t have normalcy in her own life, because if she does, she gets bored. You can see that throughout her relationships with Mr. Big and Aiden. When she was with Big, she wanted him to settle down with her and choose her. She knows he’s toxic for her, and yet she always chose him even while she’s in a relationship with Aiden, who gave her what she craved the most out of Big, which was stability. When she finally got that stability from Big, Carrie cheated on him with Aiden.

Say what you will about Carrie Bradshaw as a character. But I actually agreed with her reaction to Charlotte’s unrealistic epiphany on female friends being soulmates. It’s a nice thought. But at the end of the day, that’s all that really is – a thought. Life gets harder and busier as we get older. We get through different life stages in our lives. Some of us stay the same as we always were. Everyone has a friend during each stage of life. Some people are meant to only be there for that one specific stage in your life. I, for instance, had a couple of female friends I was close with during the toughest times during my health crisis. They were really good friends of mine, and I genuinely thought that they’d be lifelong friends of mine. Fate had other plans, however. Just as soon as I started taking my health and wellness journey seriously, and my body and mind got stronger, those friendships faded until these friends didn’t recognize who they became friends with in the first place.

They stopped recognizing me because to them, I was a completely different person. But I turned into the woman I’ve always been my entire life. I became myself again. Some of my old friends from before my health turned into the worst case scenario came back into my life, and new friendships blossomed. At this time in my life, I consider myself extremely lucky if I have one girlfriend I can turn to and feel free to call and see in times of need. I’m a disabled working woman, I’m married, and I have a child on the way. Obviously, I’m busy. I’ll be even more busy when my unborn child enters the world. My friends are busy as well. We all have our own lives, and that’s totally okay.

My husband and I are meeting up with a couple of friends of ours that we hadn’t seen in over a year this coming weekend to celebrate my birthday, as well as the news of my pregnancy. The four of us have been friends for over 8 years. We saw each other a lot in our 20’s, during our partying days. But then, life happened. First, my husband and I were involved in a car accident that deteriorated my health. Then, they had their first child. Then, the pandemic hit. Then, they had their second child while I was going through fertility struggles. And then, I got pregnant. Our friendship didn’t end. It just became different, and it’s not necessarily a terrible thing.

Female friendships are extremely important for each and every woman out there in the world to have. They’re good for our souls, especially in adulthood when we get so busy with life and just need someone to talk to and to vent to. But we shouldn’t put so much emphasis and pressure on ourselves and on our female friends. And we certainly shouldn’t compare our female friendships to what they’re portrayed in the media. It’s okay if we don’t see them every day, and it’s okay if we don’t talk to them every day. It’s even more than okay if we only see them once every few years. A friendship shouldn’t be defined by how much we talk to one another or how often we see each other. A friendship should be defined by how good you make each other feel when you’re in each other’s company. Ask yourselves the following questions:

1. Do your female friends make you feel like you can be yourself when you’re around them?
2. Do your female friends encourage you or degrade you?
3. Do your female friends put you in a position where you feel like they’re being toxic positive with you?
4. Do you feel like you can just vent about whatever you’re going through to your female friends without having them judge you and without them giving you advice you didn’t ask for in the first place?
5. How do you feel as soon as you get off the phone with them, as soon as you leave a chat-room conversation with them, or as soon as you go your separate ways following am in-person meeting with them?

Carrie Bradshaw said it best when she fell face first during her fashion show runway debut. She said, ‘When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep on walking.’ Sometimes, we just need to have good girlfriends around us to remind us of that.

I could write a whole book about this topic. In fact, I did. It’s a little diary of mine that I wrote that you can now purchase on Amazon. You’ll find more details about it here. You can also watch this little SATC clip for a little summary on friendship and bravery, and how these two worlds collide.