A modern guide to female friendship

They’re the ones who make you crack up with a single text. Who pick you up off the floor after a heartbreak. They tell you exactly how it is. But they’re also your biggest cheerleaders. They see you through your highest highs and lowest lows, and love you whole-heartedly throughout it all.

While romantic relationships are apt to come and go, our female friendships are some of the strongest and most precious bonds we make.

We’ve partnered with our own friends at The School of Life, to explore and celebrate the role that female friendships play in our modern lives. Read on to get conversation starters, advice and tips on how to maintain meaningful relationships.

“The Ancient Greeks, wiser than us in so many fields, had two words for love: eros to describe sexual attraction; philia to capture the feeling of a person being an immensely close soulmate. We may not ‘love’ our friend in the romantic way, but we love them far more richly and sensitively than that – as our long-lost other half.” – The School of Life

What makes female friendships so important?

The relationship between women can be life defining and beautifully complex, featuring magical moments, intense love and at times, brutal honesty. While women care wildly about each other, the pressures of modern life – work, family, romance, self-care – can sometimes get in the way of the deep and meaningful friendships that are fundamental to the quality of our lives.

The School of Life’s tips to keep friendships in bloom

Something at the heart of many friendships that seems important to identify and - in a way - to get good at: vulnerability. The sad, anxious and truly vulnerable bits of us that are what makes us endearing to others and can transform strangers into friends.

It’s easy to grow confused about what friendship – and the love that underpins it – might really involve. We will know we have found a friend worthy of the word when we feel witnessed in our entirety, in all our painful and chaotic complexity. Offering advice is part of being a friend but sometimes just properly listening to them is all that matters.

We need access to people we can trust enough to be silly with. Modern life can be seriously stressful and mundane but knowing that when you’re with your best friend you can be therapeutically daft is the ultimate tonic. Be the fun friend that solves the problem of shame around the unserious sides of ourselves.

We pretty much always know – secretly – where our personal imbalances lie, though self-respect may make us reluctant to own up to them. But what specifically is suppressed? What’s missing? Typically, it is the opposite of what we’re good at. The different other comes in as the friend of the abandoned parts of who we are – it is in our friendships that we discover the missing parts of ourselves.