Zoë Foster Blake
Historically, when it comes to art, cinema, fiction and Actual Real Life, the time and energy spent on romantic relationships compared to friendships is 10:1. Another interesting stat is that eight times out of 10, I fabricate data to make my writing more persuasive. But I think we can all acknowledge that romantic love gets far more airtime than the love between friends, and yet I’d argue that, as a bond, friendship is just as powerful. In fact, for many women, whether they know it yet or not, their friends may well be the loves of their life.
I consider myself friend-prosperous. This is not luck or chance: keeping a friendship humming along for decades requires effort, time, attention, care and, occasionally, unholy amounts of grace. In return you receive all of that back, plus a judgment-free witness to your life, an unwavering cheerleader and, when required, a brutal truth-teller.
As I shimmied into my 40s, my friendships began to feel deeper, closer, richer. This realisation inspired my new novel, Group Chat – a love letter to female friendships – and awakened me to just how important these bonds are as we age. Whether it’s a school mum you met a year ago, a work wife you share an office or business with, or someone who has known you since you were a grubby little teen, these women are human diamonds who must be protected at all costs.
And finally, we get to see them a little more! After all the Grown Up Stuff of our 30s – young children, careers or fledgling business, mortgages, pets, travel – we finally get a little breather. The kids are semi-independent, the career is more predictable, our parents are ageing but not yet requiring care, and so we are granted (or rather, have the capacity to fence off) some time to reconnect with friends IRL again after years of only texting.
Until female communes take off, it’s unlikely we’ll ever again enjoy the touch time of friendship we had in our 20s, when it wasn’t unusual to spend whole weekends (and vodka bottles) together. But now, in our 40s, we at least get to see each other every month versus every four. And that meeting only takes 48 WhatsApp messages, three date changes and one last-minute cancellation because someone’s laundry flooded!
And boy, do we need each other. Because at around three minutes past midnight on your 40th birthday, some real bullies show up. I’m referring to hormones, and their obsession with upending women mentally, physically and emotionally as they enter their fifth decade, a syndrome also commonly known as: perimenopause.
The confusion, the unpleasantness, the sheer chaos that come with erratic oestrogen and progesterone levels cannot be underestimated. Be it brain fog, anxiety, irritation, sleeplessness, weight gain, low mood or actively considering divorce if our partner chews too loudly, we women are not having a fun time.
I’m referring to hormones, and their obsession with upending women mentally, physically and emotionally as they enter their fifth decade.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can be a mood, sleep, marriage and (literal) lifesaver, but even that can’t fully dull the impact of perimenopause.
Many women in their 40s and 50s begin to feel inexplicably, existentially untethered: “I’m halfway through life! I need to start interrogating the choices I’ve made! Was this where I thought I’d be? Is this where I want to be? Is this all there is?”
Rather than buying sports cars or having affairs, women tend to process the arrival of midlife by scrolling incessantly, crying at TV shows, internalising our rage and gaslighting ourselves into believing that the litany of peri symptoms we’re dealing with are actually just us being “a little tired and stressed at the moment”.
Did I say we internalise the rage? Not always. Sometimes it’s very externalised. Just ask my kids! What fun. But, you see, oestrogen fluctuations disrupt the dopamine and serotonin systems involved in regulating mood and emotion, so our previous commitment to “social harmony” feels less important.
What we crave, what we need, is to be around people who will love us even at our most feral and unhinged because they are going through the same thing. Our girlfriends. A glorious coven of equally up-against-it women we can be unashamedly ourselves around, no mask required, no need to be pleasant, no need to be even remotely helpful. We can say what we need to say, be who we are and feel seen, loved and understood rather than judged when we admit we dented a door because our sleeve got caught on its handle as we walked past.
All love is magic and transformative and special. And, of course, despite their insistence on mastication, we love our romantic partners very much. But the love between girlfriends is a particularly compassionate, enduring and significant love. We bond because we have something in common, and the next thing we know our friendship has outlasted marriages, careers, even child-raising and a passing flirtation with birdwatching.
Strong female friendships are a thing of majesty, and they deserve preservation and care. Nine out of 10 imaginary surveys would back me up.
Group Chat (Allen & Unwin) by Zoë Foster Blake is out now.
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