Grab something to sip and settle in for a minute. I want to talk about something I believe in deeply and something I am genuinely concerned about.

I am a huge proponent of female friendships. Not just as a nice-to-have but as a genuine necessity. The kind of relationship that fills something that no other relationship can fill in quite the same way. I call it girlfriendships. You will not find it in the dictionary but you will find it in my beliefs and my life. And I suspect in yours too, if you have been lucky enough to create it.

Here is what I know about girlfriendship: you can spend hours with a good girlfriend, solve absolutely nothing, and feel like all is right with the world when the conversation is over.

Your mate loves you and is on your team. But he is not your girlfriend. He is not supposed to be. And expecting him to fill that role is unfair to both of you.

What concerns me, and what I see regularly in my work with clients, is how many women have very few close female friendships, or none at all. They used to. Life got busy. People drifted. The friendships that should be there are not, and the absence leaves a particular kind of hole that is hard to name. But impossible to ignore.

Here is what I have observed about why that happens. It almost always traces back to one of four patterns. Patterns that I call the four weakening C’s. And the antidote is four more C’s. The four strengthening C’s that build something worth having and fighting for.

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The Four C’s That Weaken Girlfriendships

Comparing

We size each other up. Sigh.

Whose kids are more accomplished. Whose home is larger. Whose career is further along. Whose relationship looks better from the outside. We make mental tallies, assign rankings, and file the results. Often without realizing we are doing it.

Comparison is corrosive.  It turns a friend (potential or established) into a measuring stick. You cannot fully enjoy someone’s company when you are simultaneously conducting an assessment of how you stack up against them or them you. And you cannot receive genuine friendship from someone who is doing the same to you.

Contrasting

Comparison leads naturally to contrasting. Contrasting is the habit of actively noting and amplifying the differences. Not just observing them but making something of them. Using differences to establish distance, to justify not connecting, to quietly confirm that this person is not quite your kind of person.

The differences between women in choices, in values, in lifestyle, in how they parent or work or spend their time are not obstacles to friendship. They are the texture of it, when approached with curiosity and appreciation, rather than judgment.

Competing

When comparison and contrasting become habitual, friendship quietly turns into competition. Who throws the better gathering. Who volunteers more. Who is more accomplished, more admired, more successful by whatever measure is currently being applied.

Competition poisons the thing that makes girlfriendship possible. The genuine desire for the other person to flourish. You cannot truly cheer for someone you are racing against. And when you find yourself relieved rather than disappointed by a friend’s setback, that is worth examining honestly.

Criticizing

The fourth C is where the accumulated weight of the other three tends to land. When a girlfriend does not measure up to the standard the comparison and competition have established, criticism follows. Sometimes directly, sometimes through exclusion, sometimes through the quiet withdrawal of warmth and inclusion.

A client of mine was left out of social gatherings because her daughter has a disability. Another was quietly sidelined in a friend group because her choices looked different from theirs. This is not friendship. This is a social hierarchy dressed up as one.

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The Four C’s That Strengthen Girlfriendships

Connection

Real girlfriendship begins with the decision to reach out and to make the effort to stay present in each other’s lives rather than letting the natural drift of busy days create permanent distance.

Connection does not have to be elaborate. A text that says I was thinking about you. A phone call on the anniversary of something hard. An invitation to nothing in particular, just time together. In an era when we have more ways to connect than ever before, the absence of connection is almost always a choice. Usually not an intentional one, but a choice by neglect.

Make the effort. Reach out before you need something. Respond when others reach out to you. Connection is the foundation everything else is built on. 

Companionship

Connection, sustained over time, becomes companionship. And companionship is where the real bond forms.

Think about the women you feel most deeply connected to. I would wager they are not the ones you have only known in the easy seasons. They are the ones who were present during the hard ones. Who sat with you in the waiting room. Who drove through the night when you needed someone. Who showed up and did not try to fix anything because they understood that fixing was not what was needed.

Companionship is built through shared experience. The joyful, painful, and ordinary alike. You cannot rush it. But you can be present for it. Showing up for the big things and the little things matter.

Compromise

Every lasting friendship requires compromise. The ongoing, ordinary negotiation of two different people with two different lives trying to stay connected across the inevitable friction that comes with being genuinely known.

Compromise means you do not always get your way. You do not always choose the restaurant, movie, timing or the topic. You hold the friendship as more important than any single preference within it. There is no room for a bully in a girlfriendship. And there is no version of a deep, lasting friendship that does not require both people to give as much as they take.

Care

Care is the daily practice of actually giving a damn about another person’s life. Not in a general way but in the specific, attentive way that makes someone feel seen and cared for.

My friend went back to school after many years away. It means the world to her when I simply ask about her classes. Not because the question is remarkable but because it tells her I remembered, I am paying attention, her life matters to me beyond the moments we are physically together.

Care looks different for different people. For some it is presence during difficulty. For others it is the remembered birthday, the followed-up question, the acknowledgment of something they shared weeks ago that you held onto. The common thread is attention. The decision to actually notice someone and let them know you did.

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Why It Is Worth the Effort

Girlfriendships take time. They take energy and vulnerability and the willingness to show up imperfectly and keep showing up. They require you to set aside the comparing and competing and criticizing long enough to actually see the woman in front of you.

And they give back more than almost any other relationship in your life.

The conversation that solves nothing and leaves you feeling like everything is right with the world. The person who knows your history and loves you anyway. The friendship that has been through something difficult and came out stronger because of it.

That is worth building. Building deliberately, consistently, and with the same intention you bring to any relationship that matters.

Go text a girlfriend. Right now. Tell her you were thinking about her.

That is where it starts.