How Great Love Is Found In Our Female Friendships
Celebrating Love Beyond Romantic Partners and Finding True Love in the Present Moment
Friendship is an unwavering pillar of my life, as it is for many others. It is no secret that those that make up the pillar's core can change. Each friendship provides building blocks in our lives, teaching us lessons, creating core memories, and brightening our worlds. Sometimes light can burn forever, while others dim and flicker as time goes on. While friends may walk a path opposite to ours, the blocks they contributed to the pillars of our lives remain with one kind of friendship that connects to our inner soul more than any other, female friendship.
In my time writing about dating and self-discovery, my female friendships have consciously and unconsciously shown their prominence in every story and lesson in my journey. Ones I have explored in my memoir and continue to see throughout my columns. It’s the most realistic part of my platform’s comparison to Sex and The City. When Charlotte famously says,
“Maybe we can be each other’s soulmates. And then we can let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.”
Indirectly saying great love isn’t only found in our romantic partners but in our spiritual connection with other women. While female friendship has been a crucial part of my life since grade school, my once sturdy pillar definition of female connection was swayed after hearing a quote by the wise Jay Shetty. Finding inspiration on the ever-contradicting social media, Shetty shared on Call Her Daddy:
“The biggest mistake people make in love is that they think the epitome peak experience of love is only through romantic love. When I look at the greatest acts of love in the world, often, they’re not romantic. They’re often family and friendships. As much as romantic love is important, don’t make the mistake of devaluing all the other relationships in your life.”—Jay Shetty
His words immediately shined a light over each version of love in my life. A light that always glowed but stayed on a medium setting in the background. I felt inspired to explore all love connections in my life and found the friendships I have with women played a powerful role in my life. Without pressurizing their importance, I looked at the small moments I shared with my past and present female friends.
Our connections with other women are unique. There is comradery in being female-identifying. The obstacles we face are rooted in lifetimes of social struggles of our gender, though they might surface in our lives in different ways. Our “witchy’ powers derive from the sense of simply being a woman. The innate strength found in all of us that is battered by the insecurity of the world. Womanly powers are seen by all, but either encouraged or discouraged, depending on those who see the growth from empowering women and those who only look to protect their delicate egos.
All why we should dive deeper into the connections we have with the woman in our lives and learn to be present with the love already found. There’s a lot of noise around the importance of romantic love. One great love that is soul-changing. Though the hopeless romantic side of me believes in great love, fostering a thought like that keeps us from seeing the soul-changing love that already exists in our lives. As Shetty describes, love was never saved for our romantic partners.
We enter this life wrapped with love that is not romantic at all. Love that is described as unconditional—from parents, sisters, brothers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, biological or adopted. As we grow, we find a new version of love from friendships that grows into great love as we find ourselves more through the connection with each other. We feel safe in our female friendships by knowing we are seen and accepted for who we are.
Reality and opinions of living naturally shift our focus from the meaning of our female friendships. But if Shetty is to teach us anything, he’s helping bring us back to the true love, found in our womanly connections by looking at the small moments that not only make up relationships but also life. Reuniting with this love can be done through observation of our past and mentally acknowledging them in the present. The platonic women in our lives provide a love that cannot be tapped by our romantic partners. They fill a space in our hearts with reminders of who we are and who want to become.
Let’s honor our past and present female friendships by recognizing true love in the moments missed and to come. As these moments show up in your friendships, take a second to feel them yourself, and if the situation is right, share the feeling with the women you’re with. Open space for vulnerability in the relationships and watch great love strengthen between you.
Sitting in peaceful silence together.
Laughing uncontrollably at the dinner table.
Randomly dancing in public without care of others’ gazes.
Dancing freely at the bar, serenading each other to your favorite songs.
Long hugs.
Answering late-night phone calls.
Random little gifts of the wackiest things you love.
Good luck texts of encouragement when they remember you have a big life event.
Saying yes to that spontaneous trip.
The perfect moments of being unapologetically weird with each other.
Watching sunsets.
Early morning drives.
Singing loudly with her to the song that healed her soul.
When she waits for you when you fall behind the group walking ahead.
The look that needs no words.
Comment your moments of true love in your female friendships. Click here to celebrate the love found in our other relationships.
