I Get By With a Little Help From My (Girl) Friends

Authentic, strong female friendships play an important role in a woman’s life.

Photo by: Anya Patrusheva

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It’s the classic myth about women … women are mean … women don’t like each other … women can’t have close female friends.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have definitely found this to be true, but only in some cases with certain women.

Not everyone can get along and that is OK. This does not apply to only females, though. Take a look around, not every man gets along with every man on the Earth either; that’s just how life is and that is totally fine.

But women can certainly have close female friends. Actually, having close female friends is extremely important.

Personally, I am a combination of an introvert and an extrovert. For me, that has come to mean that I can get along with a large number of people and be very outgoing, but I have only a few people who I trust and consider to be my close friends.

Most of these people I consider to be my close friends are females.

Before I go on, I do want to say this … I have been “that” girl who has said, “I just get along with guys better,” or, “I’m just one of the guys,” and even, “Girls are just too much drama.”

It was not until I started college that I realized how wrong I had been about women and female friendship.

As a female, very few times will you be considered “just one of the guys,” and if you consider females to be “too much drama,” then you are probably watching too many MTV “Real World” reruns.

Biologically, men and women are very different. We have different hormones, strengths and weaknesses.

Traditionally, women are more intuitive, sensitive and thoughtful, while men are geared more toward motor skills and spatial awareness, AKA being innately good at directions and sports.

In a study reported by Live Science, it was discovered that male and female brains do not make the same connections. Female brains have more neurological connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, while male brains have more connections within the right and left hemispheres, but less between them.

Our brains don’t even work the same, so if you think that you are one of the guys, think again, girlfriend, because your brain does not even work the way a man’s brain works (maybe men really are from Mars).

Here’s the really cool (or not so cool) thing about TV and movies: It’s fake, even the “reality” shows … I know, crazy right?

Most women are a lot less like Regina George and a lot more like Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift is kind, honest and loves to write annoyingly sappy songs about relationships, which let’s be real, we all wish we could write songs about our relationship fails and successes.

Being a woman is hard, we have tons of hormones, romantic relationships are hard and sometimes life is stressful, but as women, we should support each other in our struggle rather than put each other down.

We are all going through the same struggle. We are all overly hormonal. We are all dealing with relationship problems. We are all stressed out. We all have goals to achieve. We all want to fit in.

So, rather than putting each other down to give ourselves 5 seconds worth of self-confidence, we should be boosting each other up.

I have been blessed with some truly incredible women in my life and if I had to put into a single sentence what I have learned from them, it would be this: Men are wonderful and play an important role in our lives by protecting, loving and caring for us, but it is within female friendships that we find a unique love and support that is a necessity as a woman.

Female friendships are raw, authentic and sometimes ugly.

Female friendships are late nights, ugly cries and Ben and Jerry’s.

Female friendships are belly laughs, shared excitement and shared closets.

Female friendships are family dinners, pink nail polish and last-minute babysitters.

Mostly though, female friendships are beyond the surface; they are authentic and remain unchanged through the dirt.

The last few years of my life have been full of dirt, in both the literal sense and the metaphorical sense.

What is amazing, though, is that through all of the messy rooms, messy break-ups and the occasional less-than-good life decisions I have made, my strong female friendships have remained unchanged.

Of course, I am looking forward to finding my husband and experiencing life with him, but I am also looking forward to sharing both the wonderful and devastating moments of my life with my female friends.

Both a loving husband and loving friends are so important in a woman’s life. It’s how we get by.