You’ve seen them in the back of the restaurant. You’ve heard their peals of laughter. You’ve heard the group running together every morning. You’ve seen them walking side by side down the street – sometimes they are pushing strollers; sometimes they are just walking together. You’ve seen them sitting together at the park; talking and laughing.
Who are they, you ask?
The Female Connection
Girlfriends are vital for all women. Female friendships are precious commodities for married women. Whether their girlfriends are married or single, mothers or childless, they are the people that we find our precious moments of reprieve with. We can let down our hair. We can let down our guard. We can be selfish. We can crack jokes. We can be ourselves and relax.
Married women need female friends for their coffee breaks, their girl’s night out or just their morning walks. They need them when they take their children to the park. They need them when they are sharing errands and chores like getting the kids to school, planning the big recital or wanting to throw a birthday party.
Female friends let married women take a break from being Super Mom and Super Wife. They can be women. They can relate. They can talk about issues with each other that they can rarely talk with others about.
Multi-Tasking Friendship
We are so used to multi-tasking in our lives and we are so used to running all the time that we sometimes forget how important our social connections are. As mothers, we benefit from talking to other moms who have been through the same things we have. As wives, we relate better to women who have shared our experiences. As women, we experience a unique emotional connection with our female companions that is very different from the intimacy and emotional connection we feel with our spouses.
Our friendships, our social connections are vital to our emotional health. Our friends provide a unique support that we cannot receive from our families or children. They care about us as individuals and they care about our opinions and our feelings. They also enhance how we feel about ourselves.
Sometimes, we get so caught up in caring for our families, our spouses, our children, our jobs and our responsibilities that our girlfriends may be the only people who can reach out to us and let us slow down. They can share our experiences. They can tell us jokes. They can listen to our stories. We need our girlfriends. The need for these social connections does not minimize our other relationships by any measure – but we need all of these relationships for different reasons.