All The Reasons Why Female Friendships Are So Important

There has always been a weird stigma around female friendships, a belief that most girls are fake, jealous and dramatic. Of course, this isn’t true. As a girl, you will probably experience friendships that are more harmful than good, but that isn’t unique to one gender. 

Some people are just like that. I promise, not every girl is out to get you. Real female friendships, where the women and girls around you genuinely care about you and want the best for you, are so important and so beneficial. But what makes them different from any other relationship?

They Provide A Safe Space

My girls are my safe space. Whenever I’m with them, I can literally feel my shoulders relaxing. I know that they accept me and love me for exactly who I am, so there’s no need to pretend to be someone I’m not when I’m around them.

It’s so important to have the opportunity to unwind and really be yourself, even if it’s just a few times a week. Female friendships also create a space where you can express your emotions freely, and those emotions will either be shared or empathised with. Guy friends are great, and don’t get me wrong, we should be breaking the stigma around men expressing their emotions, but there’s something so soothing about going on an hour long rant to my girlies and not feeling like I’m being over the top.

You Can Trust Them

I believe that once you’ve found your real girl gang, they’re not going anywhere. Contrary to popular belief, girls are very loyal friends. My friends and I take girl-code very seriously. If I confide in any of them, I know my secret is safe with them.

I also know that they’ll stay with me through everything. If you’ve built a strong friendship with a girl, trust me, she will stick with you through thick and thin, and it’s so important to know you have at least one person like that in your life.

They Support You

Girl friends will always uplift you and support you in everything you do. In a solid girl group, there won’t be jealousy and discouragement. My girlfriends genuinely want the best for me, and so when anything in my life is going great, they’ll revel in that with me, and vice versa.

If I’m going through a rough patch, they give me the same support, and help pull me through it. Everyone needs support in every aspect of their lives, and in my opinion, there’s no better place to find that than in female friendships. Sure, my friends usually feed into my insane delusions (“Oh, he made eye contact with you? He is definitely in love with you!”) but really where’s the harm in that. Right?

They Just Get You

Being a woman or a girl can be hard. Very hard. Getting your period in the middle of town while you’re wearing white jeans, listening to a guy mansplaining the subject you study or the job you work, break ups, sobbing every time you see one of those mother-daughter poems on TikTok ( just me?).

Who else is going to get you other than your girls? They’ve been through it all, they know how you feel. There’s something so beautiful in sharing a connection with women simply because you are one. 

They Will Communicate With You

Are the women around you being dramatic, or are they just appropriately communicating how they feel with you? In a strong, stable female friendship, your girls will not be afraid to tell you if they’re not happy about something you’ve done, or if they need something to change. Every type of relationship, platonic or romantic, needs communication to work. If something is not working for you, the only way to fix it is to communicate it and work through it.

This doesn’t mean a full blown argument. Girls tend to handle conflict better than their male counterparts, because they communicate any problems as soon as possible, instead of bottling them down and waiting until they escalate. My girls will call me out if I’m doing something wrong, and I do the same for them. We hold each other accountable. This is a good thing, an important thing, as it helps us mature and grow into better people.

Love. Love. Love.

As Dolly Alderton once said, “Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendships with women”. This couldn’t be more relatable. All of my female friendships are so full of endless love and respect, and nobody is afraid to express those feelings.

Female friendships give you a sense of belonging and security like nothing else. I think everyone deserves to find that love, as it will genuinely change your life. 

Words by Aicha Chalouche

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• friendships