friendship

women’s closeness in the past— even up until a decade or two ago— was measured by endurance, obligation, and willingness to show up for the other person for life’s joys or hardships. By contrast, today’s aesthetic of women’s closeness, at least within the mainstream, has been flattened into a fantasy of constant emotional fluency and “softness.” It... See more

Yet to admit as a woman that you’re lonely is, in a way, a failure of status. To admit to loneliness is to confess that you are not “chosen,” that you are not seamlessly integrated into the right microcultures. To be a lonely woman violates the expectation that women are naturally relational and socially fluent. Unlike male loneliness, female... See more

The expected reflex in our generation’s female friendships is to immediately validate and emotionally coddle, no matter what. Everyone wants the village, but nobody wants to be a villager.

or one, mainstream social norms for The Contemporary Woman (created by other Contemporary Women!) have pushed a narrative that womanhood automatically grants access to a warm, emotionally fluent collective.

Love is the drug, friendship the cure.

A growing number of younger people are abstaining—not only from alcohol, but also from sex. Romantic relationships, too, seem to be losing their cultural primacy. Single-person households are rising, and the notion of heterofatalism is becoming increasingly mainstream, especially among women. In this shifting... See more

Fighting against catch-up culture isn’t easy because it involves challenging every element of what’s considered “productive” adulthood, where work, personal development and romantic relationships often take priority, while “unproductive” hours lounging around with friends fall by the wayside. It also may involve confronting our addiction to... See more

“I’ve had to speak to people with really clear intention and interest in pursuing a relationship to find people who I know who I could depend on consistently, and create an inner circle that felt less surface level.”

My friendships were slowly turning into transactional instances of scheduling morning coffees, similar to the corporate world. It feels like I’m not growing alongside them as a person, and every time we catch up, I’m supposed to bring something new to the table