Guest post written by author Kerry Rea
Kerry Rea is a 2017 and 2019 #Pitchwars mentee. Her work has appeared in Seventeen Magazine. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband and four dogs. The Wedding Ringer is her debut novel.
I’ve always cherished my female friends. As a kid, my happiest moments were spent hurtling around town on a tiny pink Schwinn, flanked by a small army of neighborhood girls. We’d spend entire summers devouring ice cream Drumsticks while we debated which American Girl doll was the coolest (I voted for World War II-era Molly, since we both sported alarmingly thick eyeglasses) and which Hanson brother was the dreamiest (Zac, obviously.) In middle school, my girlfriends and I gossiped about our crushes while bedazzling sweatshirts to wear to football games, confident in our belief that we’d be friends forever and that there was no such thing as too much glitter. In high school, I watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on repeat, transfixed by the onscreen display of fiercely loyal friendship and the biceps of the actor who played Kostas. College meant four years of sharing a dorm and my deepest secrets with new friends, certain that I’d tackle adulthood with a supportive network of smart, inspiring women around me.
Then I entered the real world.
After college, I returned to Ohio for grad school while my friends pursued their professional goals in far-flung cities across the country. As we juggled the pressures of adult life, our weekly Skype sessions fell victim to busy schedules. I tried to reconnect with friends from childhood, but as many of them became hard-working moms, the joys and demands of parenting left little time for reminiscing about our old Kirsten-versus-Molly debates. And I soon discovered that the workplace wasn’t exactly a ripe meeting ground for new friends. My colleagues had marriages, families, and busy lives to manage, and I learned that friendly lunches spent commiserating about the lack of casual Fridays didn’t automatically translate into deeper relationships.
I quickly realized the challenge so many millennials face: it’s hard to make friends as an adult. But hard doesn’t mean impossible, and over the last decade, I’ve found strategies to help me build and maintain enriching friendships as a semi-introverted thirty-something.
1. Put in the work
There’s a reason Leslie Knope put so much effort into her fabulous Galentine’s Day brunches; maintaining strong female friendships takes work. Just like a romantic relationship won’t succeed if you don’t make an effort with your partner, friendships can’t last without proper nurturing. Whether it’s a phone call on my birthday or a text on the anniversary of a loved one’s passing, it warms my heart when my friends remind me that they care—and it makes me feel good to do the same for them. Maybe I can’t host an elaborate annual brunch for all my girlfriends, but I can definitely take a moment to send a funny GIF or a quick message to make them feel loved.
2. Embrace virtual friend-dates
Just because you’re separated from friends by geography—or a global pandemic—doesn’t mean you can’t keep a close bond. Forget simply FaceTiming; since 2020, I’ve found ways to enjoy new adventures with friends through a screen. I’ve taken virtual cooking classes with a friend in Colorado, done a Zoom goat yoga session with a cousin in Indiana, and played endless rounds of Jackbox with old work buddies. Bonus: you don’t even have to change out of your sweatpants.
3. Put yourself out there
Do you have an acquaintance at the dog park whose Vizsla plays well with your border-collie mix? Tell her you’d love to develop a friendship and invite her for coffee. This might feel super awkward at first, because being vulnerable is tough even in adulthood. The first time I invited a work acquaintance to happy hour, I was sweating like a teenager about to ask her crush to prom. But it got easier with practice, and I’ve found that many women I meet are also struggling with loneliness and eager to make a new friend.
4. Know when to let go
One harsh truth of adulthood is that not every friendship is worth preserving. Maybe a formerly close friend now peppers every conversation with “hey, hun!” in an attempt to rope you into her MLM gig, or your former high school bestie won’t stop posting Facebook rants about the life-saving benefits of ivermectin. Even though my eight-year-old self thought my friends and I would stay in touch forever like the characters in Now and Then, adult me had to learn otherwise. Sometimes people simply grow apart, and love and open-hearted conversation aren’t always enough to fix it. When that happens, it’s okay to grieve the loss of the friendship—and make an extra effort to cherish the ones that last.
5. Find friends in new places
When I experienced a personal tragedy in 2020, I joined virtual support groups to meet other women who’d lived through the same thing. I only knew these women from behind a computer screen, but our shared experiences helped us bond quickly. At first, I felt strange referring to them as friends; after all, if we’d never met in person, could we really count each other as such? I soon realized that distance didn’t matter. In the midst of our troubles, we were there to comfort one another and help each other feel less alone, and that—not a boozy brunch with bottomless mimosas—is a true mark of friendship. So don’t be shy about finding friends on a message board, Bookstagram, or in a cheesy Facebook group for Hallmark Christmas movie fans (yes, there is such a thing, and yes, I am a proud member.) It’s 2021, and if your friend shows you encouragement and support, it shouldn’t matter if you met her in high school or on Bumble BFF.
Like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy, and Elle Woods and Paulette Bonafante have shown us, female friends add joy and laughter to our stressful lives. A truly great friend, one who knows your flaws and loves you even more because of them, is an incredible gift, and whether you’re just out of college or sending your kids off to college themselves, it’s never too late to make—or become—that kind of friend. And even though maintaining friendships as an adult isn’t as easy as rounding up the neighborhood girls for a marathon of riding bikes and listening to “MMMBop” on repeat, we can still find ways to cherish the women who mean so much to us—Drumsticks (and adult beverages) in tow.
