When I’m struggling with something in life, I almost always turn to my husband.
He’s my best friend, and most definitely knows me best. Even when the problem is with each other, we generally talk it out (or at times yell it out) instead of venting to friends or family.
But despite having a great husband that is good about talking through things, I know I would struggle if I didn’t have the relationship I have with my girlfriends.
When I say girlfriends, I’m not talking about countless girls. I don’t find myself being invited to a ton of brunches and getaways with all different groups of women I’ve known over the years.
In fact, the older I’ve gotten, the number of women I’m close with has gone down but the quality of the friendships has increased dramatically.
Two of my friends I’ve know since first day of freshman year of college. We have just entered into our 18th year of friendship, so considering we met at 18, we’ve officially known each other for half of our lives. We’re all married, and they have little ones, but we still try and get together for dinner about once a month.
About five years ago, our dinners changed forever when we made a pact. No more bullshit dinners.
When we were in college and our early 20s, we didn’t serve up the pretty and perfect aspects of our lives when we’d hang out. Instead, we were completely real with one another.
We told each other the stupid things we did, admitted when our boyfriends were total jerks (but didn’t think we could live without them), and we were open about feeling like we were just sucking at life.
Then, we all moved further away from each other and started getting together less and less.
I am sure it was due to a little bit of pride and ego, and a little bit of not wanting to be a downer at dinner or having the other girls worry, we just started to present the pretty side of our lives. We stopped being honest and instead made sure everything seemed perfect.
We would spend dinners talking about how things were good and getting better. No one was trying to outdo the other one, and they were fun and sweet dinners. But the lack of being real about how our lives were really going was ridiculous.
About five years ago, when my life felt like it was falling apart, I finally talked to my girlfriends about it over lunch.
I can barely remember the lunch, because my courage to be honest came from five too many martinis, but it was the first time I told them I felt broken and didn’t know how to fix it.
I remember crying and saying I was sorry for being such a downer during our limited time together.
And at that moment, one girlfriend said that was ridiculous and we were instituting a new rule. No more bullshit.
We all agreed to show up exactly as we were. Happy go lucky, or a hot mess. Either way, everyone was going to actually be there for each other and not just gossip about people from college or updating each other on our latest vacations.
It changed our friendship and we are so thankful for it.
Now when we get together, it’s still a lot of laughs, vacation recaps, and updates on the girl from our freshman dorm that one of us ran into at Starbucks. But there is also so much more.
From kids, to husbands, to body issues, to sex- we chat about it all.
Sometimes one of us will offer great advice and sometimes we just listen. Other times, someone will admit they are just as lost and have no clue what to do.
No matter the topic, or whether great advice was dished out or not, the dinners are fundamental for me.
They help me to connect in way that I missed out on all those times when we kept our pretty fronts up and missed the joy and freedom of letting each other in.
