Craving Sisterhood
'cause I frikkin' miss it a lot
I saw this tweet at the end of last year and boy oh boy, can I relate.
Since my move to Canada, I miss my girlfriends more than I can explain. I just don’t have that here. It’s so hard, at this age, to make those kind of deep connections. A 2018 study found that you have to spend around 50 hours with someone to consider them a casual friend. To consider someone a good friend, it takes around 200 hours.
And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to form these connections - no one has the fucking time.
Friendships morph and change over time, of course. You outgrow each other, maybe you move, or it can go the other way and something brings you closer than you ever were.
I find at this stage in life, people tend to have their friendship groups and they’re not really recruiting. I get it, it can be tough to bring a new person into the fold. They don’t know the history, the stories, the in-jokes - it’s a lot of labour to get someone up to speed on all that.
And where exactly are we supposed to make friends? I don’t really tend to like to get too close to people at work and outside of a work environment, unless you’re out and about, really actively getting involved in things, you’re pretty screwed.
Tough times for an introvert, out in these streets.
For me, I’ve bounced around various countries and so am just used to conducting all my friendship business from afar. I had a Zoom with a couple of my London besties last weekend, WhatsApp voice notes are a primary form of communication with many of my girls (or, ‘podcasts’, as we call the long voice notes), we’ve all seen each other from every dodgy FaceTime angle. And that’s wonderful, but it doesn’t make up for that in-person time.
I crave the comfort and familiarity of sisterhood. I crave lounging on couches watching movies together, hanging out with no agenda, being able to ‘pop round’ and not have to coordinate schedules for 6 weeks beforehand. A friend who’ll swing by your work with a cup of your fave tea, just because. A friend you can sit in silence with. A friend you can do nothing with.
Comfort and familiarity. It’s so hard to build that with people at this stage of life. I guess much like with dating, when it feels right and it all aligns, it makes sense and it just happens.
But man, I really hope I find that sisterhood soon.
Yessss, yes yes. Agree with so much.
Firstly, any voice message that goes over the one minute mark is considered a podcast ;)
I struggle with loneliness big time. I moved to Brighton two years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, and while this place is one of the friendliest on Earth, it can feel very clikey. I also find that being child-free and not in a committed relationship means you are left out of outings that involve couple with kids. I recently was out with two couples, and at the end of the night one half of a couple told the other that they should go on a holiday together. I sat there in the middle, completely ignored. I kept thinking "i want a mini holiday with mates", but I didn't come my way.
I still message, FT and email friends from college, but those are all lovely gay men :) that I left behind in Spain. But I want the random cup of coffee, the walk with my dog, the long, long chats.
I miss sisterhood. YES.
Wow wow wow. 50 hours for a casual friend? I'd never even thought about that. No wonder it can feel like an uphill struggle!