The power of female friendship: Why these relationships are so vital

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Sarah & Justine
Carole & Rebecca

published 8 March 2024

"My friends have been the greatest and most consistent loves of my life," author Elizabeth Day says. "They have seen me through heartbreak, grief, divorce and miscarriage. They have been there for me at my lowest points and have celebrated my happy moments – most often in a dimly lit karaoke bar singing Spice Girls at full throttle.

"When I went through unsuccessful fertility treatment, my best friend Emma turned up on my doorstep bearing my favourite cup of jasmine tea from
a local cafe. We sat and talked everything through. She did what she’s always done – made me feel heard and understood.

"Yet for all that friendship has given me, I realised we don’t have a language to express what it means to us. So much of our cultural focus has fixated on romantic love over the centuries that vanishingly little attention has been paid to the power of platonic attachments. I wanted to change this.

"I wanted to provide a vocabulary that would give us a way to explain these unique and complex bonds. More than that, I wanted to find out what friendship really was and how different people approached it.

"That was the starting point for Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict. In it, I examine my own addiction to friendship. I look at the history of friendship and how it’s represented in literature, from Anne of Green Gables to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. And I interview my own friends about their experiences.

"What I learnt was that friendships – especially those forged between women – have the power both to shape and sustain our lives. The best friends are those who love us without expectation. They know us so deeply that there is no need to feel guilt because we haven’t been able to write or pick up the phone lately. When we do meet, there is warmth, acceptance and probably a lot of laughter. The women on these pages exemplify this generosity of spirit. I bet they do a mean Wannabe at karaoke too."

Speaking of friendships, if you've got a special birthday coming up, we've got an excellent list of the best 60th birthday gifts, or The White Company sale has some beautiful gifts for mum, which are guaranteed to put a smile on her face.

Now, let's meet some women who cherish very special friends...

Sarah & Justine

Restaurateur Sarah Guignard, 51, from Surbiton, has always been able to rely on lifelong chum Justine Moakes, 52, who lives in Chichester.

"I can’t remember a time when Justine wasn’t my best friend. On the first day of school, I was dazzled by her fabulous long hair. I was a shy little five-year-old with a short crop, and I thought she was wonderful. We palled up straight away and nothing’s ever changed.

"She lived with her dad, and after school we'd go back to her house in Sheperton to make up dances to Wham! hits. When we discovered that Justine was going to live with her mum 200 miles away in Leeds, where she worked, it came as a terrible shock.

We swore to stay best friends and invented a special symbol to sign off our letters to each other. It meant ‘friends forever’ and we carried on telling each other everything until we met up again at college.

My ambition was to run my own French restaurant, so at 25 I went
to live in France for a few months. Justine knew that I was homesick, and she hopped over the Channel to cheer me up. When I finally came home underweight and ill because I was so unhappy, her support helped me to recover.

Justine married an American and moved to the US in 1999, but our friendship remained strong, with frequent trips across the Atlantic. I'd fallen in love with a French chef, Eric, and in January 2000 we flew to see Justine in New York. When we arrived, Eric popped the question so the trip turned into an engagement party.

The years went by and we both had families. Then Justine got divorced and returned to England in 2014. I was overjoyed to have her nearby again. For her 50th birthday in October, I invited her to our restaurant, The French Table. We'd just popped the champagne cork when my dad's home care rang. He was dying and I had to leave.

The last time I’d seen him was through the window, due to COVID rules. He died that night and, as ever, Justine helped me through it. She’d known my dad and kept checking in to see I was OK. That’s how it has always been. We share all our joys and all our heartbreaks. We’ve seen each other through every one of life’s ups and downs. We still put our little ‘friends forever’ sign on notes and cards, and we really mean it.

Carole & Rebecca

Carole Mills, 65, a library supervisor from Scarborough, rekindled her friendship with Rebecca Hare, 66, a retired teacher from Winchester, after many years apart.

"I was on Facebook in 2014 when I got a message from Rebecca. We’d lost touch more than 20 years earlier, but she said she was visiting Yorkshire and had tracked me down to see if I'd like to meet. I said yes straight away. We'd never fallen out – we'd just drifted apart.

"She came on a lovely summer day and met my partner, Maurice, then 71. We told him how we’d met in our 20s when we worked in IT. We chatted like we’d never been apart, filling each other in on the past two decades – divorce for us both, children for Rebecca, and radical career changes. She retrained as a teacher and I’d gone to work in Filey Library, and enjoyed seeing punk bands and dancing with Maurice. After that, we were on the phone to each other all the time.

"Then, on 23 December, I set off to buy Maurice a Christmas present. I waved goodbye and told him to meet me in town later. He didn’t turn up and I kept texting ‘Where are you?’ Then my phone rang. It was the hospital. Maurice was dead. He’d had a heart attack walking to meet me.

"We’d been together for 13 years, with barely a day apart, and I was stunned. There I was in the depths of winter, in a house that felt so quiet without his jokes, his laughter. After a miserable Christmas, Rebecca and I began our ‘twilight talks’. As night drew in, I made a cuppa and settled down for a good natter on the phone. She’s so thoughtful and calm that it was like therapy as I came to terms with my loss.

"Now our friendship has taken on a new importance. We’re planning a lot of fun – we’re going to keep each other going! I’m so glad she came back into my life when I needed her the most."