The Buddy System

Juggling your job, kids and marriage can leave little time for friends. But here's why pals should be a priority.

By Teri Cettina

After my second daughter was born, I did a mini life review, noting what I was grateful for and what I felt was lacking. The top entry on my wish list: more close friends.

Sure, I had acquaintances, but I had only three really close friends, and even those friendships had become tenuous. One friend had moved, one was busy with her family, and one had withdrawn while battling infertility.

When I told my husband I was lonely, he teased me. "You're never going to have friends like you did in high school, when you shared secrets and had sleepovers,"' he said. "You're an adult now."

Was he right?

I often compare myself to my mother, who died a few years ago. She always seemed to be meeting a girlfriend for lunch. For more than 30 years, the members of her bridge club met every month. How did they stay so connected? Fewer life transitions. My mother and her friends all married at around the same time, had children at the same time, stayed married and lived in the same town for decades. Their lives were stable, and so were their friendships. Women's lives are different today. When we move to a new town, change jobs, marry or divorce, become stay-at-home moms or return to work, we risk losing friends in the process.

But it is not a cost we should willingly pay. If anything, research suggests that as our lives become more complex, we need close friendships even more. In one 2002 study, researchers at UCLA found that the "fight or flight" reaction may not be the only two human responses to stress. It seems that stress can also trigger a "tend and befriend" response in women—an impulse to draw close to other women. The researchers theorize that this instinct may have helped females and their young to survive in early human societies. Today it may be what drives our desire to connect with friends when we need comfort.

"Our women friends understand us, nurture us and sometimes give us a much-needed kick in the butt," says Kristen Harrington, a psychotherapist in Kingston, New York. "I tell my women clients, ‘Not only do you have a right to carve out time for friends. You really need to do it.’”

Full article text available upon request.

[<<< Back to Teri Cettina Writing Portfolio]