The F Word

It’s time to talk about love. No, not that kind of love, but that which is shared between female friends. Here, author Kate Leaver explains why friendship has piqued the interest of her and her fellow writers

In 2015, I read an article in The Atlantic called How Friendships Change In Adulthood. Journalist Julie Beck argued that friendships are voluntary relationships and so, unlike family and spouses, they’re easily extricable from our lives and we are destined to lose many of them when we hit our thirties. This – and the meme that says ‘adulthood is texting each other “we need to catch up” until you die’ – frightened me. I messaged my best friends to request some sort of pledge to life-long friendship and started researching a book about friendship. Over the next year I would speak to academics, scientists, psychologists, therapists, acquaintances and my best buddies in order to write a manifesto on the importance of friendship. I would discover that we are in a loneliness epidemic, that it doesn’t just affect old people and that social isolation is as damaging to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I would learn that many people worry about telling friends they’re struggling with mental illness and one in three lose friends because of it. I would read that we are likely to lose two close friends when we get into a serious relationship. I would hear that the brain is estimated to maintain 150 friendships. I would talk to people who are lonely, in love with their friend, close to their ex, or in a toxic friendship. I am convinced that friendship is more important than ever. It is a joy that we are acknowledging the power of female friendship, but

I’d like us to be louder about it and better at maintaining it. My book,

The Friendship Cure, is a plea that we cherish our friends, make new ones and be kinder to one another.

The Friendship Cure by Kate Leaver (Duckworth, £16.99; out 22nd March)