I’ve found a new friend – and it feels as thrilling as an affair
THE strangest, most unexpected, thing has happened. I have made a new friend. I know! At my time of life! It really is the oddest feeling. It is almost, as they say in Brigadoon, like being in love. In fact, it’s almost like having an affair – without any of the bits that get you into trouble. I haven’t felt so alive in years. I really should have got out more.
I have terrible mention-itis, like you get at the beginning of a new relationship. So, her name is Anna and she’s a musician. She is married with two children and we met at a mutual friend’s party and just clicked.
We talked and talked, as if the rest of the guests didn’t exist, and at the end we swapped email addresses and spent the next few days exchanging flurries of messages.
And then – get this! – she suggested we move our relationship to the next level: WhatsApp. That’s when I knew she really liked me. Though I only knew for sure that we were soulmates when she messaged me the question, ‘Is X as horrific as he looks?’ about a man she knows only by sight and I, alas, know much better.
That led to our second face-to-face meeting (lunch), so that I could deliver the requisite details in person (short version: he is the nexus of all evil), which led to many more meetings, plus drunken evenings out. We are still discovering new depths to our bond. We’re even pondering a weekend away but worry that if it goes too well we might just ride off into the sunset together and never come back.
Like an affair, it’s reinvigorating. It reminds you of how things used to be. Another comparison might be that it’s like a re-run of adolescence with all the joy and none of the angst. Unless, of course, she finds another friend who’s better at netball AND eyeliner and goes off with her – oh my God, what if she does?! No, she wouldn’t. We mean too much to each other. BFFs forever!
Rather more seriously, a new friendship also encourages you to look around and reassess your relationships with other friends and see what’s missing, where you’re underinvesting and what you could do to make things better.
And occasionally, who you should bin because they’re actually now a toxic sinkhole who drains your mental and physical resources every time you meet, which is through mere force of habit rather than desire and has been for years. True friendships are such a passionate, revivifying force for good. However wonderful your husband/partner, it has been my unvarying experience that no one ever understands you better, more fully in the round, than your female friends.
They are the only ones with whom conversation proceeds in such forensic detail or moves so seamlessly from deep and meaningful to absurdly flippant, from emotional to practical, from jokes to tears and back again (or all at once, if that’s the vibe) without managing to lose a single thread in the process.
If I didn’t have my gaggle of girls (and now Anna, to whom I will introduce them when we both feel ready), I would be bored (certainly), depressed (probably) and in all likelihood visiting at least eight therapists each week to work out the various problems that beset us all as we stumble through the increasingly intricate obstacle course that is life.
We tend to forget or neglect our friendships as we get older and our families take up more and more of our time. But we shouldn’t. They are our foundation, our emotional underpinning and a joy in their own right. We should pay attention to them. And go out and make more.
Lucy’s new book, Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, is out now in paperback. Vintage £8.99.