I am newly 32 and craving a group of girlfriends. Don’t get me wrong, I think I am the luckiest girl in the world when it comes to friends. I count my blessings every day and tell them I love them when I can, but pretty much all my friendships are, well, on a 121 basis.
How do you have the time to maintain that, you ask? Well a combination of being lucky that I realised quite early on in my life to remove people that didn’t light me up from my life plus that my friends are of a gorgeous geographical blend. I currently barely live near any of them (most are in London, and I am in the North of England) so my friendships are maintained through meaningful WhatsApp convos, giggle-inducing GIFS and 2 hours long phone chats with the occasional middle-of-the-country meet up!
So I am 32. I am also single and living back in my hometown and I am yearning to be around other 32 year old, single women. All my friends are at different stages to me now; some are married, some are pregnant, some have children, some are in long-term relationships – none are single! And status shouldn’t matter, but whilst my priorities are perfecting my eyeliner flick for first dates and my responsibilities stretch to getting regular STI tests, they are trying to get to grips with mortgage repayments, varying paint swabs and night-time feeding patterns. I want to be able to chat with women over the age of 28 about safe, casual sex, my Katy Perry girl-crush, the perks of dating younger guys plus I also miss the physical presence of my girlfriends; the warm cuddles, the playing with each others hair, the you’ll be ok hand squeezes. I do admit, I have a few 121’s that are close that I can hug and tell them I love them which fills my soul. When I broke up from my boyfriend of 10 years, nearly 3 years ago, I had all these I love you’s trapped inside of me, that they simply spilled out more than usual to my girlfriends. I think they are used to it now!
OK, you got me – I just want to live in an episode of SATC! I am not even going to deny that that isn’t true. I want that physical energy of women around me, I want the open and exploratory conversations they have, I want the support network on this part of my journey where I am still trying to figure out what the hell I want in all areas of my life. Maybe you need this support even more when you are single? Maybe you need someone to talk about yoni eggs with without the fear of feeling inferior because they are currently raising a small human being and your main concern is how to decrease the stress in your vaginal walls?
My max girl group size has been 3 and when I look back on my time with the two different groups I had – oh my gosh, it was just filled with laughter, and dancing, and bonding, and giggling and pure girl love. I know how good it can be, so I want that again. But how do we go about finding this? I work freelance, it feels like no women are single at 32 in my hometown and I don’t really want to muscle into an already formed friendship group. There are apps like Bumble BFF, but nobody really uses that where I live. Well, I suppose there is only one thing for it; move!
Like my search for love, I am now planning on making a move back to a big city where I can find women just like me who can compare dates and solo-holidays and french plait techniques over an over-priced Sunday brunch littered with giggles and hugs! Whose with me?