MWF Seeking BFF
That stands for "Married White Female Seeking Best Friend Forever," and it's by a lovely young woman named Rachel, who moved to Chicago with her husband, leaving best girlfriends behind:
"I have two lifelong BFFs, Sara and Callie, who I met when I was 10 and 14, at camp and high school respectively. I have seven super-close friends from college. I have dear pals from high school whose weddings I’d never miss and babies I’m dying to meet. There is no shortage of shoulders to cry on. Here’s the catch: I live in Chicago. Sara and Callie live in New York City. My Northwestern roommates live in Boston, San Francisco, New York, and St. Louis. The high schoolers are in D.C. and Manhattan. My closest friends are everywhere but here. "
Her blog is about the active effort to find "Miss Right" -- a real, true girlfriend. Not a coworker with whom you might do Happy Hour every once and a while, not the perfectly nice wife of your husband's friend, but a real girlfriend. Someone you could call up on Saturday morning and say, "Let's get a pedi!" Rachel not only shares research on friendship, but also her adventures in finding potential friends - through readings at book stores, casual conversations in line at the bank, and other funny (and sometimes awkward) experiences.
After dating Kyle "long distance" for three years, spending every spare social moment here in Gainesville, and then finally moving here two years ago, I finally feel like I have my own friends. Yes, I met them as girlfriends of Kyle's friends OR via a girlfriend of one of Kyle's friends, but I finally feel like I can meet up with them without Kyle or their boyfriend/husbands; I even (sometimes) have plans of my own that have nothing to do with Kyle.
Not that I don't love spending time with my husband, or spending time with him and "our" friends, but I think it's important, nay, crucial to a marriage that a sense of individuality be maintained. I don't think it's fair to expect Kyle to be everything to me: husband, lover, friend, sole freaking source of entertainment. I think that's quite a burden. And if you lose your individual personality, you lose some of that person that your spouse fell in love with in the first place.
So I know how Rachel feels, moving away from your girlfriends and feeling that void. And she's a hell of a lot more proactive about finding friends than I was; I'm enjoying her adventures and her writing. Even if you feel like you've got all the friends you'll ever need, I think you might enjoy her blog as well -- it's really about that very important thing: adult female friendships.
(*If I thought I could do anything on a weekly basis, I would suggest a blog on Thursday, though...)
Photo time! Our first gerbera daisies of the year:
