Looking for some uplifting content to distract you from all that Covid-induced gloom? Well, women are tweeting about how they met their best friends – and, yeah, it’s every bit as heartwarming as you might expect.
Pop culture may be obsessed with romance, but the relationships we have with our friends are every bit as important – if not more important – than those we have with partners and spouses.
As previously reported by Stylist, studies have shown that our girlfriends may play a far greater role in our lives than we might imagine, with research showing that those chats with your girlfriends are vital to your health and may well help prolong your life.
Indeed, Shelley E. Taylor, author and a world-renowned expert on stress and health, says that women are genetically hard-wired for friendship as a means of coping with stress, theorising that a common female stress response is what she calls “tend and befriend.”
Apparently, our evolutionary heritage suggests women who formed strong bonds with one another were more apt to survive.
Over time, then, women have learned to turn to one another for support and solace and have thus become crucial to one another in times of stress.
This may have something to do with the fact that oxytocin, known as a calming hormone, is released during stress, enhancing the ability to nurture and be nurtured.
“Because oestrogen increases oxytocin’s effects, it’s likely to be more important in women’s stress response than men’s,” Taylor tells Positively Beautiful.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, though, many of us have been unable to meet up with our friends as much as we’d like.
And so, in a bid to rectify this, there’s now an entire Twitter thread dedicated to women revealing the moment they first met their best friend.
“How did you meet your best friend?” reads the initial tweet from @Nicola_Slawson, aka the mastermind behind @TheSingleSupp (a newsletter created for single women).
“Please comment below and tell me to cheer me up.”
Cue a string of beautiful stories about friendship, all told in 280 characters (or less).
“I was the new girl at our school in year 8 after my family moved from Liverpool. She took pity on me, decided to be my friend and practised ‘icebreaker’ questions in the mirror before we met – although she says she couldn’t understand a word I said for the first year,” reads one.
Another reads: “Our siblings dated when we were all at school. They broke up. We didn’t.”
“Our eyes met across a crowded room. A laugh was exchanged. Some judicious swearing. It took me several years to convince her to be my BFF,” reads another.
And one more recalls: “I rescued her from a club and delivered her home when she’d drunk a whole bottle of vodka. Mainly because I’d had a hair bleach disaster and didn’t want to be out anyway.
“We were 15!”
If you’re in need of a boost, you should absolutely read the Twitter thread in full.
Don’t go in expecting romance, though. Because, while some shared stories of how their best friend became their wife or husband, these were politely shut down by the original poster.
“We’re not doing love stories today,” @Nicola_Slawson cautioned gently.
“You have to pick a friend.”
We 100% approve of this emphasis on friendship.
That being said, though, we can’t help feeling that the first half of that sentence is wrong.
Because that powerful emotion we feel for our friends? Well, it’s love, pure and simple.
All hail the power of female friendship!
Images: Getty
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