True friendships are central to our wellbeing and good for our health

Irish Examiner

23-05-2025

Gal pals Laurie, Jaclyn, and Kate in the hit series The White Lotus rewrite the script on how female friendships are typically shown on our screens.
We've become accustomed to seeing the likes of Rachel, Monica, and Phoebe cheerfully popping in and out of each other's apartments and being intimately involved in each other's lives on Friends. Or Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte confiding in each other over cocktails on Sex and the City.
The dynamic on The White Lotus is different. These three successful women have been friends since childhood, and in the opening episode, are buzzing with an excitable energy as they catch up on each other's lives on their luxury trip to Thailand.
But over the next seven episodes, cracks emerge in their relationship as they compare themselves with one another and cattily compete to present their lives in the most flattering light.
I know from personal experience how complicated female friendship can be. I still remember the shock of listening to a local radio request while driving one day. It was from a pal congratulating our mutual friend on her engagement — the first time I heard about it.
The newly engaged friend and I had once been besties, spending hours on the phone giggling over jokes only we understood. Her not telling me this life-changing news left me feeling profound and painful rejection.
Chatting with others online, I've learned I'm not the only one to have experienced a friendship breakup. A woman named Grace [name changed] tells me how she met her friend at school and thought they would be friends forever.
'But when I married and relocated west, our paths diverged and our once natural conversations started to turn into uncomfortable exchanges,' she says. 'One day, we disagreed about something trivial and she stopped responding to my messages. No explanation. Just silence.'
She felt grief-stricken afterwards. She describes the feeling as 'the profound sorrow of losing someone who was still alive but had completely disappeared from my world.'
GP, mental health expert, and the author of books such as The Power of Connection, Harry Power, explains why friends are so important.
Gal pals Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate in the White Lotus series.
'Our relationships with them are some of the closest relationships we have, more intimate perhaps than our relationships with family,' he says.
'With true friends, we can be totally ourselves and tell each other anything and everything that's going on in our lives. And when life gets hard and things go wrong, friends are there to support us.'
Dr Ann-Marie Creaven is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Limerick and specialises in social connectedness. She says we have a fundamental need for close connections.
'Just as we need food and water, we also need to feel we matter to other people and that we belong,' she says. 'Friendships fulfil that need.'
Friendship has also been shown to be good for our health. US research published in 2019 reported that having social supports significantly predicted wellbeing and helped protect against depression and anxiety.
Another study in 2019 analysed data from 479,054 people in Britain found that people who lacked friends were at higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and premature death.
Because friends are so central to our wellbeing, Creaven understands why it is so painful to lose one. However, she believes it might help if we understood that friendships are likely to change as we move through the different stages of life.
'In adolescence, for example, friends help us figure out who we are as we establish independence from our parents,' she says. 'It's exciting to have them with us on that journey of self-discovery.
But as we transition into adulthood, we don't rely on friends for our sense of identity in that same way. And because we're no longer at school, we don't see them as much. This can change the intensity of the relationship.'
The natural flow of friendship
Barry says it might help to see some friendships as seasonal, rather than for life.
'Realistically, most of us will only ever have a small number of lifelong friends, four or five people who will last the pace,' he says. 'But that's not to say we won't enjoy shorter-lived friendships with others.
'Parents we meet at the school gates or at the kids' soccer practice, for example. These connections might then fade when our children leave school.
'Life brings us in different directions and changes us as it does so. It's part of the natural flow of life that our friendships will change, too. But just because we grow apart from someone doesn't mean the friendship never mattered.'
This may be pragmatic advice, but it can still hurt when you feel that a once-close confidant has become distant.
Creaven suggests two approaches to help deal with such feelings. One is to readjust expectations, particularly if we're overly reliant on particular pals to meet our emotional needs.
'No one person can meet all of your needs, and expecting them to do so will only put pressure on the friendship,' she says. 'So no matter how much you love spending time with any particular person, try to remember there are other people who can add to your life too.'
The other is to have a conversation with friends about what's happening.
'You might think they've forgotten about you because they're not checking in as often as they used to but it could be that they are just distracted by their new lives,' she says. 'If the friendship is still important to you both, maybe you could suggest things you could do to keep it up.'
However, if the friendship is destined to end, she says it's best to accept it, adding that a friendship breakup can have ripple effects in your social circle, causing people in the group to feel uncomfortable about inviting you both to social occasions. 'But if neither of you makes an issue of it, then others shouldn't make an issue of it either.'
Losing a friend can make us appreciate the friends we still have all the more. Despite our busy, time-poor lives, Barry urges us to make time to nurture those relationships.
'It's very easy not to make time for friends when life is hectic,' he says. 'But life won't always be hectic, and you'll have a big gap in your life if you've allowed your friendships to wither.'
Talk openly about life's demands
Making the effort to reconnect with friends doesn't have to be overly demanding.
'Tell your friend that you're busy but that you want to maintain the friendship and ask them how they think you can do this,' he says.
'Have a chat about it. It could be that you arrange to meet once a week for coffee or once a month for a glass of wine. You might text or call each other at regular intervals. It's that regular communication that will keep your connection alive.'
Creaven adds that spending time with friends doesn't even have to be spent doing something special.
'You could both go to the same gym class every week or they could even call over for coffee while you fold your laundry,' she says. 'What you do together isn't the important thing. It's giving each other the chance to catch up on what's going on in each other's lives.'
Beware of relying too much on platforms such as WhatsApp. Text messages and voice notes might make us feel as if we're maintaining friendships despite not seeing people very often. But while they can keep us in contact, they don't always provide a real connection.
'What people value most is spending time in person,' says Creaven.
'Even if all you can do is meet up once a year, it shows that you are willing to make an effort to maintain the friendship.'
Grace now has a more philosophical view on her friendship breakup. 'I spent so long replaying past conversations as I questioned what I had done to cause it,' she says. 'But I understand now that friendships don't always last forever.'
I'm trying to be equally accepting. Life has taken my friend and I in different directions and stretched our relationship to breaking point in the process but I'll always be grateful for the closeness we shared. She was once such a support to me and we used to laugh so much. I miss that but I've learned from the experience and I'll make sure the friends I'm lucky to have in my life today know just how much they matter.
Laurie, Jaclyn, and Kate appear to arrive at a similar conclusion at the end of The White Lotus. Here's hoping we can grow our friendships so that they add meaning and depth to our lives.
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