#7 Green flags in friendships and escaping the cult of 'I'm fine'
Exploring the importance of platonic bonds, as well as romantic ones, to our mental wellbeing—and the lesson it took me 30 years to learn...
The conversation surrounding Valentine’s Day on Tuesday felt hearteningly different this year. Of course, as a journalist, I received the same number of press releases about seductively scented candles, creative couple’s sex toys and alluring date night outfits. But the focus seemed much less on romantic relationships—or indeed more willing to gaze at the topic in a different way (like this fascinating Vogue piece in defence of on-again off-again relationships, Katherine Ormerod’s brilliant latest newsletter on online match-making for her mum, and indeed Banksy’s new Margate artwork on ‘love’ turned toxic).
Instead, there’s been more attention around the value of self-love. Not just of the ilk that caused the poor PR trying to get the message out about this arousing Boots product without it being firewalled, but also of the give yourself a lie-in, book in for a massage, buy yourself flowers kind of variety. What’s more, this February 14th has felt like the strongest one yet for ‘galentines’, that celebrates platonic bonds between women with the same consequence as romantic partners. The sweet, if rather cringey phrase was coined all the way back in 2010 by Amy Poehler no less, who declared in TV series Parks and Recreation that her mottos were “uteruses before duderuses” and “ovaries before brovaries”:
Many British millennial and Gen Z women will likely agree with me that the importance placed on female friendship was solidified with the publication of Dolly Alderton’s book Everything I Know About Love back in 2018. It reminded us that, while the romantic love in your life may ebb and flow, the continual platonic affection you receive is a gorgeous coffee-fuelled, WhatsApp-driven, wardrobe-sharing force to be reckoned with. However, I’ve observed that there has of late been a shift towards viewing these relationships through the same discerning lens that we now would any other.