FEMALE FRIENDSHIP IS something which has fascinated me since childhood; so it’s perhaps no surprise that I was instantly drawn to two of the few television programmes which offered a realistic insight into the complexity of the dynamic.
In the noughties, we had Sex and the City.
While touted as an exploration of female sexuality – something which had been largely ignored on television until the show’s launch in 1998 – it was actually the programme’s examination of female friendship which ultimately captivated audiences.
Indeed, the preoccupation was not limited to the programme’s characters, with considerable scrutiny given to the dynamic which played out among the four actors once the cameras eventually stopped rolling.
And in the last decade, we had Girls.
While navigating the reality of adult life as a group of privileged early twenty-somethings was ostensibly the show’s premise, the real focus was the female friendships which evolved amid engagements, break-ups, affairs, pregnancy and motherhood.
So yes; I am intrigued by this dynamic and yet I didn’t realise the extent to which this fascination would be fed when opening Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love -shamefully late I admit, given the fact it was released in February.
While the former Sunday Times dating columnist does indeed recall the trials, the tribulations and the Tinder dates which have thus far encompassed her experience with the opposite sex, it is the love she has for the women in her life which propels the narrative.
The importance she places on the part they play in her life and hers in theirs – sometimes to their respective detriment – is emotive, soul-stirring and one of the most accurate representations of the journey lifelong friends take together.
It’s about childhood birthday parties, all-nighters, and road trips. It’s about black-outs, hungover naps, and comfort food. It’s about intimacy, resentment, resilience and realising that friendships may grow and change, but with strong enough roots, they can withstand almost anything.
There are few among us who could read Dolly’s description of female friendship – and its evolution – and not relate; it’s about knowing how it feels to go from a sidekick to a third-wheel and back again, it’s about adaption, acceptance and absolution.
As Dolly, herself, says of the memoir:
It’s about needless drama and bad decisions; people-pleasing and validation-seeking. It’s about loss and saying goodbye and accepting change.
Yes, we learn about Dolly’s love and loss in the romantic sense, but each experience ultimately serves to shed further light on the bond she shares with her friends; the women she loves so fiercely, so ferociously.
Dolly’s prose in Everything I Know About Love is honest; sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, but always honest.
