The presence of the women in my life—and maybe I just got lucky—brings a sense of understanding and freedom that follows us through ordinary days and planned nights out. There’s something about their company that makes happiness feel happier and turns sadness into laughter.
This weekend, I went out dancing with my girlfriends. It wasn’t anything extraordinary. We were simply girls having fun. Yet I remember feeling remarkably safe, confident, and free.
While this feeling isn’t exclusive to female friendships, I’ve found a particular kind of intimacy within them that is difficult to put into words. It exists in small gestures, fueled by a genuine curiosity to understand one another.
I sometimes wonder whether this attentiveness develops, at least in part, from the expectations women grow up navigating. From childhood into adulthood, we learn to scrutinize nearly everything about ourselves.
As the monologue in Barbie describes, women are often expected to embody contradictory ideals. We must be strong, but never intimidating; independent, but not so independent that we appear to need no one; beautiful, but effortlessly so, because caring about our appearance supposedly makes us vain. We must be nurturing and gentle while possessing an almost mechanical capacity to endure.
One unfortunate consequence of this constant scrutiny is how easily it can turn into comparison. Female friendships are not immune to competition or jealousy. When we’re made to feel that we’re never quite enough, it’s tempting to look toward other women who seemingly have everything figured out.
But in my life, I’ve been lucky enough to find something like a lotus blooming from the muddy waters of those expectations. I think some of the women I love have developed a rare ability to understand others precisely because they’ve spent so much time questioning and examining themselves. They know what it feels like to be scrutinized, misunderstood, or made to feel insufficient. And rather than reproducing those feelings, they’ve chosen to offer others the appreciation they have sometimes been denied.
There is something bittersweet about this theory. I wish the women I love had never been made to feel inadequate in the first place. Yet I find something profoundly moving in how they’ve chosen to respond.
My friends notice qualities in me that I sometimes struggle to recognize in myself. They remember passing comments, celebrate my accomplishments, and encourage me through uncertainty. And I have the privilege of doing the same for them. I love watching my friends grow into new versions of themselves while continuing to recognize the hearts I’ve come to know. That love isn’t limited to encouragement, either. We disagree, challenge each other, and sometimes have uncomfortable conversations because we care enough to help one another to grow.
None of this is to suggest that women should be held to yet another standard of emotional attentiveness, or that the pressures placed on us are justified by the empathy that can emerge from them. I also do not believe that women are instinctively more empathetic. I believe everyone, regardless of gender, is able to have the same level of depth within their friendships that I am describing in this article. Empathy is not the entirety of what women are, nor is empathy exclusive to women or men. I’m only reflecting on the female friendships I’ve been fortunate enough to experience, and the particular ways I’ve found love within them.
What I do celebrate is the consideration that I feel comes from the women in my life — not out of obligation, but because they understand how meaningful that consideration can be.
Understanding how deeply our actions can affect another person and choosing, again and again, to make that impact one’s care is perhaps what the art of loving is all about.
