Over the last 10 years, platonic relationships, or soul friendships as I like to call them, have become the primary source of my happiness and satisfaction outside of myself. As I nestle into the safe spaces I’ve curated for myself, it’s been hard not to notice other women existing in isolation from the parts of themselves that come most alive and the people who fuel these parts. I see women reaching over and over for lovers who aren’t big enough to hold all the parts of them instead of leaning into relationships they have kept just for themselves. As women get older and step into more traditional roles, our personal needs and desires are usually expected to fade away and give room for more family/community-based desires. We’re expected to become martyrs through marriage and childbirth, to sacrifice our youth and wonders about life and settle into the mundane existence of caring for others while parts of ourselves are unkept. This may not be true for every married woman but it’s so common in our society. I know more women than not who exist in very small boxes with their husbands and children being the most important people in their lives…even before themselves. Every free woman I know isn’t married and every married woman I know over forty hasn’t been free since their youth. And in this context, freedom is the ability to exist and move of your own free will – to do things primarily because you desire to and not because doing is what’s expected of you.
The first relationships I formed outside of family were with platonic friends. I knew early on that these would be the most important relationships to me. Not only because I felt safer in platonic relationships than romantic ones, but also the importance placed on having the right friends signaled the significance of these relationships. My mom wanted to know my friends, their families, and their other friends. She taught me to screen friends before trusting. I didn’t get such lessons for romantic relationships. I wasn’t allowed to have them for a long time in my youth and so I thought, “they must not be important”.
When I was finally old enough to have a boyfriend I could introduce to my family, I didn’t get asked any of the questions I received with new platonic friends. It was assumed the relationship was safe for me simply because he was a man. I was encouraged to put up with things that abused my person and moral compass because “compromise is the bedrock of every relationship”. Instead of being pushed to express my feelings, as I did in platonic relationships, I was always encouraged into silence – into soft coyness as if that is the only way for a woman to be. While I may not have been able to keep a man romantically, I’ve been blessed with beautiful love from men who are friends. And that, for me, is the ultimate prize: being loved for the wonderful person I am and not because of my ability to nurture and care for people who are usually unable to care for me in the ways that I need.
When I was younger, I was told by a few people that I wouldn’t be able to keep a man. As a sort of insult – a warning that I would be miserable if I didn’t begin to view marriage to a man as the pinnacle of my life’s achievements. It had an adverse reaction and I was determined to find joy everywhere outside of the relationships I kept with men. That has served me right. I have maintained a certain fullness as lovers have come and go. I have maintained a level of happiness as my heart has broken and mended itself over the years.
None of this would be possible if the essence of my existence bloomed and died with the flowers of new love. The times that my heart has fallen apart, it has always been friends who have kept the pieces of my soul from shattering with the softest love and nurture. With family, we say “the tree can bend but it can’t break,” but with friends, the standards have always been different. We expect the most from our friends and hold them to a standard that is usually higher than our romantic and family relationships. From the way we navigate conflicts in respective relationships to the boundaries we set and the things we are willing to put up with. I would never be friends with an abusive person who put me down or is threatened by my success. But in the past, I have dated people who were. Had I not set a certain standard for relationships because of how fully I’m loved by friends I would still be dating people like that.
Good Friends are like a bank. They hold the freest parts of you. They hold the parts not polite enough for marriage or the workplace. They hold the memories of the years you belonged to yourself. They help you remember parts of yourself that can become lost in the rhythm of everyday life. We must prioritize these people and relationships. I think that it is imperative as we get older to carve out time and resources to invest in our sisterhoods and community with other women. It is in these spaces that we will know true liberation and become the best versions of ourselves… and subsequently better partners and parents. The importance of a well-rounded existence lasts all through our lifetime. The need for different relationships that feed our dynamic existence doesn’t dissipate when we become adults. If anything, that need expands as we stretch ourselves thinner in new, lasting relationships. And it becomes even more important to seek out and maintain relationships outside of romance.
Authored by: Fanoraine Dohr
Featured Image by: Womanizer Toys on Unsplash
