The Power of Female Friendship in a Fragmented World

The research is unambiguous: deep female friendships are among the most powerful predictors of health, longevity, and wellbeing that we have.

A landmark study from UCLA found that women respond to stress differently than men — not with fight-or-flight, but with what researchers called "tend-and-befriend." When stressed, women seek out other women. The act of connection releases oxytocin, which buffers the cortisol response. We are, literally, designed to help each other through difficulty.

And yet. We let these friendships slip. The demands of work, partnership, children, and the general velocity of modern life conspire against the long lunch, the phone call that goes on for two hours, the weekend away. We tell ourselves we will make time later. Later rarely comes.

This is a loss that compounds. The women who report the deepest friendships in their fifties and sixties are, almost without exception, the women who invested in those friendships in their thirties and forties — when it was inconvenient, when there was always something else to do.

Female friendship is not a supplement to a full life. It is constitutive of one. The women who know us best — who remember who we were before we became who we are, who can tell us the truth without cruelty, who celebrate our successes without envy and grieve our losses without pity — these women are irreplaceable.

The Manhattan Girls Club exists, in part, to create the conditions for these friendships to form and deepen. We believe that the right room, at the right time, with the right people, can change the course of a life.

We have seen it happen. We expect to see it again.

Invest in your friendships. They will return the investment a thousandfold.