After Eden: You Need Friends

It’s cuffing season, but your friends don’t have to suffer because of it.

When you start a new romantic relationship, it’s easy to leave old friendships in the dust. After all, you are now spending all your time on Miss or Mr. Perfect. It’s hard to imagine how other friendships might fit into your new schedule.

But this pattern not only breeds resentment among your friends, it also deeply harms you and your relationships. The underlying assumption is that a boyfriend or girlfriend is a better version of a same-sex best friend—that you want one or the other, but not both. In doing so, we equate our need for platonic friendship with the need for a romantic relationship and, ultimately, marriage.

While it may seem like having a girlfriend or boyfriend can replace the love that a same-sex friendship gives you, this is not true. We’ve all experienced the joy of being “with the girls” or “with the guys”—there are certain topics of conversation and types of humor that can only live in a same-sex context. Women can support and guide each other in ways that men cannot, and vice versa.

I was fortunate to grow up in a community created by the friendship of my parents. As a child, it was almost impossible to keep track of this: dozens and dozens of families and adults were introduced to me as “Mom’s friends from …” or “Dad’s friends from …”. both before and after the wedding.

When my mother passed away suddenly in 2022, these friends rallied around our family with amazing speed and generosity. Their support continued long after the funeral and is the main reason my family is thriving today.

If my parents had viewed same-sex friendships as an inferior good, I doubt I would have had relationships with friends from all eras of my parents’ lives, even when I was a college student.

Although marriage is the ultimate human relationship, we are all created for a rich network of relationships.

Being in a relationship, both new and long-term, means you need same-sex friendships more than ever—and not just because there’s no guarantee you won’t break up with Mr. Perfect and end up alone. Friends play an important role in any romantic relationship, identifying your blind spots, helping you through difficult times, and providing constant reality checks. Having deep and deep platonic friendships, especially same-sex friendships, reduces the risk of idolizing your partner. They are often able to assess the quality of your partner with more objectivity than you are currently capable of.

If all your confidants are expressing concerns about your new partner, it’s a sign that you should listen to them rather than interrupt them. And if your most trusted friends consistently express their approval of your partner, it’s a sign that your relationship is heading in the right direction.

Dating works best in community. And to do that, you need to invest more, not less, in same-sex friendships.

This will take some effort, especially during the tumultuous first months of dating. Show or tell your closest friends that even though you are in a new season, their time and contributions still matter to you. Don’t try to crowdsource a relationship, but let your most trusted friends know that you welcome their contributions, good or bad, to your new partner.

And let your friends see that their value to you is not dependent on your relationship status: your friendship has always been about more than just not feeling alone without a romantic relationship.

Learning this will help you build the healthier marriage and rich family life that many of us dream of. When a husband and wife have a strong same-sex friendship, their union becomes stronger and their children have more models for how to form their own friendships.

So save Saturday for girls.

Caroline Kurth is a junior studying English.