Friendship is not a stagnant or unmoving concept. You may have been friends with a person for years, but like any relationship, it has its own peaks and troughs. A major milestone for many long-term friendships between women is turning 30. At least, that definitely was the case for me. Friends were buying their first homes, moving in with their partners, getting engaged, and getting married. Among my friendship groups, I’m the last single friend. Turning 30 brought up worries and anxieties about being in a different life stage than my close friends. Would I hang out with them as much? Would we still go on holiday and weekend breaks together? Or is this the beginning of us drifting apart? I guess they aren’t nicknamed the panic years for no reason.
For our 30th birthdays last summer, my best friend Georgia and I booked a trip together. We’ve known each other for 13 years and because life got busy at the time, we didn’t do very much to celebrate a decade of friendship. Our holiday would not only mark us both entering our 30s, but also look back on the decade we’ve been friends. I was excited to lounge around in the sun, sip on mocktails and hang out with Georgia, but I didn’t expect the trip to be deeply reaffirming and a reminder of how powerful platonic love is, especially for women.
If you need to know one thing about Georgia, she loves to plan. And a holiday is her all-time favourite thing to plan and put together, which works for me as I’m not much of a planner. Every Type A friend needs their Type B friend, right? We’d organised to go to Valencia for four days, to soak up some much-needed sun and a dash of culture. As soon as we arrived at Gatwick Airport, Georgia showed me the two-page written itinerary she’d printed out and I knew this was going to be a great trip.
We stayed at a hotel in the Benicalap district of the city, so that we were close enough to the hustle and bustle of the city centre but also could enjoy the peace and quiet of the hotel’s rooftop pool. Georgia and I used to both live in London, and so, we’d see each other pretty regularly – at least once a week. But there’s something carefree about going on holiday together that means you can properly settle into each other’s company without keeping an eye on the time or train schedules. We can make do with a few hours in an evening to dissect her new job or my imminent move out of London, but lying together on poolside loungers allows for the friendship to breathe. I’m sure there were many conversations we had again and again, but I think repeating yourself with a loved one is needed to reach the resolution you might need.
