So, just how important are our friends?

“Building your life around close friendships rather than family or romance is a joyous and necessary act of rebellion, and governments should put in place ‘friendship ministries’ to radically rethink the way society is organised, a key French philosopher has argued.

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie this week publishes a manifesto for friendship, ‘3 Une Aspiration au Dehors’, detailing his close friendship with two other writers, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis.”

This is the opening to a short article in today’s “Guardian” and made me think.

My sister lives in Leicester and my brother lives in Manchester. My (second) marriage broke up seven years ago. So, by default, I’ve had to focus on friendships over family or relationship. This was especially true during lockdown but, more generally, my friends sustain me each day.

I think that there is a reason why, in all countries and cultures, women live longer than men in spite of generally having harder lives. I think that women are better at building and sustaining social networks.

Literally, our friends keep us alive.


 




XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>