Are your girlfriends ‘just like you?’ Do you dress, vote, think and shop the same way? There is something comfortable in friendships with women who have a similar background and with whom you share history, common interests, things you’re passionate about.

But there is also something refreshing and energizing to stretch the bounds of girlfriendship by building relationships with women of different backgrounds, beliefs, lifestyles, and demographics. Specifically, intergenerational friendships can provide insight and wisdom as only shared with decades of difference and a respect for each other’s opinions.

The following article is a great peak into this type of friendship. Consider this as you meet and ‘do life’ with women who may be a different age or background than you. You just might meet a new best friend along the way.

Intergenerational Friends

Friendships are very important to most women*. They often emerge out of a similarity in lifestyle, common interests and values, educational and socioeconomic status and developmental time in life.

The issue of being in a similar developmental place means that most friends are similar in age. But sometimes women make friends with someone much older or younger than they are. Our mothers are actually our first loves and so it is not surprising that our relationship with them would lay the groundwork for love of other women. At times these older female friendships could even be a stand in for our mothers, without all the baggage.

Red Envelope gifts for girlfriends

These relationships are often tremendously beneficial to both the younger and older woman. The younger gets wisdom and the voice of experience from a woman who has lived it. She gets someone to bolster her competence and stability. She may even get someone who can be an advocate for her, as well as a nurturer.

The older woman gets someone to whom she can impart her many acquired skills, be the idealized mentor, help a person make life changes, get attention she may feel she has lost with age, and identify with the fresh start on life that the younger person has.

What these friendships lack is the competition and comparisons of same-age friendships as well as the mother-daughter baggage of an actual mother-daughter relationship. It can be a real win-win all around.

Intergenerational Friends – On the Couch with Gail Saltz, M.D. | A Mental Health Blog at iVillage.com.

* When posting this article I consciously stopped at the first line where it mentions that “Friendships are very important to ‘most‘ women.” While we love to think that female friendships are important to ALL women, I know their version is true. Some women don’t care much about female friendship. They’re ‘fine’ in their world with few connections to other women and live their life without much support or involvement with close female friends.

As a girlfriend, I recognize that we are all allowed our opinions on friendship and that we generally seek out what we need. I NEED female friendship. And research shows that women actually biologically NEED girlfriends. Our female friendships give us security, self-esteem, hope, relieve stress, make us healthier, happier, and even live longer.

Intergenerational girlfriends give us the opportunity to expand our friendships to so many new women. The older woman down the street, the new intern who needs a friend, or the woman in line at the grocery store who, although she may not be in your age bracket, enjoys the same TV shows and laughs at the same tabloid headlines. In the same age group or intergenerational, girlfriends do make life better.

Do you have a girlfriend who is older or younger than you? How has this difference benefitted your friendship? Share and inspire!

Related articles: Better health through female friendships, enduring power of friendships, and 10 ways how female friendship reduces stress for women.

Image by krisdecurtis via Flickr

Tags: female friendship, friendship, girlfriends, intergenerational, People, Women

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 9:26 am and is filed under Be a Better FRIEND, Girlfriend Advice and Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.