If you’ve been watching Amazon Prime's Ride or Die you might be questioning your own friendship circle. Would you be able to rely on any of them to join you on the run across Europe after you bodged an assassination? Maybe not… But midlife friendships do weather a lot so you need to choose carefully. Here are the seven invaluable pals to have in your arsenal.
1. The together one
Bridget Jones might have called her a smug married but there’s a lot to be said for having someone who has everything sorted in your corner. When everything gets too much an evening at theirs is the answer. A few glasses (bottles) of proper wine AKA the sort that doesn’t sit next to the 89p own brand squash in a corner shop, a meal that utilises a full and ordered spice rack and a night under their ironed spare bed sheets is as restorative as a week in a spa.
© WireImage2. The younger one
Ask to see your fellow midlife friends for a drink/dinner/a coffee you both only mange half of and you’re looking at approximately 67 working days before everyone is free. You know who isn’t booked up until Q4? Younger friends. They will happily turn up for a midweek cocktail even though you only asked them at lunchtime and their appeal doesn’t stop there, a younger millennial/late Gen Z opinion on everything from dating to asking for a pay rise is invaluable in midlife. They have a backbone and they aren’t afraid to use it. Oh, and they can show you how to take the read receipts off your WhatsApp.
3. The one who knows where the bodies are buried
You don’t get to midlife without doing some stuff that as a sensible 40 something you don’t shout about. Whether it’s that time you got banned from every Superdrug in the country, fell asleep behind a fruit machine on a girls trip to Corfu or that period you went through of only dating men with eyebrow piercings, someone who knows all of this about you is yours for life.
© WireImage4. The one you only communicate with via voice note
Chances are you lost her to an idyllic countryside paradise sometime circa 2021. Prior to the great mate exodus you probably hung out every week but now there’s at least two motorways between you and your schedules make it feel like you’re time zones apart too. You stay updated on each other’s life through the medium of voice notes, which increase in length with direct correlation to how hot the gossip is. You know never to listen to one in public without headphones and there’s nothing better than waking up to a notification that tells you you’ve got 11 minutes 40 seconds of your own personal podcast to listen to as you put your makeup on.
5. The one you can happily holiday with
You can love a friend dearly and spend hours with them in pubs, sitting rooms, restaurants, that weird psychic night you thought would be a laugh until the clairvoyant told your friend everyone had doubts about her husband. But can you cope with them at 40,000 feet after they’ve had three G and T’s at 6am in an airport Wetherspoons? When your luxury all-inclusive didn’t tell you salmonella was the hidden menu option? When your suitcases go AWOL and you have to survive on gift shop t-shirts and rinsing out your pants with one of those teeny tiny bars of soap for three days? If you’ve found her, never let her go.
© Christopher Polk6. The one within walking distance
In our younger years all our friends were in walking distance. Mainly because we all lived in the same grotty house share and had to travel no farther than downstairs to the kitchen cum living room cum spare bedroom to see them. Fast forward a few decades and suddenly the concept of ‘just popping round’ is a habit in danger of extinction as a three train, two bus, twenty minute taxi becomes an accepted journey for a ‘quick’ catch up. That’s why you need at least one WDM, a walking distance mate. No big plans, no even bigger Uber bill, the WDM is worth her weight in gold.
© Getty Images7. The fashionable one
Because it’s exhausting keeping up with how we should be tucking in our shirt this season, whether a side parting will have us excluded from polite society and if Nando’s is an ironically naff place to have a date or just a naff naff place, you need someone who knows this stuff. They’ll take you shopping, recommend the perfect place to get your woefully 2016 brows done and send you in the direction of a restaurant where you’ll spot a celebrity whose name you can’t remember but you’ll still take a surreptitious selfie with them behind you.
Which friend are you? Tell us in the comments box below - we'd love to know.
