Growing up, I thought becoming a woman would come with two guarantees: the romantic soulmate and the female best friend. As a teenager, I lived off a steady diet of romcoms and sitcoms, unconsciously absorbing a script for how adulthood would unfold. Obviously, I would work at a fashion magazine like Jenna in 13 Going on 30 and live in an impossibly large flat in an impossibly expensive city with five of my closest buddies, Friends-style. One day, a tall, mysterious man (looking suspiciously like Colin Firth) would confess he loves me just as I am. Until then, my close-knit group of besties would be available 24/7 to dissect the minutiae of my dating life and to hold my hand through all of life’s hurdles.

But as I navigated my 20s, cracks started to appear in my fantasy. My experience working in fashion was more The Devil Wears Prada than How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and my friendships and love life often felt closer to an anxiety-inducing episode of Girls than Sex and the City. However, one thing did happen: I found the guy.

I met my husband the lockdown way: dating apps and coffee walks. (Not exactly a romcom, although I did get locked inside a public toilet minutes before our first date, which surely qualifies as a modern meet-cute). Two years later, he proposed in that same spot (the beach, not the toilet), and it genuinely felt like a movie. Now we’re married and happy: both lifting each other up and figuring out adulthood together. And with that, I achieved half of that teenage dream.

It was when we started wedding planning that I began to feel the gnawing absence of my mythical best friend. While I was engaged, the longing for a ride-or-die female friend intensified: if I had one, I kept telling myself, she would plan a hen party packed with inside jokes and teary speeches, or post a heartfelt Instagram tribute documenting decades of friendship. She would, after two Aperol Spritzes, refer to me in front of everyone as ‘a sister.’ I felt that, by not having a BFF, I had failed at one of the central requirements of womanhood. I had never found ‘the (platonic) one,’ and I worried that people would label me with the worst title of all: not a girl’s girl.

“I think many women carry a quiet sense of shame about their friendships,” says Dr Claire Stubbs, chartered psychologist and author. We’ve been sold a very specific image of what adult friendship should look like—whether that’s the four inseparable women in Sex and the City, the friendship group in Friends, or the carefully curated social media posts we see every day. The message is often that if you’re successful, happy, and emotionally healthy, you’ll naturally have a tight-knit group of best friends around you.”

The reality, she says, is often much messier. “Adult life brings careers, children, caring responsibilities, relocations, relationship changes, financial pressures, and differing life stages,” continues Stubbs. “Friendships naturally ebb and flow. Yet many women interpret this as personal failure, rather than recognising it as a normal consequence of being human in a busy, demanding world.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve had wonderful friendships with women who carried me through break-ups, celebrated my successes, and patiently listened to me spiral through podcast-length voice notes, but they have tended to exist in chapters rather than one continuous story. Part of that is circumstance: I moved countries just before turning 30, right as many friendships enter the bonding phase through shared milestones like career progression, marriage, or babies. Part of it is probably personality, too. I’m an introvert who craves intimacy while simultaneously guarding myself and needing my space. Sometimes I wonder whether I’ve been searching for a friendship that requires a level of consistency I struggle to provide myself.

Social media now plays the role that TV shows and films played during our teenage years: simply open Instagram, and you’ll find women calling each other soulmates beneath photo dumps from girls’ trips and boozy brunches. While it’s wonderful to see the growing cultural recognition of female friendship as something worthy of investment and attention (for generations, friendship was often treated as secondary to marriage and motherhood), for those of us without picture-perfect friend groups, these digital celebrations can morph into yet another thing to compare yourself against.

“What I see in my clinical work is that many women aren’t necessarily grieving the absence of friendship; they’re grieving the absence of the friendship story they thought they were supposed to have,” says Stubbs. “When we let go of the idea that connection must look a certain way, we create space to appreciate the relationships we do have. Sometimes belonging is found in a sibling, a neighbour, a walking group, a community, or friendships that drift in and out across different seasons of life. The longing itself is not the problem; the suffering often comes from believing there is only one acceptable way for that longing to be met.”

Indeed, what I’m longing for is a friendship that looks like what I was told friendship should look like when I was 14. I’ve spent years assuming that meaningful friendship should mirror romance: one person, one deep bond, and a relationship that anchors everything else. But I’m slowly realising that, as with romantic relationships, expecting one person to meet all of these expectations is nothing but a recipe for disaster, and chasing this ideal can leave you feeling as if you’re the problem.

When I look beyond on-screen portrayals and reflect honestly about my friendships, I feel lucky to have met all the women I have in my life. There are the ones who communicate mostly through memes; the ones who are there during difficult periods; the ones I only speak to twice a year, but with whom I can instantly pick up where we left off. I’ve had to learn that not every friendship needs to be soul-bonding to be meaningful: some friends arrive for a season and leave.

“I believe many women would benefit from replacing the question, ‘Why don’t my relationships look like they’re supposed to?’ with a different question: ‘What do healthy, realistic, and meaningful relationships look like for me at this stage of my life?’, proposes Lowri Walsh, a psychotherapist specialising in women’s wellbeing. “Letting go of idealised expectations can be disappointing at first, but it can also be incredibly liberating. It creates space for relationships to be imperfect, human, and authentic, rather than trying to live up to a fairytale standard.”

My mistake, then, wasn’t failing to find my friendship soulmate, but believing I desperately needed one in the first place. In the constant search for the perfect best friend, I nearly overlooked something much more valuable: the beautiful tapestry of imperfect female relationships I’ve built along the way. Not just one great love story, but a messy and deeply human collection of them.