Woman's Hour - Galentine's Day

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

How important is it to celebrate your female friendships? It's Galentine’s Day! The day before Valentine’s Day, it was first mentioned in an episode of the American sitcom Parks and Recreation nearly 10 years ago. It's now a part of card and present marketing. From identical pyjamas, to matching jewellery, to apps which help women to make friends; the concept of ‘gal pals’ or a ‘female tribe’ has become hugely commercialised. Does is matter? Claire Cohen is the Women’s Editor at the Daily Telegraph. Rachel Pashley has over 20 years of experience in global marketing and advertising, specialising in female insight. They both join Jenni to discuss.Female friendships taking centre stage. We look at three current theatre productions examining women’s relationships with actor Tanya Loretta Dee who's performing in Boots, the writer of Soft Animals, Holly Robinson and actor/producer Josie Dale Jones whose play Dressed is soon to open in London. They discuss the importance of the support and nurturing these bonds provide.How important are friends at work? It is a good idea to be best friends with a colleague? And what happens when promotions, redundancies and annoying office habits get in the way? We talk to Kate Leaver, journalist and author of The Friendship Cure: A Manifesto for Reconnecting in the Modern World, and to business psychologist Adina Tarry.What impact does having children have on friendships groups? Is it possible to carry on as before once babies are added to the mix? Do you have friends who have children but you don’t? Has your relationship with your friends changed? We're joined by blogger Candice Brathwaite and journalist Momtaz Begum Hossain.Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Jane Thurlow

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. And yes, we know it's Valentine's Day tomorrow, but you may not be aware, as we weren't until recently, that today has been dubbed an occasion for celebration too. None of that romantic stuff, and let's hope the fact that it's the 13th is not unlucky, but it's Galentine's Day, on which to celebrate your friendships with women. It was first mentioned some ten years ago in an episode of the comedy series Parks and Recreation.

If you look inside your bags, you will find a few things. A bouquet of hand-crocheted flower pens, a mosaic portrait of each of you made from the crushed bottles of your favourite diet soda, and a personalised 5,000-word essay of why you're all so awesome. What's Galentine's Day? Oh, it's only the best day of the year.

Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home and we just come and kick it breakfast style. Ladies celebrating ladies. So how much do we value our female friends? How easy is it to create a best friend from someone you work with? What happens when one of you has a baby? Do the child free fall away? And we analyse three plays which are on at the moment all with the theme of women's relationships with each other. And of course, we'd like to hear from you.

What value do you place on your women friends and how well do friendships last as you grow older and times change? Now, as we heard Amy Poehler say, Galentine's Day is a day for gifts. And hers were at least thoughtful and created by her, the crocheted flower pens, the recycled bottles of their favourite diet soda, and the personalised essays. But to what extent is the adoption of the title as a day to be marked nothing more than another opportunity to make money, this time out of female friendship? There are a number of examples of the commercialisation of gal pals, including identical pyjamas, matching jewellery and apps to help us make friends.

While Rachel Pashley is a marketing consultant and the author of New Female Tribes, Clare Cohen is the women's editor at The Daily Telegraph. Clare, at what point did you begin to feel concerned at female friendship being everywhere? Well, I think the first thing I'd like to say is that I do applaud the sentiment of Galentine's. I mean, I think it's very important to celebrate female friendship. And it's a really good message that happily ever after doesn't have to look like a romantic relationship and that female friendship is just as important. But what really concerns

me about Galentine's Day, and when I first started to notice it becoming commercialised, if you like, was a few years ago on social media. And I mean, I put the blame slightly on Taylor Swift. Sorry, Taylor. But she started posting all of these photos of her girl squad. And this became quite a big thing around 2015. And she invited her glossy posse of best friends into her music videos, and she went on tour and invited them on stage. And I just thought, you know, this is not a realistic portrayal of female friendship. It's very aspirational, sure. But it's sending a message out that if you don't have a perfect gang of female friends to bake cookies with and make cupcakes with and have sleepovers with all the time, which is what they were portraying each other doing on social media,

that there must be something wrong with you. And that certainly doesn't relate to my own experience. I struggled to make female friends growing up and in my teens and twenties. And it's really only in my thirties that I have got a solid group of female friends. So it just made me think this is quite worrying for young women and not a great message to be sending to them. Rachel, when did you begin to notice it was becoming a marketing tool? I think around about the same time and something that we see in the marketing world it's often said that women don't just buy brands they join them

so they seek sort of deeper connection with brands and I think as a result BFF marketing so best female friend marketing I know i should hang my head in shame for using that term so i'm sorry um but it's but it's now kind of a thing so brands are adopting this sort of personal dialogue with women in a bid to sort of mimic being your best friend and i think where a business has a female founder so like goop in the early days when it was smaller um or deliciously ella i think there's an authenticity to adopting that sort of personal narrative but i think where it's you know m&s giving me permission as they are at the moment on galentine's day to um put my feet up ditch my to-do list why i only get one day to do that i have no idea um you know we're in it

together girls you know we can relax today and buy some homeware from m&s um then i think i'm sure there are other shops that you could buy homeware from yes exactly it's not just homeware i brought with me a few just a handful of the emails i've got this week and it's been galentine's cupcakes galentine's beetroot burgers beet beetroot foot spas, silicon face massagers, pyjamas reading fries before guys. I mean, I've got a list here of about 20 things. The beauty kits. Yeah, you should make yourself more beautiful on Galentine's because we're not worrying about that nearly enough. I just find it so infantilising and cynical when I say. I mean, what essentially is wrong with, let's say, buying your mate a piece of jewellery or even an app for making friends?

I just think it's sad that we feel like we need to commercialise and, as Rachel said, have a day for doing this. I mean, sure, absolutely, send your friends a text message and tell them how much they mean to you today. Or if you've let a friendship slide slightly, maybe send an email and say, hey, we haven't met up for a long time. Why don't we do that? I think those sentiments are really brilliant. But what really worries me is that we're not looking at the grey areas of

female friendship at all. It's painting this very surface, glossy picture. You know, female friendships have up and downs and, you know, it's not always perfect. There was a study out this week I found really interesting, which said that a lot of young women still look at Monica and Rachel's friendship from the series Friends as the ideal female friendship. And that's like, what, 20, 25 years old now? And actually, what's interesting is that, I mean, yes, sure, it was a glossy American series, but it wasn't perfect all the time. They did have fallings out.

And it's clear that young women now, who perhaps weren't even old enough when that series was out, are looking for a relatable model of female friendship and just aren't finding it in what they're seeing on social media. Is there one currently that you can think of? I mean, Friend is a long time ago, although it does show all the time on television, doesn't it? I haven't really watched the entire time series. I look at, you know, girls a few years back or Big Little Lies,

I think, for a more authentic, sort of messier depiction of female friendship where you have sort of realities of friendship, the competition, the falling outs, the arguments, the... You know, it's not always perfect. And I think it was a celebrity who said uh Sarah Jessica Parker actually who said you know for a good marriage I think it's okay to hate your other half for four minutes of the day and I think that the same is true in friendship you know it is an imperfect relationship we don't love them all the time so how do you reckon rachel advertisers are seeing

it they're just seeing it as the perfect thing that female friends just love each other i think where it's done well um and i think there is a is a sort of an upside to this is celebrating the importance of women coming together and having important women in your life. And I think one of the problems that we have with advertising is for too long, it's always portrayed women just through the lens of their responsibilities. So woman as wife or mother, forgetting that she might have her own agency, her own hopes and dreams or, you know, a life outside the home. So I think, you know, putting a positive spin on this, brands who are celebrating the importance of women,

you know, having other, you know, female friends and having inspirational women in your life. So, you know, your own female role models, and those don't have to be celebrities, but they could be women who've inspired you. You know, my mother-in-law, I find her greatly inspirational. You know, she was one of the women of Greenham Common. And she's really inspired me, I have to say.

What would you do to celebrate Valentine's Day today, Claire? Oh, am I celebrating it at all? Not really. I'm going to my pottery class this evening, which is full of women, so I should think I shall celebrate with them. And on Valentine's Day itself, I'm meeting a female friend for a drink. But no, I'm not buying a pair of matching pyjamas or a hamper with a teddy bear holding a heart in it. I just think I will use it as an opportunity to message female friends

and tell them what they mean to me and not fall into the trap of feeling like I have to spend money to do that. Rachel, what about you? Well, I've got my daughter. I've got a one-year-old, so I've to spend money to do that. Rachel what about you? Well I've got my daughter I've got a one-year-old so I've bought her a Valentine's card so I'll be giving that to her to this evening. So you'll give it to her on Galentine's Day rather than Valentine's Day. I wouldn't mind getting one for my mum I must say. Claire Cohen, Rachel Pashley thank you both very much indeed for starting us off this morning. Now, it's hardly surprising, given the amount of time you spend at work if you have a job outside the home, that you make friends there.

There are those water cooler moments when you hang about for a gossip. The anybody fancy a bite at lunchtime and also the fatal would anybody like a drink at the end of the day? But how do friendships at work survive jealousy if one of you gets promoted over the other or if one of you is made redundant? Well, Adina Tarry is a business psychologist and coach. Kate Lever is a journalist and the author of The Friendship Cure. Kate, why do you reckon work friends are important? Oh, I think they're so vital not least because I think we've allowed corporate culture to seep into every corner of our lives these days particularly with millennials and I think if we don't have friendship in work and if

we don't build in personal relationships in our workplace I think we go mad. I think we need it as a built-in distraction and a coping mechanism. I think it's also a beautiful place to meet people. We traditionally talk a lot about how we meet romantic partners at work, but I think it's a wonderful meeting place for friends. But people don't meet romantic partners at work anymore, do they? They do it online? Oh, you know what? I'm in a relationship and I don't even think about where people meet anymore.

It's beyond me. The internet? I don't know. How common, Adina, do you reckon good friendships are at work? Well, actually, I don't think they are that common. In other words, I wouldn't say that 80% of people have a very good friend at work. In my estimate, it would be less than a third. And I think that is because friendship is actually not something that happens in a particular environment and because you are at work you are going to have friends there.

There are people who don't. It's just another place where you meet people and you may like them or not. So it depends very much on the type of industry, the relationships that you can build, the culture of the organization, whether they encourage any kind of other social activities and so on. So really, I don't see this differentiation between friendship at work or elsewhere bounded by the setting. I think friendship is friendship and you'll find it where you'll find it. But isn't it the case that people do spend a large part of their lives at work? And so, inevitably, that may be the most important place where they meet people who would become friends.

I totally agree. I absolutely agree. But I would say that we have spent about around 12 years in school, sometimes in the same school, and we make good friends there. I would say that we may have social circles where we spend time, for instance, around some interests and passions, you know, playing games or whatever, and we meet friends there. So I totally agree. Yes, it's just another social context where we meet people. And ideally, we make friends everywhere. Kate, to what extent can you be friends with your boss or somebody who is below you in the hierarchy? I think it can be challenging, but I think friendship, the good type of friendship should be robust enough to withstand a power imbalance like that. And I speak from experience. I was very good friends with my former boss and remain, after the end of that job, very good

friends with my former boss. I also have been close friends with an intern who I kind of mentored throughout the beginning of her career. And both of those friendships I regard as entirely lovely and perfectly valid, despite the fact that we were at different places in the hierarchy at work. I think it's entirely possible. I just think it requires being a little bit emotionally sophisticated should sort of jealousy or conflict come up. But we have to deal with those things in any kind of friendship. How open were you with the woman who was your boss? My boss? Extremely.

I mean, I worked for a women's website back in Australia where it was an all-female staff. Sort of being open and candid and honest was part of our job because a lot of the time we were, you know, writing very confessional kind of essays and stuff and articles. So we had a very emotionally open workplace. And I think that was probably an extreme example, given that it was all female and extremely kind of genuine and authentic and that sort of thing. But I think I would encourage more people to be a little bit like we were, because I think we have this misconception that stoicism is a professional requirement and that we should prioritize decorum in the workplace over things like vulnerability. Whereas I actually think vulnerability is an extremely powerful tool in terms of getting close to people, but also in terms of being good at our job. There's plenty of research to say that friendship in the workplace actually makes us more productive, more innovative, more imaginative. And I particularly think the productivity thing is really interesting, considering how much time we might spend gossiping by the biscuit tin.

Adina, how open should you be? Because there must be risks there. Well, I think that, yes, openness is problematic. And I think it's really depends on how good we are at setting boundaries and working with those boundaries. And I would think that, for example, if you are very open with someone who is your boss, effectively, what you do is you transfer the responsibility of ethical judgment onto the other person and not taking it yourself. In other words, telling the person whatever you like or dislike about the company, and then let them deal with that from their position of being a manager. So I think there are dangers with the so-called vulnerability, because there is one thing to acknowledge one's strengths and

weaknesses, likes and dislikes. And there is another thing to simply put things on the table and let everyone else to deal with it. You will feel better for that, of course. And then you say, so this is now your bag and deal with it. So what precautions should you take to make sure a friendship doesn't, in the end, have a negative impact on your career progression? Well, I think it's about boundaries and about understanding the fact that we play multiple roles in everyday life. We can be mothers, sisters, teachers, managers, etc. And all those roles may have common elements to them, but also differences. The question is that we need to respect each other's roles in the workplace and also differentiate that role from the role of a friend. And so, therefore, be extremely self-aware. So this

requires emotional intelligence, which really is about being self-aware of myself, of the other person and the context. In this case, the context is work. And so it will bring with it certain boundaries and an ethical consideration and professional consideration in my head when I communicate with the other person who is in a position with a certain work-related status in a work environment. Kate, you write in the book about work husbands and wives. What do you mean by that? Well, it's a common phrase that people talk about their work spouses as being sort of a synonym for best friend at work.

And I think it's really interesting that we talk about husbands and wives in a work scenario because we do spend so much time at the office and in our jobs that actually they do become these pseudo partners if you're coupled up with someone at work in a really close friendship. And I think that term, that popular term, just reflects the intimacy that you can have with someone at work and also just the number of contact hours we have. But Adina, to what extent can that kind of extremely close friendship between two people

have a really damaging effect on the other people in your team? You might just be jealous. Look at those two over there chatting away. What are they on about? Well, that is counterproductive. And that doesn't, you see, that splits the unity of the group. And that creates cliques and people who support this side and the other side of those two and another two. I find that pushing that friendship and particularly that kind of everyday behaviour in the workplace is inappropriate. Because really, I have to go back to the boundaries again. You can have an extremely collaborative and absolutely enjoyable time at work.

And I remember teams where I would walk into the room with a smile on my face and we'll laugh from morning to evening. And we had a wonderful collaborative relationship at work and we had fun and we celebrated, but there were limits. Adina, Terry and Kate Lever, thank you both very much indeed. And do let us know what's happened to you at work. Have your friendships worked or not? You can email us or, of course, you can send us a text. Now, still to come in today's programme,

friendship after you've had a baby. Do you lose your pals who are child-free? And the serial, another story in Lifelines. A reminder about podcasts. You may have missed Zelda Lagrange on Monday talking about what it was like for an Afrikaans woman to become Nelson Mandela's private secretary. And this week's

podcast for parents is about autism. How do you go about getting a diagnosis if you think your child might be autistic? What can you best do to support him or her? You can find it on BBC Sounds and there's also an article with advice from Dr Sarah Lister-Brooke,

the Clinical Director at the National Autistic Society. That's on the Woman's Hour website, which includes links to any sites you may find useful. Now, female friendship is something of a trend in the theatre at the moment.

They don't always work out well. All About Eve opened last night, famously depicting a relationship between an older and a younger woman that goes horribly wrong. But three more plays are on or about to open across London and representatives from all three join us this morning. Holly Robinson is the writer of Soft Animals, which is on at the Soho Theatre.

She joins us today from Edinburgh. Tanya Loretta Dee is an actor and writer who will play Willow in Boots at the Bunker. And Josie Dale-Jones is the producer of and an actor in Dressed. She's in Salford today, but the play will be at the Battersea Arts Centre in London. Josie, let's start with you. I know that four of you are in Dressed and you've all been friends since I think you were 10 years old. How did the production come about? It's a piece of theatre, yeah, made by me and three of my best friends from school and I'm a theater maker Lydia is a seamstress not far as a singer and Olivia as a dancer the show is based on a real-life event and in 2012 Lydia was stripped at gunpoint and five years on in 2016 she set herself one year to make her entire

wardrobe from scratch she blogged about the process at made my wardrobe and I think making her clothes had allowed her to reconnect with her body and it was an act of redress she could protect herself with a brand new healing set of armor at the end of that year when she'd given away all of her shop bought items um she wrote about why she had done it and the response was massive from friends and family but also other women that she maybe hadn't realized were reading the blog and also the press and media and she was invited to write for newspapers magazines and talk on podcasts and radio shows but somewhere along the way I think she felt like she'd lost control of her story and for Lydia it's always about creativity about turning something

really dark and traumatic into something beautiful and I'd spent years watching her do this on her own so when she asked me if I wanted to collaborate and to make a show about it, it was a yes. But as friends, what were the three of you able to offer her as support when all this awful stuff was happening? I think in a way that the making of the show and every performance is an act of friendship in itself. I mean, it's based on a true story and it's come from her losing control over her life and the way that her story was being put into the world. And so we made a show to support her in reclaiming that

and somewhere in doing so, I guess we take on a group ownership of what's happened. Now, Tanya, let me come to you. Your character is called Willow. Yes. Who is Willow? So Willow is a young woman who works in a pharmacist in the village of Hertmore in Guildford.

She's a woman who is... And the play's called Boots. And the play's called Boots, yes, that's right. Yes. Yes, for obvious reasons. Yeah, exactly. It's a chemist and Willow is a very intelligent bright bold woman who has been through a lot and she works in a chemist which

is a place where you have to be quite controlled and put on a face as it were and she meets Liz who does not put on a face is also also very bold, and they have this lovely, sparky relationship. And they find a connection after lots of exciting adventures in The Chemist, where they find a connection through nature. But there's quite an age difference between them. Yes, so Willow's 35 and Liz is 70. So why does a friendship between such different generations work? Well, it's something that we don't see very often,

especially in the theatre. This is, you know, a new dynamic. And I think it works in this play because of experience from Liz and the willing to learn from Willow. And also that reverses, that role reverses. Liz also needs to learn things and Willow gives her something in return. And I think that's what we do as women.

Now, Holly, your play looks at an unlikely friendship between two women. They're Sarah and Frankie. Why did you want to write about them? I think in kind of a similar way to Tanya and there's kind of an age difference and a bit of kind of a class difference happening and what I wanted was a kind of relationship that could fit within it all the different kinds of relationships I've had over my life I feel like for me my life's been like a kaleidoscope of shatteringly important relationships between, you know,

my friends who are peers, my mum who I'm very close to, all the women in my life, teachers and all these different kinds of things. And I wanted to find these two characters who could kind of, you know, have a mother-daughter relationship, a sisterly relationship, at times friends, at times kind of verging on romantic. And, yeah, within kind of those two characters and the story we've created around them, I was kind of able to explore all these things

I feel like are sometimes slightly left out, especially in theatre. To what extent do you think it's a friendship that will endure? So, yeah, it's really interesting kind of without being too spoilery that frankie and sarah are both um kind of on the edge of society they've been pushed to the edge for different reasons sarah kind of due to a moral outrage about a an accident that happened in her life and frankie um in part due to being kind of a young black queer woman but also dealing with mental health at university and I think that that kind of them existing on those outskirts of society mean that

a that they can cling on to each other very very closely but also that they're kind of in quite a precarious position and as much as they hold on to each other they also have to kind of be able to find their way beyond that and I think there's a really beautiful thing about that sometimes you can have these very intense beautiful relationships with women that don't last but that can also be because you've loved each other to the point of not needing each other anymore and that's quite a beautiful thing I think Josie it seems to me that you're all talking to some degree about a relationship between women that has a kind of healing nature at its centre and it's often said that women look to other women for that purpose to what extent is that true oh I think it's fully true um I think you know we we were all there with Lydia the entire time so

we've been yeah we have been friends since we were 10 um and so we've watched her go through her own healing but we've been a huge part of that um and I think yeah there comes a point where you can't do that on your own anymore you know she went off and set herself this project and at the end of it realized that actually it's kind of you know she's ready to come back to her friends and be here with us tanny why do you think friendships between women are so significant to so many women i think because we have such a wide range of emotions as women, a huge spectrum of emotions. But men have a huge spectrum of emotions too. I know, but there's a sort of intuition, an unknown magic that I think women have, as well as that wide spectrum of emotion.

And you can meet a woman and you just know things, you just sense things. And when you find your tribe and you find your women that you really connect with, that you really bond with, magic happens. And I had to learn that when I was younger. I didn't feel that connection. I think all of my, sadly, lots of my growing up with women was quite turbulent. And I had to learn. Was that with women or with other girls?

With, yes, with other girls with yes with other girls i think i think that's the the key actually is that there was a lot of um i went to a girl school so there was a lot of um men and boys were the were the key and so there's a there's a kind of this fight to get their attention and once that's gone and once i got older and i started to sort of let that go as being the most important thing, I really started to find beautiful things about women that I didn't know until I got older. And that sort of had to be learned. Holly, I know that lots of women have genuine, close friendships with men that are not sexual. How different do you think those kind of relationships are from friendships with women?

I think that the most magical thing about friendship with women is that we understand the ways in which kind of the world treats us. And that's not to say that we can't have those between men and women. And especially when we kind of go beyond presupposing that these relationships between straight men and straight women, there's a whole spectrum of different kinds of relationships we can have and I do think they can be important I think the biggest thing that we have to overcome in those relationships is the way that men have been socialized to see women as you know in some way kind of in servitude to them whether that is through sex or whether it's through kind of the the free therapy sometimes

male friends seem to expect from their female friends. And I think once you get past that, and you definitely can, you can obviously have startingly brilliant relationships with men as well. Tanya, I'm sure you're not an expert on this, but what about male friendships? You know, we've all got male friends. Yes. Do you reckon they seek the kind of closeness that women do, either to each other or to their women friends? I think they do. I'm not sure it's something that is often expressed.

It's becoming a lot more common now for men to be more open with each other. But again, I think it's something that is changing in society and that we have to learn and men have to learn and i don't think it's as common i think there is a lot of pressure to be masculine and what does that word even mean and you know and at the moment i think there is a change with with men opening up and becoming closer and and and showing you know traits of softness and kindness that you know we all have um but that they're allowed to to feel and to be free with there are a lot of men listening to this program i am now going to say look we're talking about female friendship we've also just talked about

male friendship we'd really like to hear from you if you're a man and you have something to say about your friendship with women or indeed with other men and i'm not talking about sexual relationships i'm talking about friendships please please get in touch with us because we'd really like to hear your views on this and by the way tanya boots is on from the 18th of february to march the 16th at the bunker theatre in london josie dressed begins at the Battersea Arts Centre in London on the 25th of February and is then on tour all the way through until June. And Holly's Soft Animals is currently on at the Soho Theatre

until the 2nd of March. And thank you very much, all three of you. Now, I don't know about you, but my best friend and I met when we were 11. We were at school, obviously. We last saw each other last year when I went to Strasbourg, where she's lived for a very long time. She married a Frenchman and I went for her daughter's wedding. Our friendship has survived distance.

The stillbirth of her first child, my envy at the birth of her daughter, then her son, and then eventually I caught up and had two boys. But does friendship always survive when family comes along? Do you tend only to mix with other mothers when you become one? And does your child-free friend really want to hear about your baby's potty training? Well, Momtaz Begum-Hussein is a journalist who doesn't have children. Candice Braithwaite is a blogger who has two. Candice, how did the birth of a child influence your friendships with other women? Quite negatively. I have none of my friends left with me prior to having my daughter. I found I was the first though in my

friendship group to have a child and I was 25 so relatively young and I remember announcing being pregnant on Wednesday and on Friday them still texting me saying oh we're going clubbing tonight and that just created quite a distance and I tried for a really long time to hold on to them but it just became too difficult unfortunately. How, Mumtaz, do you get on with friends who have children when you don't? I definitely think that the type of friendship changes. I do think that friendship as a whole changes over years anyway and I think you can be someone with someone have a friend for life but your level of friendship will change throughout so in my instance I've had friends that I've had for a long time there's been periods of months where I've not spoken maybe years

we've not spoken and then we've reconnected and when it comes to friends with children there's two types I've noticed there's the ones who've had children and yes we've not been friends anymore but what I've noticed more recently that's probably when my friends were having kids when they were 20s actually but now in mid 30s late 30s the older mums do have a different mentality and I'm finding we're just changing our friendship the things we used to do before we do them differently you have to put a lot of effort in as well so the things you suggest you're going to do are very different it definitely can enhance a friendship too.

Candy's at that are you still saying come out clubbing which clearly you're not gonna do when you've got the kids around well now it's changed and i'm now i'm not only exclusively friends with women who have children quite funnily my closest friends now are women who for whatever reason can't have kids and i find that they really respect the ups and downs that come with having kids because it it's as simple as saying, OK, I'll meet you on Wednesday, but then someone gets chicken pox Tuesday night. And that's out of the way. And when you're young and you just want to have fun, you feel like you're actually losing your friend to this new baby,

which on paper sounds really good, but it's not that great when you're just used to having them around. But it's interesting that you say friends who are infertile we had huge response to this question on social media and someone who obviously didn't want us to use her name said she was infertile and she really missed her group of six female friends who all do have children and I wondered you know how do you handle a friend who is suffering grief at not being able to have a child when you do? It's really, really hard. Do you know what I do?

I share my kids. I share them willingly. The one woman that I'm thinking of every other day, there's a package of Lego turning up for my kids. She just gives them so much love. And she gives them the love that I struggle to give because I'm wrapped up in the day-to-day I'm like oh I can't do bedtime I'm frazzled she's the one that's like what's the problem with my eldest daughter talk to me and I it's really wonderful but the grief does rear its head and in those moments I just have to step back and allow that space to

fill the room and then when she's ready she gives me a call and she's like, I'm really sorry about that. This is just really hard. Now, that's a really interesting way of dealing with that when somebody is grieving. From a slightly harder point of view, Mumtaz, how welcome are your friends plus their children? Not ones that are grieving grieving but just friends who say oh yeah I'll come around and bring the kids I think when I agree to meet up with friends with kids I definitely have a level of oh so it's going to be that kind of day but what I have found with one of my friends there was a period where we didn't see each other for about five years she was very

very sociable always out always had different partners and very very busy then she had a child and actually over the last nine months I've seen her more than I have done in the last few years because now she's got the child I actually go to her house more it's relaxing we have dinner if I go over around 7 38 she's putting her son to sleep and then we can just relax um there's another sort of one of my best friends and I think for the first year and a half her son was always there and it did mean that we couldn't have proper conversations when you have a conversation with your best friend and they're only listening sort of like one percent because the other 99 is is on their child.

It is hard. But I have to say, two weeks ago, for the first time, she left her son with her husband and we had a Saturday afternoon together and I think it was a wonderful break for her. I know not everyone can leave their children, but it just showed, actually, we can still be friends and suddenly those blockages we had maybe for the last few times we met up had gone. Andice might her mother need to be a little bit careful and not be boring to her

friends and go on about potty training oh he took his first step the other day all of that you've got to be so careful and you know with your first child, everything's exciting. My second now, he's 11 months. I really I just really can't care for it. I'm like, that's not on the radar today. We will not discuss that. But I do find now that whether my friends have kids or not, I value those friendships so highly. Now I have children because that's my safe space. That's where I get to be me. And that for me is really important. And what advice would you give Mum Tess just briefly to any mother who wants to see her friend who doesn't have children what should she not talk about? I think we should just go back to talking about things we used to talk

about so I think if I ask a question about, what's the latest thing your child has learnt? Then that's good answer. But if not, then perhaps let's not talk about the child, because beforehand we talk about so many different things. And let's bring it back to that. I was talking to Mumtaz Begum-Hossein and Candice Braithwaite, and we have had lots of messages from you about the idea of Galentine's Day Dr Neil tweeted

loving the concept of Galentine's Day might we consider Palentine's Day? Alice emailed I really struggled to make friends when I moved to London 10 years ago and I can count the amount of friends I have on one hand in a situation where I'd love to find new friends

but I work from home and I hardly socialise. I'd absolutely love to know where and how to make friends. Alistair emailed, as a man with female friends, do I also need to get matching pyjamas? Do we celebrate today or is this an opportunity for another day for the card companies? Laurie tweeted, there's a long way to go before men are able and encouraged to be as emotionally connected as women with each other and with women. The gender gap is still very big here, more so in cultures where men treat women as beneath them. When will we be equal? Chris emailed, I've always sought friends who are open and willing to speak about emotions, which has resulted in me having an equal number of male and female friends. I've never been comfortable in groups of men because of the bravado that comes with it.

If you seek friends who have similar values to you, gender becomes irrelevant. Anna emailed, I know that my male friends won't be responding to your plea to get in touch, so on their behalf I would like to say that my best friends throughout my childhood and twenties were male. I don't cancel them, they cancel me. Our friendships have survived the arrival of partners, wives and their associated hostility, children, bereavements. Not all of them have children, but they're always respectful and understanding of my children's needs. They're the best. No flirting, no pressure, no expectation. I met my very dearest female friend in my 20s. She doesn't have children, but she's the first person I think of for guidance and steering about my children's well-being.

And we had so many messages on Instagram about friendships after one of you has a baby. Nikki said, My husband and I are at that point where everyone around us is having babies. Some friendships have taken a back seat when people seem to feel like their lives are different from ours now. Friends who were extremely close prior to having babies have stayed that way. We're the people they call when things are good, bad or ugly. We hear about the highs and lows at home, related to the new routine and life, and also the normal non-baby related stuff. They know we're always here to listen and to help. Lucy said, I'm part of a group of loving, supportive female friends

who've known each other since our school days. In our mid-thirties, I'm the only one not to have children. I'd desperately love to start a family but have so far been unlucky. This group of women is so wonderful but sometimes our group chat ventures deep into mummy territory. Chats about sleep patterns and bath times can go on for hours and I have nothing to contribute. When this gets too much I mute the conversation or take short breaks. It can be hard feeling like I'm not part of the club in a group that I've always been central to. There have been times when I've been reduced to tears. I know if I mentioned anything, they would stop straight away, but I wouldn't dream of trying to suggest any restrictions on topics when we all rely on our group chat to

get us through any issues. Naomi said my friendships stay alive because they were formed on the basis of shared interests, humour, experiences, kinship. Having a baby doesn't change who my friend is, it just adds a new dimension to their lives and experiences. If anything, it can enhance friendships rather than pull them apart. Now do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to the England netball head coach, Tracey Neville, about her Commonwealth Games success and the impact it's had on the sport. And as we then move on from Galentine's Day to Valentine's Day, we hear from Laura Murcha about why we love the people we do. She explains how

interviewing people around the world about their relationships has transformed her own. Join me tomorrow, two minutes past 10, if you can. Enjoy the rest of Galentine's Day. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.