Group Chat is a weekly series where HuffPost UK writers discuss friendship, diary dilemmas we face and how to reclaim our social lives in a busy world.
If I don’t know exactly what my friend Claire is having for dinner, or how her journey to work was this morning, I start wondering if she’s okay.
She is my EBF. My Everyday Best Friend. But ‘everyday’ makes it sound like she’s not special – when the truth couldn’t be more different. By sharing the minutiae of our lives with each other, we give each other the space to listen – and to be heard. And in our busy world, that feels incredibly unique.
We know how well each other’s kids slept the night before, down to the various times they woke up, and how tired – or grumpy – we both feel about it. We share details of the state of their nappies nobody else would (rightly) want to know. We send each other photos from extended family outings, and I know the names and ages of all her nieces and nephews – even those I’ve never met.
There have been times I’ve even messaged her husband because I started panicking she’d been run over, or had some terrible accident, simply because she hadn’t been in touch to tell me how her work night out was.
That’s the kind of friendship we have.
Claire was the first person I met at university, and it feels fitting that on my first night ever living away from home, we stayed up until 1am eating cake and chatting – a good sign of what was to come. Our husbands went to university with us, too, and we were chief bridesmaids at each other’s weddings.
Twenty years later, despite us both having families now, not much has changed. We live in the exact same neighbourhood in east London, and I can’t imagine my life without her in it – because she’s there every step of the way.
We help each other make decisions – from where to hold our children’s birthday parties and what to watch on TV, to WhatsApping each other shots from changing rooms if we’re agonising over a dress or (in my case) boiler suit.
Like sisters, we swap clothes, wear each other’s hand-me-downs, and have pet names for each other. And like family, we spend weekends hosting playdates at each other’s houses – though most of our time is spent adjudicating because our children are so close, they play (and fight) like siblings.
Because of how close our families are, we all go on big holidays together and spend occasions like New Year’s Eve having sleepovers at each other’s houses.
We look forward to the birthday or Christmas presents we give each other more than any others, though that’s not to say we don’t sometimes get it wrong. But if we do, we’ll admit it. We have to – we know each other so well that our faces give us away.
My daughter recently asked me who was in our family. We’re not related, but my little girl calls Claire “auntie” all the same, so when she asked whether my best friend was ‘family’, I shrugged and said, “not actually – but they’re just like family.”
So yes, she’s my ‘everyday’ friend. My best friend. My EBF. My family. And I know we’ll be there for each other, everyday, for the rest of our lives.