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We start collecting friends as soon as we are able to share a Fisher Price shape sorter at playgroup and we carry on gaining and losing friends throughout the various stages of our lives.
For women, friendships are especially important – we are actually hard-wired to need friendships; to need to be part of a group. It stems back to our cavewoman days when we needed to be part of a female social group in order to protect our young from peckish dinsosaurs or our marauding menfolk.
Consultant psychologist Ingrid Collins says that from being tiny babies, boys and girls operate differently when it comes to relationships: baby boys know they are different from their mothers, baby girls are aware that they are the same.
“We females notice the subtleties in relationships within our gender; we are far more aware of relationships at a subtle, personal level . . . we thrive on the energy of friendships, the connections of friends and it’s important for them to be nourishing.”
That’s why the primeval urge to have close female friends remains, even though the terrorising Pterodactyls have long gone. It is something we still feel and it comes to the fore when girls hit adolesence, then their brain chemistry is what forces them to spend hours on Facebook dissecting who said what to whom. Exhausting, but a necessary part of development.
“Female friendships are about the quality of the relationship; as girls grow up they learn more about relationships. As teenagers they fall in and out of relationships like they were just invented. Girls won’t tolerate a friend who is not a real friend,” says Collins.
And as we leave our teenage, Donny Osmond/Duran Duran/Jason Donovan/One Direction* (*delete as age appropriate) postered bedrooms behind, we usually continue making friends at college, at work, at the school gate and beyond. But, sometimes, other stuff – like partners and babies and job juggling – gets in the way and we have less time to hang out with our friends.
For Helen 
And even when you do have a few friends on the go, you can’t always find someone to hook up with on the right day or find someone who shares your love of Woody Allen films or Zumba exercise classes. It was just such a gap in her friendship group which gave Helen the idea to launch her website, which is a sort of friendship ‘dating agency’ for women.
“I was wanting to go out hiking for the day, but had no-one to go with. My family and friends were either not available, or were not interested in traipsing up hills with me! I have lots of friends but we don’t always want to do the same things – one of my friends is a keen golfer, something I am not so interested in: another likes to horse ride, again that’s not for me.”
Her eureka moment led to her setting up togetherfriends where women of all ages can register their interests – from meeting for coffee to visiting a photography exhibition or playing tennis – and make contact with other like-minded souls. It has members of all ages who have joined for a variety of reasons – some have recently moved to a new area; some are empty nesters ready to spread their own wings a bit and some are divorced and their ex got the DVD collection and most of the friends.
“The joy of the internet is enabling people to make connections when their paths might otherwise not cross,” says Helen, whose website started in Yorkshire and is now extending throughout the country.”
There is no doubt that friends are fundamentally important for women – they keep us sane, make us laugh and are just darn fine company, whether trekking up that hill or kicking back and enjoying that glass of Chianti or slice of carrot cake. So make some time to dust off old friendships or create some new ones, the cavewoman in you needs attention.
Togetherfriends.com