How Fantasy Becomes Reality

Hi Karen,

I'm another Psychology Today blogger who writes as "The Friendship Doctor."

Thanks for your post. I loved reading about Social Jane. With women becoming more mobile as they pursue education, careers, and relationships away from their hometowns, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hang on to the tight friendships we made in high school and college. As a result, many of us, like you and your cousin, are looking to make new friends or deepen our existing friendships.

A host of sites are popping up on the internet that are focused on helping women find friends and become a better friend. Several of us have even formed a group of bloggers called "The Friendship Circle." Each of us looks at friendship from a different angle. You and your readers may want to check out these URLs:

1) www.GirlfriendCelebrations.com
2) www.Girlfriendology.com
3) www.MWFSeekingBFF.com
4) www.GirlfriendCircles.com
5) and my site: www.TheFriendshipBlog.com

Best,

Irene S. Levine, PhD
Author, Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend

Hi Karen,
Great blog post. I couldn't agree with you more.

My BFF moved to the States last year (I'm from Northeast Canada) and I started to realize that slowly I was drifting apart from my existing friends or our interests were different. Where to look? Sure you can try work and maybe you'll get lucky but if you're an Engineer like I am, you spend your days with men and the odd female and then you're hoping to connect with that one other girl. Well, I happened to realize (through connecting with that one other girl) that I was not alone and that there must be many other women out there like us who: are in a relationship, outgoing, career-oriented and in the market for that friend that you can call at any time of the day and do the Starbucks-shopping-doesmybuttlookfatinthis kinda day with.

And so, The Social Woman was born. We created a site where women can do just that. Connect online and meet offline at member organized events. Our site is Canadian-based and right now we are really concentrating on local areas to provide value to the members who sign up.

And so far, it's been great. Have I met my BFF yet? There's a few potentials..I know she's in there..somewhere or maybe not yet. But at least I have a place where I can start!

Cheers,
Sandy

I love that "Starbucks-shopping-doesmybuttlookfatinthis" day. Priceless! BTW, if anyone lives in North Carolina and wants to join me for a day like that, you know where to find me.

Seriously, using these sites really offers so much potential to build the friendships and friend circles that make such a difference in womens' lives. And I particularly love that one can find like-minded people. So much better than finding out that someone your age moved into town, but they are a fundamentalist cat lover who listens to country music and you are an agnostic dog lover who loves world music. In the end, there's that certain je ne sais quoi, as you Canadians say, that you are looking for in a potential BFF. That spark, if you will, can happen online as well as F2F.

KD