The unsolicited advice sessions are a collection of my most relevant contemplations and reflections. Here, I give unsolicited advice to anyone who finds it valuable. The first one was free as a gift. You can read it here. It was about how to stop thinking about ourselves so much.

If you are curious about this one and want to keep reading the monthly series, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber if it’s within your possibilites.

Fuck me if I’m wrong, but I am 100% sure that if you are a woman reading this letter you have witness at least once in your life one of your female friends complain and cry over how bad a man treats them just to go back to them as soon as your conversation ends.

This used to irked me so much that I stopped talking to one of my good friends for almost a year because I hated her boyfriend so much I couldn’t stand listening to anything to do with him. He wasn’t even a bad boyfriend, but I didn’t like him as a person and thought my friend could do so much better. Every time we hang out I avoided him. When he wasn’t around I would talk shit about him. Our mutual disdain created this hostile enviroment in our friend group and my friend decided that taking space from me was the best she could do to protect her relationship.

The boyfriend is not in the picture anymore, our friendship is as strong as ever and we don’t hold any grudges from that time. In the end, our friendship persevered.

In Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton writes, “Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.” To me, this is a great explanation of what strong female friendships feel like— a bond so strong that you sometimes forget it’s there, a feeling so familiar that you can’t imagine a life without it, and that sometimes you take for granted because you assume it will always be there.

In her book, Alderton also writes, “Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt from my long-term friendships with women.” And so, if female friendships are so important and teach us so much about life, why do we throw them away so easily? Is it because we expect it to be unconditional? Why do we often prioritize romance over friendship?

Now, I look back to the way I used to handle these situations and laugh. I used to be judgemental and self righteous (i still am) and I cared more about being right about their boyfriends than how my friends felt.

Female friendships are often romanticized, and for that reason we forget that they too are complex. Being a good friend is not easy, especially when your girl friends are dating, talking, or sleeping with an asshole. How do we deal with this? Do we tell them to break up with him? Do we let them make their own decisions? Do we stop talking with our friends because every time we talk to them it’s about a man who puts them through hell but that they refuse to stop seeing?

There are no easy answers, and every situation is different. On this letter, I will share some of my knowledge on how to deal with this. But first, let me tell you a story.

One August, two years ago, I took a 5-hour bus drive to go visit my cousins. The first day I arrived, everything went well. We went to the beach, swam until our skin was wrinkly, and ate lots of sandy snacks. When we got home, we took a nap and then woke up to get ready for dinner.

We had almost made it to our destination when one of my cousins announced from the backseat that she didn’t feel good. We asked what was wrong, and she said she wasn’t sure. We were about to hop off the car when she started hyperventilating. She said, “I can’t breathe.” I immediately noticed that she was having a panic attack. I grabbed her hand and said, “Ale, look at me. Find five things you can see and repeat them to me.” She did as told. “Now found four things you can feel,” she slowly started to touch things, but she seemed distressed. I noticed that the exercise was making her more anxious; she couldn’t find any objects to name, so we all started to name them for her. After a couple of minutes, her breathing went back to normal.

Still in the car I asked her if something had happened before we left the house. She said nothing extraordinary had happened. I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t push. She would tell me eventually if she needed to talk.

We had dinner without complications and had some ice cream for dessert as we walked down the pier. When we got back home she confessed.

I’ll spare you the details. The point is, before we left for dinner, she found out that the guy she was talking to had been lying to her for a long time. The news had been so shocking that her mind couldn’t comprehend and process it in its usual way. Panicking was all her body could do. She told us everything with tears streaming down her face. In the morning, she talked to him and called him a liar, a piece of shit, and the worst man she ever met. She said she never wanted to speak to him again.

After that, she got back together with him. Not immediately; she made him grovel and beg. But in the end, she took him back. She didn’t tell me at first, she knew I wouldn’t approve. I guess she knew what she was doing was wrong but she wasn’t ready to accept it.