It’s okay if my husband isn’t my best friend. He’s my significant other.

Trust me husband-centered life livers! It’s okay that he’s the center of our beings and still not our best friend. Or he’s our best friend when it’s about half the things but probably won’t get when we talk about the other half that we go through. It’s okay and has no bearing on the happiness or the camaraderie that we share with our husbands.

Can I share an experience bond of a womanly tendency with my husband? No! The reason is simple. He hasn’t had any of the experiences that I have had as a woman. And because of this reason I understand that there are certain things that he doesn’t seek counsel in me for. He probably has a friend for those things too.

When I got married I was gung-ho about making my new best friend in my husband. And I found a friend in him. A great friend. A one-of-a-kind friend. The most available, dependable friend. But I soon learned that I needed a girlfriend.

Women share many common experiences. Many women reading this can vouch for the authenticity of my next statement. A lot of our experiences, to a man, are, (for lack of a better phrase), a doing of our inexperience. To a man, most of our experiences with people are either totally avoidable or inconsequential or not worthy of being counted as an experience. To our husbands also many of our experiences with their own family are just things that we are finding out. They don’t credit us much for surviving most of these incidents that lead to our remodeling as a human. I can tell you this much! Any incident that brings a change in us is an experience. And any incident that helps us form an opinion is an experience too.

My girlfriend whom I share the major occurrences in my life is not one person. Because I can’t share all my experiences with one person in order to have an experience-bonding. I have found someone in my in-laws who is trustworthy enough to have become my shoulder, sounding board and confidante. She has become a friend over the years. She and I share things that have affected us through the same group of people. This validates our experience. We don’t blow each other off. We accept that something, as outrageous as it may seem, could’ve happened and could’ve hurt us. We have been on the same journey, in different times, and we have found a lot of common ground through guiding each other and helping each other out in sticky situations. Would some people call it slightly gossipy and mean? I suppose so. But if she wasn’t available to me I would’ve believed that I was crazy. She validated my experiences because she had gone through them. Now see, this isn’t the type of thing that my husband would always get, even though he gets it many times. And even when he gets it he has no idea how to help me. He loses interest fast. The process isn’t cathartic with him like it is with my girlfriend.

My sisters and mother make my other circle of confidence. They listen and argue and put their point across vehemently also. They match my temper with their own and even though it’s annoying in the moment, it’s also liberating. They and I don’t pretend with each other. We get it and when we share our experiences about friends and bosses, we find commonality and differences. What we always find is a stronger bond.

Our husbands don’t have to be our best friends. The sisterhood of womanhood has to amount to something. There is no need to feel shortchanged if our husband didn’t turn out to be our best friend. He didn’t have to be. He has the most unique title of all. Husband! Significant other! The most important person! The guy who’d be number 1 when all is said and done. Having girlfriends who can be there for us when we need them isn’t a blot on our relationship with our husbands.