I love going for margaritas every other Tuesday night with my friend Michele. Being together is not really about the food or the delicious margs, it’s about catching up, checking in, and chatting. Michele and I really have it down – we go out early in the evening, order drinks and dinner, vent, gossip a tiny bit, and BAM we’re done! We get home early enough to button up our households and go to bed relaxed and happy. I really look forward to nights out with my friend!
I recently got this email from Michele (a Stanford Grad!) and wanted to pass it on. There’s nothing like girlfriends!
They Teach It at Stanford …
I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was
on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease.
The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things,
that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be
married to a woman, whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could
do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.
At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.
Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that
help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences.
Physically this “quality girlfriend time” helps us to create more
serotonin – a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create
a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often
form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy
and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal
lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting,
golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely.
Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our
sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said
that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general
health as jogging or working out at a gym.
There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing
something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends,
we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged – not
true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality
personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical
health as smoking!
So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself
on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your
health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo, let’s toast to our
friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s very good for our health.
