This is a guest post by S.I.F.

I am an almost 27 year old single woman with no children. I am far more concerned with eradicating the no children part of that sentence than I am with changing the single part. Many of my friends are married. Some are not. I’m at that bizarre stage when it seems like everyone in my life who I was once right in line with are now all off doing different things. No one is on the same page; most of us aren’t even in the same book any longer. And, it is in this transition that I am realizing how much friendship and marriage have in common.

Everyone knows that marriages require work. It is fairly common knowledge that most marriages will hit a rough spot at some point (the 7 year itch) and that if that relationship is not nurtured and cared for that rough spot could lead to the end. People change. They grow and morph into something completely new all the time. If we weren’t an ever changing species, the world would be a boring place. But, it is in those changes that relationships must also become flexible and easy to mold. Everyone knows this in terms of marriage, but no one ever seems to want to acknowledge it in terms of friendships.

If you’re lucky, you will have maybe a handful of truly good soul sister friends in your lifetime. These will be the women who will be by your side as you cry, laugh, and scream through this life you have been handed. They aren’t to be mistaken for the fun acquaintances who will fade in and out of your life like the tides. These are the women who stick; the ones whose hearts have staying power in your life.

But with that staying power comes the necessity for a relationship that can grow and change. You won’t always be the same women you were when you were 14, 18, 21, 26, 30 and beyond. It just isn’t possible. You may both wake up one day and realize that you don’t even recognize each other anymore. There may come a point when you both need a previous version of the other, and when you find yourselves miffed that that version no longer exists. You would never stand for someone questioning why you have changed, but you find yourself wondering why your soul sister has.

These are the times when it becomes important to take stock; of you, your friend, and your friendship. You may need to remind yourself of the people you each once were, and why that bond was there to begin with. Any long term relationship (be it marriage or friendship) will be plagued by rough spots at some point. I think people sometimes hit those rough spots with friendships and decide it’s easier to walk away and start over. This is a decision that wouldn’t be easily made with a marriage, so why is it so easy to make with a friendship? Is it because we delude ourselves into thinking that there will always be another new friend around the corner, or because we aren’t bound legally as we are to our husbands (and would you walk away easier from your husband during those rough patches if it weren’t for the legal mess that would be left behind in your wake?) Or is it simply because we don’t know how to start over with this person we used to think we knew?

I am at the stage in my life of wanting to settle down and have children. Most of my friends are either behind me (at the stage of enjoying their single mid twenties life and not being in any rush to move past it) or ahead of me (already at the marriage with kids part). No one is walking along with me now, and it has made me look at all of my friendships in a different light. My married friends no longer call on me first in times of crisis; they now have their husbands for that. My single friends no longer call on me for a night of drinking; they know I’m over that. We are all struggling for new ways to connect, and to find those areas in which we can once again bond.

I almost lost one of my closest friends recently when we hit a time of complete and total disconnect. We were both blindsided by life at the same precise moment; me with a medical diagnosis I wasn’t prepared to handle, and her with a loss she never should have been dealt. We both needed each other and couldn’t be there for the other all at the same time. There was a crack there; a moment in time when we both longed for the person the other used to be. Add to this the whisperings of others (because, when there is disconnect in life isn’t it always the case that there is someone whispering in everyone’s ear trying to forge their own path of destruction?) and before you knew it we were barely talking to each other. There were many factors involved (many people who seemed to thrive off the drama of it all) but in the end it was us who had allowed our friendship to break and crack. There was a point there where it would have been so easy to walk away and be done with each other. Had I been married and had a new rock to lean on, it’s very possible that this may have been the path I chose. But instead, we fought. We fought, and we talked, and we quite literally started from scratch in many ways; both redefining what they needed from a friendship. This happens in marriage all the time, but no one is prepared for the fact that it may be necessary in friendship as well. In marriages, those that survive the rough spots are the ones that come out the other end stronger and more intact. Shouldn’t this same theory be applied to our friendships as well? Shouldn’t we all want to come out the other end stronger?

Friendships change. They grow and transform and need to be redefined all the time. People do this willingly in their marriages because it seems like such an important relationship to maintain, but your soul sisters are just as important. They are the women who will listen to you vent for hours when your husband pulls a stupid move. The ones who held your hair back when you had too much to drink, and are there to do it again when a growing baby is keeping you from holding anything down. They are the ones who will watch your children when you need a romantic weekend getaway, and they are the ones who will laugh with you through the tears when life throws you another curveball. Fight for those relationships, and don’t be afraid to redefine them when the rules begin to change.

After all, these are the women who knew you when you were someone else.

At the age of 25 S.I.F. picked up and moved from San Diego to Alaska with the plan in mind to find a man, settle down, and have babies as soon as possible. Less than a year later she was told that she had a debilitating case of endometriosis that had wreaked havoc on her reproductive organs, and she had to face the reality that she may never be a mother in the way she had always pictured. Making the decision to go it alone and fight for her right to be a mommy, S.I.F. works to lend humor to the less humorous parts of life. Her two biggest goals are to make a career out of writing, and to one day scream her way through a horrific yet awesome labor. The miracles are in the details.

You can be a Guest Author too. Check how here. On Saturday we will publish the review of Rajlakshmi’s blog, one of the winners of Show Your Best January Blog contest. You can be the winner too. Submit your entry to the February contest. Just click the link and read the rules. It is Free and it is Fun. But it is less Fun without you.