Since I was 8-years-old, I’ve loved reading. I started with Harry Potter in elementary school (as so many of did), continued on into the dystopian world of The Hunger Games and Divergent when I entered middle school, and eventually found myself entrapped in the John Green era of books (Paper Towns and Eleanor & Park being my favorites). But, when I got into high school, I stopped reading as much. It’s a curse that seems to hit a lot of girls who were just like me in their younger years. At 16, you start becoming bogged down by schoolwork, new friends, sports, clubs and various others, until reading becomes a distant hobby of your past.
Despite that shift, the importance and love I felt for reading never quite escaped me. When I got into college, I found myself with a bit more free time than I had in high school. So, my natural inclination was to start reading again. After much research and consideration, I stumbled across an autobiography titled Everything I Know About Love, by a lovely British woman named Dolly Alderton. I’d seen this book several times before – in aesthetic Instagram story posts, niche online articles about “Must-Read Books for Women in Their Twenties,” and of course, ruling the top end of the New York Times best-seller list. I was intrigued, to say the least, so I ordered it off thrift books, waited a week for the delivery notification and read it in one day.
It was perfect.
I didn’t have enough praise for this book when I read it a year and a half ago, and I still don’t. I felt as though Alderton had opened up the brains of women everywhere, read all of our thoughts and began writing. Even in the parts I didn’t relate to, I understood what she was saying. Her writing was witty and relaxed, but still sincere and intelligent. I remember texting one of my older sisters immediately after finishing the last page and telling her, “You have to read this book ASAP, you’re going to die.” Dramatic? Sure. Accurate? Probably.
The book follows Alderton’s life from her younger teenage years all the way to the start of her thirties, specifically highlighting her changing perception of romantic relationships, the importance of her friends and her own personal growth through her twenties. I fell in love with how she framed the confusion of interacting with men, her humor when depicting the lack of direction she felt within her life, her Type B personality that she wore on her chest and the endless adventures and shocking drinking anecdotes she had available.
However, aside from all of that, there is one key reason why I appreciated Everything I Know About Love so much and why I believe it’s something that should exist on the desks and backpacks of all girls in their college years. And that is how she talks about her female friendships. By almost the second chapter, it’s immediately clear how much Alderton loves her friends. To her, they are the guiding pillars in her life, her primary voices of reason and her longest romantic relationships (her words, not mine). That love is something I immediately connected with while reading. I’ve always been surrounded and led by the experiences of my female friends and family. They are the primary reason why I have healthy relationships with myself as well as those around me, and they’re also why I think having and prioritizing these relationships is probably one of the most important actions you can take as a girl in college.
In the novel, Alderton says, “Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendships with women.” You’ve probably heard that quote on Tik Tok edits of “Little Women” and “Barbie” or in Instagram carousel posts of various hopecore quotes. It’s simple, but it summarizes the guiding theme of the entire novel. Throughout high school and college, I’ve watched my friends and sisters endlessly enter and exit relationships, frequently with guys who (in my opinion) didn’t hold a single candle to them. But, I’ve also watched them return, time and time again, to the women in their lives. I wholeheartedly believe that romantic relationships are incredibly important to who you become as a person and Iunderstand the importance of those experiences in your life. However, at the end of the day, I think the most important lessons you’ll learn can and will be found within your friendships. If you’re lucky, you’ll find that the people you’ll rely on the most in your college years are your female friends. Because at the end of a relationship, who do you cry with? Who do you live with during your four years? Who walks out of your house with you on a Saturday night at 9 P.M. and is still by your side when you walk back in at 2 A.M.? Who responds to your midnight texts asking to get a sweet treat and joins you the following morning to study all day? More often than not, the people who fill those spots are your girlfriends, and not the three-month situationship you have at the start of your junior year. This is exactly the point Alderton stresses throughout her book.
She also writes about the eventual increasing presence and importance of men in her and her friends’ lives. She discusses the inevitable shift that will take place in your late twenties, where everyone switches from prioritizing girls and friendships to prioritizing boyfriends, who will become husbands, who will probably become people you form a family with. There is a part of the book where she talks about how that shift changes the relationships you have with your friends. To quote Alderton, “The love we have for each other stays the same, but the format, the tone, the regularity and the intimacy of our friendship will change forever. You know when you were a teenager and you’d see your mum with her best friends and they’d seem close, but they weren’t like how you were with your friends? There’d be a strange formality between them – a slight awkwardness when they first met. Your mum would clean the house before they came and they would talk about their children’s coughs and plans for their hair.” What she is talking about here is the importance of appreciating your female friendships while you have the ability to do so. Because there will inevitably come a time when they naturally cannot hold the same space in your life as they do in your twenties.It is ultimately why I classify this book as an absolute must read for all college girls. I’ve said it before and I cannot say it enough: more so than any other time in your life, college is when you need your girls. “Everything I Know About Love” shows what those friendships can add to your life. As Dolly says herself, “I hadn’t ever thought that a man could love me in the same way that my friends love me; that I could love a man with the same commitment and care with which I love them. Maybe all this time I had been in a great marriage without even realizing.”