In 2024, we ditched romance in favour of friendship
Although it was once 26-year-old Cerys’* biggest goal to meet someone who she could marry and start a family with in the next five years, she only went on two dates in 2024. Back in 2023, however, she lost count of them. The gallery assistant from Yorkshire has given up the once all-important milestone to instead focus on her friendships. “Honestly, binning off dating and nurturing my friendships instead is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. “My peace is protected, I’ve had more fun than ever this year, and I feel like I even sleep better.”
It was a cosy sleepover with friends back in January that led her to this year-long friendship quest. Wrapped in blankets, drinking M&S gins-in-tins, and rewatching the Twilight films, she and her pals — both in long-term relationships — were running through Cerys’ “honestly tragic” dating mishaps. Then her friend said: “You don’t need men — you’ve got us.”
Cerys admits that this is the kind of throwaway romcom-style comment all friends would say when another is suffering, but it struck her anyway. “I kind of zoned out and I was like, wait, everything I want from companionship — interests in common, unconditional love, and someone to have fun with — I had it already. In my friendships.”
Her experience, and that of many other women and non-binary people, is part of a cultural shift we saw throughout 2024 — one where we all put down the dating apps and nurtured our platonic relationships instead.
We saw it in pop culture, too: in the friendship bracelets of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour; in two of the most talked-about films of the year being entirely about friendship (hello, Mean Girls reboot and Wicked); and in Aimee Lou Wood’s passionate Woman’s Hour tribute to the power of platonic love, which became a viral TikTok sound for celebrating friendship.
This year also saw a lot of reunited friendships, including Jordyn Woods and Kylie Jenner, who made up after their friendships’ infamous and very public unravelling, and Paris Hilton opened up about her infamous friendship break-up with Nicole Richie, confirming that they were friends again (bringing every early 00s teenager who religiously watched The Simple Life to tears). Not to mention Charli XCX’s “Girl, So Confusing”, dubbed the biggest moment in pop culture this year. The song explored Charli’s complex friendship with Lorde, and was followed by a viral social media trend of women using the audio to address their ‘girl trauma’ and express their desire to patch up with former friends. Clearly, we’re all having a friendship moment.
Kimberly Vest, a relationship therapist at Ellie Mental Health says this year’s emphasis on friendship is likely in response to the struggles of modern dating culture. “With dating apps, there is a thought that ‘if I swipe and swipe, maybe there will be somebody better’,” she explains, adding that, while a lot of people have had successful relationships from dating apps, this transactional nature is increasingly turning those who want a romantic connection away. “People are realising that it’s their friendships in which they can be their authentic selves and have the security [they’re struggling to find in today’s dating landscape].”
Dating fatigue is driving this too. 78% of men and women using dating apps reportedly feel “emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted” by them, as per a recent Forbes Health study. This — as well as a desire to distance themselves from men — has led many women to adopt ‘boy sobriety’ this year, a movement propelled by TikTok, or even full-blown celibacy. Between ghosting, breadcrumbing, benching, and every other dating term that encapsulates the painful parts of dating, the whole thing is starting to feel… not worth it. For many, arriving at that ‘I just can’t do it anymore’ point leads to a natural swing to prioritising friendships. Why not hang out with pals — who actually like you and have your best interests at heart — instead of organising dates that typically end in a flop?
A recent report by YPulse shows that more people are adopting this mindset, with 55% of young people saying they value their friendships above their romantic relationships. This year’s Teens and Screens, an annual report about adolescence and social media from the University of California, also found that almost half of teenagers (47.5%) think there is “too much sex and romance” on TV, and over half of them (51%) want to see “friendships and platonic relationships” explored instead.
But this year’s love of friendship hasn’t just been about ditching dating apps or navigating Taylor Swift fandom. At the end of 2023, the World Health Organisation officially declared a loneliness epidemic, with Gen Z being revealed as the loneliest generation. In fact, ONS data shows that those aged 16 to 29 are two times as likely to report feeling lonely often or always, compared with those over the age of 70, who are usually considered to experience loneliness most acutely.
It’s this, says Kimberly Horn, a relationship therapist specialising in friendship and the author of Friends Matter, For Life, that’s likely driving 2024’s shift to friendship. “Many of us still feel disconnected [after the pandemic], and I believe friends have this unique ability to mend loneliness in ways that other relationships might not,” she explains.
Rather than wallow in it, though, many people seemed to take loneliness into their own hands this year. One example is the viral ‘friendship CV’ trend, where women shared their ‘friendship skills’ and invited strangers to reach out if they felt like they might be a good match — mostly taking place on TikTok and the 200,000-member Facebook group for friend-making, Truly Twenties.
Friendship apps also gained huge traction this year, with platforms like Bumble BFF (the friendship mode on the popular dating app), Blend, Azar, and Meetup gaining popularity, forging new ways to connect with potential friends. As per The Financial Times, even the biggest dating apps are moving into the friendship space, after app usage never properly recovered from the pandemic. This is something Vest is all for, noting that apps can do a great job of removing the intimidating aspect of friend making; and today, plenty of friends have found success via this method.
30-year-old brand manager Lauren* met her now-best friend on Bumble BFF last year. She tells Cosmopolitan UK that she downloaded the app after a break-up, which made her realise she didn’t have a tonne of friends that weren’t her ex-boyfriends’. Her mum suggested she make new friends, and someone mentioned the app to her.
After three months of platonic swiping, she met Lily*. “I think I was more nervous meeting her for the first time than I have been with any date, ever,” she says. “But we really hit it off. We were both so open about the loneliness we were experiencing prior to the app, so all cards were on the table. Yet it didn’t feel desperate or codependent or anything. It just felt like a real connection.”
Technology can indeed enhance our friendships — and we’re getting increasingly creative with it. For example, voice noting each other can boost our intimacy more than simply texting, while sending memes has become a love language of its own. But, warns relationship therapist Horn, nothing can nor should replace in-person interactions, as these foster true connection.
Heeding this advice, 2024 also saw a boom in IRL initiatives for making friends. From supper clubs to walking groups, more people are stepping away from their screens and diving into real-world connections. Initiatives like Dinner with a Stranger, run by Glasgow university students, and Strangers in the City, launched by journalist Chanté Joseph, bring people together for no-pressure friendships over shared meals.
33-year-old office administrator Charley* met her friend May* at a women’s beer social at their local pub. “I had just moved to the area and I didn’t have any mates whatsoever,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. She initially started dating to find someone to connect with in her new area, but quickly realised that wasn’t what she was looking for. “I wasn’t actually ready for a romantic relationship — that would be a lot to take on while also getting used to a new town, and I’d started a new job too. I was just dating because that’s what you [typically] do, not because I wanted it.”
“I realised I just wanted someone to chat to, go to the gym with, do dog walks with, and go to the pub,” Charley continues. “And that was a friend.”
“When I met May, we realised we were both at the same gym and just hadn’t met. That was six months ago, and we now work out together and meet up every week for drinks and a gossip. I’m so pleased to have met her,” Charley explains. “We don’t like to get too soppy about it but we have really changed each other’s lives.”
This hasn’t been a movement exclusive to female friendships, either. How could we forget some of the male friendship moments in pop culture, from Challengers to Paul Mescal’s respective press tours with Andrew Scott and Pedro Pascal? But while same-sex platonic friendships have thrived in 2024, we’ve also seen a concomitant divide between men and women more broadly, driven by political and ideological sticking points.
“Political divides are straining [mixed-gender] friendships,” says Horn, adding that men and women also approach friendship very differently. “Men are socialised to prioritise camaraderie in friendship, whereas, historically, women and non-binary people have been encouraged to value emotional connection and vulnerability in their relationships — perhaps in part because they are marginalised,” she explains.
“After years of feeling let down in my friendships with men, I realised the connections I craved were already in my life — with other women,” says 29-year-old Maya, a marketing executive from Manchester. “With my female friends, I feel seen, heard, and genuinely valued. I love my male friends, but there’s something about those friendships that aren’t giving that energy. There’s this unspoken understanding [with female friendships], and an emotional depth that just feels more fulfilling,” she adds.
These differences have complicated mixed-gender friendships, but hope isn’t lost for them. Bumble’s dating predictions for 2025 show that women rely on their male friends to help them through dating problems. In many ways, women’s disappointment in dating draws them closer to their successful, platonic, male connections — spaces where they can be intimate with men without expectation.
Horn explains that, ultimately, friendship is so appealing right now because it’s “liberatingly unscripted” when compared with romantic relationships. “They don’t follow predefined societal norms or milestones as closely,” she explains. And yet, she warns, this freedom is also what can make friendships so easy to neglect if not “nurtured intentionally”.
This, too, is something we’ve unpacked this year in great detail. Selfish behaviour within friendships has been well documented in 2024, from convincing ourselves we don’t have enough time for friends and how individualism and taking our friends as a given can turn us into bad friends. But at least we’re talking about these blindspots and criticising them openly — showing how badly we want this whole friendship thing to work.
As we head into the new year with our new lease for platonic vibes, friendship should continue to be a conscious priority to avoid making the same mistakes here as we have with dating. As Vest says, it’s time we “make a date night for friends; set aside time to go out and celebrate something”. She concludes: “When things get tough, know that you’re wanted [and that you want them]. Too often, people say, ‘I didn’t want to bother you’. Bother your friends. Over love them.”
*Names have been changed
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