‘It’s a deep, soulful, beautiful thing’: readers’ friendship stories
We asked for your friendship stories. Here is the winner and five more of the best. The winner and a friend get a two-night break at the Meyrick Hotel, Galway
Give Me Five: Koftas with herbed lemon yoghurt
FRIENDSHP WEEK: Koftas are a sociable food, perfect for casual gatherings with friends
Hilary Fannin: My mother sees ‘the girls’ now only in her dreams
The friendship of the four of them, their gang, their cabal, spanned the decades
Irish abroad: ‘Friends from home will always be my closest’
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: Generation Emigration readers on leaving lifelong friends behind, and creating new social circles from scratch abroad
Patrick Freyne: My male friends are all feelings, my female friends are thugs
The most lasting friendships are based on shared interests and values and humour, not the possession of similarly shaped genitals
The electricity between Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: Twain was hugely interested in technology and struck up a friendship with the scientist
I’m homesick for friends who have all moved back to Ireland
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: As my husband and I sign contracts for our new house abroad, our friends are signing contracts for new jobs at home
Ten great movie bromances
Butch and Sundance, Spock and Kirk, Woodward and Bernstein . . . Movie bromance has been around for a lot longer than the word that has come to describe the genre
'Friendship in Ireland was a whole new world ... it has a different meaning here'
Nigerian woman Zeenie Summers writes about making friends in a new home for The Women’s Podcast
My friends have become so self-involved since they had children
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: I don’t mind seeing the children sometimes, but not all of the time
Coping: Epicurus was right about friendship
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: Such bonds are essential to human happiness – but it’s important to know when to walk away
New to the Parish: ‘We were homesick. Being together made things easier’
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: For three Ethiopian men doing development studies in Dublin, their friendship acts as a buffer against culture shock
Michael Harding: Even death can’t uncouple my soul friends and me
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: I am what my friends have made of me and I exist only in relation to them
‘If it wasn’t for my friend’s support, my son and I would be on the streets’
This entry to the Friendship Week reader competition is the story of a friend in need
Question Time on The Women’s Podcast: ‘What issues will you be raising with politicians?’
This week on the podcast we want to know what you’ll be asking politicians when arrive on your doorstep
Aisling on beauty: True friends know a make-up addict needs her fix
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: Sometimes I wonder if my friends only love me for my moisturiser
Twinning: good friends with identical styles
Friendship Week: Turning up in the same outfit as your friend is no longer necessarily a social faux pas – it is often deliberate
Beauty tips: The Dublin duo behind Anu
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: The production of natural cosmetics in Ireland brings people together
Fitness and friends: discover the benefits of a running buddy
A buddy keeps you motivated and as miles fly by, worries, hopes and dreams are shared
'My friend powered her way across the Channel, through jellyfish and the dark'
The first of the entries to our Friendship Week competition is a watery tale of endurance
How WhatsApp keeps our cross-continental friendship alive
Messages ping in at all times of the day and night from Ireland, London, Hong Kong, Sydney and New York
The importance of keeping your friends close
In this introduction to friendship week, Laura Kennedy looks at how friendships often take a back seat to romantic or family relationships despite studies that show they are essential to health and happiness
Marian Keyes: I can’t summon the emotional energy needed for a decent goodbye
To coincide with Friendship Week, the Women’s Podcast explores the joys and challenges of these important platonic bonds
Is it ever wise to lend money to a friend?
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: Shakespeare wrote ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’, but was he being a bit dogmatic?
Ruth Fitzmaurice: Five kids, a dad who only moves his eyes and a mass of medical equipment
Broadside: My husband’s motor neuron disease has made me wildly inappropriate; I have no social filter
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