Rachel Bertsche - MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend

Praise for MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche

Genuine, funny and thoroughly inspiring, MWF Seeking BFF is a tribute to female friendships and a must-read for anyone who has ever found herself sunk into her couch and scrolling through the phone list feeling like theres no one to call for a last-minute drink or Sunday brunch.

R ACHEL M ACHACEK , author of The Science of Single

MWF Seeking BFF is funny, charming, and so relatable. Throughout Rachels journey to develop more meaningful, enduring relationships with other women, I found myself wishing she had my number.

R OBYN O KRANT , author of Living Oprah

I guess you could say Rachel had me at HelloI found myself totally invested in her honest, earnest, oftentimes hilarious quest for meaningful female friendship. Whether youre actively seeking a BFF yourself or simply recognize the value in making quality connections with other women, MWF Seeking BFF underscores the profound rewards we women stand to reap when we simply open up, reach out to one another, and go for it. A smart, fun, and inspiring page-turner that will surely resonate.

K ELLY V ALEN , author of The Twisted Sisterhood

MWF Seeking BFF is a work of nonfiction.
Some names and identifying
details have been changed.

A Ballantine Books eBook Edition

Copyright 2011 by Rachel Bertsche Levine

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52495-9

Cover design: Misa Erder

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

Ive known my two best friends since I was 10 and 14. Sara was in the bunk next door to me at summer camp. She had chubby cheeks and came from Manhattan. Someone asked her once if she heard gunshots a lot. She had beauty products by FACE Stockholm and effortlessly cool stationery. She was allowed to walk alone around Greenwich Village. I guess we were friendly enough that summerit was seventeen years ago, who can remember? What I do know is that sometime during the following school year Sara called out of the blue and invited me to her familys country house for the weekend. Thats the defining moment for me.

Callie sat across from me during a math placement test for the high school where wed be new kids that September. She wore saddle shoes, a term I didnt even know, and a short skirt. She was funky, I thought. She wouldnt stop jabbering with a kid she clearly knew about their school play and, I learned later, her starring role in Alice in Wonderland.

The bestfriendships grew naturally, as they do when youre thrown together in relationship breeding grounds like high school and summer camp. They were my bridesmaids. On the night (or, I guess, morning) I found out my father was going to die from the cancer wed thought was being treated, I called Callie. It was 3 A.M. but she picked up. I dont know why I answered the phone, she mumbled. It normally doesnt wake me.

A few nights later Sara borrowed her fathers car to drive uptown, bring me a clean T-shirt, and sit with me while I stole a few hours of sleep at my brothers studio apartment. She just sat there, watching TV, while I slept. All those clichs about friends dropping everything when you need them? The ones about always picking up where you left off, even when you havent talked in a while? When it comes to Callie and Sara, theyre all true.

But summers, semesters, jobs, boys, and cities later, theyre still in New York while Ive moved to Chicago. Unlike our freshman hallway or Tripp Lake Camp cabin, the Windy City isnt rife with girls waiting to be my new best friend. In your late twenties, friend-making is not the natural process it used to be. In fact, as it turns out, Ive completely forgotten how to do it. Im too shy to approach a potential BFF at the local bookstore just because she too is caressing The Things They Carried. The ladies at yoga class already know one another and, for a discipline all about nonjudgment, seem oddly unapproachable. Im not a mother, and wont be for at least a few years, so I can count out the Mommy-and-Me classes that are so obviously more for the mommy than the me.

Life was easier when playdates were set up for us.

Theres no pity to be had here. I moved to Chicago with my boyfriend. Wed been doing the long-distance thing for three years since college and were very much over it. He had no interest in moving to New York, and I wasnt relocating to his hometown of Boston. We met at Northwestern University, so Chicago was the obvious choice. When he got a job at a law firm here, I started packing my bags. Sure, Id be leaving most of my friends (despite going to school in the midwest, our college pals flocked largely to the East Coast), but I would finally be in the same place as Matt. I figured wed get engaged in about a year, married in two. Wed do grown-up-people-who-live-together things like picking out art and making couple friends when we werent doing really cool young-at-heart things like playing beer pong and Wii Tennis. It would be perfect.

Mostly, it was. We moved to Chicago in June 2007 and got married in August 2009. We bought a portable tabletop to play drinking games and framed a five-by-three-foot lithograph to hang over our fireplace. And its not like I didnt know anyone in the city. I had a friend in town from college (who moved shortly after I arrived) and a cousin who I figured Id get closer to. But there wasnt a Callie or a Sara. Not even a potential one. I found myself with no one to call on Sunday morning to see where we were having brunch, nowhere to stop by after work to watch Project Runway.

The truth is, Ive always felt comfortable in groups. I know, so Mean Girls of me, but Id argue its true of most women. Its un-PC to use the word clique, but most of us can name our group of friends pretty easily. And its not necessarily exclusive. Just the opposite. Defined groups eliminate the hard decisions. Theres no question of who to invite to a dinner party, where to sit during lunch. Yes, if theres a woman anxious to join your ranks and you ignore her, youre being a bitch, but I like to think that scenario ends after high school. Come adulthood, women dont sit around wishing they would be accepted by the popular girls. They have their own friends who are their own popular girls.