by Going on holiday with your friends is a ritual. From clubbing in Ibiza to mud bathing at Glastonbury, these experiences are often the foundation of lifelong friendships. But, as we get older and our calendars fill up with romantic getaways and family getaways, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss vacations with friends from the past.
According to a study by Dr. William Chopik, a psychologist and associate professor at Michigan State University, quality time spent with friends has a positive impact on our health, happiness and well-being. He analyzed data from 271,053 people in nearly 100 countries for a study in the journal Personal Relationships and found that while our relationships with family and friends both have an effect, the ones that have the most impact are later in life.
Another study at Harvard University showed that social connections have as much of a positive impact on our long-term health as getting enough sleep, eating a balanced diet and not smoking. It gave me the motivation I needed to put five of Dr Chopik’s findings to the test with a handful of girls in Tuscany (all in the name of science, of course).
1. Friendship becomes more important as we get older
Keeping a few really good friends around makes all the difference to our health and well-being. A recent milestone birthday gave me reason to take five of my best girlfriends to a luxury villa in the Tuscan hills to ring in the next ten years in style. We stayed at Villa Chiantisol, a sprawling pile of honeycombed stone on the edge of the village of Tavarnelle Val Di Pesa.
Within minutes, the women had chosen one of the 10 beautiful bedrooms – all rough oak beams, terracotta tiled floors and rustic wooden shutters opening onto those famous views – and reunited on the terrace for the first Aperol spritz. I looked around at the wonderful women I had collected over the years and raised a toast to my wonderful life choices. I was beginning to understand what Dr. Chopik meant.
2. Friendship has all the benefits of being in a relationship, without being overwhelming
It’s smart to invest in friendships that make you happy. “There is a difference between the way we behave with our friends and the way we behave with family. It’s because these are relationship choices,” says Dr. Chopik. “You choose to hang out because you enjoy each other’s company.” But it’s important to invest as much in our friendships as we do in our romantic relationships.
A holiday with friends is different from a holiday with a partner or family. It may be a lack of duty, but a group adventure is often more about relaxing and reconnecting than exploring. One key to its success is not to over-plan, be flexible and remember that it’s a holiday for everyone.
My aim was to lounge by the pool, enjoy a rustic lunch in a vineyard and enjoy light pottering around a medieval hill town. Mary and Teresa were eager to visit San Gimignano again, Hannah and Rhonda had never been to Florence before, and Laura and Amy were happy as long as we always stuck to the aperitivo hour. We all had different ideas, but we were basically on the same page about what we wanted from our trip.
3. Friendship adds to our happiness and morale
As the old saying goes, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Dr. Chopik’s study found that those who put time and effort into building friendships over the years reported feeling happier and healthier.
“It was magical to spend this quality time with like-minded women,” Rhonda told me during the trip. “We’re at an age where nobody’s pretending anymore. We all know our foibles and nerves but a holiday like this means having room to have those huge hearts (of course, alternating with being silly and acting like teenagers again). It really is the best.”
After one blissful evening drinking Bellinis around the pool, we decided to head into Florence, 30 minutes away by car. Inspiration for the best artists in the world, the Renaissance city has the best art galleries in Italy.
If we had skipped the Bellinis and arrived a little earlier, we could have visited the Accademia and seen Michelangelo’s David or Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus at the Uffizi. Instead, we continued our exploration of Italian aperitivo at Caffe Gilli on Piazza della Repubblica.
4. Spending quality personal time together helps you create emotional bonds
“We have a saying in Italy, ‘il dolce far niente’, the sweetness of doing nothing,” explained Lorenzo, owner of Casa Lucii, on our visit to his organic winery near San Gimignano. As I sat on the terrace overlooking the vineyard, sipping Lorenzo’s chilled Spicchio rosé and nibbling on oil-drained artichokes, I couldn’t think of a better place to do anything – or better people to do it.
“It’s great to keep in touch with friends via text or social media, but there’s no substitute for the face-to-face connection that spending time together can have,” she says. Dr. Chopik. “You can sit down, look them in the eye, have a real back and forth and read each other’s body language. They can see you and your facial expressions. You are reacting emotionally to things. You don’t always get that through a phone call.”
Once again, I agree with the Doc. Whether it was preparing lunch together or chatting around the pool, our little images of friendship were priceless.
5. Investing in relationships has psychological and physical benefits
The doctor says the quality of close relationships is linked to healthier behavior and lower mortality. After the gallons of Chianti and the troughs of prosciutto and pecorino we ate during the week, I’m not sure healthy behavior is the right term. But the almost constant laughter has tightened my stomach muscles to create a six pack.
“I had a blast,” Laura said. “He made it possible for all of us to spend proper time with each other. Although our lives have changed since we could do so 25 years ago, this time together confirmed our female friendship in a heavenly area.”
On our last night, we had dinner in the town of Panzano at Antica Macelleria Cecchini, the beef restaurant owned by Dario Cecchini “the greatest butcher in the world”. As the waiters dished out silky sliders of seared carpaccio and slow-roasted scallops, I raised our glasses from straw-wrapped Chianti flasks and raised a toast to my gorgeous entourage of ladies – my secret weapon for the first other half. century.
Fundamentals
CV Villas (020 7261 5400, cvvillas.com) has a week at Villa Chiantisol for up to 20 people from £10,529 (or £751pp), including easyJet flights from London Gatwick to Florence.
