When a friendship starts, it’s like all new relationships: you like the other person but you don’t want to look too keen and smother them, you try to bond by asking them ‘how their day was?’ and move onto ‘what are you doing this weekend?’, all the while secretly hoping for an invite to spend more time with them. And then all of a sudden, you are in a full blown love affair with this person. You know you have found your life partner when you stop closing the door on the toilet. Everyone else knows you have found your life partner when they stop asking you to places individually and just presume if they tell one of you, you’ll both just show up. That’s when it starts to get a little scary and something happens when you realize maybe, you are just a little too close.
1. You’ve started liking the crappy TV shows they like . You know how it goes. You profess to hate bad reality TV, but when your best friend is in the kitchen and watching her shows, chances are you’ll sit down to join her —and just after 2 or 3 episodes, you’re totally and completely hooked, too.
2. You know every single one of their stories and you can tell it like it’s your own. You have heard their stories about how they were in high school, or the most embarrassing night out ever so many times that you can re-tell it word for word with the right inflections to make it sound like it happened to you.
3. Your periods are in sync. This is a common trait a lot of women have with their close friends — so much so it’s a scientifically proven fact. And you’re just going to wind up using the same tampon brand, because it’s just easier that way. The friends who cramp together, stay together.
4. You’ve picked up each other’s slang words. This could just be because you’ve lived in your city for too long, too, but you can’t help it if you both use the same abbrevs. and actually LOL all the time IRL. It just kind of rubs off on you without even knowing it.
5. You know how to swap personalities and roles. You’ve been known to divvy up the wing(wo)man duties, and switch off between wanting to be the one who wants to stay home when people ask why neither of you are out at the bars. (You’re a 2-for-1 deal; if one person is feeling like a homebody, you both are.)
6. You can talk about their family like they are your own . You might also have their siblings and cousins added on Facebook.
7. You wear matching outfits unintentionally. How many times have you gotten dressed separately without any previous discussion, then walked into their room and realized that you’re pretty much wearing the exact same outfit in different colors? Too many times. All the time. Right now, even.
8. They’re really good at picking out “your type.” Usually with close friends, it’s always a danger of liking the same ‘type’ of guy, but when you are just that much closer, there is no way they would even think of looking at your guy because they are too busy planning on how to wingman you.
9. You frequently give each other The Look. Remember that scene in Bridesmaids when Rose Byrne is making the speech at the engagement party and she tells Maya Rudolph’s character that she knows what she is saying with just a look? Yeah, we all know what that look is.
10. You play games in public — and on unsuspecting people. My personal favorite is the Swapsies game: When you go out with your best friend, change your name, occupation and interests to theirs when you start talking to new people. The first person to forget they are playing loses.
11. You are irrationally jealous and possessive over them. This is beyond those moments when you see some other girl talking to your boyfriend. That is nothing in comparison to when someone is trying to get in with your best friend. Breathe.
12. You are fluent in “food in your mouth.” I don’t mean this in the general finish-each-other’s-sentences kind of way, I mean this in the “they have a mouth full of food and they are yelling at you from the other room” kind of finishing each other sentence.
13. 9 times out of 10, you are more successful on a double date than you are on a single date. Best friends are pretty much a packaged deal, so why bother dating just one of us when you can just grab your friend, and we can make this are awesome foursome? We are clearly more charismatic, adorable, and hilarious as a two-some than a one-some!
14. Knowing each other’s bodily functions and habits. Including, but not limited to: the pooping cycle, when you have a cold, seeing you in pain from a UTI. You tell them you are going to be their emergency contact, but you never actually think it will ever actually happen until it’s 4 am and you’ve yelled at every emergency room attendant in a five mile radius to fix your best friend.
15. You can imagine you future with them better than you can with a romantic partner. You can clearly picture growing old with them, when you are both in a nursing home, sitting in a wheel chairs, playing UNO without your teeth, pink rinse dye through you perm, and talking about the good old days when you were 23 and chasing tail.