E5: Christin Henke - Cultivating Female Friendships in Your 30s and Beyond

Nurturing platonic love is often overlooked and seen as less important than romantic partnerships. Today on the Aligned Love Podcast, Lauren’s best friend, Christin joins her to discuss cultivating female friendships in your 30s and beyond. Tuning in, you’ll hear all about the ups and downs of Lauren and Christin’s friendship, their relationships with each other’s partners, why they had to fight for their friendship, and more. We delve into how to navigate introducing partners into friendships before discussing disagreements in friendships. Lauren and Christin go on to share the importance of healthy boundaries, community and nurturing all relationships, and being in (platonic) love with each other. Finally, our guest tells us what aligned love means to her and reminds us to lead with love in everything we do. The bottom line of today’s episode is that we need aligned love in friendship too. So if you want to hear all about this beautiful platonic relationship and how to cultivate your own, press play now! Key Points From This Episode:The importance of fighting for platonic relationships. Why we need aligned love in friendships  as well. The dangers of jealousy when a friend finds romantic love. The difficulties of how to navigate introducing partners into friendships.Our relationships with each other’s partners. Finding the balance between advising friends against bad decisions and having boundaries. How to handle disagreements in relationships. What we have learned from our relationship with each other. Being in love with platonic friends and what we can learn from polyamory. The importance of community, nurturing all relationships, and leading with love. Christin tells us why aligned love is safety for her. Quotes:“A romantic relationship is not designed to meet all of our needs and the amount of intimacy and support and connection a person requires to be healthy and vibrant and fully expressed – is a group effort.” — @matchasnob [0:11:28]“A lesson I’ve been learning is how – [to] continue really loving someone and not withdrawing from someone because our beliefs aren’t the same.” — @matchasnob [0:37:08]“We don’t honor [friendship] the same way that we do partnership but [it] is a partnership!” — @matchasnob [0:48:07]“Alignment and safety go hand-in-hand for me. Typically, the feeling of misalignment is the same feeling of threat or discomfort or disease or things that indicate to you that you don’t feel completely safe.” — @matchasnob [0:54:39]Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Christin HenkeChristin Henke on XChristin Henke on InstagramLauren ZoellerLauren Zoeller on LinkedInLauren Zoeller on InstagramLauren Zoeller on XLauren Zoeller on TikTokLauren Zoeller on FacebookThe Aligned Love CollectiveThe Aligned Love Podcast