friends

Most of us have been fortunate enough to have a work wife. They’re there to lighten the load when your to-do list is longer than your arm, meet you in the kitchen for a tea-brief after a particularly difficult chat with your manager, and save you from office-based boredom with their spot on post-meeting analysis.

It takes something pretty special to make a friendship last 20-plus years. You might pick up a group of friends at school who fall away when you go to uni or start your first job. You might move cities or lose touch. But, if you’re lucky, you’ll have that one friendship which, no matter where you’ve left off, can be picked up as if it was only five minutes since you last spoke.

Blind dates are pretty unusual even in the world of dating, but what about being set up with a new friend? It might seem strange at first, but when you think about it, it’s actually a pretty failsafe way of making a new connection. Providing the person doing the matchmaking knows you well enough. And, in the case of best friends Matilda Egere Cooper and Addy Frederick, who work in media and PR, the recommendation was made by the people who know Addy best of all — her brother and sister. She explains, “It’s pretty unique that there’s something about [Matilda and I] that’s so similar other people were saying this friendship has to happen.” And happen it did, with the pair’s friendship still going strong three years later. In partnership with Matlesers, they explain how a shared love of running and a mutual understanding of the need to be generous and warm in all relationships have helped their friendship thrive.