Pop culture may be obsessed with romance, but the relationships we have with our friends are every bit as important – if not more important – than those we have with partners and spouses.

As previously reported by Stylist, studies have shown that our girlfriends may play a far greater role in our lives than we might imagine, with research showing that those chats with your girlfriends are vital to your health and may well help prolong your life.

Indeed, Shelley E. Taylor, author and a world-renowned expert on stress and health, says that women are genetically hard-wired for friendship as a means of coping with stress, theorising that a common female stress response is what she calls “tend and befriend.”

Trending on Twitter: women are tweeting about how they met their best friends