'Look what Betty says,' I say to my partner, Bob. He rolls his eyes. Five minutes later it beeps again. 'Ha! Ha! She's going to a champagne local dating party dressed as a Victorian,' I say.
Since Betty waltzed into my life two years ago, I've been captivated. We speak several times a day, usually local dating last thing at night and first thing in the morning.When something exciting or alarming happens, she is the person I tell.
I've started wearing the same clothes and make-up. We have matching necklaces.
The attraction isn't sexual at all, it's just that Betty is the latest in a long line of meet friends crushes.It started at primary school in Kent. Louise was tall, blonde and clever. It was a joke in our home that when we stated a fact it would be preceded with: 'Louise says.'
Louise was soon replaced by Mandy. She was glamorous and had moved down from London. Her parents were divorced and she as single women appeared to know all there was to know about life. I began speaking with a London accent.
Then there was Miranda. She was everything I wanted to be. Her mother had been a beauty queen and her father a bit of a rogue.
She was sexually mature and the boys loved her. She listened exclusively to music from the Fifties and Sixties and had - gasp! - a red lamp in her bedroom.
I idolised her, changed my music listening habits accordingly and procured a red tea towel to drape over my bedside lamp.
There's nothing quite like the heady buzz you get from meet friends crush. It's remarkably similar to a romantic one.
There's the thrill of a text, email or phone call and the indescribable feeling you get when you discover something else in common.
Don't we normally grow out of a schoolgirl 'pash'? Not me. I continued having them through university (Sarah, a willowy hippy who inspired my love of coloured tights), my early career Alison, who cracked meet friends with funny jokes I could never dream of making and told people what she thought of them and I have them now.
I have a collection of sweet, funny, dependable friends of both sexes, but not all of them fall victim to The Crush.
The women I crush on are who I want to be. Women who look how I want to look, women who make me laugh and - maybe more importantly - women who laugh at my jokes.
Often they take risks I would never take or do things I would never do. I would certainly never don a bridesmaid's dress and prance around on a beach at midnight of my own accord (thanks Betty).
It seems that men don't experience this in the same way. 'Nah, you just meet someone you like and hope they also like you,' said my friend Charlie, before adding: 'Do you mean a friend you want to have sex with?'
But I know I am not alone in girlworld. 'I am in the middle of a friend crush right now,' says Lauren, 29, a teacher.
A heterosexual single woman, she met a new friend through work two months ago and has been besotted ever since.
'I feel compelled to tell other people that she has just texted or emailed me, so they can be impressed, too,' she says.
'I like dropping it into conversation that she is my friend, and what she has said and done recently. And it is very exciting for young single women when we go out because then I look brilliant, too, because she wouldn't pick a friend who wasn't, surely?'
Another friend, Annie, was the victim of a brief pash from me. 'I get really excited by the similarities I have with someone else man seeking want to get to know them even more, to see what else we have in common,' she says.
'And each time they make me laugh or do something that makes me think "She's so me!" I get giddy and proclaim my man seeking love for them to other people.'
When Betty's sheen wears off, I have a replacement. Holly is the girlfriend of a friend I have known for a few years, but it's only recently that we have got to know each other.
She's pretty, funny, clever and sweet - and to hear me exclaim when she emails me, you'd think I was besotted. Whoops!
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source::dailymail.co.uk
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