Galentine's Day Ideas That Actually Deepen Your Friendships
Sometime in my early thirties, I started noticing a shift in my friendships.
Nothing dramatic — no fights, no falling out, no loss of love. The love was absolutely still there. But something had changed in the ease of staying close.
We were building careers, traveling, getting married, having babies, learning how to take care of aging parents while also figuring out who we even were as adults. Our texts went from long and winding to quick check-ins. Our group chats were full of "We need to catch up soon!" — and then weeks would pass, and we'd mean it again, and weeks would pass again. The love never left, but the time just kept slipping.
Turns out, that's the most common story of adult friendship: A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that most adults say friendship is extremely important to them — and yet many report having fewer close friends than they did years ago. Other studies suggest it takes roughly 50 hours of shared time to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and over 200 hours of intentional connection to build something truly close. Two hundred hours. That's not something that happens by accident. It requires two people showing up, planning, and deciding, over and over again, that the relationship is worth protecting.
Which is why I think Galentine's Day deserves to be more than a themed dinner or an excuse to post photos with heart emojis. It can be something more useful than that. It can be a night to actually go deep with your girlies and to remind the women you love that they're loved — and to let yourself be reminded, too.
Here are a few ways to make that happen:
Cook Together Instead of Going Out
There's something that loosens us up when we're cooking alongside other people. Women have been doing it for centuries: gathering in kitchens and around fires, feeding communities, talking while their hands stayed busy. When everyone has a small role — chopping, stirring, setting the table, debating the playlist — the pressure to perform or make sure everyone has a perfectly curated night disappears. No one is "hosting" in the exhausting sense of the word. Everyone is just... participating. And you don't need an elaborate menu either. Pasta, tacos, homemade pizza — any of it works!
Before you sit down to eat, try asking one reflection question to the table: What's something you're proud of lately? What are you learning about yourself right now? What are you working toward? It sounds simple, but structured questions like these create depth without making the evening feel heavy, and they remind everyone that growth is happening, even when life feels chaotic.
Host a Favorite Things Night
Ask each friend to bring one small thing they genuinely love. It could be a book that changed their perspective. A snack they keep restocking. A candle that smells like a place they miss. An album that carried them through a hard season. The only rule is they have to explain why they brought this item.
The object itself is almost beside the point; what matters is the story behind it. When someone tells you why a particular book found them at exactly the right moment, or why a small ritual brings them comfort they can't quite explain, you learn something layered and real about them. These are the kinds of things that don't tend to come up over cocktails. You have to make space for them.
Swap items at the end if you want, or just trade recommendations. Either way, you'll leave knowing each other better than when you arrived!
A Craft Night — But Make It Meaningful
Craft nights are having a moment, and honestly, the reason makes sense: working with your hands regulates your nervous system. When your body is calm, conversation flows differently. The walls come down a little and you stop monitoring yourself as closely.
Make vision boards centered on how you want to feel this year rather than what you want to achieve. Paint small canvases for each other. Decorate journals. Make friendship bracelets with words that describe each other's strengths — which sounds cheesy until you're the one holding a bracelet someone made for you with the word "brave" or "authentic" on it, and you feel it more than you expected to.
Play is underrated in adult life. It builds connection in ways that structured conversation often can't replicate.
Conversation Prompts That Actually Go Somewhere
If your group is up for it, a few good questions can change the entire tone of an evening. You don't need a fancy card deck; handwritten prompts in a bowl work perfectly fine! Some worth trying:
What have you outgrown in the past year?
When do you feel most like yourself?
What kind of support do you wish you asked for more?
What are you healing that most people don't see?
You don't have to work through all of them. Even one or two can open a door and multiple people can answer. The point is to just practice witnessing each other's lives more fully. Most of us move so fast that we never stop to be truly witnessed, so an intentional question can be an invitation to slow down.
Invite Women Who Came Before You
This one might be the most underused idea on this list.
If it feels right for your circle, consider inviting an older woman — a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a mentor, a longtime family friend. Ask her what she wishes she'd worried less about in her twenties or thirties. Ask what friendship has taught her. Ask what she understands about love now that she didn't before.
There's something incredibly profound about sitting across from someone who has lived more years than you and realizing that your current uncertainty or fear or anxiety is part of a larger story — one that many others have moved through and come out the other side of. Intergenerational spaces have a way of offering perspective that same-age peer groups rarely can.
End the Night With Specific Appreciation
Before everyone leaves at the end of the night, try this: go around the room and have each person share one specific thing they appreciate about the woman to their left. Not "you're so fun to be around" (though we all love to hear that!), but something real and particular. Something like, "I admire the way you handle hard things without losing your softness." Or "I've watched you rebuild this year and it's genuinely inspired me."
Specificity is what makes this land. Adult women are rarely reflected back to themselves with care and precision. Offering that reflection (and receiving it) can become the most memorable part of the whole night, for everyone involved.
One Last Thing
Remember: Galentine's Day doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need flawless decor, a curated charcuterie board, or a photo that stops the scroll. It just needs to be intentional. Because we know that friendship in adulthood isn't self-sustaining. It requires tending, the same way anything worth keeping does.
In a season of life that moves this fast, choosing to slow down and gather thoughtfully is its own kind of resistance. The friendships you invest in now are the ones that will carry you through whatever comes next.
So make the time. Everyone in the room will be better for it — including you!
