Adult friendship mostly runs on memes and dinners that get rescheduled three times. But the friends you hang onto are the ones you can fall apart in front of without getting judged for it.Having someone like that in your life is actually good for your mental health. Psychologist Marisa Franco, author of Platonic, told NPR that among 106 factors linked to depression, “having a confidante is the most powerful.”Friendship researcher Suzanne Degges-White recently asked women in their 20s through their 70s what they wanted most from their friends. Surprisingly, the answers didn’t change much with age. Support came up repeatedly, along with wanting someone who would listen without jumping in to criticize or offer advice. One woman described it as “understanding without judgment.”And that’s where many of us could probably use some work. When a friend calls upset about something, it’s tempting to start offering solutions before they’ve even finished explaining what happened. But people aren’t always looking for advice. A study published in Psychology and Aging found that people across different age groups generally disliked receiving help they hadn’t asked for. It could leave them feeling incapable of handling their own lives. Sometimes your friend just wants to cry in her car for 20 minutes and have someone listen.What Women Really Want From Their Adult FriendshipsYou’ve probably had an argument with a close friend that got a little heated, only to be laughing together a few days later. Franco calls this “dynamic safety,” a concept from psychoanalyst Virginia Goldner. It’s the security that comes from knowing you can disagree with someone and still be friends afterward.Getting to that point takes time, too. University of Kansas researcher Jeffrey Hall found that developing a close friendship generally takes more than 200 hours together. That’s over eight full days, although sitting next to someone at work for three years isn’t quite the same as spending time together outside the office. You could know every detail of a coworker’s divorce and still have no idea what they do on weekends.Most of us probably have a pretty short list of people we’d call when life goes to hell. If you’ve got someone who always answers, even when they’ve got their own sh*t going on, that’s a good friend to have. And sometimes the nicest thing you can do for them is be quiet for a few minutes and listen.The post This Is What Women Really Want From Their Friendships, According to New Research appeared first on VICE.