Most of us grow up with fairly fixed ideas about friendship. We imagine big friendship groups who all know each other from school. Couples socialising together. Nearby family support. Lifelong best friends who live around the corner and automatically show up with soup whenever life falls apart. And while that absolutely exists for some people, single parenthood often reshapes friendship in ways we never expected.

Because when your life changes dramatically, your support system often changes too. Sometimes friendships drift after separation or divorce because your routines no longer match. Sometimes you realise certain relationships were built around convenience more than emotional closeness. Sometimes the people you thought would show up don’t really know how to. But at the same time, entirely new kinds of friendships can appear in their place. And often, they end up being the relationships that carry you through the hardest seasons of your life.

Sometimes your village appears in very unexpected places.

It might be another single parent you meet online who slowly becomes the person you send voice notes to every evening. It might be someone from a Frolo Meetup who instantly understands why handover days leave you emotionally exhausted. It might be the parent at school who saves you a seat at sports day so you don’t have to stand awkwardly alone.

These friendships don’t always arrive dramatically. Often they build slowly through tiny acts of understanding.

A quick message saying ‘thinking of you today’.

Someone remembering you had a difficult court date coming up.

A meme sent at exactly the right moment.

An offer to walk round the park together because neither of you has the energy for anything more ambitious.

That’s the thing about support as an adult – especially as a single parent. It doesn’t always look big or cinematic. Most of the time, it looks small, consistent and emotionally generous. And honestly, those are often the friendships that matter most.

Single parent friendships can also feel unusually intense in the best possible way. There’s often less small talk and more honesty. People open up quickly because life has already stripped away a lot of the pretence. You find yourself discussing money worries, co-parenting stress, loneliness, dating anxiety or burnout with people you’ve only known a few months. But that vulnerability can create incredibly strong bonds.

There’s something very powerful about being properly understood by people living similar realities. Not pitied. Not judged. Not told to ‘make the most of it’. Just understood. That’s one of the reasons communities like Frolo can feel so important. Whether it’s through group chats, online conversations or in-person Meetups, many single parents discover that friendship becomes easier when they no longer have to explain every part of their life first.

There’s less pretending. Less masking. Less pressure to look like you’re coping perfectly. And perhaps most importantly, friendships stop being another thing you have to perform successfully.

Of course, building new friendships as an adult can still feel vulnerable. Many single parents worry about putting themselves out there. They assume everyone else already has established friendship groups or busy social lives. But the reality is that so many people are quietly looking for connection too. They’re looking for someone to message on difficult days. Someone to laugh with. Someone who understands why an uninterrupted coffee can feel like luxury. You don’t necessarily need a huge social circle to feel supported. Sometimes just one or two people who genuinely understand your life can change everything.

If you’d like to meet other single parents who understand the reality of solo parenting, you can download the Frolo app to join chats, attend Meetups and find your people.

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