Top Reasons You Need a Girlfriend's Getaway Weekend

Let's face it; we all need a break now and then. Recently I suggested to my husband that I needed a "girlfriend's getaway" and he asked "why"? I decided to make him a list of the reasons why.

1. STRESS RELIEF- As we sit staring at 12 loads of laundry we dream of a place where there is no laundry, no toilets or floors to be scrubbed and, no bills to pay. Husbands may go to work and make the living for our families. Some of us women stay home and care for the house and our kids, some of us work, but all of us have stress. The fast pace of life today is stress inducing for everyone and we all need a break now and then.

2. PEACE AND QUIET- Kids scream, dogs bark and husbands cannot find their socks, which have been in the same drawer for the last five years. This can drive even the most mentally stable woman to hard liquor. We need a place of solitude where we can hear ourselves think. We need a place where we are able to pick up a book and read more than once sentence without being asked to make someone a drink or locate his or her misplaced belongings.

3. BEAUTIFICATION- A weekend getaway with close friends provides the perfect opportunity to treat ourselves in ways we would not usually take the time out of our normal daily routines. Getting a manicure, pedicure, and a facial with friends allows us to be pampered and primped, restoring us to feeling like the beautiful women that we are.

4. GIRL TALK- It is true. According to research women talk more than men. This doesn't really come as a surprise to any woman who has ever tried to communicate with her man. We love to talk about all that is going on in our lives, the ups, the downs, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We want to dish about our other friends and catch up with the latest gossip. Try talking to your spouse or partner about these things and he will be tuned out after the first sentence. Girlfriends will listen with interest, interject comments, and laugh and cry with us. We cannot buy therapy that is as good as what we can get from a good friend.

5. SHOPPING- Who among us has not dreamt of a shopping excursion where we can visit every department of every store we want to without kids complaining that they are tired and their feet hurt, and husbands looking sour as they drag our purchases from store to store? Only another woman can truly appreciate the shopping trip that unearths the perfect shoes for a particular dress. Our men will tell us whatever they think we want to hear to get us out of the store, but a true friend will tell us if those jeans make our butt look big enough to serve as a parking space for a jumbo jet. We often see women together in malls with a look of unrestrained joy on their faces. Automatically we have come to recognize this as the look of a woman who is doing her shopping completely unhindered by her family unit.

6. A NIGHT OUT ON THE TOWN- Girls just want to have fun. We have been hearing Cyndi Lauper sing it for years. We all feel it in our hearts. We may be pushing 40 on the outside, but on the inside we are still those same 18-year-old girls who loved to dance until the wee hours in our acid washed jeans and shoulder-less shirts. Contrary to what many men might think, we are not out there looking for something better. We are simply trying to get back just a little bit of the youth that we lost to marriage and children.

Everyone needs a rest from the daily grind and women are no exception. Too often we think we are "superwoman" and we need to do it all without ever taking a break. There is no good reason not to stop and take a weekend to remind us of the girls we once were and what better way to do that than to do it with good friends.