Anna Faris says Chris Pratt wasn't her best friend – and shouldn't have been

Anna Faris doesn’t think husbands should be their wives’ best friends — and that there’s something special about friendships between women.

In Cosmo‘s latest “On My Mind” column, the Mom star shares an adaptation of an extract from her new book, Unqualified. Faris writes that though she used to prioritize male friendship in her life and consider herself a “guys’ girl,” over time she has begun to appreciate the important value of female friendship.

“Back then, I thought that having the approval of my stoner guy friends was of greater value than having the approval of beautiful blonde sorority girls,” she writes. “I was selling my own gender down the river, and I wasn’t even getting any fulfillment from the relationships with those dudes.”

With marriage, Faris believes, comes the expectation that now a woman’s husband will fill the closest companion role. “I was once told that I didn’t need a tight group of girlfriends because Chris should be my best friend,” she says, referencing Chris Pratt, who she is now separated from. “But I never bought that. The idea of your mate being your best friend — that’s overhyped. I really believe that your partner serves one purpose and each friend serves another.”

The author and actress goes on to state that she feels lucky today to have “a handful of women I count as confidantes” these days, but understands that it took her longer to appreciate the importance of these relationships because of negative experiences with groups of girls when she was younger. “It takes vulnerability of spirit to open yourself up to other women in a way that isn’t competitive,” she writes, “and that’s especially hard in Hollywood, where competition is built into almost every interaction.”

Read Faris’ musings on female friendship, as adapted from Unqualified, in their entirety over at cosmopolitan.com. Unqualified is scheduled to hit stores Oct. 24.