If you read that headline and did a little uncomfortable shift in your seat, perhaps reflecting on the pasta you grabbed with your bestie last Thursday, allow me to explain.

Recently, I was chatting with someone who was frustrated that her friend had cancelled their midweek drinks at the last minute. Confused, I asked, "But you're both free on Saturday, just go then?"

"No way," she said. "This is a weekday friend."

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As if in a cartoon, I heard the shattering sound effect of my reality being forever changed. Weekday friends. Of course. She was right — I'd just never heard anyone say it out loud.

There is a certain phenomenon we rarely discuss out of fear of offending people: that some friends are reserved for weekdays, while others have free rein over the weekends.

Now, I know how it sounds. Our weekends are precious real estate and weekdays often feel like filler time.

But the reality of weekday vs. weekend friends actually has less to do with friendship and everything to do with the catch-up content.

Let's break it down.

During the week, our social battery is on, we're at the office, we're in the city, we're around. We're also busy.

The proposal of an after-work wine or sunset walk comes with a very reasonable time limit and strict agenda. Which is exactly why there could be no better time than a Tuesday or Thursday.

Weekdays are for the friends you haven't seen in a while and you ladies need to knuckle down and do some real catch-up admin. You need to remember names, the details of your friend's last date, the colour she picked for the bathroom tiles. It requires significant brain power — the kind that's already "on" from a day at work.

That type of catch-up is not going to work on a Saturday.

On the weekend, we want to relax. No offence, but I don't want to hear about your work drama; I want to drink a margarita and talk about the latest season of Bridgerton.

Weekends, to me, are for making new memories together as opposed to a routine catch-up. They're for trying a new cocktail bar, going to the movies, lounging at the beach or even running boring errands with someone by your side. There is a very specific friend suitable for this.

You likely see them all the time, you know everything about each other and there are no real updates necessary.

It's important to note that once placed in a camp, you aren't stuck there. I have friends that are both weekday and weekend friends, and others who have transitioned from one to the other over the years.

I, myself, am both a weekday and weekend friend, depending on who you ask.

When I spoke to my own friends (both weekday and weekend) about the concept — after nodding their heads in agreement — they shared what constitutes a weekday friend.

One argued that weekdays are for her closest friends. After a day at work, she just wants to unwind with the people she feels most comfortable with. She'll grab a late night ice cream with them and save the weekends for friends she might not see as often, or require a longer, more intense catch-up.

Another friend said she didn't have weekday or weekend friends, but based her friendships on events. She has 'going out' friends and book club friends and never expects the two to intersect. Instead of trying to push one into being both, she respects that she has different friends for different needs.

I realised after these chats I had been trying to force certain friendships into looking like something they're just not.

When my friends — who like to go to bed at 9pm — wouldn't stay out late with me, I couldn't understand why. Or my friends who like to party didn't care to discuss the differences between the Wuthering Heights book and the movie.

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Once I accepted that one friend cannot be everything for you, it brought a new sense of harmony to my social calendar.

So, now my 'weekday' friends fit in perfectly on my Tuesdays and 'weekend' friends on Saturdays, and all is right in the world.

No matter how you put it, there is a valuable lesson: you can't rely on one person to fulfil every need. Which is exactly why it's so important to surround ourselves with many different kinds of people, for every day of the week.

Feature image: Instagram/ @haileybieber.