Friends wasn't just a sitcom for me - it was the roadmap to my twenties. I can't wait for their reunion

As a kid in a small town I watched Friends with a rapt attention; to me, the New York twentysomethings with their whimsical humour, absurd mishaps and implausibly swanky apartments were the height of cool. The series made me laugh, but also inevitably made me care about the lives of Monica, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Joey and Phoebe. They screwed up, but they weren’t slapstick puppets. They were developed characters with authentic lives, where even the ridiculous rang true.

I didn’t realise until I was a twentysomething myself how true to life the sitcom actually was. Take the example of Monica being tricked into sleeping with Paul The Wine Guy, who says he hasn’t had sex since his wife left him – which seems authentic enough until her colleague reveals he’s used the same line on her.

“Why? Why would anyone do something like that?” she demands, to which Ross deadpans, “I suppose we’re looking for an answer more sophisticated than: to-get-you-into-bed.”

The series was a preview of the disastrous relationships you’ll have in your early twenties and the mistakes you will make. I had no idea at the time that Friends was a map, rather than just a sitcom. I wouldn’t realise until years later when I was walking the same route.

The minor characters - Paul, Mark, poor obsessive Gunther, Ugly Naked Guy, Mr Heckles – are akin to random the folk we will all encounter in our twenties, and the scenarios too are familiar – so much so that “We were on a break!” has become a shorthand for our generation.

We have all had friends with partners akin to the unbearable Janice (“Oh. My. GAWD.”) In my case, it was a girl who referred to friends of her boyfriend as “your little friend”.

But even Janice had a sweetness and core of vulnerability. “It was like movie love!” she told Chandler, and suddenly we see that she has her own narrative going on, her own story. I remembered this when my friend and his annoying girlfriend broke up. Our friend group had one narrative and their relationship another.

Friends was also a story about young people moving away from the family unit and into big cities where they needed to create their own family, a group of people who would always be there in a familial way, however shitty life got. The amazing thing with the six friends is that they remained friends in spite of everything that passed between them. They were a close group, always ready to mock one another while at the same time offering a hand to hold through life’s pitfalls.

Chandler said, “I’m not so good with the advice, can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?” And sometimes that is what you need from your friends – a bit of goodhearted ribbing; someone to pull you up when you’re being a pretentious idiot or a soppy fool; someone who doesn’t judge however many times you screw up.

Watching Friends now is weird. In the early episodes these sophisticated New York grown-ups of my childhood are actually younger than me, and that feels odd. Now the map is one of familiar terrain, no longer exotic, but comfortable – cosy – it is chartered territory for me.

When the Friends reunite next month for a two hour special, they will be in their late forties and early fifties. Once again, two decades ahead of my generation. I wonder what they will teach us this time, about the pitfalls of middle age.