Amanda Seyfried on the Importance of Friends: “My Marriage Was Not Going to Be Everything to Me”

Amanda Seyfried is opening up about the incredible importance of friends, even as a young, happily married mom

Amanda Seyfried has a lot going on. She’s happily married to Thomas Sadoski, and they share two children together: 6-year-old Nina and 2-year-old Thomas. On top of all that, Seyfried is an extremely successful actor (seriously, did you see her in The Dropout?). That would be more than enough for a lot of people, but for Seyfried, there’s one more equally important piece of the puzzle: her childhood best friends, Anne Hoehn and Maureen North.

Seyfried has teamed up with Hoehn and North to create a line of children’s playhouses and is now speaking out about the importance of her friends in her (very full and busy) life.

“Our friendship has evolved since we were five,” now-37-year-old Seyfried told People. “It’s been 30 years and it’s just grown and grown, and then we all had kids around the same time, so we became mothers together.”

As much as Seyfried sings her husband’s praises (and describes their parenting as a perfect “yin and yang”), her friends just play a different role for her—as they should.

“I rely on my friends to make me feel like I’m not crazy,” she explained. “I knew from the jump that my marriage was not going to be everything to me. I know that you can’t get everything from one person, and so it feels like I have these relationships with my friends, especially with Maureen and Anne, having had that history with them. There’s a venting space, there’s freedom there. All of our lives, experiencing a lot of the same things, I just feel really safe.”

And now that the three besties are in business together, they mean more to each other than ever.

“I have a full-time career and two kids,” she said. “It’s a lot of work, but I love it. My family is very supportive of it … For sure it sounds like it’s chaotic, and it is in some ways, but I’ve also found so much peace in where I live… I can’t wait to grow this together as we’re growing our kids.”

It’s an important reminder: family can be the most important thing in your life, but it can’t be everything. As much work as it can be to keep nurturing friendships when you’re a busy (and exhausted) mom, it’s so important. Your kids deserve a village—and so do you.