Everything Is Content - Modern Friendship : A Deep Dive, Part One

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Happy Friday EIC-heads, this week on the podcast we’re delivering part one of our two part friendship deep dive, sharing our favourite fictional friendships, before discussing how friendships change as we get older and the myth of being a low-maintenance mate. From low maintenance and medium friends to friendship and motherhood, how does the modern world shape our friendships, and how do we navigate friendships as we get older?Thank you to Cue Podcasts for production.We hope you enjoy, thank you for listening O,R,B xxI Thought Being The Low Maintenance Friend Would Set Me Free. Instead, It Made Me Lonelier Than Ever- Chante JosephThe Vexing Problem Of The Medium Friend - Lisa Miller Why Is It So Hard To Maintain Friendships From Your 20s In Your 30s? - Carola LoveringIf babies are ruining your friendships, the problem is probably you - Olivia Petter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richerra and I'm Anoni. And this is Everything is Content, the podcast for pop culture analysis, deep dives on hot topics and discourse-heavy debates. Whether it's TV, film, celebrity or internet drama, we do it all right here. With a friendship bracelet circling the wrist of content. This week on the podcast, we're delivering part one of our two-part friendship deep dive, sharing our favourite fictional friendships before discussing how friendships change as we can. get older, and the myth of being a low-maintenance mate.

Follow us on Instagram at Everything Is ContentPod, and if you haven't already, make sure you hit follow on the show on your podcast player app, so you always know when there's a new episode. So before we get into the meat of today's episode, I thought it might be fun to trade our favourite pop culture friendships. Do you both want me to go first? Yes. Why not?

I actually came up with quite a problematic one, and it's one that I've talked about before, but it is Hannah and Jessa from girls because I think it's one of the most realistic, almost toxic, but like deeply loving friendship, sister dynamics because it involves some of the worst crimes that you can do to a friend while still loving them, e.g. Sleep with her ex. I mean, I think that's probably the worst thing that Jessa does,

but still, they are constantly at each other. They're not rocking in the bath, and I think it is a depiction of friendship that for a long time we didn't see. It was all very mystic pizza. it was all very la la la loving and actually girl friendships can be from fucking hell and so that is my favourite that is so funny i've gone down such a different route same what's yours an only but first i do want to say i'm surprised you picked a darker one because i feel like when you ask this question all i thought was of like rosy good friendships not any of the like realistic or

like painful friendships so that's yeah maybe maybe i've gone for like the more like dreamlike version of them. No, no. Love to controversy. I think you have a point, though, Beth, because I think much like romance in stories, friendships and stories also probably gave us all math of insecurities as teenagers because we were like, why are we not having these, like, loving friendships. Anyway, I'm going to speak my truth, and I'm sorry about this, because mine is Harry Hermione and Ron to the point where. Oh, God. To the point where, and I know that we're no longer, we're no longer support. that witch,

lol, but basically I was such a Harry Potter fan and to the point where I actually decided in sick form there was these two guys who I was good friends with called Buster and Elliot but I actually secretly in my head I was like this could be my Ron and my Harry and I really wanted to be a girl with two guy friends because I'd never managed to have friends who are boys before because I'd always end up kissing them or worse. So I was like, and I really, they were like game for it.

We had the same classes that were like before lunch. we were going for lunch together but in my head I'd like overly romanticised it and I'd like refer to us as the three musketeers they were just there they were having a nice time

they were mostly talking to each other and I was also having past it next to them but I was like so obsessed with the idea of having this sort of like trio of friends the idea of like being friends

with boys and I did still have my friends who are girls but I thought there was something really cool about having this really deep platonic friendship with men I haven't spoken to either of them in years

but it was lovely for about three months when I was really sort of egging it on that's such an interesting and funny point about almost like the elusive dream of having male friends who are platonic and like could be a good sounding board for if you are into men having their opinion or their insight into just like your dating life or even just like a male perspective on anything but yeah i agree with you having gone to an all-girls school i feel like i both went through the process of thinking that would be amazing and then just like retreating back

to my friendships with women and like having mostly female male friendships and like just being really really happy with that situation and like not really missing the male perspective but maybe that's a bad thing slightly different for me because i did go i've never been to a same sex single sex school and so it was always like okay be friends with boys and i did that from being a little girl and then i think just very quickly realized girls aren't better like i love my male friends i often had that same thing of like oh my god i'm the mainey in a group of and then realize very quickly no i'm always the wrong but i think it you you're try it out, you realise men are lovely, men are fantastic, I love them, but there's nothing quite

like being part of a girl group. I still, that lingers on though. I still don't really, I've got like a couple of guy friends. I always think this if I ever got married, I'd really be struggling to invite like men. They would just have to be like my friends' partners. I do want, I do want boyfriends, but I don't know how you get them. I don't know how that happens. It's so true, isn't it? Because now we're talking, I'm like, oh, I do actually have a few male friendships. And it's not just all women. But I think it's because I stopped caring about it. And yes, 75% of those men are partners, but like a few of them aren't.

But it just wasn't, it was just me letting go of the concept. And now I've forgotten about any kind of like gender or sex in my friendship groups. But like at one point I was like obsessed as well like you were with having like a male friend. I just don't really know any man unless I'm going out with them. I do think also as an adult having male friends can be. And this is not all the time, but there is a danger. It's happened to me a couple times that they. will get a girlfriend who does not really prove of male female friendships. Like I've lost a very

good friend to that. And I wrote a piece of days actually about it ages ago. And people were not happy. They're like, men and women shouldn't, you know, your relationship should come first and maybe that's true. But it's broken my heart a few times to be like, I don't fancy him. That is my friend. That is Ron. No, I think, I think that's a real problem. I think that's a problem of how we were brought up to think that like boys and girls couldn't be friends. I really actually wish, I know I'm joking about it, but I do wish that I'd had a better ability to forge strong friendships with men because I think it's a really important thing to do. And I think it's very chic when people have lots of guy friends and lots of girlfriends. So I think that I hope if I ever had

children, I'd really raise them to try and have a broad variety of friends. I'm sure you will. What was your favourite pop culture friendship, Ritura? So I have gone for Ilana and Abbey from Broad City. I have gone straight for the problem case scenario. which is what you described, which is the completely, possibly, not maybe, you know, for everyone, but the like gold star friendship duo, the one that made me feel bad about my own life, the one that I still think of quite a lot that I just wish I had that set up where it's like, almost like in lieu of a romantic partner, you have somebody who is your life partner, who is a platonic friend, who is just your ride or die to the last day that you breathe on earth.

I love them. That is such a good recommendation. is I have had periods with friends that are like that where we're basically like in a relationship we're just so on top of each other spend every day together but it is actually quite unsustainable being that like level of intensity and I've been that level of you know how they're just absolutely nuts they're just like constantly getting smashed and doing the most crazy things I've had that with like a couple of my friends for like months on end and then at some point the fun you can't keep doing that I agree it is like because I think up until maybe

about five years ago. I forget this about myself. I was so the person who had a best friend. I always have been that person. And it's only like a new chapter, a newer chapter that I haven't had one person who's been my, like, person that I text all the time. I hang out with all the time. Like people joke, are we together? That kind of thing. But you're right. It's not, it's not sustainable. It's like, it's not for the other person, but I think at least for me, there was some codependent see going on in some of those friendships because it was just a huge level of communication that I don't even have with my partner who I live with in the same home. I think it's very healthy at times, weirdly, to have that like burst of codependency

and just be like, we rely on each other, we are each other's rock. And I do think Abby and Alana gave, not permission, but like a certain language and certainly like a lot of good gifts and memes, two best friends who are like obsessed with one another and being like, because Alana is so, she's sort of sexually obsessed in a way with how Abby looks and how gorgeous she is and what a queen she is. And I think that period in the early mid-2010s, we needed that. And I actually really enjoyed that. And that's how me and my best friend talked to each other and about each other. And it's like, it's really worshipful.

And I remember watching that being like, I kind of love this depiction of friendship. Maybe I hadn't seen anything like that before. Like she's just talking about how gorgeous she is and how gorgeous her ass is all the time. And sometimes you need that. I also, I'm so surprised that none of us have brought up sex in the city because I do think that is the friendship that ruined a million women's perception of friendship. Like everyone was out and you'd have three best friends. We all need to see each other at brunch every single day.

We need to be out every single night. Like that was probably one of the most unrealistic things to watch as a young person imagining that in your 30s you're seeing the same people four to five times a week, if not every day for lunch, for brunch, for dinner, for cocktails. because I think we'll come on to this but the logistics of friendship in your 30s are not what sex in the city taught us and for that I'm suing.

I know, are you still having the problem where you're booking people two or three months in advance because I feel like we had a bit of a cultural reckoning where everyone agreed that that sucks and we want to be a bit more spontaneous we want to be free closer to the time a bit more but I feel like especially at the end of this summer It's been a bit disappointing for quite a few people I've spoken to, including me, because I think

everyone's just so busy and I don't know if it's a 30s thing. I don't know if it's a life thing. It's really hard to see people regularly. So I feel like I'm long distance with all my friends. And luckily when we see each other, it's really nourishing and we spend a lot of time together and we, you know, we have a bit of like superficial but also like very deep chat. So we can have a good time and it can be really great. But it's just so infrequent. compared to especially the dream of like brunch every Friday or like regular hangouts where you have that kind of like non-catch-up time as well. You just have passive time. I think when I was imagining adult friendships, I just forgot that me and my friends would all have to have jobs. And that really does

get in the way of hangout catch-up time. I have been trying recently, I will say, to just say yes to things. When a friend asked me to do something, I say yes. It sort of worked, but I'm also so exhausted that I just, I'm showing up and I'm not. I don't know how. impressed they are with me. There must be a middle ground, I'm sure, but I'm yet to find it. The point about passive time is so on it, Richard, because I think when you're in your 30s, hanging out with friends is like having picky bits for tea, whereas when you're at uni, it's the full dinner, it's an all you can eat buffet, you're going out, but then you're spending a whole, do you know what I miss more than anything is a hangover day where you're all

absolutely rotten. All you can do is what reruns have come dine with me. One of you is going to the corner shop every 10 minutes to get a different kind of liquid and or snack. then you're ordering pizza hut and then you kind of forget you've had pizza and get dominoes and then one of these so bloated like what has happened and all of you're on the sofa it probably is like thick with some kind of smog of smell of just all of your like beer and alcohol breath or whatever and that feels like the most intimate gorgeous female friendship because I think at uni you become and not I genuinely don't think it is like this anymore but we were quite disgusting with each other at uni

I lived in a house share with like seven girls, five girls. And we were just, it was the most intimate, amazing setting. And I think it takes a long time to kind of grieve that. And now I'm like, okay, I can do cinema date with a friend from five to seven on Saturday. Then I'll see another friend from 10 to 11 on Sunday for a walk. Then next week I'll do blah, blah, blah. And it's like you can never have that elongated kind of flowing time with friends. unless you're really on holiday now.

And I think I've just about started to figure that out. But in my 20s, that was why we would end up going out so late because we were like, this is not enough time. We can't meet for dinner at seven and go home at 10. That's only three hours. We barely even covered like what's happened in the last 20 minutes. So we would end up out to one in the morning slash six in the morning just for like a want and need to spend a good amount of time, enough time together.

But just due to the factors of ageing no longer. longer possible. We might have said this before but I do think sleepovers or just like spending the weekend with somebody as if you're on holiday with them needs to come back because I think about going to Paris recently to meet my friend who lives in Brussels so Paris was our meeting spot another friend in London came with me and we spent the whole weekend together and it was just but literally exactly like you said a buffet of time. Us being on our phones but in like comfortable silence, us having loads of chats, us just like having all these experiences together. Same with my friends who live in Sheffield and Leeds. Because we spend three or like two

and a half days together, we can have all of that. But it's the friends in London that are the tricky bits actually, which is so unexpected and counterintuitive. But I wonder if I should bring that approach to the people who live like literally in like North London, even though I'm in South and just treat it as long distance. Well, yeah, because it takes so long to get anywhere here. Like I just like the idea of a commune. I like the idea that you would just make friends with people on your doorstep and then you can just nip in. The idea of just nipping in to a friend would be like, can I come over after work or something? And that not being like a tube strike, 90 minute journey getting screamed down on the street. I sound so nice. I do, I want to do

a sleepover. I, for my sister's hen, we like went away to a cabin. She, my mom, myself and my sister and I ended up sharing a bed because it was up a ladder. My mom was like, I'm going to fall down that ladder. She really, she guilted us. But actually it turned out so nice because me and my sister had not obviously had a sleep over, but since we were children, there was a lot of giggling. There was, it was just very sweet. And I was like, in fact, as an adult, you are allowed to do this. Maybe I'm not going to do this all the time because I want to get a good night's sleep. And also my friend's husband's probably like, you've got to get out of the bed. But it's so nice to like share a bed with a girlfriend, feel like a little kid again. It's just such an easy way,

I think, to feel close to someone. it's you're making me think then when you're saying about the tubes and stuff this was this is the other thing it's like you think you're going to be if you'll live near enough to your friend you'll see them all the time unless you genuinely lived next door on the same road it's so hard to see each other and all of my friends at one point we were all living in south london and poppy had wanted to move east for ages but we were already stressed about someone leaving south london because we were like we won't see each other and then we realized we'd never in the whole time we'd ever hung out in south london we'd all get the tube and go somewhere else so we had this false idea that because Because of this proximity, like geographical proximity, it was making us see each other more. But it actually didn't really do anything. Like London's so big, there's so much on that I think, honestly, unless you're living with someone or happen to live down the road, it is always like a logistical nightmare. It's never just, I'll text you and we'll go for a coffee. Although I do think post-pandemic, the first year out, there was a period of time where everyone

was like your unemployed friend. Everyone was texting each other at like random times of the day being like, should we just go get a wine? because it was just the freedom of it all and the fact that we could be spontaneous. And then I think that was post that maybe that the joy of missing out thing came in, which we spoke about in a couple of episodes. And everyone's gone the other way. So we're still looking for that perfect equilibrium. But I don't think that the, what's that thing called that swings?

Pendulum. The pendulum has, I don't think the pendulum's settled quite yet. So I want to talk about low maintenance friends and me. medium friends. In a recent piece for Vogue titled, I thought being the low-maintenance friend would set me free. Instead, it may be lonelier than ever. Shanty Joseph writes, growing up, I'd often felt like I was a bit much as a friend. I was always hosting dinners from my cramp uni accommodation and trying to organise regular meetups with everyone like it was a full-time job. But as we grew up and as people became busier, more focused on their own lives, jobs,

other friend groups, I found myself feeling abandoned. It was around then that I shifted into being a low-maintenance friend as a way to stop breaking my own heart. By asking for nothing and expecting little, I ceased placing expectations on people they weren't obliged to meet. Instead of holding on so tightly to people who weren't giving me the same energy back, I opted for a friendship light option, where our relationship consisted of catch-ups rather than creating new shared memories. In other words, I was loving people in a way that felt entirely unnatural to me in order to keep having them around. And it's a story we hear and read about a lot where life gets so busy, and people who were once in your inner circle, all of a sudden, it seems, have

slipped out into the outer rings. And in a separate piece for the New York Times, Lisa Miller writes about the vexing problem of the medium friend, and she defines friends of this level in the following way. Medium friends are genuine friends. You share history, such as the same alma mater, circumstances, an employer, or interests, rude jokes, the royals, thrifting or squash. Medium friends make you laugh, bring news, offer insights or expertise. But unlike the the closest friends, medium friends test the limits of your time, love and energy. There are only so many dinners in a week, so many people with whom you can be incessantly texting. Median friends prove the lie in any naive attempt to be all things

to all people. So two really great pieces and I hope you know where to find them by now, but they will be in the show notes. And I personally actually really related to Chante's piece. I have done a lot of work on myself to learn not to be a people-pleasing. to trust that people might actually dislike me off the basis of my personality, not me sort of showering them with gifts, offering to cook them dinner, going above and beyond and over-extending myself to the point where I am totally burnt out. Because actually often that also puts people off. But that's what I did at uni.

I used to host roast dinners for 12 people. There were six people in my flat and six people in the corridor opposite. And I'd be like, I'm making a roast just to like sort of buy their friendship. It worked. But with age, I've also realised. I think like Shanty says, it's like you don't want to be doing too much but also you don't want to be doing nothing.

I don't know how I feel about the medium friend piece so I would love to hear both your thoughts on both pieces and we can get into it. I also really related to Shantay's piece. I feel like that's still something I'm really working on which is just kind of asking people for things and also having expectations and allowing people to see me

you know maybe when I'm not my quote unquote best self so maybe at my snappy bits and not just like immediately after just like cowering and removing myself and like adding some distance between us to kind of forget in my mind that's the thing it's not even beneficial to a friendship because I think sometimes I have a tendency to if I'm struggling if I'm having a period where my mental health isn't great or I'm struggling with something in life. I often feel embarrassed and I feel like I really struggle with just asking people to be there for me or to support me through something. I don't have this issue with a partner anymore but it's something about the communication and just bearing warts and all that I just really find difficult and it's something

that I've been actively working on to the point that this year, in what felt like a breakthrough for me, with a friend, I just kind of had a conversation where I was like, I was really disappointed with this situation and I really wish you had been there in this way. And the next day, I still went to like apologize in this like massive text and just said this like massive apology. And she was like, you don't need to apologize. You're right. Let's talk about it. And that was really difficult and just not something that I am particularly comfortable with. So I'm really working on it. I'm really working on showing up as who I actually am,

not like a polished, perfected version of myself where I dip in and out to like, you know, keep the facade up and just make the friendship smooth and easy all the time. And also just trusting that friends will stick by me even if I maybe, you know, ask them for something or even just like snap or act out. And then afterwards apologize and explain what's been going on. on rather than just presenting a fake version of myself, I guess, that's palatable and easier to

digest. So that really, I really loved that piece. I thought it was amazing. And it really, the words and the messaging really sunk in with me. With the medium friends, I love this piece a lot as well because it is a dilemma that I face all the time. How much do you invest in friends that aren't your core lot that are like the inner circle? I feel like that tension is something that I feel and think about quite a lot because I never I never know if I'm getting it right. I never want to remove attention and energy away from the people who've been there for everything. But I also really love the importance of medium friends who, if you're having a shit day, you don't necessarily talk about it with them, but they lift your mood. They, you know,

gossip with you. You have so many jokes. They are such a core part of getting out of your head and living life as well. What do you think, Beth, about both? So the pieces were very different. Chanty's piece was very comforting to me to read. It felt very instructive, whereas the medium friend piece, it's confronting because it's exposing something that I hate to think about, which is there might be a cap on friendships and actually friendships have to change over time. You may meet someone as an adult and be like, in another life, we would be really close.

But one or both of us maybe has hit our limit. And I don't like to think about friendship as being sort of a finite close. club, but I think there's some science to that. So I'm still mulling that one over and trying to work out whether I mind being people's medium friends, whether I think people mind being mine. For Shantay's piece, what I was thinking when you were both talking is, I do this. I almost treat it like I have to build credit with my friends. So I have to, which we do have to do. You have to sort of give enough and do all of these lovely things. You've got the basis of friendship. But I've been treating it like, I've got to build my credit.

So that when I am a human woman, e.g. When life is hard, when I'm having a bad day, when I need something from a friend, because friendship is this exchange of need, I'm allowed to ask for it because I can say, well, look, here's the roast dinner, although of course I don't make people roast. I'm not gorgeous domestic queen like you and only, but like I can think of, okay, I did this for you, I did this for you. It's like checks and balances, which is a really interesting way to look at friendship. I know that's not totally at the heart of what she's saying. she's talking about this drive to be communal, be together and how actually, as she was feeling herself shift from certain people's inner circle, she was like, okay, I'm just going to be so chill,

I'm just going to be so calm. But I do think it's a very interesting way that we talk and think about friendships as transactional, because even though they are, it's not quite, I'm never thinking to a friend, where you haven't, when was the last gift you got me, or have you done this for me, have you done this for me? You just kick in of like, we are there. for one another. We've made this commitment to hopefully whole life together. The balance sheet doesn't always have to be completely right and tight to ask for help. And if someone that else said to me that they were trying to do this to me, I'd be like, but you don't have to. And the truth of our friendship is it's so much deeper than that. But I still do do it. And similar to romantic

relationships, I'm learning not to. I'm learning to meet people, not try and immediately dazzle and impress them, trying to instead build a strong foundation of something. But I still find myself being like, but I've got to earn it. I've got to really earn it. And then I'm allowed to cry in front of a friend or I'm allowed to call them sobbing or I'm allowed to be like, hey, would you feed my hamster? Or like, do you think I could stay here for this time? It's so, I don't want to think about friendships as transactively as I do, I guess, so I'm saying. That's really interesting. I think I definitely think that more when I was younger. And in fact, when I was at school, friendship was one of my biggest shames and anxieties because I couldn't quite work out

had to get it right. I felt like everyone else in the girl group would find it so easy to make the right joke and say the right thing. And it used to like pain me to not, I used to always feel like it was like an active pursuit. It didn't come. I would have some really close friends, but in terms of like big groups, I'd find that really hard. Then as I've gotten older, I've like found my groups and I've found my people and there is this unspoken knowledge now that it's almost like a sisterhood, but these people, some of my friends I've had from school for 20 years. My uni friends, we've been friends for over a decade now. And you lose that feeling of need that, you know, this could at some point end. That's why they are so magical.

And we should probably talk about Dolly Alderton's book at some point, but whether that'll be in this episode or not, but where it is different from a romantic relationship in that with my friends, there doesn't have to be a breakup, even if there are fallow periods of time where we might not even speak for like a month, but it means nothing. And even without having spoken for a month, the conversation doesn't then pick up and it's how are you. It's just straight back in. I think medium friends where I found the piece, I don't know if I necessarily agreed that they were a bad thing is I also have some friends where we have an inability to not have the most deep conversations. I have one friend where like when we go for lunch, we will cry.

We will talk about the most traumatic moments in our life. That is just the pattern of our friendship. It's a really deep rooted thing. and you can't really untrain that. We find it hard to have a lot of levity. Whereas I have medium friends where I still love them and they're still really important to me. And I think that the quality of our friendship

exists in the fact that we are there to boost each other, to give each other a laugh, the fact that there isn't this heaviness to it, perhaps you met them slightly later on in life. And maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but that's how I see it. It's like these people that you're both there for a good time, you really respect them. And if they needed you, of course you would help them, but potentially

they wouldn't come to you for that. They would go to their non-medium friends, their deep friendships. And I think it's useful to have that kind of light and shade and the different levels. But what I do find is I get older is I find it very hard to meet new people and maintain that. So sometimes I've met people I've loved and I felt really guilty about the fact that actually I've been really shit at forging and creating a friendship just out busyness or feeling like I don't have the time even though I really really like them but over the years there are you know you pick up people some people you just have an immediate like grace for example we actually that might be like eight years now but we met and it was just like we were best

friends there was no way that girl was ever going out of my life and that was absolutely no work at all we just immediately were friends other people I've met and I know that had I met them at 24 we would probably be super super close now but meeting someone at 30 31 it's um it's um it's It actually makes me sad. I don't have the capacity. But I think one of the most amazing things that's come to me with age, because sometimes I got stressed about my career. I got stressed about my relationship status. But if I think about the thing that really plagued me as a young person, it was friendship. And I think through actually a lot of work, self-inspection, understanding like people policing tendencies, not really understanding how to do that,

I've figured out a nice groove from like, God, I have these amazing people in my life. I'm actually not that great in a big group setting, that's okay. Because something that pop culture really made me feel bad about was like I couldn't, I found it quite hard to be with lots of people and much better with a couple of friends, four or five friends, one on one, shove me in a massive party and actually I kind of lose all sense of myself and don't know what to do. And I do think that's sort of like an age thing and a working out thing. And I'm kind of here for medium deep, not so much for shallow friends. But I don't mind the medium ones. Yeah, I think the way you described medium friends is perfect and that is exactly what I think they are too and I think it's like having a

well-rounded meal I don't think everyone has to have have this but I think at least for me there's different kinds of nourishment and sometimes it is just having your work friend who you just like gossip with about stuff that's going on like meaningless things that are going around in the office and having a day of that or just like having a lunch like that is so fun and it it kind of it fills your cup in one way and then seeing your friend and just like really getting to the meat of of something that's you know ongoing for you that's like a life challenge that might be like a family thing then that fills you in a different way it's just it's different kinds of communication and it's also different kinds of community so yeah I really love the way you describe medium friends

I agree with you. I don't think they're a bad thing. I think they're an amazing thing. And at least for me, they really bring me a lot of joy. It is just, it's getting the balance right. And I really related to what you said about losing some potentially amazing friends along the way because of struggling with the balance or struggling to incorporate that person in your life in a long-term way. I had somebody pre-pandemic who I feel like I was seeing like every two weeks or something and we would hang out quite a lot. and they were a new friend and just just because of the pandemic purely because everyone really kind of like locked in with their closest and caught up with the people that were like nearest to them and dearest to them about what was going on it just kind of fizzled out almost like a relationship like a romantic relationship it just fizzled out as a friendship and it's really sad it's yeah it's quite I feel you just reminded me about that and it is just like a sad thing because I feel like if we had had maybe like half a year before the pandemic we probably would have been able to like weather it and still be friends and it's just a shame because they were really great and it was a really nice thing going um so yeah it's almost like the the car light the taxi light theory with romantic relationships and sex in the city sometimes i feel like you have to be in a certain frame of mind or life stage to be able to absorb people in but then also the other person has to have that as well you both have to be on the same page

and be able to make that friendship work for it to stick and sometimes maybe like with a grace example sometimes maybe it just works so cohesively that it's just not even work but it is sad I wish I wish I could have kept that one up Beth do you have anything like that I think the way that I so I've definitely had those friendships in adulthood could count on probably one hand And it's that instant chemistry of it all. There is also people you meet and you go, I hope we are exactly the same thing to each other because there is, I've had sometimes, I've met people and I've been like, oh, you are fantastic, love running into you. We always have such a laugh. But they're trying to catch up all the time and talk on the phone.

I'm like, oh my God, what if I'm at capacity and I am wasting this opportunity to be friends with someone because I can't offer more? And then there's guilt. I've been it really difficult, I think, to manage my own expectation. and also I worry a lot that I am just like failing as an adult to maintain all these friendships because I meet so many great people and I think am I meant to be keeping in touch with everybody am I meant to these people meant to become my best friends and then I think okay so I've got this many best friends from childhood I feel very lucky for that but then also you have to make new friends and you have to be tested in this way and it's and surely there can't be anything wrong

with just like stacking friends upon friends but it's not reasonable especially in modern life But I was reading, there's something called Dumbar's number, or Dumbar's theory, which is about how many friends, how many connections, rather, a person, a human animal can or should maybe maintain. And I think the number is made, first I read it, I was like this high than I thought. And now I'm thinking it's lower. And it's 150 connections. That's not all close friends, but it's 150 connections is sort of the most amount of people you need to know. it was based. It's a British anthropologist who came up with this idea and I think drew on like early primitive societies because you would have a village and that would be optimal. That was the amount of people you needed to know for all of your needs to want to stick together. But then I'm thinking meet people at some point. I remember having like 900 friends on Facebook. You'd have this many people that you follow. You'd have this, that and the other. You'd run into people all the time because modern life is very busy and very moment. I do wonder whether it's like this social, modern phenomenon of we meet too many people and

so we're unable to prioritize or filter the ones that are actually giving and loving connections from people that you just happen to know and are in the same space as. And I think medium friends often are that. And in some cases probably do, especially if you work with them, especially if they're your partners, friends, girlfriends or whatever it is, they may be in any other situation wouldn't have earned that spot, but you're spending an outsized amount of time with them. I just think that's a very funny idea of like 150 people. How do you monitor that? Do you keep a running tally? Do you get to 151 and you're like, I'm sorry, darling, you're out? I don't know. I wonder what you both think about that number because to me, I love the idea of

there being a science to friendship and someone saying, you're not failing. You've just hit capacity, but 150 people, too many, do you view? I think that again, it's this. this layered thing of that's in order to have that many people then you do you're going to have people that exist in like a you know like you look at the picture of the earth and it's got all the layers of the core and you just got that kind of thing but I also do think that we've got this weird thing where I think culturally we have found a way to celebrate friendship especially for women so much safety comes from having a close community of women especially in a patriarchal It's women that will probably save you from a domestic abuse situation or like a dangerous

marriage. Like I think for women, friendship is so important. At the same time, because of the modern world, because of we don't live in these like small communities where you're next to your neighbour and you go to church and there might be like literally 150 people living in your village, all of whom are a community. On the one hand, we value it more. But on the other hand, we have such lower threshold to access that day to day, every single moment, knowing that if you pop out the house, you're going to see Sandra. If you go to the pub later, Deborah will be there. It's a much, it's a much different thing. And we all are living such more individual lives, a lot of friendship. You might feel, sometimes I recognize this. I think that I've seen my

friends loads. And then we'll realize it was actually six weeks ago that we got a coffee. but because we talk on WhatsApp, because I'm following them on Instagram, there's this false idea that we've been connected and we actually haven't. But I just think it's a shape-shifting thing and I think finding comfort in that and finding comfort in to go right back to Chanty's piece at the beginning about that low maintenance thing, to find comfort in that what's so lovely about getting older is that your friends do love young additionally. And sometimes it's so funny because it's normally me doing this and I think I've done it to you both as well. But I'll be like, guys, I'm really anxious. Does everyone hate me? Just because, like, we haven't spoken

from it. And Poppy did the other day in the group, and she's never done it before. She was like, can I just, she was like, I'm really sorry, but I'm just feeling really worried that you will hate me. And we had to be like, no, we love you. Sorry. Like, I'm really busy. I was in Ireland. And then Steph was like, oh, I'm doing this. Yeah, she's literally just had a baby. She's like, oh, thank God. But it's like that comfort of knowing, like, so rarely do I feel like that anymore. But when I was younger, I'd be so worried if I saw on someone's Instagram story that someone was hanging out without me, like you got all this fear. And then you get older and you just learn this unconditional language of basically like a sisterhood. And that is

really hard to come by. And that you cannot have with 150 people. I think that is for most people between like one and 12. I do have some friends who are like amazing social butterflies who have these big girlfriend groups. I'm much better with smaller ones. Well, speaking of our next topic from low maintenance and medium friends, to friendship and motherhood. I recently read an article in vogue by Corolla Lovering titled, Why Is It So Hard to Maintain Friendships from Your 20s in Your 30s? And in the piece, she writes about a situation like this,

opening Instagram one day and seeing a photo of three of her best college girlfriend having lunch together about 45 minutes from her house. And the shock of realizing that not only hadn't she been invited, she hadn't even known that one of the women was in town. And as the only woman in this friendship group with children, It hit a nerve. And she asked herself if she had become a, quote, reductive presumption, a person not worth inviting because of her role as a mother. And so with her feelings hurt, she opened their group chat and sent a middle finger emoji. As it actually turned out, she wasn't being left out of the lunch. It was a last minute thing that hadn't been planned in advance. As she writes in the piece, it's a situation based in truth and one that is all too common. Many friendships do not survive from 20s to 30s. And the cause of that is often, the decision to either become a parent or not. What did you both think about this piece? Obviously, we are speaking from the child-free side of things, but we're all of that age now

where friends are having children, friends are choosing not to. There are situations where I'm hanging out in a group and the mothers, the hashtag mothers, are not present. And I think I probably haven't felt as, I haven't felt guilty, but I maybe should have been slightly more cognizant of that and how my friends who are parents, feel seeing that. I don't know. I think it's a really interesting conversation. The thing I really liked in that piece was just how she had the chat with her friend and allowed her friend to understand her friends in the friendship group to understand how she was feeling. And it came out in quite a dramatic way. I think she said that she sent like a middle

finger emoji to them and then it all kind of came out what the, what had actually transpired that it was a last minute plan. She hadn't been left out because I think I think I think there's a careful balancing act with situations like this. And I find this really difficult with friendships to not give in to the like core beliefs I have about either myself, i.e. that people might find me annoying or people looking for an excuse to like move away from me, things like that. And it's it's like a careful balancing act between challenging those thoughts and also communicating your fears with people. So you give them a chance to reassure you and letting them reassure you about things. Like you said, and only with asking people if they're annoyed with you

or just letting your friends know that you're feeling a bit insecure needs and reassurance. So I really loved that she included that she did that. And I think it was a nice way to explore this issue where it is like, yes, we can see that either in our lives or through pop culture, having a child is one of the biggest life changes that people go through. And it would be just like a natural, I guess, source of difference and also challenge for friendships. I completely see how that can happen. And as somebody who has not had a child, but has a very good friend about to have a child, it is something that I really want to mitigate because I would hate to be the person who doesn't understand what they're going through or to ever make them feel as if I have moved

away because they have less time or ability to meet up with me. So I really want to actively challenge all of that. So it is, of course, a problem. So I think, I don't know, having a piece that goes into why so many people struggle with this, why it is a huge challenge in your friendship is really important. But I also love that at the same time, it always comes back to you, but all you can do is really communicate with your friends. All you can do is give them a chance to be there for you and to let them know that you feel the gap between you and them, and then give them a chance to repair or to just prove to you or reassure you that that's not the case, hopefully. What did you think? It's such a difficult time in our lives and more and more

like I have a few friends and I have children. One of my best friends has just had a baby and I think you both touch on so importantly like making sure mothers are included. I think the other side of it that's also hard is friends feeling like because their parents and our mothers, they're also not there's like two sides of it there's the the mother potentially feeling like she's no longer being invited and then there's the childless friends thinking oh I'm no longer she's not going to want to be with us anymore she's not going to want to do what we used to do before because now she's got a baby and I think really it is just like an open chain of dialogue constantly and because I think there's also it's such a shame-filled thing the motherhood thing whether you want them or you

don't whether you're trying or you're not whether you've got friends you don't have them or do and it's like it can actually create a lot of awkwardness because I think people that are mothers might feel guilty about, you know, if their friend might want to have a baby and then people who don't want to have children might not want to bring up that they don't necessarily love the idea of being a mother in case it offends someone. So it's such tricky territory and the only way out is through communication always. And I think that we are luckier in our generation because we have got a language for this more now. And I think mothers have been given so much more of a voice even in just the last five years, even in talking about the difficulties with conception, the difficulties with miscarriage, I think we're so much more in the know as childless people than we were before. Everything was kind of like hush, hush, smoke and mirrors, didn't really know the intensity of it. And I think mothers weren't allowed to speak up for fear of looking like they were going to complain. And because we are of a generation where people are becoming mothers a bit later, I think we're armed with so much more knowledge to hopefully mitigate these circumstances a tiny bit more. But it does

take a lot of fiddling. Two of my really close girlfriends, the ones that have her babies, have both left London. So to go back to what you were saying, Richarda, what's fun about that is when I go to theirs, I'm getting really good quality time. So I spent like a long weekend with my friend over the bank holiday with her baby. And then my other friend, she's got like a proper house. So I go there, I feel bad actually. She'd literally just had a baby. She made me lunch. I was like, wait, something's going wrong here. This isn't right. You've just given birth. And she's that, I'm making lunch now. And I'm just sitting there holding the baby. She's making lunch for everyone. She was just sat there holding the baby for, I'm not joking.

he's so cute and he just slept the entire time. So six hours, I didn't move, just holding the baby. So that's really nice and it does, it does change it, but I haven't, I haven't got to the point where it's actually been, nothing has happened yet in my specific circles. There's also like broader friendships, like my friends from school, some more of them have had babies, but I'm not as close with them enough for it to like impact our friendship. But I do feel, and I hope that if and when these things start to happen, we are better about it. And even now we have these conversations in the group chat like should we do dinner a bit earlier because so and so is pregnant

and then everyone's like yeah actually I'd love to have dinner at six anyway so that's great or like I'm going to come but I'll be leaving because you know I've got to get back and I think that this comes with age again but I would have like I'm not joking almost like an anxiety attack if I saw two of my fans hanging out without me knowing in my 20s it would like send me into a spiral I'd like they hate me don't want to hang out with me why are they hanging out without me and now what I love is that like I've got these separate groups and lots of them are like four or five people and if two of us hang out from one group no one gives a shit it's just like cool I'll hang out with you another time thank God I've been freed from those anxieties because it used to drive me insane and then I'd be too scared to do it so yeah I'm not to say that I'm totally evolved but I have through active learning like genuinely had to work on this I think and I hope that when this does become more of a thing when more of my friends have children

we will know how to figure it out without it getting to the point of anyone feeling excluded or they might feel excluded but it's like it's just a set of circumstances that we're trying to all work around as best we can to um yeah again quote olivia petter who friend of the podcast and also probably the person who's work we do draw on the most thank you Olivia petter um she wrote a piece for the telegraph i don't know if you i don't know if we shared this or we talked about this but um it's called if babies are ruining your friendships the problem is probably you. I think it was maybe this year or last year. And she talks about, because she is, I think when I read this was in a very similar position, like we're in similar

lines of work, single dating life is, I mean, dating in this modern age, as we've talked about is difficult. It's tough. No babies. And then she talks about how you talk to like a pregnant friend or a friend with children. And then they might ask you, do you want this? Are you going to join us. You're going to have babies. You're going to come over here. And there's a real impulse when someone who is married, settled down, about to have a baby, settled in other ways, asks you that. The impulse is to like bite back and get annoyed and almost kind of really firmly have to explain to them. Like, my situation literally does not allow me to think about children and kind of feel like they have been insensitive and they have crossed a line and you are

the wounded party because, you know, it is sometimes like, are you thick? I'm living in, you know, people ask me that. I'm like, I'm living at home. I'm not thinking about babies at this point in time and how dare you even make me think about it. But obviously, your friends are not asking you that to make you feel like shit. They're just at a time in their lives. They're making conversation about the thing that's happening to them. It's actually not always as combative as it needs to be.

And she gets into this in the piece. She kind of dives into how this expectation is placed on women to have babies and to think to figure it all out. It shames the people asking the questions and it pits us against one another as women when actually it's great to have these conversations. It's great to talk about it. It's great to figure out and like renegotiate, mitigate our circumstances and just be really honest with each other because I don't think any of my pregnant friends who are like, oh, do you want babies? Do you want all this? Would mind if I said, do you know what? I'm going to tell you why that question actually strikes a nerve. I think they'd be like, that's really interesting

and thanks for saying it. And she also talks to the piece about how there is this expect coded into society, of course, that women, women should have babies, of course, they should have babies, quote unquote, on time. And women who either wait longer and have babies much later, there's an implicit shaming for that. There's also an implicit shaming for women who don't have children at all. And we code, even though we treat mothers absolutely appallingly, we code it as the right and good thing. And it makes enemies of us because even if you know better, you are very aware of that coding. And it makes mothers really lonely. because even though they are framed as,

okay, you've done the correct thing, tick, well done, you've created a family, you've created life, will allow you. They're still shamed to the fucking health. They're still very lonely. They're still very put upon. And for the rest of us who are not having babies, you feel like I'm defective, I'm defunned.

Whereas actually, we are all on the same side. We are still all mothers. We are still all put upon by the patriarchy. And I think it's just a no-sum game. And I really like this piece because I have definitely felt that like want to bite back. And actually that does put a friendship in Jeopardy way more than someone having a baby. It is the attitude that you adopt afterwards of like, oh, okay, I guess we've got nothing

common or, oh, okay, I guess you hate me now. Or it's that like defensiveness and that assumption and you shouldn't assume because it makes an ass out of you and me. I completely agree with you. And you said it straighter and like more directly than I did. And I kind of wanted to say a little bit of what you were saying, which is. I'm glad the writer got to the point of just being like, oh, I really projected on my friends in this scenario because we are all capable of projection. And I think a lot of this issue is legitimate. But I also think there's a lot of both sides projecting on each other. Oh, they don't have time for me. Oh, they don't centre or prioritise me in the same way they used to. That can be true in your scenario. But it also could be projection. You'll only know that by having a conversation. and directly tackling it. And so I really love that that piece did that. And I think all we can do

is just kind of notice if we are projecting, but also just talk about it because we live inside our heads so much. It's so hard not to narrate friendships, experiences in our lives. And I think with something as big as having a child, you just don't have time to not talk about shit. You don't have time to just like let a friendship fizzle out if you don't want it to. You just have to deal with it head on. And I think reading this has made me think if I ever get in this scenario, I'm not going to just live inside my head, narrate the story and get to the ending and just leave it there. I'm just going to ask the person how they're feeling and just maybe infringe myself a little bit because I think you have to if you care about that person and just ask how

they're doing, check, check in, ask if the gap has been down to anything, if you can support them in any way and then say how you've been feeling. That's all you can do. Yeah, this is also making me now feel guilty because I've just realized that one of my friends who's pregnant and has a toddler, I haven't applied to her text. Because I think the other implicit thing is if you're a single woman or just like someone that doesn't have sort of this nuclear family, like a husband and a baby, is that they're not lonely. And so like if you're really busy, they've got like this, but there's like you said, Beth, there's a huge loneliness to motherhood because it's such an isolating thing.

And I think that that's a trap we can fall into where we're kind of the projection thing, you said, And I also want to talk about resentment, which is like jealousy's fraternal, ugly twin. And I think the opposite to resentment is fierce cheerleading. Because I think whether you're the single woman in the city or married mother in the suburbs, you can get this feeling of resentment

that neither of you are like seeing each other properly or recognizing what each other are going through. and if you feel that slightly it might change how you act towards them without you saying it you might not even notice but you might start like pulling away a bit being like they might be busy working but I'm a mother or like they they might be busy parenting but I've actually got a really busy life as a single person whatever it is and I've had to practice this as well because jealousy is like one of the worst emotions I think can be really corrosive and it might even feel like jealousy and the only way to rectify this and I've said this before is to be like

so fiercely supportive, proud and being like what you're doing is amazing. I'm so happy, like blah, blah, blah, because it brings that back and it's such like an energy transference thing. But if you're shoving loads of positive energy their way, it will keep you afloat. It'll help your friendship stay alive. And being happy for someone else's journey, whether or not it's something you want, whether or not it's something you might not like at all, helps, I think, give you a bridge with which your love can sail over. God. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know if this makes any sense,

but it's something I've had to practice. It's like, because I think there is also, this comes back to Carrie Bradshaw's, the episode, the baby shower episode where she loses Manolo Blannick and everyone at the party's like, oh, it's just a shoe.

And she's like, I spent hundreds of pounds on her wedding. I spent hundreds of pounds in a baby shower. And like, what does anyone celebrate me for? And I think that's, that's another stick that can come up at this point in time when you have sort of like

the haves and have-nots in terms of who's on that traditional path. and who's not got there yet or is decided they're not going to go down that route. There can feel a little bit. I think that's where the resentment can come because you're like, where am I getting celebrated? And I think the trance to that is to be celebrated, you have to celebrate someone else. And then just instinctively people like pour it back into you. And again, I just think all of these things are active, practiced, communication based,

which is something that is in your phenomenon. I think people thought you'd sort of like get into a relationship and the relationship it would just unfold before your eyes. You'd make a friend and they'd be a friend for life. And we're seeing this with, you know, older people reporting cases of loneliness because it's a job in a lovely way. You have to work at all of these things. You have to make quite difficult decisions and it has to be a process of action and choice rather than just sort of, okay, I've tethered myself to you and now I guess we'll just bob along together. And I think that goes back to my original point of why I do think medium friendships are great because it is nice to have

someone who will just pop up for brunch with you, have a spicy marg, and then there's sort of no recourse for action afterwards. Perfect. The only thing I was going to say is that episode delightfully called The Right to Shoes. Oh yes. That's so good. I do what I think last thing that I would say on this is that there are cases where and perhaps this is when it's the single child-free women, like the only child-free women in a group of mothers where it actually is healthier for her, or she does make a choice, to allow those friendships to lapse a little bit because motherhood is beautiful, expansive, huge job. It changes so much for so many women. It rearranges priorities and, you know, the cells of your body, as some of my friends have said,

and sometimes that does mean being unable to shop for your friends for years. years at a time because life has suddenly rearranged itself. And I've spoken to child free women who said, I just couldn't continue to go out to the suburbs. I couldn't continue to ask and ask and not hear anything back. And though they understand where their friend is coming from, they don't blame them. I think there is a case to be made that some child free women are right or it's the only thing that they can do in allowing a friendship to change and to become kind of a medium friendship when it was once a really close community because motherhood does it alters everything and I think hearing both sides I'm sure as a mother you're like but I don't want to lose my friends like

you don't understand how hard this is I'm doing this I'll probably be back on the scene in a few years but I also understand child free women who go the friendships I keep close to my chest and like the most dear in my life I want them to be people that I can see a lot I want them to be people that I can spend time with gone holiday with really support one another and when one friend is not able to do that for totally legitimate reasons. I think there is a case to be made that you are as the child-free person in that who has, quote unquote, technically more time and will be doing maybe some more of the labour, are allowed to maybe allow that distance to permeate and allow that friend to become less important. It's an impossible situation, but in cases where that's happened,

I just don't think there's always blame. I don't think it's always possible to maintain friends, friendships between child-free people and mothers, because the things that you bond over, the time together, the crazy nights out, whatever else. Without that, some friendships don't survive. A lot of them do. For some people, the answer will be, let's find new things to bond over. Let's completely reconfigure things. Like, things have changed, but I want in my life forever. I just don't think it's always possible. And that's not, it's a very sad thing, but I just don't think there's always anyone at fault. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, as always, you can find us every single Friday and every single Wednesday,

which is when we release everything in conversation with an extra dive into a topic or discussion with all of your opinions included. Please do also follow us on Instagram at Everything is Content Pod. That's where we decide potential topics, share weekly videos and invite you to slide into our DMs with your opinions. We're also on TikTok at Everything is Content Pod too. And final thing, reviews and ratings are so helpful for getting the podcast out there. We read them all, we treasure them all, and we love every single one.

Even the mean ones. No, I don't. I personally don't like those ones. Actually, no, we don't. Yeah. See you next week for part two. Bye. Bye.