Goes Without Saying - resenting your friends: the one where you should've just been honest

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

we're dragging ourselves at this point. are you a shitty friend? do you find it hard to be honest with people you care about when you feel insulted? can we ever get over being jealous and comparing ourselves to our friends? honestly... we don't know. but join us (sephy & wing) in mulling over your friendship situs, drama, toxic boy "friends" and more.  speak your mind on our instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to Higher Priestess. I am Persephone. And I am Erin. And in this episode we are discussing... And you are... And who are you? And who am I? Little Gilderoy Lockhart reference. Just some Harry Potter going on there. We've asked you for your sit-choose because a lot of you are struggling with toxic friends and friend breakups and friendship dilemmas and they're fucking, some of them are juicy

and infuriating. Oh, love it. Also kind of outgrowing your friendships. Like what happens when you and your friend who you were close with have kind of gone different ways and it's like, how does that?

You're not a match. Honestly, it's's not a match you've swiped left shall we go straight in any any honorable quarantine mentions is my new thing that i ask you um i think we have to shout out animal crossing of course but not the new one because we don't have it this is how lame we are also like i'm not like other because we don't have it. This is how lame we are. Also, like, I'm not like other girls. I don't play Animal Crossing on a Switch. We don't have New Horizons. We play Wild World.

Wild World on my MacBook Air from an old website called, like, Arcade Stop. That is so... It's awful. And the frame rate is way off and everything's awful. Well, I'm one step up. I'm playing new leaf which is just one you're living a life of luxury yeah i know it's on at least a 3ds like it's nowhere near a switch but it's a 3ds it's like okay but it's quite embarrassing it's got loads

of stickers that i put on my 3ds when i was like younger one is so embarrassing and it's so embarrassing because i also had this sticker on my laptop when i went to work like when i was on like so it must have not been that it was kind of like four years ago um yeah when you were like 18 yeah and it's a big sticker in pink that says feminist oh cool and it kills me it kills me because i that's cute like i honestly thought that was like my brand like i'm kind of i'm not like other girls like feminist girl kind of is feminist girl on my work laptop pink and white like bubbly it's like bubbly writing it's like a baby pink and it's not cute it's kind of the opposite of feminist as well because i'd be writing for my old job at this wedding like magazine writing about like how to lose weight

for your wedding big sticker on my thing feminist like i'm literally i'm literally killing it was a big fuck you to everyone else in the office i'm literally killing women's self-esteem and at the same time a self-proclaimed feminist it's awful it's absolutely awful well we do what we gotta do so yeah i'm reliving some nightmares but i'm also in the fun fun world of animal crossing so stunning what's your world called echo it always is oh that's cool it's always called really yeah because i always play this game called harvest moon i don't know if i've mentioned it to you yeah which i'm obsessed you mentioned it to me you mentioned it to me millions of times but this might be if you're listening the first time you've ever heard it but trust me there's lots more

mentions to come there's more where that came from genuinely if you play harvest moon please please please dm us because i'll talk to you play harvest moon please please please dm us because i'll talk to you about harvest moon till the sun goes down like honestly i love it so much i've been playing that i've been playing tale of two towns if anyone hits me up i'm trying to marry cam he's not biting also trying to marry some other guy called kana but he's also not biting that's what's going on in my life right now oh i've also been playing did you ever play the sims erb sims in the city on game boy advance no never i wanted it though and then i also was playing the sims busting out on game boy advance those are the games but i'm not playing them on my game

boy advance because that's nowhere to be seen after my parents traumatic divorce um so i'm playing it on my laptop on an old website i never liked their um sort of spin-off like different console games did you remember one thing that was called my sims yeah and it was kind of their big bobble heads yeah that's awful it was awful in my opinion i would never slander the franchise oh i'm slandering i would never slander my franchise. But that's what I've been up to. My Sims family are thriving though. Good. My Sims family are called the Embers. And they've all got names like.

Echo. Fire, Flame. No, not Echo. Echo is the name of my daughter in future. But similar, similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So similar. That style.

Kind of, they've all got kind of, they're all called like Scorpio. Things like that. Like they're quite cool names in my mind. I love it. Like the lamest of all names i love that sims is now socially acceptable yeah it's sad that it's not it's sad that it's not like why is it socially acceptable to like watch i've been watching netflix like i'm binging tiger king it's like suddenly that's romanticized oh we really make me sick it's a weird thing isn't it that's like you're it's kind of cool guys like right i've just been watching netflix but it's like that's just watching tv like you're just watching tv yeah that's not a cool hot thing like you've

basically just been watching come dine with me in reality like you're covered in kind of ketchup yeah and like dorito dust yeah it's not hot and the tv is on in the background like it's not it's yeah it's not like a cutesy thing but it's been made aesthetic it's like net let's net watch Netflix but it's like I've just done nothing but watch Netflix for days and it's like why is that hot you've literally just been watching dinner day on ITV essentially but I do kind of love that it's hot as well oh yeah it needs to be because it's um it's my lifestyle but i do i kind of enjoy the romanticization of things in what way i quite i quite like it i quite making like a tiny normal thing really cute oh yeah i was watching a youtube video the other day and they're like

i'm making my morning tea it's my ritual yeah exactly and i put the water in it's like god you've managed to make making a cup of tea aesthetic it's like god you really have a i like it yeah yeah but it's true that i think it comes down to that like human ritual and like our tendency to need um like a pattern and also like something to celebrate especially in times of trauma oh my god yeah literally it's like oh what so now a cup of tea is like totemic of your life yeah and it is it's like every morning i have a tea like i need my cup of tea in the morning yeah i completely agree i actually do need my cup of tea in the morning but it's also like it's weird that it's been made into like your morning routine it's like i'm not even thinking that that is part of my routine but it's not even a it's just like a you don't even

think of it it's like before you know you just got a tea in your hand it's not like I'm putting the tea bag in but that's why I quite like the romanticization because it makes me enjoy those things more yeah I get it like having a bath for me has changed since I was like 10 before it was like all right I'll just get in the bath now it's like oh it's my ritual of my bath time ritual it's like so stunning literally i'm putting crystals in my bath these days yeah it's like a whole thing so i think it's quite nice like i put crystals in the water like i put like a big fat crystals they sink right to the bottom i step on them they're quite sharp oh well i know where they are but when it's a bubble bath sometimes you've got to be a bit careful do you ever have

like bath salts and they don't um like kind of they're not like a mouse they're not like dissolving properly yeah well we got that one from goddess provisions our sponsor we love goddess provisions yeah they were really nice we've got this lavender um bath soak thing i used them all in one go did you no i've been really like eking it out like one salt at a time you've been charlie bucketing it one grain of salt i'm really like um a spoon at a time like a little shake wow it's because i've got weird flex but okay an abundance of bath salts when i say literally like a like a like a five litre paint bucket oh my god of bath crystals i have that and then like loads of other okay yeah you're not you're not needing it i kind of so it's kind of like i need to get through this shit i kind of have the one there's only so many

baths to be had i just have the one thing and i'm like let's make this last till let's save this yeah that's nice till the next box of goddess provision comes yeah yeah exactly should we get into the questions yeah let's do it okay I need to get them up I kind of want to ask you some questions about friendship though okay you go so what are your thoughts on like toxic friendships healthy friendships like do you think within your history of friendship that you have like worked out a way to keep your friendships healthy or like do you still struggle with like toxic friendships out growing your friendships like what is your what are your friendships like in life hmm I think sometimes my perspective on it my perspective on friendships and the reality of my friendships

is not um like don't always align yeah I agree as in I feel like verbally or like in my like kind of um if I'm like introspective I think communication is everything and that to me is healthy and that to me is like the way to make things work unfortunately um like i'm not perfect so i'm not a perfect communicator in all scenarios and then beyond that you could be perfect doesn't mean someone else or your friend is going to be also the perfect communicator and almost like willing to go there with you exactly if you can be asked to go yeah not everyone is kind of the problem i think with friendships is with romantic relationships there's an expectation and like a standard that you will meet in the middle and you will match the energy that is being you know it's much more reciprocal whereas i feel like in

friendships things are less lit and it's constantly being questioned yeah with relationships it's much like um romantic relationships if this isn't working you'll dip out hopefully yeah with relationships it's much like um romantic relationships if this isn't working you'll dip out hopefully yeah with friendships and also with romantic relationships it's like you're only expected to have one so it's constantly under analysis it's constantly being like um under a microscope constantly being looked at examined is this the best i can get yeah whereas with friendship it's like i've got so many of them and they're spread all over the globe. Yeah. Yeah. Huge, huge web of them. But I've got so many of them that it's like, I'm not only just balancing, it's not just one relationship.

I can't keep an eye on them at all times. Yeah. It's kind of, it was easier when you're in primary school. It's like, you're my first best friend, you're my second best friend and you're my third best friend. But now it's like, okay,

well, I have about seven, ridiculous. I've got about seven. All of you guys. 7 7400 of you besties but i've got about what seven second best friends and like all of this and it's just sort of like yeah okay so i'm kind of you're balancing all this stuff something's got to give i'm like looking after you at the moment but i've also got to it's so unromantic but a lot of admin and often i think in romantic relationships your

expectation of what you would want from a romantic partner is often mirrored by the person that you choose to be in a relationship with versus you could be friends with a whole load of people who see a good friend as something that is very different to what you are or what you would want yeah it's tough totally and also it's like what's the expectation because i have some friends that i used to see all the time and now it's like i don't need to see you all the time it doesn't mean i don't want to be friends with you just means that has shifted or i don't need to phone you all the time it's just things have shifted i don't want to be in constant comms with everyone i know i really don't it's just quite weird that it shifts yeah

so what do you think yours are like what's your friendship landscape looking like these days again I think I could be a better communicator or push that more because I think what we'll come to in this is that communication is key it's like so fucking obvious and it literally is the answer to life but it's like why can none of us fucking do it then and be consistent with community with communication yeah it's really difficult because even though i think you and i are good communicators yeah but with each other we're good with each other but that's because we will match it's almost like also in our lives i was gonna say we're on a similar path we're on the same path right now like we're hand in hand honestly the animals walk too how is that the second time we've said that in the season um but it's difficult because even though

i have friendships that are like insanely like of the utmost importance to me yeah they're not necessarily on the same they don't view um like they don't view life in the same way as me let alone relationships i think that's one of the main issues in my friendship landscape is that there kind of tends to be a bit of a disconnect between like um worldview and that is and especially I really really really struggle with like a political difference in that I am I mean you may have guessed from this podcast that we're both like left-wing liberal what I'm a fucking Tory you're like Brexit till I die um yeah so then and I have a few of my friends that that's just world view and like political um like compass just do not align and i just really struggle with like communication in that

way of like if i tell you what i think and you tell me back there's going to be an argument so what we just both turn a blind eye we just both ignore each other but i completely disagree with you yeah it's like what i'm supposed to reserve some energy ready to like essentially argue with people who i really care about yeah about about topics that i really care about and the sad thing is that no one's changing it's like as much as i am set in my thing of i am not budging i'm not budging on those views that i believe why should they yeah they're not budging on the fact that they don't they think oh but they're taking the money they're taking the jobs they're not budging they're not talking about here i have friends that genuinely believe that and have said very very similar things and have voted for

boris johnson and very very right wing things in their life um and stand by that with like their full chest and they're not budging they're not gonna budge because i one day say wait have you thought about um maybe the fact that's a bit um like wanky of you to think that and they're like yeah but they fight it yeah it's difficult because then obviously how could we ever get back to you're my number one best friend you're my number two best friend you're my number three it's like our issues are so far yeah from what they once were like and even then things were dramatic I don't have time to write a list of you exactly oh it's crazy literally yeah so friendship is complicated I think we're going to get into the answer of life the answer to everything is

communication but it is still the fucking hardest thing to do to like fucking say what you're actually thinking and actually give a shit what they think. I think a lot of people also hear communication is key. It's all about communication and translate that in their minds as to arguments, confrontation. Yeah. Like kind of being so vocal about things

and oh my God, it's so uncomfortable and blah, blah, blah. It's not necessarily, you just have to be honest. Yeah. And also care about what they're going to say because I think that's one of the god it's so uncomfortable and blah blah it's not necessarily you just have to be honest yeah and also care about what they're gonna say because i think that's one of the things it's like when you say to me communication is key oh brilliant talking that's my special skill i'll just say that say what i think but it's like yeah you have to listen and you might even have to question yourself and do all the difficult stuff yeah the communication isn't just saying what you think and turning a blind eye it's do you think it's worth it yeah it's not just write a monologue and say that it's like a whole it's just so much more yeah it's no it's a dialogue it's a full duologue honestly you thought it was

a monologue oh no it's a dialogue guys you've got to learn your lines and you better know your cues should we do some questions yeah okay we both loved this question right more than life itself wow i love doing things like this because it just shows how everyone is dealing with the same honestly same shit different day is that we really do all be living the same life yeah okay so they say my friend said she wants to be curvy like me i'm a size 10 and insecure because of her comments this makes my absolute blood boil curdle because it's just so i mean this is just so relevant and we've seen this time and time and time and time and time again like your friend basically being jealous of you and then saying something but also kind of bringing you down it's your drowning analogy we told it in one of them if you want to tell it

again this is my thing that i always think about whenever someone's trying to tear me down um essentially it's often people in your life who are closest to you um but they just can't stand to see you happy or see you succeed and they want to take a piece for themselves and it feels like they are drowning so miserable in their own lives like so upset with themselves drowning and they will happily use you and push your head down to keep them afloat my god shivers every time honestly retweet if you get shivers every time it was a real it's funny because that analogy obviously was a real um direct consequence of a really similar situation to this of someone commenting constantly

on my life and why i had things so easy or why i had things so shit and blah blah blah just keep me and my name out of your fucking business please i'm trying to do my backstroke here honestly i'm working on did you ever do a stroke that was called sculling no do you remember that i'm not gonna lie to you i'm not the strongest swimmer but there's one called sculling i could never perfect i'm always trying to work on that when i go for a dip what is it it's kind of you lie completely straight on your black on your bag and you just move your wrists in circles oh my god i don't have the wrist power for that i broke my wrists a long time ago no but then but then I invented my own stroke. Oh, what is it? You lie very flat on your front. Ooh.

Kind of like you're dead. And then you let yourself sink to the bottom and die. No, you just, you move your hands in kind of, it's called the helicopter, in like a helicopter motion. The fingers are pointed up and, to be honest, it does propel you somewhere, but not that very fast. Love it. I'll give it a go. give it a go the helicopter when i make it out alive of this

quarantine scenario and don't have a pool do you no far from so what do we think well this question just gets me specifically because it hits me very hard because of the specifics because it says i'm a size 10 and people call me curvy, which I am also a size 10. And if someone called me curvy with the connotations of curvy, it would trigger a load of my like body dysmorphic tendencies. And I think that would really, if it was coming from a friend, it would be particularly harmful to me.

So this one kind of gets my um like my blood curdling yeah yeah if you've listened to the body image episode you know about our experiences with body image and things like that so i think this one here hits particularly hard because also women are so judged on their like appearances and just everything about their physicality that your friend commenting on your weight specifically is just i would say unacceptable and needs to be addressed i completely agree and i completely agree yeah it needs to be addressed because i think as we've said already and i think what the theme that will come out what we will continue to say is essentially what you don't want to happen is for this to build up even more there's obviously some sort of pit of resentment already going on and you do not want it to fester or do

you i don't know if you don't and you want to you either want to cancel the friendship and you don't care about the resentment or you want to you think this is worth keeping around and you want to make it nicer for both of you yeah then you're 100 going to need to address it properly with like real honest communication and it's not going to be easy yeah also i don't think with comments like this it's worth throwing the whole friend away because it's like everyone is so as women we live in such a weird um weird society where we've been given all these insecurities that aren't our own and we've just internalized them all so your your friend has got a load of insecurities. They're carrying a load of shit about their body around,

like most of us are, like essentially all of us are. So it's going to come out, and it's unfortunately come out at you, which is horrific, it's unacceptable, blah, blah, blah. We know that it's not acceptable. Yeah. But it's also just like, it's worth questioning why they thought it was okay to say that, why specifically it was about you um and how they're feeling about their own body i think it's about asking all of these

questions rather than yeah and setting a very clear boundary of that is never ever okay to comment on that but but interrogating it rather than being like they're just a fucking insecure jealous bitch bye yeah why are they drowning yeah exactly it's like because we're all drowning yeah why were they drowning in the first place and then you can meet each other um kind of as equals part this life as equals but you can meet as kind of you can both come in you're coming from the same perspective the harry potter references are as equals they met they left this life as equals so stunning though that's from the animated section of the deathly hallows love it so my sister was saying that they shouldn't like that i was honestly saying this is one of the most stunning things i've ever seen in my life and i said it at

the time and i'll say it again part of this life as equals her voice just when they make the bridge it's the bridge and it's and it's like it's the reflection of the water then it's the bridge it's just like beyond it's beyond me so good yeah um okay so just pull that back that might get caught raining that back in who knows the bridge though the bridge it's like this podcast really is chaotic. Honestly chaotic. Yeah. It's difficult as well because I actually think there's a lot of, I think the reason often that a lot of us don't want to communicate or find it hard to like approach that situation is because you end up feeling a bit ridiculous

because it's like if you don't say it there and then, you've missed the slot it feels like. It feels like the train has just gone on and you've missed the window and now you're just left kind of standing on the platform with your luggage that's like festering bad feelings towards your friend. Yeah.

And it's like, what, you're going to bring it up in 10 months time? You said that one time and then it seems ridiculous. But I think it's necessary. I think I'm actually really good at this. This is the thing that I think me and my friends have got really good at. And you've actually pointed this out that me and a specific friend do this really well to each other I always say you and Stella communicate so perfectly because whenever anything

crops up it's just immediate and I had the pleasure of living with both Steffi and Stella last year yeah like it was last year and it's just nice to see. Anyway, take it away. I wasn't good at it, but we've developed it between the two of us. It's because you value the friendship as well. We have just really mastered it. And it's because of a long... Yeah, and we've really worked through some...

Not through shit, but we've just worked on our own insecurities together with stuff. And whenever something is said, so I'm trying to think of an example, but like if I said, if she says, oh, which outfit do you prefer? And I said, oh, I prefer that one. I just think the other one didn't suit you. Something just random like that.

It's completely off, like this didn't happen. And then later she would just say, hi, by the way, I actually, I don't know why, but that really upset me when you said that that didn't suit me. And it would even, no matter how ridiculous it is, it will always be brought up because then you go on the night out thinking, God, it just didn't suit me. It's obviously because I'm so ugly and gross and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And your insecurities just all come out if something has triggered you. But if you just bring it up to the person, it sounds so simple but it really was it's been a practice as well because some things seem so ridiculous that just can't you can't bring them up it's like I can't I can't possibly and there's some things I would never bring up to anyone else that I'd bring up to her and be like when you said that specific thing yeah it triggered me for this reason like can you explain why you said that and what it was and and you and it's always always nothing yeah the benefits of that as well are um twofold because not just are you resolving whatever situation it was and you get a chance to discuss kind of

your insecurities and deal through your own issues and have a bit of a kind of therapeutic chat with someone that you care about but just by having that communication where you both have to be brutally honest just shows that you care so much it's just such a really important reminder of like okay here we are both yeah fighting for something that we both want yeah it's just so important yeah because it's just a whole different way of communicating which has definitely taken me a long time. Like when we first met each other, it's not like we're always throwing out, we're like, you look fucking gross. Yeah.

No, I'm having to apologise. It's like just noticing small things that go unsaid in conversations that just usually get blown under the rug and just picking them out and being like, when you said that. So it just means there's nothing, it really is a friendship where there's nothing unsaid.

Yeah. Which is is to be honest I think my kind of um blueprint for all my other friendships same and rare yeah but it also it's work it's like it does take two people to be like yeah we're gonna commit literally we are in a relationship yeah but it's like two people committing to like okay we're gonna um not let emotions like insecurities rule some like i don't know it's just it's just it's just been really healthy yeah i think what's really important as well for the person who left this message is if you sometimes as well you don't say things straight away because you almost don't realize that it's upset you or you're not sure quite why you don't realize it's hurt you yeah or your instinct is to be like someone say oh kevi oh yeah cool laugh it off or something

not that that is ever offensive just come out with something yeah you just make a big old joke or you just like yeah or just completely ignore it talk about something else well you brush it away because the immediate kind of dig your your gut reaction isn't to be like oh let me have an amazing communication about this it does take a few minutes and sometimes it comes out an hour later and you realize wait why am i feeling a bit bad and you trace it back oh it was because of that comment weeks later yeah exactly and yeah so when we got asked this question i initially thought of like this very specific example that we both witnessed between two of our friends and it was specific example that we both witnessed between two of our friends and it was such a bizarre thing that to for someone to say but also so common and we've all heard this and we've all done this and

we've all been the recipient of this kind of comment so many times but one of our friends was trying on a pair of jeans was it yeah she was trying on a pair of jeans and she the other friends and she said oh my god these are getting so tight on me like I can't they're always so tight on me and the other friend said oh I have that pair of jeans too but they're always so loose on me and it was just a cop and nothing was said nothing more than that but it's just enough for the friend that was trying on the jeans they were too tight for that just to linger in her mind and she brought it up to the rest of us later it should have obviously been expressed to the person but it

was just that thing of like um that was such a camouflaged insult that it's you can't you feel like you almost can't bring it up but it just goes somewhere in you of like oh thanks you basically just called me fat but very very subtly and in a very manipulative way that you almost feel guilty to acknowledge it yeah i think also the common theme amongst a lot of your situations is the subtlety of what it means to be insulted yeah yeah and even if for in that example that you just gave even if the other friend it just came to her mind she said oh my god that's so funny because mine is so big like i keep meaning to like take them i keep meaning to get a smaller pair blah blah yeah i can almost guarantee that after she said it even if she didn't intend to say it in that insulting way after she would have

thought oopsie and she very easily could have said i really didn't mean it like that by the way like yeah or even 10 minutes later be like oh it just sunk in that when i said that yeah it could have sounded like i was saying it like this and i 100 wasn't like did you were you upset by what i said etc yeah and that needs to become normalized that kind of conversation exactly because i was gonna say that kind of conversation sounds so extreme jarring and almost unrealistic yeah to be like did it upset you when i said that or i've just realized what i've said might have sounded yeah really ridiculous and i just wanted to say sorry like did that upset you i completely agree but the more you say it the more normal it becomes and it should be yeah normalized because that's the only way you get through without building up hatred for people that you spend a lot of time with yeah exactly

because now that was never expressed between those friends and it will live on forever but it kind of just does just live in you a little bit of like oh that time when they said that and also when you you were talking about the subtlety of things and i think that's so key because the subtlety for both of these examples is you are fat but we acknowledge that being fat is not inherently bad it's not a bad thing to be we should be comfortable with being called that because it's not negative we've only been encouraged to hate our body through bodies through the patriarchy so it's like you have this weird guilt of the fact that shouldn't be an insult but you are offended because we've been brainwashed and it's this weird thing of like you want to acknowledge why is that offensive yeah you're

not wrong for being insulted for being called curvy by one of your friends that's valid yeah and it's incredibly layered because we've all been told to hate yeah yeah general rule of thumb just don't comment on what anybody looks like ever yeah my mum always used to say things to me don't comment on anything that somebody cannot choose and i think that's really true because it's like you could kind of say like what a ridiculous hat that you're wearing. But you wouldn't say, I hate your eye colour. It's like, oh, well, there's nothing I can do. I can get rid of my hat, but I can't.

My eyes are forever brown. Like, it's just quite, I think, quite a good rule of thumb. Yeah. Room for improvement. I will always, always just push communication and authenticity with like authentic lack of ego conversation with saying not my, I'm happy with my body. It's like, you don't need to be happy with your body. You don't need to be body positive here. You can just say. Often the immediate reaction is to overcompensate. Yeah. Yeah. I also just, it made me think about a similar situation

I had and actually the situation that the drowning scenario came out of which is hilarious i would be heartbroken if i like had some sort of relationship with somebody we weren't friends anymore and they came up with a whole like analogy of how i made them feel of drowning awful yeah but um i was in by the time i'd realized and picked up on all of the things over the years that they had said to me that made me feel a certain way it was too late because they were no longer in my life they're still alive but no longer in my life thank god yeah and i didn't want to i was in no position to contact them again and say hey when you said this on the 12th of

december in 2012 it made me feel this way um so i wrote it all down i wrote like a long list of everything bad that i had stored in myself about me and like between us and blah blah blah and then just like got rid and that's quite nice i think really nice like if you're in a situation where someone has ever said anything to you and you're not you're not going to bring it up get out of you i know it sounds like dumb to write it down but it actually is quite nice because you can kind of write quick angrily and really scribble and like really press hard on the paper and just i love that and then it's like okay well i finally thought about everything you did so there's no need to think about it ever again write a letter 100 i never send it yeah because i'd

constantly be going through my life thinking oh fuck i just remembered that thing they said i completely forgotten about that yeah and it's like if you keep remembering things bit by bit if you kind of establish a new memory which is just you in the paper it's like just your memories nothing to do with them it's so true and you rewrite all of those memories of just the way that you think about it very healing i also think that's a really healthy thing to do after a breakup or after yeah i burnt it well i did that i told you about this when i wrote a letter that was never ever ever going to send and burnt it and it genuinely is it sounds so like wicker girl do you know what i mean like it's so um like you just morph in simply can't yeah you honestly honestly You morph into a witch at this point.

But you literally write a letter and you just burn it. And it's just so fucking... You just literally feel it leave you. Because it's like, yeah, that's never going to be read, but it's out of me now. And I love it. It's literally a fucking magic spell, but I love it. And if it's not, do it again.

Yeah, and also, it's not out of you forever. Like, it's going to come up again. But it's also, you get your thoughts out. Yeah. Because for me, it was a real do it again. Yeah, and also, it's not out of you forever. Like, it's going to come up again, but it's also you get your thoughts out. Yeah. Because for me, it was a real issue that I kept thinking kind of on a Friday afternoon, it'd be like, la-di-da-di-da. Oh my God, they told me that once.

And it's like, I actually don't have the time to be constantly reminding myself of these dumb things that I thought I'd forgotten. So I'm just going to get them out one last time. And then you reenact a whole argument where you, like, beat them in an argument. And it's like, what? Yeah yeah you finally say what you say don't no more fake arguments in the shower guys paper i'm burning it send us pictures of your letters that you're burning

do you remember that time that we had a candle and we put self we do you remember me and erin did a magic spell. It didn't work. It didn't work. It backfired. It was a real eat slugs moment. What we did is we got a candle and we wrote down on a piece of paper, self-hatred.

Oh my God. So mortifying. We wrote down self-hatred on a piece, a very, very small piece of paper. We're going to burn self-hatred on a piece a very very small piece of paper and we're like we're gonna burn self-hatred it doesn't exist anymore we're getting rid of it from the world and we put it into the candle but because it was a candle and not a fire it fell straight into the wax and kind of crystallized and just became a laminated piece of paper essentially with the word self-hatred written really clearly on it i was obviously the most i've ever i've got a picture of it as well it's just

a big old candle that says oh my god oh shit and it was just this piece of paper that was really thick but you could really clearly see self-hatred and maybe i'll put it on the story so everyone can see it if we get any dms completely like um diminishes all of our credibility of everything we just said it's like if all else fails laminate a piece of paper in wax your embarrassing letter that you've written like i still love you it was like a kitchen candle that everyone would light it's like people are gonna see this fuck that was so funny forever sealed in wax so that's why there's still self-hatred in the world

guys we didn't manage to abolish it maybe next time next cue yeah let's do the next one so my best friend and i are kind of going down the same career path and I noticed it gets competitive. Ooh. We have drifted recently, which I think has been good for us. I can't tell her any of my future business plans either. She just copies me and takes them as her ideas when they were mine. I'm not the only one who sees this either.

I don't know if I should work on fixing the friendship or if I should just let it drift. A lot going on there. I love love this one i love when people write they did this in the question boxes but like jumping from question box to question box i was loving it it's like a whole puzzle you've got to put together um yeah i love this because i think it's so um a universal problem and i had this in school and you're going to have this in every career you go into the thing that I immediately think of when I look at this question is how as you say universal it is and just I think not even if you're on the same career path I think just in life especially amongst women it's just so prevalent that there's so much comparison it's really hard to avoid

completely you're because we're told that we're um we're just told a load of fucking bollocks and it goes somewhere it sits in you and it just waits to jump out at someone and the people it jumps out are the people closest to you so you see your friend succeeding and you view it as a as a direct attack on your own success which is horrific And it's something that we are constantly challenging within ourselves. And it's so important to constantly challenge. Really difficult. Yeah.

Because beyond like communication, so they've drifted already. Yeah. So the other friend, I am inferring, the other friend is also picking up on this vibe and there's just a whole lot of kind of under the surface tension, think what i find sad about this one in particular is that it's surrounded by korea and like therefore capitalism it's like

only one can be number one type of situation yeah it's like you're not jeopardizing your life to have a friend god it's awful like they're not mutually exclusive you could have both you kind of need both you you absolutely do and also you need a friend you need one whether a career or a friend one is man-made and one is instinctual go for the fucking friend always go for the friend one is completely a societal construct of my career my career which is grounded in ego and money and ridiculous things and material possessions and just like um external opinions of your success man-made doesn't exist the other one is human connection with a like-minded

person go for that always always prioritize that i think what also what this person is struggling with is that yeah i think i think the person wants that because they want to have this friendship and yet their friend is like stealing their ideas that would oh fucking piss me off well that's happened to me before imagine i used to have someone at school many a time who i won't say the lesson too specific lesson is too obvious but i had someone who we were quite competitive in this one particular lesson and they always would kind of take my ideas a little bit I actually had it once at uni it's so painful when someone takes your ideas because it's so it feels so personal and um it just builds up such resentment because it's like

how dare you take something that was very much inside my own body I expressed to you and now you pass it off as your own it's so painful it's really um sour yeah and it it leaves you with that poison feeling in your body of just like now I've got to prove that I was the smart one and it's like oh I actually think I've just thought of the answer to this situation which is not my so this is kind of what my friend does when her her friend she has a friendship that is very much rooted in ego and the girl kind of that she's friends with is kind of very trying to be competitive with her about things and um trying to kind of prove that she's like better at everything and kind of the prettier one the cooler one and more people like her and things like that they're very very old friends

like they're kind of her like childhood friends so it's not a friendship she's willing to sacrifice yet that cannot be going on what she does is absolutely genius and she takes her swimming into a swimming pool they've got wet hair they're in swimming costumes and it's just so genius because you cannot have an ego when your hair is wet and you're in a swimming hair. They're in swimming costumes. And it's just so genius because you cannot have an ego when your hair is wet and you're in a swimming pool and you're in a swimming costume and you're a bit drowning a little bit and you're doing some fucking doggy paddle

and you're doing the scuffle or whatever it's called, sculling. You're like, I invented a new stroke. And they immediately, because their friendship was made in childhood and now they're adults and they're struggling with that kind of dynamic of like um competitiveness and things like that it just brings it all back and i think it's fucking

genius because it's so clever strips ego from the whole thing and you're just two kids in the water again and it's genius i honestly think it's it's so the go-to way if you're in a competitive situation with your friend go and you still value that friendship go to a place that the ego has no place it's just ego cannot exist in a swimming pool we're not talking also like a glamorous um swimming pool it's not like a pool party no it's like a kind of all the old people around we're talking about a legend or they were r.i.p that's a bit much the corona is going to my head yeah just go somewhere that just cannot be glamorous and you're not in an outfit and all your makeup comes off and you're back to being like um a human um an animal essentially you're no longer just pure

friends yeah it's like there's so much pretense so say you're meeting your friend for coffee you're kind of pretending to be adults and you're pretending that's like a normal situation like we're going for coffee but it's like but we made friends by throwing mud in each other's faces when we were seven and now we're going for coffee and i put on a little outfit i've got little earrings in and i'm going for my look and i've come with a load of fucking baggage and ego with how i've chosen to dress myself we've both driven here separately and you're gonna say oh so how is your job it's great mark from the office says blah blah blah and if you don't break that barrier immediately it won't be broken the whole time and you'll drive home feeling a bit like ill totally and have you had that a bit stale i've had that loads definitely

you need to break the barrier immediately of being like my hair's really greasy i've just done a shit yeah just say i've just done a shit yeah something kind of that just immediately lowers the stakes and i would always say don't go for coffee don't meet in a cafe because it's just it's an environment that just is so fake to me what is this a job interview why are we sitting opposite each other drinking a cup like what is that like that's never happened before usually we're sitting in our pajamas and we're talking about whatever and we look like states why are we in outfits drinking from a cup opposite each other no kind of are we like autumnal christian bloggers

no with our pumpkin spice literally i'm drinking a hot cocoa like no i can't do it because i'm like but i will meet you for a fucking dog walk where we're gonna step in shit and we can fucking laugh our heads off kind of you need to like go to the cinema and then like i was gonna say the cinema the cinema is genius it's the place to be god i can't wait to get back in that cinema oh you just wait day cinema's not gonna know what's hit it should we answer the next question yeah okay next question and we're answering this in the nick of time it just came in just now just came in hot off the press bear with because it's a bit complex but i think it's interesting on a couple levels so there's a couple things i want to yeah and also we're really sorry if we didn't answer your questions we literally got so many questions about this and we just talk

for hours and hours on each single one if you want another friendship just hit us up and we'll do another one so here we go first term of uni best friends with a boy who'd always complain about his girlfriend from home i'd always tried to see her side of things but ultimately she sounded toxic in brackets cutting off his friends etc so in the end i said look i want you to be happy just act accordingly to what will make you happy he tried breaking up with her didn't succeed now we rarely hear from him but when they visit each other at uni it's radio silence from him and he said he doesn't think anything's changed but i think the only reason he's still occasionally replying and never reaches out first is because he's living with us next year

okay i think a couple of things there yeah i love it because it's about uni so it's like we have thoughts on this but go on well just you're so right at uni everything is such a bubble where it's so like everything feels so extreme and like heightened it's quite it's just everything's a drama and it's so fun who you're living with feels it's crazy yeah well that was one of the things that I wanted to pick up on was the fact that she said I think he's only replying to us because he's living with us next year and it's so that thing of maintaining a friendship out of not just politics but just just enough to keep it hanging on it's not okay it's actually not okay not acceptable behavior to do that ever um and

well i had to do that as in do just enough in my first I knew I was in a similar situation in the sense that and I think a lot of people are in the sense that you know you're gonna end up living with people that you don't have necessarily like a really amazingly healthy relationship with or like you're really close like I definitely had a situation where i knew i was going to be living with people and to be honest it was hanging on by a thread um it was a group of girls and there were a lot of different dynamics in there so this isn't my group of friends like this isn't me yeah this is this is nothing we live together in third year but this must be a different year this was yeah this is a different year um this is a different year and to be honest i don't think there's any,

from my end, there's no bad feelings because I don't care. And I'm sure everyone is, you know, happy and living their best life. And I, to be honest, think that for the most part, everyone's a nice person. But it was just a tricky situation where I knew I was going to be living with people

that didn't necessarily fucking love me. And you didn't love. And I, it was reciprocated there was little to no love around honestly it was a bit tough so and actually that ended up being really shitty years so you've got that ahead of you and i'm joking um to be honest i just thought that was interesting because i think although that's coming from the other side i think there'll be a lot of people yeah there was a lot of people saying kind of similar things of like i know that i'm going to be in a scenario with someone for for a long for the long haul i'm in it for the long haul i'm not prepared to communicate what do i do and it really is just like you're hanging on by a thread and it's tough yeah um what i also thought was interesting was that it's so tricky let me read it the bit where they say first time of uni

best friends with a boy who'd always complain about his girlfriend from home oh my god like i can just see it now it's really i can just see it now it's so difficult. I can just see it now. It's so difficult. Relationships. So friendships and their relationships are really difficult because you're essentially accepting someone into your friendship group that you may not necessarily like. It's a really difficult thing because it's like, they're a huge part of that person now. But if you don't like them, then it's like, what am I going to do?

And it's also kind of the thing that we said in the last episode of um kind of when your friend is with a scrappy do when your friend is with kind of a time waster or just someone who you think doesn't deserve them at what point is it okay to intervene and try and help them out or are you just being an arsehole and you should mind your business yeah because it's like it's not really your business but also it depends on the closeness of the friendship but also we are responsible for our friend's happiness a lot of the time it depends on the closeness of the friendship because i 100 with my if i had some weird random person coming up to me saying i don't or some like peripheral friend coming up to me saying i don't like your relate i don't like the person you're in a relationship with i would be like

fuck off it's none of your business but if it was you or someone I would be like okay I'm gonna really listen but then also you're relying on that person not shooting the messenger well if you came to me and said I've got a problem with Jack and here's why immediately I would be like huh well that's also quite yeah that's quite also that's essentially marriage like that is a very very niche situation that you have been with jack for so long and you live with it would be really random and also to say also it's so different because jack is a very self-aware um kind of likable person so it would be like if i'm saying to you i don't like jack it's kind of like well give me a back off no but jack is a nice person i'm like he's just texted me but it's very different because that would be like well why don't you like him like them

there must be some other reason but and why did you never say something it's just like give me your reasoning why i'll listen to you but if it's like well i've got a close friend right now who i cannot stand the person that she's with really can't stand him for so many reasons i think he's just so undeserving of her to say the least just massively holds her back but i just can't and it actually is getting to the point where it's causing here i am miscommunication but actually is getting to the point where it's causing here i am miscommunication but it's got to the point where it causes a divide between her and i because she doesn't even know that i don't she doesn't know how i feel about him this is what i mean by it's so different when it's someone that you don't like suddenly the stories that they're

saying don't seem so cute and don't seem so you're not so happy when they say oh yeah we're going on holiday you're kind of thinking yeah but it's fake fucking idiot yeah yeah it just becomes like you're a fucking idiot and it's just a weird divide because you can't even talk about it yeah what should this person do so okay well i think here in this person's scenario i think it depends on what they want yeah and also i think it might be about maybe accepting that if what you want is kind of the best friend that you had in first term irrespective of his girlfriend you might not be able to get what you want yeah yeah and that's nothing on necessarily you it might just be that that person is just in no place to be answering

to his girlfriend answering to you answering to himself yeah the person seems quite confused and potentially like there might be a bit more to the situation with her saying um that it's made him distance himself from all his friends and things like that that seems like there's more to the situation than anything to do with you like he's distanced himself from all of his friends like that's very convenient that that happened yeah and you're not responsible you're not this guy's caretaker so it's not down to you to say oh you know you don't have to distance from your friends by the way just because she told you so he's a grown he should be 18 years old or over like he's at university he should be smart enough to like hold himself accountable you shouldn't have to

but then it's it's hard because it's really difficult because it's like wait okay so what this person's now going to live with you next year so this is going to come up this is going to come up at some point when you're living with someone yeah i would say prepare at some point she's gonna blow yeah this is going to come up but it doesn't have to come up in a horrific way i would again go in with empathy and go in not all guns blazing like why did you what you only stayed in contact with us because you you you what didn't well you knew you're living with us but you don't care blah blah everything's changed it's like yes everything has changed and go in sensitive yeah go in super vulnerable i really miss you are you okay like maybe even say like i'm sorry maybe i haven't been the best about you and your gf if you feel like

there is some place that you you do owe an apology and maybe he owes one too like i also think with someone getting a boyfriend that you don't like that sometimes the best thing to do is like get to know them a bit and like spend time with them as a couple because yeah you're not going to know your friend anymore as their single friend because they're just different now but you can get to know his new life and what's going on there and things like that and make a bit of effort and yeah they the the girlfriend might turn out to be a fucking maniac but you've at least given it like your best shot 100 and like you've tried yeah i think if you think it's worth it you should try it depends how good a friend he is if he's if you want to be mates with this person then keep it

going but if you just are happy just to live with them and know that they um are in a weird relationship at the moment where they've become um distant the thing is just make sure that you've got other good people around you and you're not waiting around for this guy to make your experience at uni better because no one does that for you no it's hard true bye peace out okay shall we call it a date let's call it a date i think we're done we're nowhere near done we're nowhere near done we have so many more questions that we are obsessed with that we just physically talk for about 45 minutes on each one so we just can't but we are not fucking around here if you want us to answer your question if

you missed out and you wanted us to answer blah blah just message us and say loved the air i love this specific bit you're amazing absolutely beautiful can i just point out exactly yeah just ask us if you want another one basically because we will do it if you don't ask we won't do it but if you do we will because we do enjoy it and we hope you do too yeah i mean i've loved this one and it seems like because this was a really requested one and we've had so many questions about this like oh also how are you guys finding the quality because i think we've been managing this coronavirus crisis pretty well in terms of the podcast at least in my personal life i'm in ruins but on the podcast the quality is exceptional you know the podcast thriving me

dying but other than that it's literally okay right we'll see you next time guys thank you guys so much bye bye i hate the way i say bye