Life Uncut - Are We All Too Busy For Friendships & Do You Lie To Your Partner?

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Hey lifers,Keeshia is in the hot seat filling in Britt while she's in Romania.Have you ever accidentally done something illegal? Laura's renovation project has made Keeshia realise that she's been accidentally shoplifting for over a decade.Do you ever lie or withhold information from your partner? Do you hide packages or lie about new items that you've bought and say that you've had them forever? There's a tiktok from Thewestcoastmama that has us questioning what's normal and who is in the wrong.Today we take a deep dive on what friendship means to us and whether we're too quick to deprioritise friendship when other responsibilities rear their heads. We spoke about Simon Sinek and his conversation on the Prof G Podcast and his Youtube with Trevor Noah What are you currently looking for in friendship?Has that shifted over the years as your life has gone through different chapters?Is there too much pressure to maintain friendships when there are all of these other things that we are trying to do well? 92% of you have experienced a friendship breakup. Most of you think about the breakdown of a friendship more than the breakdown of a romantic relationship. We speak about our own experiences of friendship breakdowns and whether we would ever be able to reestablish those friendships. You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Cammeraygal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Keisha, filling in for Brit while she is away visiting her fiancé Ben in the land of Dracula. I still have to resist every urge in my body to call you Producer Keisha. It is all because it stems from one review that we once received and it was like, how dare you keep calling Keisha Producer Keisha.

Her name is Keisia, which was spelt incorrectly. I can't remember what the word was. Did they say that we were patronizing? Okay, well host Keisha she is. Or condescending, I think. We've had some reviews lately. The people on YouTube, they're more brutal than what I'm used to. They're more brutal.

We got a comment on one of our videos through the week that was something along the lines of, oh, the Australian accents are just disgusting, dreadful, cannot listen. Fair, fair. If you've been watching American TV or you're American, this is probably going to hit you somewhere where it's like a soccer punch to the ears. I feel like accents- Soccer punch, sucker punch. I got punched with a soccer ball.

Mom! I just feel like accents are not anything you can do anything about. We also got a review that said something about my S's and it's been living rent free since I read it last week. And I am so hyper aware now of how I pronounce S's. Say snakes. Snakes. Am I doing it wrong?

Say Sarah's got some snakes. Sarah's got some snakes. Is it a bit too wispy? I did have a lip flip at one point this year. We've spoken about this on the podcast and I really regretted it. Because it does change the way that you speak. And you couldn't suck dick. too far two things can be true at once but also the reason why keish says it's living rent free

in her head is because like we're old dogs at this whole podcasting things but we are very new to the youtube and youtube the way that youtube works and the people who watch youtube are not always from within your community so like it gets cast the net is wide and vast and you'll have some random person who watches it goes way beyond your extended network and that's where the reviews come from. So don't worry. Your S is a perfect key. You don't have anything to worry about. I think they are a little wistly, but to that person, I promise you I'm working on it. But Laura, I have a confession to make to you. Something that I also realized last week is that I have been doing things very wrong. And I think it's actually to the point that I've been

doing something illegal without realizing that I was doing something illegal. How illegal are we talking? Are we talking like community service? Are we talking slap on the wrist? Are we talking two years in jail time? Slap on the wrist to maybe because I'm such a repeat offender. I don't think I'd go to jail for this. I'll let you decide. So I love a bit of DIY. I love painting what I can. I only rent, so I'm limited in what I'm able to do, but I like painting furniture. I like painting all different kinds of things. So in the past 13 years, whenever I've gone to do my DIY projects or paint a piece of furniture, I'll take myself to the hardware store, but I'll go there and I'll look at the paint swabs and I'll go to the people behind the

counter and say, hello, can I please have a sample pot of this particular color? And they'll mix it up for me and I'll get my little sample pot and I will leave the store. And last week you posted a video because you're renovating your house and you and Matt had this thing go up about for this week alone you can get a sample pot of this specific paint from Mitre 10 for free and I was like what why are they advertising that you can get a sample pot of paint for free they're always free they're always free it's a sample you go to Donut King you get a sample of donuts for free you go to the grocery store they have the people there with the sauces and they're like hi would you like a sample of this how many pots of sample paint do you think you've stolen from Mitre 10 how many

if you're going to guess. Like more than 15. Oh, that's okay. That's only like, what, a hundred bucks? I don't know how much they are low because I didn't know that you were supposed to pay for them. I don't know why they call it a sample pot. If it's actually just a very, very, very little pot that you do have to actually pay money for. So I've just been leaving the store. I don't think that you would be the only person to have gotten this wrong. Maybe that was like a very clever marketing tactic to make people realize actually you're supposed to pay for them but for one week will give you a grace period I don't think that you would be alone in doing this but I also think it's on them if they're not telling you to go to the counter to pay for it so you just then walk

straight out and no one's ever stopped you no I mean no one's coming for you never in my entire life have I left a hardware store with just one item like it's like a paradise of DIY things right you always pick up it's like Kmart you can't just leave with one thing you get you get like 10 things so I'll go through the self-serve checkout and I'll scan everything else but I'll just put the sample pot in my belongings Keisha's like can I also get a sample of spack filler a sample of wood glue and some sample paintbrushes thank you perfect I just like to try these ones out I didn't realize this whole time I've been stealing no I still think it's on them if you've managed to make it to the front counter didn't put the thing down walked out with it like surely someone saw

and and I feel like the 18 year old that works there was just like that's not the hill I'm going to die on they can have that sample pot for free yeah maybe maybe maybe they kind of thought that because I purchased everything else but you know people who go through yeah like people who go through self-serve they so conveniently oh I just forgot to put that through that would have been what I looked like but I didn't forget I genuinely thought that I was supposed to get it for free I thought it was a sample but look I have a question for you and this is as someone who is in a long-term relationship now, Keish. And I kind of want to ask this to everyone listening as well. If you are in a long-term relationship with your partner, do you ever lie in your relationship or

withhold information that would pertain to lying? There's a TikTok that's going viral at the moment from a woman who says that she tells her husband absolutely everything. This is at West Coast Mama. She's posted this viral video and it really, I think, raised some very interesting questions. Have a listen to this. Hi, quick question. Are we lying to our spouses or? Because I'm reading in this book and this girl's talking about how she and her husband are so different than their friends because they don't lie to each other she has a friend that will sneak clothes into the house and she will put the clothes in the closet and get the tags off so that he doesn't see the price she has another friend who hides facials and haircuts and getting her nails done from her

husband so my question is we're not lying to our spouses right like if you're not in danger you're not lying right if you are in a safe happy healthy marriage we're not lying to our spouses because the moment something happens the first thing i do is i text my husband if he doesn't answer i call him. If he doesn't answer, I FaceTime him. And if he still doesn't answer, I'm sending a fucking carrier pigeon. Okay. There is not one thing in this world that would happen that I would keep from my husband. And if you are keeping things from your spouse, why? I want to pose this question to you guys, because I think that there are two types of relationships. There are absolutely, and I'm talking about healthy relationships as many times relationships, but there are definitely

people who share everything, who don't feel the need. And I think it mostly is around like purchases and it's around like spending a lot of these types of like secrecy comes around when it centers around money there's people who are super transparent and then there are people who are quite happy to it's easier to say I've had this for ages rather than saying it's a new shirt or a new dress or a new whatever but my question is is is this something that you do in your relationship and when you do do it why like what is the reason or what is the motivator to not tell your partner, everything that you're doing. I absolutely do keep some things to myself, but why I feel like when I put this into words, it actually makes him sound like a worse person

than he is because my initial reaction would be like, because I don't want the judgment. Cause I don't want to have to justify something that maybe I didn't need, but I chose to get anyway because I wanted it. And not everything has to be a necessity in life because they get a little bit of dopamine when I get the package arrived. But that makes it sound as though he is really critical or quite controlling of what I spend my money on but he's not it's like it's kind of a bit of like a laughing point in our relationship and I think that the answer to this question it does have two extremes the extreme of if your partner feels the need to know everything that happens in your life and everything that you're spending a cent on that to me is really

toxic but then the opposite of if you feel the need to lie about every single thing that you're purchasing for yourself, that's also really toxic. I sit in the middle. I'm about to say I wouldn't necessarily lie, but I definitely have told the little white lie of like, no, I've had this for ages with something that I've quite literally just cut the tag off and discarded of the rubbish in the back wheelie bin. And hid it underneath things so that he'll never know. I mean, I listen to this and I don't want to sound holier than thou because I do tell Matt pretty much everything. Like there's very few purchases that I make where I, not that I tell him, I'm not like, Hey honey, I bought myself new socks today. I don't need to tell him because he doesn't care. Do you know what I mean?

So if I come home and I've got a new thing and I show him, he's not going to have a go at me, but that's also because I always spend within the budgeting that we have mutually agreed on together. I mean, for me, like buying things is not, it's not something that brings me, I don't get the same dopamine rush, put it that way. Now I kind of like listen to this and I'm like on one side I think you can go to the extreme and you could be like you shouldn't have to lie in your relationship if your partner is criticizing you or is making you feel guilty for a certain thing then that's controlling behavior but I also think like not everything has to be dramatic and not every white lie has to be a severe fault within your relationship I think that sometimes

people tell white lies just for ease they tell white lies because they can't be bothered to have the conversation that surrounds the behavior and I guess it's the gray area as to where the white lie actually is no longer a white lie and when does it actually impact the relationship and if you have healthy boundaries around that if it's not impacting the relationship if you haven't kind of spent above and beyond the means of what you both mutually agreed upon within your budget then I think it's okay I don't think we need to be like judging people's relationships based on little white lies they tell I completely agree with this and I want to read you a reel that my boyfriend sent me yesterday. It's got a dog with really big eyes in it. So the dog's kind of

like, it looks panicked, right? And it says this, when your hubby asks you why your facial was $550 and you have a bruise on your lip and in two weeks you won't be able to raise an eyebrow. That's an example of something I've lied about. Okay. That's an example of like, I just, you know, went and had my eyebrows done and actually, no, I had things shoved into my face that were really expensive and they don't want the judgment but also on that like i know that kind of makes me mad because it's like of course you went and spent that money on that because there is still an expectation that as women we get our hair done we get a facial we wear nice clothes we wear high heels like there is still a social expectation that we look a certain

way and for women everything is more expensive if you go clothes shopping clothes shopping for women is more expensive than clothes shopping for men i think but like female clothes are so much more expensive than what male clothes are for a similar like for like product and I'm not saying for the same brands but just in general like women's clothing is priced so much higher women's jewelry is priced higher women's hair care is priced higher it does come down to pink tax but there is this idea that like women because we are the consumers we are more inclined to spend money we are more marketable too and therefore because we're going to spend the money they might as well price it at whatever they want to anyway it's frustrating because it's like well it costs me

more to live. So I should have a higher budget than you. Yeah. I don't think that's the reason that I kind of keep things, I don't want to say secret because again, it makes it seem too extreme. I just, I don't open my mouth about things that I don't have to open my mouth about. If a package gets delivered while he's not there, he doesn't necessarily need to know about it, but it's because we don't have shared finances. So we have completely separate bank accounts. I have no transparency over what goes in or out of his account. Same with mine for him, but we live together. So we have to split the costs of things. And he pays for more because he earns more than what I do. We've kind of had discussions about that. And sometimes I do find it a little bit

like I may be being a little hypocritical by being like, well, you can pay for more because you earn more. If then I'm also spending all of this money on things that I don't necessarily need. Maybe there's like a guilt attachment to it. There is a guilt. Yeah. Maybe it's more so it's not so much fearful of the criticism, but there is like a small feeling of guilt like like a knowing I shouldn't be spending my money on this but I'm gonna do it anyway because it makes me feel good so I'll fucking deal with the repercussions later because I get a little dopamine hit when I hit purchase and then again when it gets you know when you

the best there is no feeling in the world like when you've purchased something online but you've forgotten about it I have never purchased something and forgotten that I've purchased it that is that's amazing that's your ADHD flaring feeling when it gets delivered it's like a surprise to yourself it's also free because you've already paid for it and you've forgotten about the fact that you paid for it and so now it's just a gift to yourself that is such a surprise and it's like wow this is so nice of me is this when girl math meets adhd unmedicated i don't think no i can't think there's nothing that i've purchased that i've completely forgotten about and then it just arrived and it was a joy i want to experience it though okay well just purchase

quite a few things at the one time when you're having like a bit of an impulsive moment and then you probably will forget about one or two of them but then when they turn up it feels really good I think you've actually just identified exactly what it is though I think it's the guilt I think I feel a little bit guilty of maybe some spending that I didn't necessarily need to do especially when probably could have put that money towards saving for a house I would be so interested maybe there's a poll that's brewing I'd be so interested to know how many of you feel that it's okay to keep white lies from your partners? And would you be okay knowing that your partner has kept a white lie from you? Not something that's going to impact your relationship, not something that's

toxic or damaging. I know that we're like, I should go without saying, but I feel like I need to say it and preface it. But do you keep white lies from your partner? And I would love to know why, because I genuinely think there would be more people who do. And I also don't think that it is a problem to keep things from your partner. You are your own person. You are allowed to have autonomy in your relationship. You do not have to cohabitate as one single unit in every single thing that you do to have a healthy relationship. You're talking about white lies, but I'm also interested in lies of omission where you've just omitted facts. That's still a white lie though. If you're purposely not giving details about something, which means that that person doesn't

have the full picture, it's not necessarily a white lie, but it's also not the truth. So what is it? Sometimes you can have things done like skincare treatments and whatever, or laser or you know you can get away with omitting that like if they ask you how your day was you can just not mention the fact that you went to an appointment but also you shouldn't have to admit every single thing that you're doing to your partner you don't need to give them a running timetable of every single thing you've spent on yourself like that thank you that's how I feel yeah that to me is crazy because you don't need to ask for permission for every single thing that you spend your money on I don't need to lie to Matt I don't lie about the purchases but I certainly don't tell him

everything because that's fucking boring information. He doesn't need to know. He doesn't care if I bought a pack of six razors. Why would he? And if he does, that's a bigger problem. But I think that that's for a purchase that is a necessity. I'm specifically talking about things that you didn't necessarily need. Guys, I did not need Botox, nor did I need Profilo, but I certainly didn't sit him down and be like, hello, this is what the bill was for my most recent Profilo also, guys. Yeah. I know six months ago I said I hadn't had Botox. Well, I got some recently and I didn't tell Matt about it. But he figured it out.

Yeah, they figure it out because you get bruises. No, he figured it out because he was like, frown. Be angry. You're like, I'm just really happy with you. I just haven't been upset with you for quite some time. He's like, why does your skin look so good? And I was like, damn it, it's so effective. Fuck.

It's so expensive. Anyway, I didn't tell him about it. Worth every cent. well as I've been spending a lot of my past week thinking about friendship and it's something that we talk about I would say quite a bit on this podcast it was actually something that you and I spoke about one of the last times that we did an episode together just the two of us and the response that we got from it was really massive and the reason I've been thinking about it so much is because I've been consuming quite a lot of Simon Sinek's content in the past week just

coincidentally, he is a speaker, he's a writer, he's a podcaster. You may be familiar with what he initially went viral for like a really long time ago. It'd have to be more than 10 years ago now was the find your why. So he was all about finding purpose in, you know, your job, your relationship, your, your reason for existing basically is what his initial body of work was. And he has been on quite a few podcasts and YouTubes lately because he's currently writing a book on friendship. Now he's 50, he doesn't have kids and he's never been married. So his views on friendship are that they're incredibly important and that they're probably more important than what we have been led to believe that they are. He also goes on a lot about how we have so

many resources for things like success, success in business. We have so many resources for romantic relationships. We have resources for almost everything, leadership included, but we don't have a great deal of resources about friendship, of how to be a good friend, how to cultivate good friendships. And through a couple of things that I was listening to last week, one was the Prof G podcast. It's called Be a Better Leader, The Human Paradox and the Folly of a Plan with Simon Sinek. And there was another YouTube that I watched as well, which was with Trevor Noah, and that was on friendship, loneliness, vulnerability, and more. I'll link both of those in the show notes for you. but it really left me with a question of what I am currently looking for in friendship

and how that has seemingly evolved quite rapidly for me in the past maybe like a year and a half and so I wanted to have a conversation with you today about what friendship means to you and whether that has shifted throughout different life stages whether it shifted throughout different priority stages and the priority thing is something that I found really really interesting because one of the main points that Simon made in various podcasts that I've now listened to was that we seem to prioritize everything other than friendship. You know, if you have a work commitment come up, we're really quick to say, Hey, I'm so sorry. I need to cancel our plans because I need to be in a meeting for this or that. Or like, we're really quick to cancel plans

with friends. We're really quick to deprioritize time spent within our friendships because other things are deemed to be more important. So Keish, you wrote this, I mean, we have like a group chat, which we're all in, in terms of like what content we're going to talk about or how we're going to, you know, navigate the podcast for the week. And Keish threw this into the mix of things that she wanted to speak about. And I will be perfectly honest because when you sent this through and I watched all Simon Sinek's podcast and I listened to some of the talks that he's done and he's speaking about how this is a body of focus for him now, this unpacking the tools to be a better friend the why around friendship and this under-resourced part of our life and my first

reaction was I don't really want to speak about this because I feel ill-equipped at the moment and the reason for that is is because I feel like I'm in a phase of my life this period of having two young kids of trying to run multiple businesses of trying to be a good wife of trying to be there for my family I feel as though I am not a great friend at the moment and so I was like I don't really want to be on a podcast talking about friendship and how to be, it's going to make me feel upset, how to be a good friend when I don't necessarily think I am one at the moment. Oh, didn't, wow, did not expect to get that. But I also think that there's a little bit of, and I don't want to say BS on it because I definitely, I don't think it's healthy to

deprioritize friendships. I'll be the first to say that. But I do think that there is so much pressure to be able to be good at everything, to prioritize your family, your work, your friends, like the fucking bucket isn't big enough. It really isn't. And depending on how many friends you have or what those relationships are to you, they are often the first ones that are sacrificed in some ways. I'm not saying that you just discard people, but they are often the people that you have less time for. And it's because it's seen as indulgent and it's indulgent to go and have a girl's lunch or it's indulgent to get a babysitter and go and spend time with your friends or do things that are taking away from the pillars that are deemed as core and necessity. And for me

at the moment in this phase of life, the core and the necessity is being with my kids. And when it's not being with my kids, it's making sure that Matt's had enough time to feel like he's taken care of and our relationships tended to, or it's making sure that my businesses aren't going down the fucking gurgler. Everything is always screaming as a priority. And I think friends are often so understanding that you're quote unquote busy because we're all so busy that it's having the allowance on yourself to be able to navigate this period of life is really important as well. Yeah, that is what I think I'm quite interested in, how much this idea of responsibility seems to trump our importance of friendship. But I also think it's really interesting to unpack

how much what you want out of friendship evolves over whatever period of life that you're in. you know, for Simon, he's 50, he's not married and he hasn't ever been married and he doesn't have children. Which is also why when I watched this, there was a part of me that kind of felt a little bit resentful towards him because I felt like, well, it's so easy for you in the place of life that you're in to give advice around how important friendship is. Everyone's aware that friendships are important. I mean, there's so much data out there around how it is connected to longevity, it's connected to community, it's connected to reaching a ripe old age, having a great friendship circle. But I think that's easier to do when you don't have all of

the other pressures. Because I'm like, cool, I don't want to oversimplify it because I'm not just saying people who have kids have it harder, not by any means. But having children does mean that there is a whole additional pillar that you have to make time for that you don't have to do if you don't have them. So his experience and his ability to make time for his friends is very very different to what other people would be experienced and the place in life that they're at yeah and I think that for someone who is in Simon's position like I understand why friendships are so so deeply important to him because in terms of the relationships in his life friendships take up a huge portion of the pie but from what he was saying something that I really sat and I thought

about a lot is uh is this question of like what I actually want out of friendship because for me I I don't have children. I'm in a situation that's pretty similar to Simon. So I have really sat and thought about what I actually want out of friendship and how much that has changed over the course of time because I'm someone who has always had a lot of friends around me and I've moved to a lot of different cities. I've lived in, I think I counted at one point and it was like 11 different cities. I moved around a lot for work and also just because I like to travel and live in different places. I've also never met anyone quite like you Keisha in terms of you are the type of person who can make friends wherever you go. We might meet someone who is, you know,

we meet them in passing. And then three weeks later, Keisha's like, oh yeah, I caught up with that person. We had coffee and we went for, did the Bondi walk. Like you make instant friends. And I think that's like a really admirable and beautiful quality of you. I appreciate that. And I mean, I'm very privileged in the sense where I say like, I've never struggled to make friends and I don't necessarily know why that's the case. I just haven't. Interestingly, a symptom that a lot of people with ADHD experience, which was something that could not have been less true for me is that they really struggle to maintain friendships and I was like oh I don't align with that at all I put that as a zero on the scale and over the

past year I've kind of tried to unpack the reasons for why I felt so much responsibility to maintain friendships and actually quite a lot of pressure and I felt a huge amount of guilt like it was it would be a really really common occurrence for me to be like you know I haven't spoken to that person for a week. I need to message them. They're going to think I'm a really bad person for not checking in on them. And I felt as though I always had to be making so much effort with the friends in my life. And I don't think it's a coincidence that I've seemed to not require the amount of intensity of friendship because I'm in a committed, stable relationship now. When I was single, I obviously lent a lot more of my friends because I had more time. That was kind of the phase that

we were in we were all single together and we were all having these friendships where we it was almost like reciprocity right it's like you're trading war stories yeah a lot of times or also they're the people that you go and spend time with to go out and to meet new people and to be able to go to the pub and the bar or like you know there's a real social aspect to that I just want to go back a second because I'm very interested in it why is it that people who have ADHD find it harder to maintain friendships uh there are a couple of reasons and I mean I'm not a psychiatrist who is equipped to talk about this but from what I've read it can be based off of a few things it can be based off of kind of feeling like you just never have fit in because you think in a different way

you can be hyper aware of like your social interactions and you can mask a lot where you you look for the social cues that you're going to be accepted into the group and so you kind of try and mold yourself and mask in a way that you're going to be accepted and it can lead to not being a very genuine person like you know that's the bad side of it the other is that you can be a bit of a chameleon and you can fit in anywhere apparently it's a sign that a lot of people they just struggle to maintain stable relationships because we can be quite impulsive we can say things that you might not necessarily want are the behavioral traits like interrupting people can find very rude and very annoying you can be quite self-focused at times is it also around the

like the organization because obviously like to maintain close friendships you need to have a level of organization where you prioritize allowing them to fit into your life. And I think that that's what, I mean, moving away from speaking about ADHD, but just in general, like we said, it's often friendships are the things that are deprioritized. One, because it's, if you have great friends in your life, they're often very understanding when you are really busy and they get it. But also the more that you deprioritize something, the less connected to it you become. So as much as we all have those friends where we can say, oh, you know what, we don't even have to see each other that much. We're still just as good of friends when we do

eventually see each other. I agree with that. I have friends like that as well, but I would definitely challenge, are we as close as when we used to see each other every day and talk every day? No, we're not as close because we now speak to each other once every couple of months and we see each other once every couple of months. We're in very, very different life phases to where we were when we were in our twenties and we were so connected to each other. I would say that our friendships were almost akin to my romantic relationships. They were that intense. But I don't necessarily think that it is a terrible thing that friendships go through these different fluctuations of intensity. I think we have to expect that that's okay and give ourselves a

little bit of an allowance. And that's also not to say that a friendship won't go back into intensity as well once you're able to spend more time with each other and give it the focus that you might like to. I've been trying to unpack a lot of why I felt the need to have these really intense connections in my friendships and why I felt such a sense of guilt when I wasn't able to maintain them at the intensity that they once existed at. And I feel glad that I have somewhat let go of the guilt, but not entirely. Like a really big part of me feels like a pretty shitty person for not checking in on some of the people who at one point were like really really really close friends of mine and I do wonder whether they would think oh well since you've been in a

long-term relationship like you've changed and you don't have as much time for me and they probably do think that to some extent and I grapple with whether that is just me moving into a different phase or whether I actually should be spending more time on those friendships whether I actually should feel bad about the fact that I've let some of them go by the wayside because I've seemingly had other things pop up as priorities. What do you think makes a good friend? We actually put a poll about this on Life Uncut last night. There were three trains of thought of what people wanted out of friendship. And the main one was that people wanted reciprocity. So they wanted equal effort between the friends. Yeah, I think that's a really big one. And I

think that that's usually where relationships fall down because it's like one person may have moved into a different phase of life. One person's priorities may have shifted purely because of the pressures of fucking life and the other person's haven't shifted as rapidly. And so there's a mismatch between where the friendship was and where it's heading. And it's not that the love has changed. It's not that the affection or the care for each other has changed, but it's simply the amount of time that one person can put into the friendship versus the other. Yeah, I absolutely agree. So the second category was people who wanted loyalty, trust, and respect. So these quite intense. We are ride or die. I am there for you. No judgment. We can be completely

vulnerable with each other. We can be completely honest with each other and we will be there for each other. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, our friendship will exist. So that was kind of like the second category. And the third train of thought was that people wanted carefree, easy and fun. And I wrote down last night what I really look for in friendship now. and these are the things that I wrote down. I wrote down picking up where we left off, consistency, similar values and wanting to do similar things. So I feel as though what I look for in friendship now is slightly less intense and it's not lost on me that it's probably because I get things like loyalty, trust, respect from my partner. I'm sure you still have friends in your

life who you have that intensity with, the loyalty, trust, the respect, the really deep connection of conversation, but you probably don't have the volume. I think that's the other thing that happens is, and I mean, statistically there's, there's many studies and proof that's been done on it. This idea that as we age, our really close network of friends get smaller. And on one hand, that can be bad, especially if it's getting smaller because you're discarding friends or you're not putting effort or time into it. But other times it gets smaller just because it becomes more focused because you simply cannot give that much of yourself to that many people. so you you you start to realize okay who are the people that have similar values to me who are the

people that are in a similar life stage to me and they're the people that you focus your energies on do you feel bad about that shift though like is there a part of you deep down that is kind of judgmental of yourself for accepting that some friendships are just going to fall by the wayside I think every friendship is different right and the other thing that you have in romantic relationship is that you often have boundaries and conversations around what is the relationship If you're dating someone and you're romantically invested in them, at some point normally, and what we would preach is that you would ask, well, what are we, right? What is this?

Set the guidelines. You don't do that with friends because that's fucking weird. You're like, so are you my best friend or are you my sometimes friend or are you my occasion friend? Like, are you an acquaintance friend? You just have to have self-awareness around what is the intensity of that friendship. I still have my very, very close friends who I absolutely love and adore. And my network, I would say, is slightly smaller than what it used to be.

but I also have friends that I realized what was the necessity of the friendship was it because we were both going through something and we had this shared trauma and every time we'd talk we'd always like vent about the thing that was the thing that made us upset you know do I still need that are they still needing that venting and I wonder if most people have experienced this I think we've all had that one friend or multiple friends who the relationship was based around helping solve their problems like playing therapist yeah yeah being like the free therapist and that's okay for a period but you can't play that role for an entire friendship for forever there has to be other things there that you also mutually get out of it and so I think that there's definitely been

some of those friendships that I've identified and like I said at the beginning you know it does make me feel like I'm not a great friend I hope to maintain friendships well enough and strong enough and put effort in to do the girls weekends away and have the dinners and everything so that when I do have more time in my life to dedicate to friendships they still exist they're still there I don't want to wake up in my 50s and be like well fuck where are all my friends gone because I spent all my time working and being a mum and now my kids have moved out and like here we are I think that that was something interesting so when Simon was talking about how you know we are so quick to deprioritize a friend catch-up because something that we deem more important or that has more

responsibility pops up I felt a little bit similar where I was like oh well I mean he also spoke about the fact that you know he would choose spending time with friends over work opportunities and paid work opportunities and my initial response was like oh well that's a really privileged position to be sitting from like you can turn down work opportunities when you've got enough money to turn down work opportunities to catch up with your friends like that must be nice but then when I sat with it a little bit I actually realized that that was just me trying to kind of justify away why I've made those decisions and why I've prioritized work so much more. And maybe I needed to hear that from him. Maybe I needed the little reminder that

friendship is more important than I've been focusing on. Maybe I've almost given myself a bit of a get out of jail free card to not put as much effort into the friendships as what I should have. Have you experienced what I would deem to be like a friendship breakup, like a breakup of a friendship that was as intense as the breakup of a romantic relationship? Well, I think there's two kinds of friendship breakups. I think there's the breakup, which is like an actual breakup, like something happens and you have to actively not speak to that person anymore or, you know, and it's quite dramatic. There's that version of a friendship breakup, but then there's the more subtle version of a friendship breakup. It's more

hard to define because it's usually like a soft fade and it kind of just goes from being really intense to not speaking to each other as much to hardly ever speaking to each other. And I think both of them can be equally as challenging. Sometimes the soft fade is really hard because you don't have an understanding as to what changed in the relationship and you really miss the closeness that you had. Yeah. And it's awkward on their birthday or when some big life thing happens and you find out through Instagram. That you're not invited. Yeah. That's when you really realize the sort of cavity of what's being created in that friendship. But then I think on the other hand, the like severe friendship breakup is way more dramatic. It's way more brutal and it

can be as painful as a romantic relationship breakup. I've spoken about it before, like my best friend through school and also through university, you know, we were friends for like 15 years. We had a really dramatic friendship breakup and it was surrounding my ex. So my ex at the time who was a flog and I needed to learn those lessons right like I really need to learn those lessons for myself know why she didn't want to be there for it she was like I can't be friends with you whilst you're dating someone who's like this fucking this is so toxic it's it's unhealthy for you it's unhealthy for our friendship it's just not good and I understand why she did what she did but I think I also had a lot of resentment for it so it was very very very dramatic and I

think it came at a time where maybe our friendship needed to shift anyway but it was really hard then saying to people because we were always it was always the two of us we were always together it was really hard explaining to people that we no longer were friends that we were no longer speaking it was almost like explaining to people that we'd had a breakup I experienced something so similar like my friend who I would call us soulmate friends people used to think we were sisters because we looked so alike and we would quite literally spend every second of the day either talking or we were physically together I felt as though no one has actually ever known me in the way that she knew me and we had an eruption of the friendship and it was my choice to end the

friendship and still that would have been would have been eight or nine years ago now and still to this day I don't know whether that was the right decision to make it obviously was a very emotionally charged decision because of what happened at the time but I still think about it all the time and I think about you know like so weird to me this person who I just knew so to their core I've gone on to see that she got married to a guy that I was with her when she met him and they've had a kid and she has this whole life every single time I see something come up from her I'm like this is just so weird isn't it funny because it's kind of the same as like when you go through a relationship breakup how you can like check on the Instagram and you're like wow

I'm just no longer a part of that. I only found out it wasn't actually that long ago. We stopped being friends years and years ago. And we are very pleasant with each other now. Like we've exchanged messages here and there. We will never have the friendship that we had, but we are absolutely like civil with each other. But we only started following each other recently again on social media. She deleted every single photo of our 15 year friendship. Any photo that I'd been in, she had deleted. And I was like, it must have been as hard for her as what it was for me. You know, it's interesting. I think every single person has been through some type of friendship breakup. And as much as we talk about what we said at the very beginning, this idea that

in everything else in life, there is resources, there is toolbox, there is like how to manage this. Friendships is that one thing that is kind of gone by the wayside and kind of slipped through the cracks. And so I don't think it gets the validity that it deserves when it comes to like what a friendship breakup feels like and how to navigate that. It's funny that you say like, oh the relationship is not what it and it never will be what it ever used to be because there have been times in the past like eight nine years however long it's been that I've genuinely been like should I reach out should I actually put an olive branch out and see if we can repair this friendship because of how close we were and how much I feel like I'm missing her in my life but

then I think the reality sets in that even if you were to do that like the fracture is there you're never going to go back to what you were. And I probably do see it with a bit of rose colored glasses. I think in the same way that we would give advice around a romantic breakup and reaching out to someone who you were once in a relationship with, you're never going to have that same relationship again. You're never going to reach out to someone who you dated five years ago and be like, Oh, I still think about you, which you might still think about them. But I do think it's very different when it comes to friends in that if you were to reach out and you were to try and reignite a friendship. I don't know whether that friendship would ever meet up to the

expectations of what it once was or whether it would be tarnished by the massive fracture of that friendship breakup. Yeah. And I just imagine what that initial, like, let's say, let's say hypothetically right now, I have inspiration from having this conversation and I messaged the person that I'm talking about, this person that I had this massive breakdown of a best friendship with. What the fuck am I supposed to do when we like, do we agree with like, oh, let's go and grab a coffee. Hey, how's the last eight years of your life been? So you've got a kid now. Like how are you supposed to start that interaction? I don't have the answers to that. And I also think it's not so much about the one coffee

catch up. It's about how do they fit into your life now? Like, do you have enough room to fit that type of relationship into your life? And I think about my really good friend who I had the friendship breakup with who now has two little girls we literally are in the same phase of life like it would make sense I'm also so hesitant because I'm like it ended so badly even though I have so much love and respect for her and I think she is just an incredible person and we get along so well I think that the friendship got so damaged that I don't know if you could restore it back to a place where it would be what it was and then are you just comparing well this is where we are now to what we were then or do you have to just start as a new completely fresh relationship

I often also think about reaching out but I would not even know how to navigate that I wouldn't know how to navigate it and I also think that deep down there's a bit of a fear that we would never be able to get back to what we were and maybe I'd get hurt again like I know that this sounds so ridiculous and a little bit intense because it sounds as though I'm talking about a romantic breakup but I genuinely would worry that I could experience the pain of losing that friendship again I don't think that that sounds ridiculous I think there's so many people who would resonate with this and who have been through something similar we did actually do a poll on life uncut we got back to our good old poll roots now 18 000 of you have responded to these polls so it is not

a small study but the poll was statistically significant it is what's it called a um p value a what oh in statistics the p value of 0.05 the p value people who are in stats or in science will get what i'm talking about we've done a comprehensive study okay so the very first question was, have you ever experienced a friendship breakup? 92% of you said that you have experienced a friendship breakup. That's a lot. Well, it's pretty much everyone. If you haven't, then that's an incredible place to be in. How did your friendship breakup compare to a romantic relationship breakup? So 35% of you said that romantic breakups were harder emotionally than a friendship breakup. 32% of you said friendship breakup was harder. And then 33%

said, well, they're about the same for you. So it was equal to or more than with 60% of people. And then the last one was, do you think about your friendship breakup more than you think about your romantic breakups? And 46% of you said that you think about your friendship breakup more. That was the highest percentage. Only 16% of you still think about your romantic breakups, but those of you who have been through a friendship breakup, it still is something you think about in 46% of cases. It's so interesting to me because like we said, there's so much out there for people who go through those romantic breakups. There's so little out there for people who go through friendship breakups, but I think we ruminate

on them exactly the same way. We think about, well, what would our life be now if we were to reach out to them? Is there space in our life to make space for a new friend if you were to do the work to make up? And also, would it even be something that you could, like, can you extend an olive branch when you've had such a significant breakdown? I want to add one more question of what would that friendship mean to you now? Are you lacking in your other friendships right now that makes you feel like you want that really deep connection with someone that you once had it with? Or do you just feel bad about the fact that it ended? No, I think it's really hard to find people as an adult that you absolutely radiate with and resonate with on like a deeper

level. I think a lot of us have more superficial friendships and I think a lot of people have, no, I don't want to say acquaintance friendships, but it's very easy to meet people who you have a pleasant and lovely time with it's really hard to meet people who you have a really deep connection with and that goes for romantic relationships it goes for friendships and so I think when you have found that person who as you described Keisha like it feels like a soul sister to you and then you lose that there is a hole that's missing because you're like well fuck when's the next person like that going to come along and sometimes they don't come along and so then you're left feeling as though well maybe I'm never going to have a friendship

with someone who understood me as well as that person once did and that's I think that that's like a really sad thing to try and overcome I know that we've kind of bounced around a lot about all these different parts of friendship and I also I feel similar to you Laura where I'm like I'm not an authority to talk about this this is more me actually having a conversation about something that I have genuinely been considering to do like I've been sitting and wondering whether I actually am a good friend and wondering what friendship means to me now and what I seek in my friendships and perhaps why that has changed. That's something that I will continue to spend a bit of time on because I'm not at a point of resolution now where I'm like,

oh no, I'm okay with the fact that some of these friendships have fallen by the wayside because my priorities have changed. I think that's what I needed to hear from Simon's work. I needed to hear that friendship is a very important priority and perhaps I haven't been paying as much attention to it as what I maybe should have I think it's such a great question like am I a good friend am I being a good friend and it's okay if that answer isn't always yes but I think what can you do to get back to being a place where you go yeah I am a great friend and I am there for the people who I love in my life and in reciprocating that they're also there for me I don't want anyone to feel like that this is because like I said the way that I felt about this when I first read it

and I was like fuck another thing to not be great at great you know another thing to add pressure into life it's okay to give yourself the allowances of sometimes not having the ability to prioritize everything but I do think it is important to have that introspection and go okay well am I making time for the things that I really care about in life and am I making time for the things that I value and if the answer is no then what can you do to get back to a place where you feel as though you're able to do that all right it is time for accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing stories and this one holy fucking dick this got sent in the group chat and i i read it out to matt i mean he shriveled up into a tiny ball in the corner as i said it to him so if that gives you

any sort of visual reference for what went on this is it i was a brazilian waxer for a while or should i say a vagina designer oh and my colleague had just recently started at the Salonay was working at. Now she waxed someone who had a tampon in and you guessed it, the tampon string was hanging out slightly and it was ripped out with the wax and splat across the room straight into the wall. Needless to say, there was mortification felt on both sides. How do you explain to Salonay, I'm so sorry, I just ripped your tampon. I think she felt it, I don't think you need to explain it. I don't know if I would go and get a wax if I had my period, if I was throwing a tampon. Sometimes you can't plan these things. Sometimes you've got to book your wax

when you've got the time and it comes. Tuck that string up. Tuck it up. Push it up. You would tuck it inside of you? I would absolutely tuck the string up. But I feel like they really get into the crevices of the bits. Just shove it two centimetres up. And fish around. Yes. If I'm going to go and get laser, I'm not going to do it. I don't get laser, let's be real. But if I was going to go and lay their spread eagle yes I would tuck it up is that crazy am I crazy I don't know I just have never thought about that no I would just expect that they would be able to navigate their way around the very clear white cotton string but maybe it was only just hanging out by like a tiny tuft also that like a little bit more confronting though if you're like ready for

a wax and you've got a full tampon string hanging out like that's bright that's a bold woman I'm here for it what do you do afterwards do they give you a tampon to go and replace it I think you have to wipe the wall down i don't think you can leave that to someone else who wipes it though the patient the patient absolutely you're right sorry if someone's flung my tampon out of me i'm not gonna go and clean up after their mess they created it it's no would you really make someone else clean it up i wouldn't feel responsible for it yeah but would you not like out of just the decency and kindness like get up with like a little bit of a dead old wipe and go and wipe it up yeah because I'm awkward and I'm a people pleaser but not because I feel like it would be

my responsibility I would just do it because this situation was so awkward imagine if she still had hair to go you had to lay back down so fucking wild oh my god all right suck and sweet Keisha what is your suck for the week my suck for this week is that for quite a long time on the podcast my boyfriend asked for me to not really speak about him at all and now I am hyper aware of the wise but he also asked me initially yes we don't name him he goes by Toblerone that's the nickname that Brit gave him when she first met him he initially asked me not to talk about his profession and that has changed so he's a doctor and at the moment in the particular field of his training he is in the kind of like specialty training and as a part of his specialty area

they have to sit this exam and it's nicknamed the thousand hour exam and it is going to be the most challenging and difficult exam of his life. It was $6,000 just to sit the exam. So he has been studying. Like I genuinely feel as though if we didn't live together, we would never see each other. Like he's been the most dedicated and determined person to the point where I actually admire it now. But you're also annoyed by it. You're like, I'm so sick of this. I just want my boyfriend back. Yeah. So today we are finding out whether he passed the exam or not. So today I'm going to find out whether we're going to be living the way that we have lived for the past year for the next six months because that's when they sit the next exam right and and it's just

brought about like a huge amount of anxiety and I'm really really really hopeful that firstly he has passed I mean by the time this episode comes out I will actually know but I'm just so hopeful that our life can go back to actually spending time together and getting to do the things that normal people in relationships do. And it's such a unique experience because I think unless you like, I mean, I have very, very little connection to anyone who's in like the medical world or the medical industry, but I do have friends who have sat this exam and I know like I lost them for a year. They just kind of, I never saw them for an entire year because that is how all consuming this exam is. The amount of hours that you have to put into studying is like unparalleled from

any other industry so. Unbelievably crazy yeah so anyway my suck is that for the past week because this date of like that we're going to find out has kind of been looming and I just feel as though the anxiety rising in my body has gotten so bad that we're like neither of us are sleeping and we're kind of a bit like what is going to happen in our future based off of this exam but my sweet for the week is I really feel as though I have got my mojo back so for the past couple of months I've just been feeling this real like meh attitude, this lack of motivation. I haven't been eating particularly well. I definitely haven't been exercising.

I've been sleeping pretty well. So in the past week, I have signed up to this new gym and some of my friends are coming along with me and I just feel as though I've got a little bit of my oomph back. You're back into your ice bath era. Not ice bathing yet. It's too cold still, but I will ice bath again. but yeah I just I feel as though in the past week I've just felt this uh like this bit of a shift and I like mojo is exactly what I would describe it as I just feel as though I'm kind of getting

that back and I've really missed it it's just been absent for a couple of months and I don't know if it's a winter thing I don't know if people just experience periodic times like this where I've just been feeling very like kind of dragging my feet it's almost as though when you're in those periods you don't always recognize that they're happening until you all of a sudden start to feel bit better and you're like oh that's what was wrong I wasn't sad I just needed a holiday I don't have a suck for this week I've genuinely had a really wonderful week we've had we were on radio break at the moment so because we haven't been at work no but it also meant that I've got to spend time with the kids and with Matt like I really genuinely feel like it was a great week my sweet

for the week though is on the weekend so I mean we've been spending lots of family time ever since Neil passed away earlier this year we've really been spending a lot of time with mum and had been prior to that too but just to make sure that she's like good and she's you know surrounded by people who love her but on Saturday one of Neil my stepdad who who passed away his really good friend owns Sydney Brewery and he created a beer it's called Lenny's Lager and so we had an event on Saturday for him which was like a bit of a fundraiser for cancer research as well but it was really cool going into this brewery and like seeing all the beers lined up and they've got like your pale ale yeah you know your two is new and then Lenny's Lager is one of the beers

that you can actually get from the brewery there. And it's just a picture of Neil playing his trumpet. He was a fucking keen beer drinker. Like he loved his boutique beers, which means it's no surprise as to why he was like very good friends with the guy who owned a brewery. But it's also really sad because you have these days and you're like, this is so great and the person who would have loved this the most can't be here to enjoy it.

But it was really, really beautiful. It was a really awesome day. That's really special. Yeah, it was really special. I hope that the beer is kind of fruity because that's kind of like, You know, like, and hoppy. It's Hawaiian-y. It's Hawaiian shirts.

Yeah, that's what I think of when I think of Neil. I think of him as being this, like, larger-than-life personality. And it's really lovely that you can go – I was about to say you can go and sip on him. Let's get out of here. That is so weird. That is it from us, guys. If you've enjoyed the episode, please go leave a review.

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