The Liz Moody Podcast - The Secret To Making Soul Satisfying Friends As An Adult (Avoid The Mistake Everyone Makes!)

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Author and journalist Anna Goldfarb dives into the challenges facing friends these days, the most important qualities to making new friendships and deepening old ones, and how to find the most fulfillment in your relationships. The challenges that make friendship SO much more difficult now than it was for our parents or grandparents Exactly what an “about” is, how to find one, and why it is so crucial to lasting friendships The differences between memorial and active friendships, and how to treat both Small, simple, and specific ways to be a better friend How to successfully reach out to potential new friend (and what NOT to say) How to identify and navigate a toxic friendship Exactly what the three Ds are and why you need all of them for a successful friendship The ideal number of friends to have, according to science  How to navigate political differences within friendships Why men are so lonely and how women can help And so much more For more from Anna, you can find her on Instagram @annagoldfarb or her website, www.annagoldfarb.com. Her new book, Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections comes out on June 4th and is available for pre-order where books are sold. To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: Molly’s Suds: go to mollyssuds.com/LIZMOODY and use code LIZMOODY for 20% off. AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: How To Work LESS AND Get MORE Done Actress Ashley Greene & Olivia Khoury On PMDD, Cycle Syncing, & How To Understand Your Hormones To Transform Your Health My FULL Anxiety Story + The Tools That Help Me The Most The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're learning how to work less but get more done with a new approach to productivity, diving deep into hormones and how to cycle sync, or sitting down for an intimate look into my anxiety journey and the tools that help me the most. And yes, those are all real episodes and they are linked in the show notes if you would like to listen.

I don't want to overhype this episode too much, but it contains this paradigm shift when it comes to how we view friendships. It is a huge unlock that has completely changed how I approach building and maintaining friendships in my own life. And I have not been able to stop talking about it. Since I recorded the interview, I keep telling people, did you know that friendships need and about? This is the missing piece of friendship. You will find out what that means in the episode in just a second. Okay, I feel like I have just overhyped it a lot, but it's really exciting. It's information I feel like that has been missing from this conversation for so long. And I am so excited to welcome Anna Goldfarb to the podcast to discuss it. Anna is a journalist, author, speaker, and friendship explainer. She is the friendship correspondent for the New York Times. She writes about friendship for publications like The Atlantic, Time, Vice, the Cut, Fox, and the Washington Post, among many others. Her new book is called Modern friendship, how to nurture our most valued connections. It comes out June 4th, and it is such a gem of a book, and Anna is just such a gem of a human being.

There is so much fascinating research and so many completely game-changing ideas in this episode. We get into the challenges that make friendship so much more difficult now than it was for our parents or our grandparents. Exactly what an about is, how to find one, and why it is so crucial to lasting friendships. The difference between memorial and active friendships and how to treat both, I feel like this is going to be a huge aha moment for so many of you. Small, simple, and specific ways to be a better friend. How to successfully reach out to a potential new friend and what not to say. How do identify and navigate a toxic friendship?

Exactly what the three Ds are and why you need all of them for a successful friendship. The ideal number of friends to have, according to science. to navigate political differences within friendships, why men are so lonely and what women can do to help and so much more. I cannot wait to hear what you think. So please share your thoughts and tag us both on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and Anna is at Anna Goldfarb. I think this could also be such a great episode to share with your siblings, with your parents. I know so many people out there who have parents that are really, really lonely. So let's help them out with partners, even with your friends. So you can start to build in these elements of friendship that are going to

make your friendships so much more deep and so much more long lasting. Also, finally, I know that 50% of you out there listening have not yet followed the podcast. Why are you making your life harder by having to search for episodes every single week? You come back, you listen every week, but you don't follow. You want to follow this way. You'll just get them. right in your feed to make it easy, peasy. You don't have to think about it or do anything. Following is super simple. You're just going to go to that little plus sign in the top right of the page that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes. Then you'll get every single episode right in your feed. So pause this right now. Goal the podcast and then come on back and we're

going to dive deep into friendships with Anna Goldfarm. Anna, I am so excited to have you here. I'm so excited to be here. I loved your book. I was absolutely obsessed with it. It was just such a good mix of stories and exercises and answering all of my questions. So I have many, many questions for you that we will get into today. But let's start off with what is the problem with modern friendship? Well, the problem with modern friendship is that nobody knows what they're doing.

I think collectively people are very disoriented with their friendships right now. And it's not because of anything they've done. It's because their strategies don't work anymore. We're at an inflection point of people's lives are so busy. They're so much more complex than our parents and our grandparents' lives at our age comparatively. We have so much information that we're bombarded with that's historically new. And for friendships to be tossed in the mix, I think is really throwing people for a loop of what they thought friendship would be. like is very different than what it is in reality. It feels different. And I think that that is just so

disorienting of I thought it would feel different now. I thought some of the examples that you shared in the book were absolutely fascinating. Like I had never thought about how getting married later would impact our friendships. Can you explain that connection? Oh yeah. Well, one of the biggest reasons we seek out friends in our 20s is for mating, is for meeting people to date. And that's a large part of let's all go out, let's all go meet people, let's go drinking, let's go dancing, and it just feels eternal in the moment of like, I'll always love this, right? This is something I'll always want to do. But when you marry later in life, you have your own circle of friends.

You have a shared history with all these kinds of friends from your childhood, your schooling, post school, your first job, your second job, your third job. and then you meet someone who has their own entire circle, generally speaking. And it is very hard to combine circles with two separate groups of friends that have no commonalities. Assuming they didn't go to the same schools or didn't grow up in the same places, it is really hard. And I look at my grandma who was married at 18. She never went to college. Her life was very different.

She was able to keep friends from third grade. because she never left her town. She didn't have those kinds of challenges that so many of us have when we have advanced education. We move around a lot. We travel more. It's just a very different kind of paradigm. And when she met her husband, they probably made many of their friends together or were already even in the same circles if they were from the same town. Yeah. I mean, my grandpa was 18. Can you imagine? What an 18-year-old wants to do is very different than like a 39-year-old wants to do in the history, that living on your own even. Like you meet so many different kinds of people when you marry later in life. You've had previous relationships. You have your exes that might be still in your life or maybe you share a child. Maybe you become best friends. Just being older introduces new scenarios that a lot of earlier generations didn't have. have to really deal with or confront or synthesize into their new life. So is one of the solutions to that almost being open to hanging out with people that might not be

100% your cup of tea or how do we navigate the fact that I have my established group of friends and then my partner might have their established group of friends and we can't merge as easily as we might once have? You could try to merge. Some people really love it. They're like, we have a backyard barbecue every June. We invite everyone. But a lot of people aren't like that. They're more introverted. They don't feel as comfortable mixing groups. I certainly don't feel comfortable. Two of my best friends don't even know each other. Like, isn't that crazy? You know, in high school, like all your friends knew each other. At least for me, we were a crew. We all knew the same people. It was a real sense of community, but it's been harder to find that getting older. What I learned

writing the book is that affection is a component of friendships, but it's not the reason for a friendship. Friendships have to be about something else outside of the people. And when you're making friends later in life, it really is like, what do we all care about that's apart from us? And a lot of people do it with like Dungeons and Dragons or LARPers. We're into LARPing. We put on a costume. We go to a park and everyone's into it. And it's harder when you don't have that niche passion. But a lot of people are struggling with their passion. They're trying to figure out, what are my hobbies? What are hobbies that include other people? One of the examples in my book is my own sister, how she was really into Reiki and crystals. You don't need a lot of people to be into

a crystal. You just kind of need the thing. But she started marathons. She took up running and her social life exploded. And it was from the running community in Boston. It was a real social shift for her to find an activity that required other people. So we'll circle back around to some of the problems facing modern friendship. But I do want to dive into this a little bit more because it's a huge assertion in your book, which is that you need essentially a purpose. You need a reason to be friends with somebody versus just I like this person.

How did you discover that? Why do you think that's true? That's a great question. I developed my framework off of the study of Jeffrey A. Hall, and he found that it took about 200 hours of shared activities to go from stranger to best friend. And there's levels and there's markers up until then. But to get a best friend, you need to spend 200 plus hours with them. And I'm thinking when you're an adult, that time is so hard to come by. So how do you pick people to spend that much time with? And well, you pick people who care about the things you care about that you'd want to do those things with. When I was putting together my paradigm in the book called Wholehearted Friendship, it's based around the idea of time.

And who do we spend our time with? What do we talk about with them? That is so compelling that we will tell our significant others, sweetie, you're on your own for dinner tonight. Like, I'm going to go meet with my friend to talk about this thing that's so important to both of us. That's the key. Every friendship needs an about. That explains why people do what they do, why they choose who they choose. And I think people expect affection to carry their relationship through, at least to keep it active.

And they're surprised and hurt and in pain when they realize affection isn't enough. I love my friends, but a lot of them live across the country. I never get to see them. So it's helpful to understand where to put that love and to realize you can still love your friends, but it doesn't mean it's going to be an active friendship. That might be an unrealistic expectation to hold. I want to dive into that a little bit more because you ground it really nicely in the book. You say when you're thinking about new friends that you want to have, you can use this phrase.

I want a friend I can do this with or I want a friend that I can go here with. Can you speak to that a little bit? There's a lot of articles and podcasts about how do I make new friends? Like, what is the secret? That's what everyone wants to know. That's one of the biggest questions that I see or I get asked in interviews. And what I realized is I want new friends is an incomplete thought because we have to do something with our friends. It has to be outside of us. So a more complete thought is I would like new friends to do X with. And that will point you in a direction of who can I find that is into the stuff I'm into, and we can talk about that.

And that will be a portal into developing a deeper relationship. You can't have a friendship deepen without that initial compelling about. It's not going to work. It's not going to stay active. So when I think about when I want new friends, I mean, I'm a writer, so I love writers. And I'm always reaching out to writers. And what do we talk about? Writing. What are you working on? How can I help? And it's just a natural, compelling about to me because I love my work so much. I love being a journalist. I love meeting other journalists too. But that's not going to work for everyone. Not everyone wants to message a writer on X and be like, hey, let's be friends. But you have to find your own thing of what do I care about? And that can go in some interesting directions of what do I want to do? So one of the biggest questions I have about that is that I feel like I have the friendships that I do certain things with. Like I had my work friends.

I had friends that I did sports with. I have my book club friends. And I always view it as a right of passage when we move beyond that thing, that shared interest that we have in common. I'm like, oh, with my work friends, I'm no longer talking about work. so we must be real friends now with my book club friends. I'm no longer talking about the book. So this idea of we have to have this thing in common to be the thing that we talk about, one of my reactions to it is, does that limit our friendship?

Does that make it feel transactional and only about that thing versus I love your whole self and you love my whole self? Well, that's a great question. What I learned about friendship about is that they could change, be outdated, or be absent. And what that means is with my best friends, we had one about, just like you said, but it branched out into so many more interesting and deeperabouts. Like I can sit with my best friend. We could talk nonstop for two weeks. And we would talk about family, work, curb your enthusiasm, skincare.

We have endless abouts. But it had to start with one. Like I said, it's a portal. Of course they can change. They're supposed to change. Like, I think that's something people may not give a lot of thought to of what is our friendship about. When a friendship is outdated, that's like when you have a friend from childhood and you were really into camp together. But now you're not in camp, you're an adult.

And it's like, well, what do we talk about? It's like, well, we talk about like old people from camp. Okay, well, how often do you want to do that? Like, every four years. Like, okay, that's probably why you talk to that person every four years. When an about is absent, I think of when you meet someone at a party and you don't know anything about them and you're sitting there picking out a cheese plate and you're feeling around for an about of like, so what do you do?

What do you interested in? Like, what's your deal? So abouts are really, really crucial to who seeks us out and why and why we seek other people out and why. So no, it doesn't stay the same. It's not supposed to stay the same. I love the abouts my friendships have taken. It's taking really interesting directions.

And also, friendships, I think, are done and dead, buried, dusted. Some knew about rises from the ashes. And you're like, oh, my God, right now in this point in my life, that isn't about that is compelling to me. Like when my dad died, I had a friend reach out who also lost her dad. And so this was someone where we didn't have a compelling about. But now we were talking on the phone for like an hour and a half. Well, now we were really compelling about.

But is it enough to sustain a friendship? I could identify that the about of this friendship with this old friend was our dads both died. This is now our about right now. And this is what we share. And she recommended books on grief and sent me messages on Father's Day, like thinking of you. But it hasn't progressed more than that. And it doesn't necessarily need to because I have other friends with more compelling abouts. But it made me just appreciate it for what it was.

How should we be thinking about about in the most pragmatic sense in our life? Should it be, if we're looking for new friends, we should figure out an about for them, which would be using again that I would like a friend to go here with, to do this with. Or should we be looking at our current friendships in moments they feel a little lackluster and saying, is this lacking in about? Can you ground it in real life situations as much as possible? Yeah, you can negotiate it about at any time. I could say, Liz, I want to spend more time with you.

Like, what are your goals? Do you want to move your body around more? Maybe we could do something. I could help you meet a goal of yours. you can negotiate a friendship at any time. Most people don't think to do that. Maybe they haven't seen that modeled or they didn't know you could do that with an old friend. Like, we have an old coworker where you talked about work a lot, but you shared about your families and stuff. But then you leave the workplace. You're like, well, what's our friendship now? Work was our

common threat. And you could always renegotiate. What else are you interested in? I want to spend more time with you. Any ideas? I think it's a really wonderful. invitation to someone. You can definitely recruit a friend. But like, I want to spend more time. Do we have a movie club? We could just watch a movie every month and talk about it. We have a wine tasting club. We can do anything we want. But the idea is you shouldn't be saying, I want to spend more time with you and not having an about. You actually need to have an about. You need it about. Yeah, because it's going to be harder to find reasons to get together. And that's why ghosting and flaking and bailing is so common because what that says to me is that there,

wasn't a compelling about to the meeting. If I say to you, Liz, I want to start a podcast. I love that you have a podcast. Do you want to get lunch so, like, we can talk about podcasts? And depending on how compelling that is to, you'd say, like, yes or no. And you might make it more of a priority if it's something really interesting to you. Like, actually, that's really interesting to me. I'll make that happen. But if I just said, Liz, let's get together. Let's get lunch. You probably will be, like, excited. And then there'll be this other second thought of like, okay, why do you want to get lunch? Like, what will we talk about?

And then that creates anxiety, the uncertainty of, I don't know what this is. One quick way that I get to a comment about, or at least start somewhere, is to ask someone, what have you been obsessed with lately? Because that's something they're excited about. They've thought about a lot. And that can go in some really interesting directions. Like, well, I'm obsessed with, you know, Real Housewives of New Jersey. Like, really?

Teresa? And then you go up in a whole direction. So those are all like strategies we can use to really pinpoint an about. And, you know, about's changed. They're supposed to change. We change. Friendships are supposed to change. Friendships are so fluid.

That's one of the messages of my book is people may not realize how fluid these relationships are. And I think they expect them to stay static. And it's very upsetting when that's not the reality. So if you have a friend and you cannot find something in common, maybe they've been your friend for a really long time and you are asking about Real Housewives, they're talking about their sports team. You know, you just cannot find that common ground. You cannot find that about. What would you do in that situation? Well, you can always just put a friendship on pause. You don't have to end it or have a conversation. You're just like, right now, I feel like we're both exploring different things. And it's not necessarily. really bad. You can still have affection for someone. We can still be there in a time of need. But will you seek them out day to day? I think it'll be harder to make that case in your life

if there's not a clear and compelling about. And I think it really helps to understand how our social lives are meant to be set up when you live in a hyperfluid society like we live in, where people move around a lot. They change lifestyles. I mean, people change so often. It's so easy to shed an identity now. It's easier than ever. My problem with that is I'm a relatively introverted person, and I put in a lot of time and

effort and energy to get to a place where I feel 100% comfortable with a person, where I feel really cozy and safe. And if I'm investing in a friendship, I hate the idea of like, oh, if this about changes, we won't be friends anymore. If I'm investing in a friendship, I like the idea that that will be a friendship I will have for a very long time because I've put so much work into getting to the point where I feel comfortable. Yeah, well, they'll still have the friendship. I think that what might be helpful is to think of friendships. There's two kinds of friendships. There's memorial, which is high on affection, but low in frequency in contact and active friendships that are

really high in communication. You talk to them all the time, and it's based on a passion or a hobby that you have today. So you're not losing any friends that you feel cozy with. These people are, I mean, it's just a treasure. It's a privilege to have memorial friendships. People need to understand that you need to hold two different expectations for the two different groups of friends. Memorial friendships might take longer to get back to you, not because they don't love you, but because they have the more immediate spaces in their life that they need to get back to right away. If they have someone that they're comfortable with and they love, there's not that urgency.

When I message a friend of mine from my childhood and just like love you thinking of you, sometimes it takes about a week to hear back. Not because they don't love me too. It's because they have other people, people watching their kids, their spouses, their employee, their job, like they need to get back to these people. They don't necessarily need to get back to me. And I think what I've learned is to be at peace with that. I really relate to you because you sound like a pinball too.

I'm a pinball. I was born in upstate New York, grew up in Chicago, went to school in New York City. Then I moved to Philly and people like us who move around a lot and have these really deep, loving friendships and were blasted apart from them. It's such a particular acute pain. to know that you have these wonderful, deep, meaningful friendships, but life isn't making it easy to connect. And it's not anyone's fault. And what I'm advocating for is I understand this is a memorial friendship.

A memorial friendship will be my life forever. But I also understand it's not an active friendship. And there are different expectations for each group. Is there anything that we can do to nurture those memorial friendships to make sure, even though they're not the people we're talking to every single day, they still feel really connected to us? Yeah. Actually, I have a friend here in San Francisco, who I'm seeing, and she just lost her cat. I sent a donation to the local animal shelter in memory of her cat, and I sent her a present

to say, like, I know you're hurting, I'm thinking of you. both of those things made her feel loved and cherished. But I understand that we don't need to speak every day. I don't have that expectation for her. I know we can go a few weeks, even a few months. And then it's like, I miss you. We should catch up. Let's have a phone date.

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That's Bowlen Branch, B-O-L-L-A-Ranch.com slash Liz Moody, use code Liz Moody to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. Going back to problems that we have in modern friendship, you said that parents are spending twice as much time with their children than they were in previous generations. That floored me. Oh, yeah.

Talk to me about the impact that has on friendship. Well, it's definitely shuffling. the hierarchy of where friendships are in an adult's life. I don't have children. I'm not a parent. So it has been challenging to spend time with my friends who are parents because they spend so much more time with their kids. When you look at your time, you look at who I need to spend my time on and children are coming up first. It should be the priority. It is the priority. but it's also impacting our friendships because people aren't spending as much time with their friends. But part of that is also regionally where you live.

If you grew up in a town where they had lots of porches, neighbors knew each other, you know, the more money you get, the more privacy you seek out. And the more you're not just hanging out on your lawn, talking to neighbors. I mean, that just doesn't happen. I live in a city. Like, there's nobody. outside just on the stoop. Part of it is all these changes in how we use our time. Part of it is parenting. Part of it's the privacy of people move away. They move to the suburbs. They're not hanging out

with their neighbors. Generally speaking. It's also harder to rely on your neighbors. Earlier, I think people prioritize their friendships, like our parents and grandparents, for practical help. Now I can order an Uber. I didn't need to have a ride to the airport. We have ways for technology to fill in for the roles that friends would do for us. Like building a deck, you hire a contractor. You don't try to, like, coerce your friends into helping you build a deck or something. You still can, but they might be a little annoyed of like, well, why should I do that?

It's culturally different expectations. Can you share two or three things that we could all be doing? that are very specific to be better friends? That's a great question. One of my favorite tips in the book is when friends talk to one another, they share their experiences in an effort to maintain closeness of, oh, Liz, like, oh, you had a cat, like, I have a cat, or something annoying, like, you got broken up with. I'm like, oh, I got broken up with, and it was really horrible.

And then I subtly direct the conversation to be about my pain and my breakup. And it leaves you feeling left out or unheard. And one of my favorite tips is just to subtly redirect conversations with just a little baby question at the end to show that we're still talking about you. So when you say I'm going through a breakup and I'm like, oh my God, I just got broken up with it. It's horrible. How are you handling it? How have you been?

And just that little, little, little baby question shows that we are focusing on you. I got to share my piece, but we are still focused on you. And I think that makes you feel safe. It makes you feel relieved. And it makes you feel cared for. So that's one of the best littlest ways we can be really kind to our friends. It's like, we're still talking about you. I'll share my thing, but we're still talking about you.

The biggest tip in the book is to pick three to five friends and just be an incredible friend to them. I cannot be an incredible friend to everyone I've ever met. It's just not going to happen. It's not realistic. I can't text everybody happy birthday I've ever met in my life. I really try to be wonderful and a committed friend, and I tell my friends that I love them. I started doing that once I wrote this book. Do you tell your friends that you love them a lot?

I do. It's something I've had to work on because I wasn't raised in an I love you house and I wasn't raised in a physical affection house. So part of my journey as an adult has been like, oh, I love hearing I love you. I love saying I love you and I love physical affection. I love cuddling up with my friends on the couch, but I would stiffen at it and I had to train myself into letting myself do the things that feel really good to me. Friends want to hear it. They want to hear it. And it gives clear. clarity of I don't ever want my friends to second guess or not know how I feel about them. I tell my friends I love them so much more. And like you, I had to train myself to do it. It wasn't something that came naturally to me. The other big friendship tip is to give clarity and to say, you're one of my best friends. And it feels so good to hear it. Because studies show that people think that having more friends will feel amazing, but what actually feels amazing is being considered someone's best friend. So when people I admire and treasure identify me as their best friend, that's a really wonderful indication of what kind of friend I am. Like the integrity I

have as a friend, the commitment I have as a friend. That makes me feel so good. So give the gift to your close friends and tell them you are my best friend. And part of my goal with this book is to give language to these tiers, language that we can use of you're in my jacuzzi tier. This is my star roster of friends, and I'm going to go above and beyond. I'm going to commit to them. These three to five people, I'm going to text back immediately, I'm going to give them presents for their birthday, we're going to celebrate all their milestones, and like, that's the move. That is how you cope in a world where there's so much uncertainty and fluidity. Just pick a few. identify who belongs in your upper tier and really go above and beyond for them.

How do you elevate somebody from a lower tier into an upper tier and to your point about what studies show we want to be somebody's best friend more than we want to even have best friends? How do we make sure they're elevating us back? Spend a lot of time together and a lot of it's recurring. One of my friends we get together every Friday and write together. It's been that way for about. seven or eight years. You know, besides COVID, we have phone dates. During lockdown, we would still keep it up. Recurring dates are amazing, great for maintenance, and you have a clear and compelling

about to the meeting. We're getting together to write. That's important to both of us. That's been the key to our success, for sure. With other friends, it's really about the time, and it's about intentionality of I'm prioritizing you, I'll pick up when you call, I'll text you when you write me, we'll make happy memories together. A big part of friendships that I think has been missing is making memories together. And so many of my friendships have been text-based, especially when my friends move away. And it just doesn't feel nourishing. It doesn't feel like anything. It feels like a dot matrix printout of like words to each other. There's no memory of, us texting for 10 years. So the best thing you can do is have happy memories, go on little trips,

go to new restaurants, let's try new cuisines. That's a great way to deepen a friendship. So then you could look back. Like, remember we went to D.C. and we like saw that crazy house party. Like you need those memories to fall back on. That's what makes the friendship feel richer when you have so many memories to share. I find that so fascinating and it was a real unlock for me when I read in your book that making memories with your friends versus just like doing the same thing all the time. Although it's interesting because you also want those recurring things of your friendship. So maybe it's a mix of you want the recurring things that make it easy to connect and you're not having decision fatigue and thinking about it. But you also want to make sure you're sprinkling

in these memories. Can you share some more ideas for how we can make memories with our friends, especially in a time where we're all really busy? I think one of the reasons for the friendship crisis like we talked about is that people have really busy lives. So how can we make memories within that? A lot of it's coming up with good invitations. And it's all about the art of the invitation. You know, for instance, one of my best friends, we went to see an author reading in D.C. And I was like, would you want to come with me? I can drive us. And I realized we never went on a trip together. This was our first trip. It was so exciting. We've been friends for years. We've never gone anywhere together. We still talk like.

how much fun that trip was. So really it's just finding the invitation of the thing that's exciting to you both. And it just takes initiative of, I want to go on a trip with you. Let's go somewhere. What would be fun to do? What do you want to check out? A lot of my advice boils down to helping a select group of your friends meet their goals and achieve their dreams. That is what is most likely for people to keep you close. If you care about the things that they care deeply about, they will be more likely to keep you close. What that looks like for me is caring about my friend's children, getting to know them, being a part of their world, getting them little gifts. And it's opened up a portal with this friend of my preteen's having a birthday party. She wants you there.

I'm involved in her life because I invested in the relationship with her kids. She cares so much about. That's a message that we're lacking in our culture. I think it's very much me, me, me. I want friends to care about me. I want friends to do things for me. And that's not what moves people. What moves people is caring about the things they care about.

That's the best advice to deepen a friendship. What do you care about? How can I help? You care about these kids? I'll get them get. I'll check in on them. I'll get their phone numbers and text them. Happy birthday. All those things show my friend how much she means to me. It feels to me like a lot of your thoughts on friendship revolve around the idea that there are always more people to be friends with and you can

stick to your standards. You can let people move fluidly in and out of your life. I don't think a lot of people have that belief. I think there's a real sense of scarcity when it comes to the people out there that will be a good match for me in a friendship way. What would you say to people who are not having that abundance mindset with? There's always more friends out there. There's so many wonderful people out there that have such beautiful qualities. And I think it'll be a relief to hear that friendships are about something outside of you. It is about a shared excitement. It's It's not about me. It's about the thing we both are excited about.

That takes the pressure off me. It's like I don't have to be sparkling or generous. Those things are great, but it's not how friendships actually work. Friendships are always need an about, and the about needs to be clear and compelling. And to the people that feel there's a scarcity, I would say, well, what do you care about? Like, what are your passions? This world is so big. It's never been easier to meet people who care about what you care about.

People who are into like the most obscure stuff have a discord somewhere. Like you can meet people. But it's about caring about people and choosing people that you care about and want to bear witness to achieving their hopes and dreams. It's a different mindset than I want friends that click with me. It's like, well, I want friends that I love and believe in and I want to help them achieve their goals. And then the other stuff comes. It takes time to develop. I think that people compare maybe they had friendships in their youth that were intense or they didn't know what they were doing,

were unhappy with how their friendships played out. No one sits this down and is like, oh, nothing's wrong with you. That person actually is not a good friend candidate, but you didn't know enough about friendships to vet them. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. We pick people for the dumbest of reasons when we're kids. It's like, oh, you like Shira? I like Shira. You're my best friend. I mean, that's how it is when we're kids.

You meet someone who likes the same step as you. Oh, you like New Kids on the Block. Who's your favorite? Oh, my God, you're my best friend. Let's talk about Niki's on the Block. It's how we always have gravitated towards other people. But when there's desire, there's always hope. As long as there's desire, anything can happen.

If you have a desire to be in more people's lives, it's not even make friends. I want to be in more people's lives. I want to care about other people. It starts with a shared passion. And then it grows, it develops, it mutates in an interesting way. So if you're sitting here listening and you're like, I would like to have more friends is the first step to just maybe make a list of anything and everything that you're interested in, and then trying to figure out where those people might be? Or can you ground it in a, we're listening, we want more friends, we want to put this philosophy into life.

What should we do? I would look through my friends and social media and see who's doing something I'm interested in. Oh, they're knitting. Like, I want to learn to knit. That's really cool. Let me see if she'd, like, be interested in doing a little knitting circle. That's truly what I would do. I would just look through who's doing something interesting.

Who's doing something that makes me think, oh, I would talk to them about that for an hour. So you're mining almost your acquaintances and trying to turn them into friends? Yeah, or just people in your town. I find people on social media that are doing what I'm doing, they're doing interesting work, and I reach out. I have cold calls. I published my DMs in the book to show the evolution of how do I turn a DM into a friendship. And I do that by offering something. I would love to help you.

Can you share maybe an example of a not effective cold call DM and then an example of an effective cold call DM and explain the difference between the two? Oh my God. They were so pathetic. My cold call DMs at first were like, I think you're great. Send. I think your writing is amazing. Send. And it's like nothing happened.

It's like, oh, thanks. I didn't go anywhere. No further communication was needed. I pretty much said everything that had to be said. But as I evolved in my career and in my friend-making skills, I started reaching out and offering something of, hey, I love your newsletter. I shared it with my friends and got five of them to sign up. I would love to help you achieve, like, I'd love to help with your newsletter any way I can.

Then that's interesting. That's usually a message someone will reply to. It's like, oh my God, you did that for me? That's so cool. I love your writing too. We should talk. Actually, one of my book buddies for the book, I saw that she had a book announcement come out. And I'm like, oh, we're going to be working on books around the same time. So I messaged her. And I said, congrats on your book. I'm working a book too. How can I help? I could share media leads. I could put you in touch with whoever I end up doing press with. We started meeting every week. We meet every Wednesday. We still do. And I forge connections all the time, but I learn to offer something that is important to the other person, that is interesting to the other person, that is relevant to the other person. Like, oh, I love that you are reading these books. Have you read this? Like, I'd love to lend you my copy.

It's like, oh, well, that could be cool. Really, it's just thinking about the message receiver. I think a lot of us spend a lot of time thinking about the message we want to send. But they don't spend as much time thinking about the recipient. What are they going to take from this message? What are they going to do with this information? I wrote about gift giving for the Atlantic, and it really brought this thinking to the forefront of when people give gifts, they want to give smile maximizing gifts. They want to blow the person's hair back. They want the puppy jumping out

of the little ribbon box. But the reality is gift receivers want something useful and practical. Something they'll actually use. They have to own it. They have the experience of owning the thing. But gift givers, and I know gift giving is your love language. So I know you've spent a lot of time with gifts. I love giving gifts. I think I love giving gifts more than I love receiving them. But I love receiving them too. And I think gift giving gets a bad rap because it feels very much about the material object.

But for me, it's about, oh, I was at the grocery store and I was thinking of you. So I got you this kombucha. It's like you were always on my mind. I used to give people gifts that I loved. Oh, this is my favorite caramel. I'm giving you my favorite caramels. You're going to love them. I'm like, why don't really like caramel? I'm like, oh, that sounds like a you problem because I just give you a great gift. But what I learned is, well, what does the other person care about?

And I started tailoring my gifts to what does the other person love? And I would do these personalized cups on uncommon goods of like the person with their pet. And they love it. My friend used that on every Zoom call. She loves it way more than a box of caramel. to move the needle. So that's the bigger message is spend some time thinking about the person receiving the invitation, the message, does it work for them? Actually, one of the most interesting studies about friendship was a small study that predicted who would be best friends in four years. It was with a small group of college kids. And they found that students who provided social identity

support were more likely to be best friends in four years. And I'm like, well, tell me everything. So I called the researcher and I was like, what is this about? Like, is this some like magic bullet that nobody knows about to keep their friendships strong? Social identity support is looking at a person for their race, class, finances, everything that makes them up as a person and being attuned and interested in it. So that would be like saying, I want to learn about your family traditions. I'd love to attend a tradition or a dinner. Like, I want to know about your world or I'd recommend places that fit in with your identity. I wouldn't suggest we go to a restaurant that you'd feel really uncomfortable at. Like it'd be a Michelin Star if you have, you know,

a limited budget or vice versa. You like, you want to ball out. And I'm like, well, let's just get pizza. You're like, well, that's not really my vibe. You know, so it's about being attuned to the other person. And it's all part of the same message of spend a little time thinking about how these requests and invitations are received in a way that the other person can say yes to? I think about that all the time with my friendships because I do think sometimes we gravitate more towards friendships we've made recently because that person is reflecting the current version of ourselves back at us versus the friends that we made 10, 15, 20 years ago sometimes can be reflecting a version of ourselves that we've outgrown back at us. And to your point,

They can be memorial friends, but sometimes we really want that affirmation of our current identity. It's so interesting to think about in our friendships, who is my friend trying to be right now? And how can I best support their journey to be that person? Yeah, and they'll be more likely to keep you around. The friendship will have a better chance of enduring. What are some signs that were in a toxic friendship? If you feel any kind of negativity, repeated sustained negativity. and you don't feel respected in your own friendship.

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Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. In general, do you think it's better to have a conversation with somebody about what's bothering you before you change the status of the friendship in your head? Yeah, but it depends who the person is. It depends what the reason for the friendship. is and if it's something clear and compelling to me where I want to fight for the friendship

because it's so valuable and meaningful to me. And I've done that. But to go back to your signs of a toxic friendship, I would say if you feel disrespected, if you feel belittled, if you feel unsupported, if you've made attempts for a long time to try to get things better and it's not feeling like it's getting better or if you feel like your friend's getting worse. I mean, listen, friendships are voluntary. That's part of the beauty of friendships is that they're all voluntary. And a lot of times we have to vote with our feet of this isn't a friendship I want to be in. And you have to stand up for yourself.

Not every friendship is worth fighting for. Not every friendship is worth it. You know, some friendships have just been around so long that you're like, why I'm even in this friendship to begin with? But that can make it so tricky because even if they are disrespecting you, belittling your needs, belittling your feelings in the moment, you can think back to all of these amazing memories that you have in a time where they didn't do that and you establish this caring, loving relationship.

And it can be so hard to let go of that even when you're faced by a very different reality in the present. One of the harder things I've done is to stand up for myself and to say, I don't want to be in a friendship that makes me feel this way. Part of my paradigm is laying out, these are the healthy friendships I'm consenting to be in. I don't want to be in an unhealthy friendship. It's not on me to coach someone on how to treat me with respect. If you can't figure that out, like within reasons. If it's a friend who I love, who loves me, they're overstepping or being too critical.

I could say like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, rain it in. I don't need to hear every opinion about this. We're so close that I can definitely do that. It's like siblings. But with older friends, memorial friends, where you're noticing, like, there isn't a clear and compelling about, we have outgrown each other. I've outgrown this friendship. I think it's really courageous to say, I'm not just going to spend my energy on this.

We're not socialized to have these kinds of issues. The expectations for friendships have changed so much. In the 50s, friendships were mostly as a reprieve from married life. It was like very superficial, really just marked about humor, just chatting, laughing with some girlfriends in the neighborhood. Now friends are expected to be each other's therapists, mothers, sisters. There's so much more that I think people expect from their friends now of like life coaches. A lot of us aren't trained in any of those things. We're not skilled in any of those things. And we're buckling under the weight of all this expectation that we're just not qualified or suited for. I've heard that about our romantic relationships.

We expect more now from our romantic partners than we have at any point in history. And a lot of romantic relationships are buckling under the weight of that. But I have never heard somebody say that about friendship. And of course it's so true. And it's so fascinating. And it also makes me wonder, if we need so much more from our romantic partners and we need so much more from our friendships, do we just need more in general? Or are we not getting stuff from other places? Like, why do we need so much more from these two huge categories of relationships in our lives? I think we just have a supremely confessional culture. Talk shows in the 80s. Really, I wrote my senior thesis on this in college, talk shows and how they were the new religion.

And, you know, I think of the personal essay boom in ExoJane, where everybody's just sharing all their stuff all the time, like every deep thought. And friendships historically were not really like that. They were not expected to just share all these things. I think friendships before were more community-minded. There are women you see at your synagogue, women you see at your church. It wasn't this deep soul-bearing confessional about all this stuff. That's a generational clash. I think older generations are like, why do you just tell each other your business all the time?

And I love deep conversations and deep vulnerability and all those things. So how can I keep the things that are great about that while taking some of that pressure off of friendships? You ask for consent. Like, can I rant for five minutes about this thing? It's not urgent. Let me know when you can handle it. You're mindful of not dominating the conversation. You're mindful of, I am so grateful for my friend to listen.

Thank you for listening. What can I do for you? It's really about being a mindful, respectful partner to your friends when you share these things. I love that we share, but it's a new expectation historically. So I'm not surprised that people are feeling all types of way about it. Like sometimes you have a deep conversation. You're like, that was great.

And then you walk away. You're like, whoa, whoa, that was too much. I know too much about them. The only way through it is communication to check in and to say, is this too much? Like, how are you feeling? I'm only going to talk for five minutes about this and let's move on to something else. It is not a nice thing to do. And I think a lot of friendships buckle under that of just expecting this, the other person's problems to dominate the friendship.

Tell me about the three Ds of friendship. Oh, I love this. I came up with the paradigm of wholehearted friendship because wholehearted means dedicated, enthusiastic, and committed. And those were the kinds of friendships I wanted. So how do I close the gap between how I want my friendships to look and how they actually look? And I came up with the 3Ds of desire, diligence, and delight. And all of these concepts revolve around the idea. of time. Desire is who we want, who we yearn to spend time with. Who do we long to spend time with? Diligence is who we prioritize spending our time with. And delight is who do I actually enjoy spending my time with? Because sometimes you're there with a friend. You're like, okay, we're together. I prioritize this, but I'm not having a good time. And other times, you long for your friends. Like the memorial friends, we're like, I miss my friends so much. Like, but I'm not prioritizing time with them and you don't really have a relationship so there's not much delight.

Desire is all about, again, the clear and compelling about. It's the reason why we seek each other out. What do I have to offer? What do they have to offer me? And is it a good match? Diligence is all about presenting invitations in a way people can say yes to. It's being upfront with your motivations, upfront with your expectations. and just being mindful. We're busy, people with busy lives, complex lives, all sorts of issues that we don't necessarily divulge to each other. So how can you make friendships a priority?

And delight is all about being mindful of the little quirks and things that we do that might be driving our friends away in an attempt to connect, like that tip about redirecting. correcting conversations back to the one struggling. And I think that that is pretty much all the ingredients to having wonderful nurturing friendships. You need to have all three things. You need to desire to be with them. You need to prioritize being with them. And you need to love your time together. Can you reverse engineer that where if a friendship is feeling a little bit lackluster, you can say,

okay, here's the three days. Is one of these missing? Yeah, especially with delight. That's That's where a lot of friendships go to die. So if you're not having fun, if you're sitting there like, why did I agree to do this? I could be doing so many other things. Delight's probably not happening. Diligence, I think friendships go to die. When you hear, we should get together. Let's get together.

And it never happens. And you're just like, what is happening? I'm reaching out. Like, I don't understand why this isn't working. And what I found is that that's an outdated strategy. When you say we should get together, that's from a time when you probably were 14 and had no money and had a bike and your schedule is wide open. We should get together like, I have no plans. Like, sounds great.

I have no money. We can go hang out at 7-Eleven. Love it. But that strategy doesn't translate. It's an outdated strategy. You cannot just say we should get together sometime because that implied question is why. Why should we get together? What's in it for you? What's in it for me? What are we talking about? How long is it? I have a lot of other stuff I want to do. There's a new Bridgeton coming out. Why am I making time for this? So diligence is really freaking key. It is an underrated skill in friendship is the art of invitation.

So it's not we should get together sometime. It's do you want to meet up Friday night to watch a rom-com and make a yummy snack? Which sounds way better than like to. But it also depends on the friendship. Like with my best friends, I don't need to say do you want to get together for a reason. We have a million abouts. But when you're making new friends, that is something or you're rekindling a friendship and you expect to pick up where you left off. It's a miscalculation. You need to say, I want to get together. I want to hear about your new job. I want to hear about what your plans are for the summer. You have to give a reason. So the more abouts you have, the deeper the friendship is and the less you need to put in reasons to hang out.

Yeah, absolutely. Or the abouts are so coded into the friendship. When I tell my writer friend, let's get together Friday, she doesn't think I'm asking her to a bouncy house. We're getting together to write. Like, we know why we're in the same room. And so our goal in some ways is finding those three to five people and trying to almost increase the about that we have with those three to five people. Then it's like you're cruising.

I know exactly what we're going to talk about. I know exactly why we're together. I know exactly why I care about her and why she cares about me. I don't have to just guess and wonder and worry. It's the most calm. I've ever felt in my friendships ever. Like, it's really transformational. So the immediate thought of ways to increase the abouts to me is to do new stuff together.

And then if you like that, you get a new about. We will try hiking together. If we like hiking together, we suddenly have a new about. Is that the best way to increase about? Are there other ways to increase abouts? If we're hanging with somebody and we just were like, we want more about, how do we stack them on? It's very organic of, oh, you know, I'd love to see that movie. I'll go with you. Oh, you love movies? My friend Blake came up with a friendship deck. And it's

really cool. I used it with my friends when we're just like at lunch. It was a really cool way. I learned my friends an atheist. I'm like, I think I'm an atheist too. They never would have come up if I didn't look at this card. It was a surprising tool. I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't know that about you. It opened a new dimension to our friendship. This friend wasn't one of my jacuzzi friends. It was like an outer ring friend. But I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'm always learning interesting things about what people are into. Like, oh, you're into that? I'm into that too. You like NASA discoveries? I care about that. But part of it's being dynamic and having interests. And if you aren't dynamic and don't have interest, you're going to have a

hard time because this is what people connect on. Yeah, we're big fans of conversation card decks. Yeah. That's a thing I love to use to connect with people. To connect with people. And it's okay to need a little help. But, you know, I think you have to offer, part of my confidence is that I'm so excited to help people achieve their dreams. And I hope other people can look at it that way. Of making friends isn't about seducing people to want to be in my life. It's, I want to help these amazing people do incredible things. I want to be a part of it. And that orientation, that disposition, that framework has opened up. a lot to me when I meet new people. It's like, what are you working on? Oh, that's so cool. Can I help?

Oh, you have a new Etsy store? Want me to leave a rating? I can do that. Like, whatever. And that means so much to people. Yeah. I do just struggle with the idea, though, that then you are energetically giving all of the time. And so many people feel like they're already the one energetically giving all the time. So approaching the entire world with like, how can I help you this? how can I help you this? How can I help you with this? I'm worried about people feeling burned out or tired or like they're not being loved back in the same way that they're loving. We all have five basic genetic needs. They're survival, power, freedom, fun, and love and belonging. We are engineered to want to belong. Belonging is something that we crave. Loneliness is

because we don't feel like we belong. We have a loneliness epidemic, a crisis of people feeling like they don't belong anywhere. And I really feel that when you put it out there, like I want to help, it creates a sense of belonging, of you're helping other people. It's not everyone. It's a few targeted people. And it takes a lot of time of repeated interactions, like 200 hours of shared activities to become a best friend. It is a privileged position. I know I've said a lot of best friends and I've talked about different people because I've had different people at different stages of my life and I value them and I think a lot of people can relate to that. But in active friendship, there's only a handful of people. There's three people, not including my husband,

that I would do anything for. It's not an invitation to everyone. But if I was looking to make new friends. If I was feeling lonely, that is the best strategy I've found to take away some of that loneliness and is to care about other people. It opens up pockets. You model for them. It really is showing people like, this is how I practice friendship and it's contagious. I've had my friends reflect back to me some of the ways I orient with them now. And our friendships are stronger. They've started saying that they love me. They started saying, like, I will do anything to help you, because I say that to them. It got to start somewhere. We have a real problem. You know, we live in an individualistic society where we're so hyper concerned about ourselves. If you're not feeling at peace in our society

with that kind of moral teaching, I would recommend giving it the finger and start reaching out to people who seem really cool and seeing where it goes. And it takes a lot of time, seeing what kind of cake you can bake, the friendship cake. Talk to me about the numbers really fast. Three to five super close to your friends is the ideal, you would say? Yes, this is based off of Robin Dunbar's findings about our social circles. The first most intimate tier is your bathtub. And for men, that's one other person, usually there's significant other. And for women, it's two people. Usually there's significant other and a best friend. And I call it the bathtub because it is very tiny. It's not a lot of room in there. And then the next tier is the three to five core elite group of

friends. And Dunbar calls them the support group. These are your like biggest means of support. And the outer tier I call the swimming pool, and that's the 10 to 15 people that are in your life, like you might house it for them or double date. Maybe they're your favorite coworkers. And they're called the sympathy group. And I thought that was because, like, they're good for crying on their shoulder. But it's actually because if any of these people died, you would be very upset. That's what they're called the sympathy group.

That was what this other researcher group calls them. And then the next tier is your bonfire. That's about 50 people. So if you're having like a 40th birthday party, that's everyone you didn't invite. And then the last tier is the water park. That's 150 people. That's the wedding and funerals group. They're the second cousins.

They're the people that will schlep out to be at those milestone events. And that's about it. That's normal. Where things go haywire is that you see in your social media events, you have 500 friends. But I think social media has really scrambled our idea of what an ideal social world should look like. Both in the 3,000 friends way, but also I feel like I'll be scrolling and I see all these people on like girls trips with like 10 to 15 people. And I'm like, oh my gosh, they have 10 to 15 best friends. Am I a loser?

Because I have more of that 3 to 5 best friend range. Yeah. You're like, I'm comparing. Now I feel bad. Yeah. And social media flattens. your social world and presents it in a feed so that you see your best friend next to an old co-worker, next to your uncle. It's overwhelming. It's just too many people and it's hard to care

equally about all of them. And it makes you feel not excited. I've been following people on social media for 12 years that moved away that I never see. I know more about their life than people in my own neighborhood. And it's just a very strange feeling. Like this is a new feeling. This is historically new to see everyone you've ever met cataloged. Since I wrote this book, I've naturally shied away from social media because it's not real life. And it doesn't feel like real life. It's not representative of real life. And I don't have a tolerance for it.

It's like I know who my three best friends are and I'm just so focused on them. My other tears, it just feels like enough. And I think social media never makes you feel like enough. It makes you feel just inadequate all the time. So if you take nothing else from this podcast, really put your energy into those three to five people. And if you don't feel like you have those three to five people, ask yourself, who would you want to go? Who would you want to do something with and begin to explore and find those about that you can build on? Yeah, perfectly said.

Okay, excellent. Let's do a few listener advice questions. Let's do. I am genuinely concerned about my friend's boyfriend. He has gambling issues. He's manipulative, toxic, all of the above, but she doesn't see it. How do you approach talking to her about your concerns without pushing her away? And I would love to broaden this into if we don't like choices our friends are making or other people in our friends' lives.

Is it ever our place to say something? Well, I'm not sure if it's our place, but I wrote an article for The New York Times. about how to give advice people will be delighted to take. Because I was curious about this thing too. I had a girlfriend who had a no good boyfriend. It's like, do I have any influence here? Like, she always asked me for advice. This is actually going to help.

And what I learned about advice is one study showed that when it comes to advice, people take advice if it's expensive and hard, like a lawyer. You will take a lawyer's advice because it was expensive to attain and it was hard to parse, like on your own. The second situation is if the person is highly qualified, like a doctor, then you'll take the doctor's advice. But the third point was that someone is least likely to take advice if they're highly emotional. They already know what they're going to do. So if your friend is like, I'm going to rage text my boyfriend.

You're like, no, don't. Just put the phone away. They've already decided they're going to do it. They're not really going to listen to you. Emotions play a big role in advice and who takes it. So the first thing I'd recognize is that your influence here is going to be limited. And part of it is that you don't live with the consequences your friend does. And this partner might be meeting a lot of her needs that she's not willing, ready to give up yet.

Like I just talked about our five basic genetic needs of love of belonging is one of them, but so is power and survival. and if they live together, that could be her survival and power. If they have a social standing, being a couple, she may not be ready to lose that, freedom, and fun. So they might have inside jokes that she loves. Like there might be a side to him that's really fun that she isn't ready to give up yet. She probably gets a kick out of them for some reason. So the best thing you can do for your friend is to support them because you don't,

don't live with a consequence. It's a bigger ask for her to leave her relationship. It's easy to say, oh, I know what you should do. But your friend knows their life best and they know what needs they're getting met and what they aren't. So your attempts to sway her may not be very successful. When I've had friends that have done this, but in relationships that I didn't approve of, assuming there's no abuse going on. If he's just like a jerk or immature, all I can say to my My friend is, I love you and I'm here for you. I want what you want. Friends play a limited role, I think, is the reality.

And I know it's uncomfortable. I know you don't want to hear about it. I know you're over it. I know you're like, I'm ready for this guy to be out of our lives. What about you? But the reality is, is that they're adults and she chose this relationship and your influence is probably very limited. I think that's so true.

I think that one of the biggest mistakes we make is trying to tell our friends what to do, which. diminishes their belief in their own power, which actually makes them less likely to make the decisions that will serve them in their lives when the best thing we could do would be to pump them up so they believe in their own power and then make the decisions that will serve them best. Yeah. And one of the reasons friendships are so pleasurable to be in is because peer relationship or equals. And when you give advice, it's a power dynamic. You're saying, I know what you need. I know what's best. And friends do not like to be dominated. Friends do not want to be dominated. It's uncomfortable.

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So I never bring it up, even though this war has affected me a lot. Do I bring it up? And if so, how? And I think outside of this situation, I'm curious your take on what to do when it feels like greater political things or things happening in the world are impacting our friendship. I think it's lovely that you have a friend with a different perspective. I have friends with different political perspectives. One of the wonderful things about our friendship is that we can talk about it and we can have different viewpoints. And I can hopefully help her see some of mine and hopefully I'm open to see some of hers.

And I think that's a beautiful thing about America. This is a feature of American life is that we can be friends with people who disagree with us. It's okay. It may feel uncomfortable, but it's okay. You can say to your friend, like, I can hear you, hopefully you can hear me, and I love you. This is a really complicated situation that's very emotionally charged, and people are going to have very strong feelings about it. But the hope is that your friendship will influence your friend. I think people are quick to feel an uncomfortable emotion with a friend and feel like, well, I don't want to feel this emotion.

this friendship's got to go. But one of the truths in my book is that friendships require maturity. And it requires a lot of maturity to have a different political perspective than a friend. It doesn't mean that the friendship is over. It just means there needs to be sensitivity around this issue. And I don't think you need to convince her or try to sway her unless she's open to it. Like tell me, help me understand what you're feeling. Your influence might be limited, but it's not nothing. My hope is you could show her that you're a friend no matter what and you can help show the humanity of this situation. The situations cause so much grief and just pain. And I think you and your friend can most likely see an eye on that of like this is a painful situation.

And can we both agree on that? This is very painful. And I think that that's what she would want to hear. This is so painful. This is unbelievably painful. I'm not like versed in international politics, but I do know that with friends sometimes just need to be sensitive and say, I love you when I'm here. I understand it's painful. I can't find other couples for me and my fiancé to be friends with. We have our own friends that are couples, but I want a couple that's equally both of our friends. We talked about this a little bit, but if somebody specifically wants some couples friends, how can they find them? Oh my God, that's a great question.

That's something I do with my own husband. I love double dates. I run an article about how to go on double dates. I was like, this is the best because your spouse tells all different stories that you've never heard. So you're like, what? I had no idea. You took a road trip to Texas?

When did that happen? But also, I know men's friendships are struggling right now, historically. I know men want different things out of their friendships, assuming it's a heterosexual relationship. Sometimes some partner wants a different thing out of friendships than the other. Is her fiancé open to finding? Let's assume yes. If she's open? Oh, my God.

Then I find people in our neighborhood. People who, old friends, I've recently connected with an old friend. And she said she loves Bravo shows. And I'm like, my husband watches Bravo. But you want to go on a double date? My husband would love that. We could talk about Vanderpump Rules. It would be great.

So you're using the same principles we've really talked about. You've mentioned a few times that men. are really in a friendship crisis. We're all in a friendship crisis, but you've mentioned that men really are. I got a lot of listener questions about my partner doesn't have friends. How do I help them make friends without being really naggy and annoying and like, oh, you should go make friends and making them feel bad about an already hard situation? Can I just say that's what I want my next book to be about.

I want to write a book for women who love men who are like, what is up with my partner's friendships? Because they're just a disaster. What I've learned is that in midlife, women want more interdependence. They want to be part of other people's life. They want to nurture and care for other people, generally speaking. Men want more independence. They don't want to be judged or criticized.

So there's this real negotiation happening. Remember I told you the bathtub? There's man and his spouse. Usually it's a woman and their best friend and their spouse. And that speaks to the tension in the bathtub and the negotiation that's required. Oh, that's so interesting because the best friend for the woman has as intimate of a relationship with that woman often as their spouse does. Yes. But there's no male equivalent.

Yes. Oh. So I want to deep dive into like what is up with this bathtub that there's this constant negotiation going on. So that's very normal. I find that men have been peeling away from their friendships really because they don't want to be criticized or judged. And men are so competitive. They are so competitive.

Men are assholes to each other. They're just competitive assholes. And a lot of men are not feeling it. They don't want to do it. A large part of friendship is vulnerability, sharing what's really going on with you. And men really resist being vulnerable. They don't want to do that. Well, you know my theory on this is that men experience vulnerability and deep emotional

intimacy with their female partner if they have one. And then they're like, wait, this is so much more satisfying than shooting the shit, talking about nothing, being mean to each other, to your point. And so then they're like, well, if I'm going to spend my night choosing between those two things, I'm going to continuously choose my female partner. And then they start to isolate and isolate and isolate from their male friend. And ideally they would say, oh my gosh, emotional vulnerability feels so good. Why don't I bring that into my male friendships instead of being like, no, those don't have

that. So I'll just isolate from them and not spend time with them. The patriarchy has done a number on the dudes, let's just say. Like, they do not want to be seen as weak. They don't want to be criticized. From what I've read, a lot of men feel like sharing their problems opens them up to criticism of like, I'm having problems at work. Oh, you're not a very good employee.

I'm having problems with my kids. Oh, you must not be a good parent. And they're so unwilling to subject themselves to that judgment. They're just like, I'm out. So what do we do? If he wanted more friends, I would let him take the lead and say, how can I help? I'm here to help. I don't want to do it for it.

I don't want to solve it for him. I'm here to help. I'm a teammate. Part of it is the dominating. Like, you know, I don't want to dominate my friends. and I don't want to dominate my partner. I'm here as a teammate. I'm here to help.

So you figure it out. You figure out what you want to do. Happy to help. And I will say that even coming out here, my husband made plans to get dinner with a friend last night. Like I know that it's getting through to him by modeling to him. Like these friendships are important. They're meaningful.

I know that it's trickling down there a little bit somewhere. And I was so proud of it. I was so happy for him. He's like, I'm going to Philly's. game. I'm like, go, babe. Yeah, love it. It also occurs to me that on double dates, you can model that type of vulnerable, emotional, lifting each other up conversation and show how good that feels compared to other types of conversation. And then they can take that and run with that, too. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of modeling, not really professionally. Like, in a very amateur household

kind of way of this is how I relate to my loved ones. And it really is about being a teammate and saying, I'm here to help. Can you leave us with just one homework assignment if we want to increase the quality of our friendships in our lives? If we want to feel better about the state of our friendships in the modern world, can you leave us with one thing we can do as soon as we stop listening to this podcast? I would write down the names of three to five people. And your jacuzzi tier and I would let them know, hey, you're in my jacuzzi tier. Here's what that means. I've told all my people, you're in my jacuzzi, here's what this means. It means I've replied to your text immediately. It means I celebrate your birthdays. It means we do fun things together. It means

I'm committed to our friendship and I'm not going anywhere. And that certainty will feel like beyond. It will feel beyond for you and it will feel beyond for your friend. When I was writing my book, I did a survey to like a hundred or so people. And I asked them, what did they wish their friends did more for them? What do they wish their friends did more? And the number one answer was I wish their friends reached out more. Everybody wants their friends reaching out to them. So what I learned from that is we can do that. I can do that to reach out to your friends and let them know, you are one of my closest friends. You're in my jacuzzi tier. And I'm so grateful and thrill to have you here. And that immediately is going to change the energy of we are doing this.

Like, this is settled. Let's go have fun. That's my hope. I love that. And again, if you don't feel like you have those three to five people, there's lots of advice that can help you in your book in this episode. So even recognizing that you don't have that jacuzzi tier that you really want to have can be a really great starting place. I do have an asterisk that sometimes if you're a new parent, you don't have the luxury of a lot of time. I understand that. Maybe your baby's in your jacuzzi tier. You know, your cats and your dogs are in your jacuzzi tier. It doesn't have to just be people, but these relationships are fluid. Your baby's not going to stay a baby forever. And when you're in a different stage, come back, re-evaluate, see where you're at today, and move forward.

Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book? Oh, my gosh. Modern friendship. is the best thing I've ever written. It's based on almost a decade of writing articles on friendship for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Washington Post. And I wanted to put together something more comprehensive about the state of friendship today. I wanted to investigate. And I wanted to tell stories that you haven't heard a million times. I really, really tried to make it so from the first.

sentence of like, I haven't heard the story before. And I try to give examples that you haven't heard a million times before. Every article I've written, I start with the question of what is everyone missing about this topic? And I wanted to write a book, what is everyone missing about friendship? And what I learned is that we live in a hyperfluid society. It's never been easier to shed friends. And that's why we need new strategies to keep them. You can do this. It's not a heavy lift. I'm not going to make you do something that I wouldn't do and I'm fairly lazy. I mean, I play video games and have a cat. And my friendships have never been better. So I've learned, I've applied everything I've learned in my own life and I've never felt so at peace. And I just

want other people to feel that way too. This book is so meaningful to me. It was inspired by my dad's passing. I talk about that in the introduction. And I promise it's not something you've read before. I know there's a lot of content on friendships, and I really tried to do something new, useful, and applicable. And I think you nailed it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anna. This is wonderful. Thank you for having me.

This episode gave me so many things to do right out of the gate. I thought about my bathtub, ducousy, and swimming pool tiers of friends, and then I determined what my abouts were for each of those friendships. And then I thought about new friendships that I wanted to make. and I thought about what the abouts would be for those. And I texted all of my bathtub friends and I told them how much I loved them. And that was actually a really satisfying experience. So I highly, highly, highly recommend that you do the homework assignment from this episode because it feels really good. This episode is just full of so many good, actionable tips.

I hope that it's a game changer for how you think about friendships in your life. It's also just made me so much more focused on having experiences with friends, building in new about versus just going out to dinner. I highly, highly recommend you send the episode to your bathtub and jacuzzi to your friends, the people that you're closest with and you care so deeply for and you want to use this information to make your friendships even deeper and even more satisfying. And sharing is hands down the best way to support the podcast. It's how we can keep bringing you amazing content week after week and it is so, so

appreciated. Thank you so much to every single person who sends those links around every single week. I see you. You're the reason this podcast exists. So I love you so much. If someone shared a link to this episode with you and you were new to the podcast, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. Go follow the podcast. This is how you're going to get new episodes in your feed every single week. You won't have to search for them. We have so many amazing episodes coming up. We have one about what nobody is sharing about Ozempic. We have another. one that's going to give us life-changing micro habits to make us happier, healthier, and wealthier, so much good stuff. So go to the main page of the Liz Moody podcast, the one that lists

all of our episodes. And you will see the word follow with a plus sign button on that page on Apple Podcasts. And you'll see the word follow under the logo on Spotify podcast. Just click that. Also, if you've been listening on Apple for years, you're going to want to go to that page and click turn on automatic downloads. They had a little update. It just makes it so like automatically unsubscribed everybody from all their favorite podcasts, which is kind of annoying. So even if you've been listening for years, go to the page that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes, click, turn on automatic downloads. Then they will show up right in your feed.

We got so much good stuff coming up. I'm so excited to share it with you. And I will see you on Monday for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.