January 2, 2025 • 35 mins
This episode originally aired on July 2, 2024. We have the power to contact our besties with the tap of a finger, yet we live in a loneliness epidemic. Journalist and author Anna Goldfarb wants to know: why? And what can we do about it? In today’s installment of our friendship advice segment “Calling for a Friend,” Anna delves into the research behind her book “Modern Friendship.” Anna’s findings reveal the importance of infusing your friendships with a shared sense of purpose, the optimal number of friends, and just how many hours it takes to form what she calls a “wholehearted friendship.”
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, as
we step into a new year, we're bringing you an
encore conversation about something we'll all be considering in twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Power of Friendship.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Author and journalist Anna Goldfarb joined us to explore what
we're getting wrong about modern friendship, what we're getting right,
and why this is actually the best time ever to
be a friend.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's Thursday, January two. I'm Simoan Boyce.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
I'm Danielle Robe and this is The bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, to laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Samal, we're talking friendship today. I'm excited. Yes, I'm so
excited too. This is our favorite topic.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
It really is.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
And there's a reason we call you our bright Side besties.
We love friendship and so we are here with an
expert today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Our guest is Anna Goldfarb.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
It's written extensively about friendships and relationships for The New
York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, the list goes on.
But she's also the author of Modern Friendship, How to
Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, and it's a book that
she actually started working on right after experiencing some friendship
breakups in her thirties, some unexpected friendship breakups.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
No, my friend says that every woman's Roman Empire is
a friendship breakup. Like that's the thing that we play
in our head all the time, Like men maybe think
about the actual Roman Empire. Well, women think about that
friendship that just soured and you had this really painful
severing process and you're still not over it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I think there's so much truth to that.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I had a friendship breakup the day before I started
high school, so going into ninth grade, and I was
wrecked over it.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I still think about it today.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Does it seem worthy the cause when you look back
on it now, does it still seem like, oh, yeah,
we should have broken up that.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I don't even remember what the cause was. I don't
know that I got the real answer from her. I
don't think we were mature enough to like have that moment.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, but it's still her.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
We're in each other's lives now today, like we text,
you know, once or twice a year, just checking in.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
But do you think about any of those those breakups?
I do.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
There's one friendship breakup that happened to me when I
was a new mom and it was a new mom
friend that meant a lot to me, and it was
really hard at the time. It's stung for a while,
but I think time heals all wounds, and I think
that I think about it a lot less today, and
when I do think about it, I'm like, huh, maybe
(02:40):
that was for the better, you know, maybe it wasn't
supposed to work out. But I'm always down to talk
about this because it's so relatable. It's something that we
all experience, and honestly, it's something that never goes away,
even as you get older. I hear my mom talking
about friendships that she I think needs to break up with,
so it is it's a universal conundrum. And Danielle she
(03:03):
covers so much ground in her work, which I think
is really refreshing, not just the breakups, but how do
you revive friendships? Like what does reconciliation look like? How
do we continue to connect with people as we get
older and we move through these different life stages. And
as a journalist, some of her most popular articles have
been about maintaining friendships, connecting with coworkers, and even dealing
(03:26):
with a friendship quiet season?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I actually feel like I have quiet seasons with friendships,
probably every three months.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
What do you mean by that? Like you go in
and out of being an active friend.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
This is a great question, and I think we need
to ask her what does a quiet season actually mean?
But if I were to take a guess, it means
you're going through a period where you're not as socially active.
Maybe you're not able to make as much time for
your friends as you would like. And I definitely go
through periods like that, like I either respond to your
text in three minutes or three weeks, and sometimes it's
(04:03):
going to be three weeks, depending on what life looks
like at that time.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
How about you? For sure? I think it depends on
what's going on in your life.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
And I feel that with all relationships, like there's moments
where I'm being such an active sister or daughter, and
there's moments where I'm like, Wow, I really suck right now.
But I've read a lot of Anna's pieces and she
said that we actually have to get rid of that guilt.
So I'm excited to ask her about that today because
I would love to release some of my guilt.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I'm so glad you brought that up, Danielle, because getting
rid of guilt is something that I am working on
right now.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well, Anna's touching on so much of this in her
writing and her book, but there's actually another really touching
reason that she wrote her book. She wanted to help
honor her dad after he passed away, because her dad
had this longtime friend that he wanted to reconnect with,
but she said he was always too anxious to actually
(04:58):
do it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And after his.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Passing, Anna learned that that friend felt the same way,
and so she called that experience a turning point for
her and part of the inspiration for her book. And
we have to dig into that because, like, what a
beautiful inspirational story for all of us.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
That is so heartbreaking to hear. It honestly makes me
want to cry. I want to avoid that at all costs.
I want to figure out, like, how do I live
a life that I can be proud of when it
comes to my relationships and friendships.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
What a beautiful story.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Well that's why we're here today. We're gonna dig into friendships.
We're getting into all things friendship with Anna Goldfarb. That's
right after the break, stay with.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Us, Anna, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, we're so excited to talk friendship with you.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And you know, my great grandmother lived until she was
one hundred and one years old, and in her late nineties,
I would call her and ask how she was, and
without a doubt, she would talk to me about the
drama at her lunch table or her friends at her
bridge game.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And I realized that whether we are.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
In our twenties or in our late nineties, we are
all trying to navigate friendship. And you have been dubbed
the New York Times friendship corresponding. I can't imagine that
you grow into a title like that without struggling and
navigating connection yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Why did you start writing about friendship?
Speaker 5 (06:33):
I started reporting on friendships in like twenty seventeen, and
I had no idea friendship experts were even a thing
like that. That blew my mind that it was someone's
job to analyze friendships and translate friendship trends, and that
just was like what I had no idea. And the
(06:54):
more I learned about friendships and how they work, the
more questions I had, and with the pandemic, it was
this incredible opportunity where everyone was re imagining their friendships
at once, which is historically wild. I mean, normally we
have our own dramas, our own hiccups, and we're trying
(07:15):
to feel around in the dark for how to move
through them. But to have this opportunity where everyone was like, well,
how does this work? How do we live in a
world where seeing a friend could be literally life or death?
So I just dove in and a lot of the
advice around the lockdown, if you remember, was reach out
(07:36):
to that friend, like send that message, send that email.
And I wrote an article for The Times saying should
you reach out to that friend right now? Because part
of my thinking was, well, why haven't you been in touch?
Like why has there been this lapse in your friendship?
Let's take a look at what's going on here. And
those kinds of articles got me the most excited because
(07:59):
I just felt like there was a real hunger for
this knowledge. This is this was like questions that people
had but didn't think to articulate, so or maybe they
did fight and hear it. So I hope to illuminate
what these issues are.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Anna what's the article that you've written that you get
the most engagement from.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Let me think, Well, one of the ones I love
the most was how to Handle a Quiet Season and
a Friendship? And I thought it was such a poetic
way to talk about the rolls that we have in
our friendship. And you know, it's so easy to generate
a narrative with very little information, so I wanted to
(08:42):
dive into that, like why do we fill in the
gaps with our silences from our friends? And how do
we handle it? Do you confront them, do you ask them?
Do you just hide in a hole and hope things change?
I mean, how do you handle the quiet season? And
part of that was, you know, people always say friendships
(09:02):
last reason or a season or a lifetime, and I
hate that. I honestly hate it because I'm like, well,
why why is it a season? Why is it a
Why is one friendship a lifetime and one a season?
Like tell me more old adage, Like I feel like
you're missing some steps here. So that was part of
the reason I wanted to write this book, was to
(09:24):
really unravel, like what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
We do hear that often that friendships are made for
a certain season of life. And you've actually written a
lot about friendship breakups.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
I mean that's part of why I'm obsessed with friendship
because I have a busted, tattered trail of friendships where
I didn't know if it was my issue, was I
flubbing the brief? Was it their issue? Is it just
living in America in twenty twenty four? Like, is it
that our culture friendships are so precarious nowadays? I mean,
(09:58):
it's so easy to break up with friends. That's because
our friendships are mostly based on interests. They're based on passions,
and our passions change, our priorities change, so our friendships
are like part of that chure and they're part of
that mix. Actually, studies show that we lose half of
our friendships every seven years, and that's such a staggering
(10:20):
stat It's like, oh my god, are we just monsters
and ogres moving through life like cutting down our friendships
left and right. But when I learned more about it,
it's actually I thought something beautiful. Because we change, we grow,
we evolve, and we seek out people who meet us
where our changing interests lie.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
That's so interesting. You're taking the guilt out of it all. Yeah,
I'm like, please, don't be guilty. It's really really hard,
you know.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
I spent a lot of time in my book going
over our culture and talking about how we live in
a hyper fluid society now, and this is historically new.
It's very different than our grandparents and great grandparents, whose
social lives were more like an oak tree, where they
had deep roots and they basically stayed in the same town.
They didn't have to try very hard to keep their
(11:12):
friendships going. They had these other institutions that helped keep
these give a framework for these friendships to practice in.
But we live in a society that's more like a
bicycle wheel where we're in the middle, and we have
these groups of friends from childhood, from high school, from
college if you went to college, from your first job,
(11:34):
your second job, and they only share common history with us,
not with each other. So the burden has shifted onto
us to come up with reasons to keep a friendship active.
So there has been this big shift in personal responsibility
to keep these friendships going. And we don't have any help.
(11:55):
We don't have an institution that's like we're throwing an
ice cream social on Sunday. Literally show up, you have
to spend no energy of But when are we going
to get together again? It is not in our imagination.
It is much much harder to keep friendships these days.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
I read this book by Robert Putnam called Bowling Alone,
and it's about like the individualization about American society.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Like there used to be bowling clubs on Wednesday nights
where people would gather, so I've never thought about that.
But it is harder to gather. There is more work
that goes into it. I guess I understand the title
of your book now more, which is Modern Friendship, and
you say it's a guide to creating wholehearted relationships. What
makes a wholehearted friendship? You know?
Speaker 5 (12:42):
I wanted a word to describe the kind of friend
I wanted to be, and I really couldn't think of anything.
I'm like, a good friend, a great friend, Like it
wasn't descriptive enough for me. And wholehearted means dedicated, committed,
and enthusiastic, and I'm like, that's it. That's the kind
of friend I want to be to my favorite friends.
(13:05):
I want them to think of me like that. So
I developed a paradigm called wholehearted friendship because I was
noticing a disconnect if I wanted to love my friends,
I wanted to support my friends, but they didn't feel
loved or supported. And I based this paradigm around the
study by doctor Jeffrey A.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Hall.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
He's a professor of communication in Kansas, and he found
that it takes two hundred hours of shared time to
go from stranger to close friend. That's a lot of time.
Two hundred hours a lot of time. But we have
that time when we're younger, when we aren't as many
things to as many people. You know, what are our roles?
(13:44):
We're like a child, a student, a grandkid maybe, Like
there's not much pulling on our time. But once we
reach thirty, our friendships fall off a cliff. But that's
because we become more things to more people. You become
a spouse maybe, or you're a significant other. You become
an employee, you become maybe a daughter in law, an auntie. Like,
(14:09):
there's all these other roles that take a lot of time.
So who do we spend time with? That's that's what
wholehearted friendship's about. It's three d's desire diligence, and delight,
and desire is who am I yearning to spend time with,
Diligence is who do I prioritize spending time with? And
delight is who do I actually enjoy this time I'm
(14:30):
spending with And those three things. It's all based on time,
because friendships are time. They're a story of time.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
The delight part is so huge for me. I decided
a few years ago that I'm not doing pity hangs anymore.
I know that might sound harsh, but if you don't
delight me while we're hanging out, and vice versa, if
I'm not delighting you, what are we doing this for?
You know, like, let's not waste anyone's time here. We
should be making the most of the time that we
(14:58):
spend with each other, because you're right, come so many
things to so many different people in that time diminishes
as we get older.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
So you have this analogy about fitting friends into groups,
and I love that they're aquatic theme. Do you say
friendships are supposed to fit into a bathtub, a jacuzzi,
or a swimming pool? Can you break each of those
down for us?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Absolutely. These numbers are based on Robin Dunbar's finding. He's
a British anthropologist. He is wonderful. He's done a lot
of work in social groups, and I rebranded these groups
to highlight how fluid they are. Our friendships are very fluid.
They can go from really intense to less intense all
(15:42):
the time for any reason. So the innermost here is
what I call the bathtub because it's really small, not
too many people fit in it. For men, it's usually
one other person in their bathtub, it's usually their significant other.
For women, it's usually two people. It's their significant other
and a best friend. So right there is showing like
(16:05):
the gender differences between how we practice friendships. The next
tier is your jacuzi, and that's because there's three to
five people and perfect size for a jacuzi. And these
are the people you'd think in an Academy award speech.
These are the people you'd call, you know, if you
had great news, if you had scary news. This is
(16:25):
your closest support group. And then the outer tier from
there is your swimming pool, and that's ten to fifteen people.
Those are the people you'd house it for, maybe coworker,
favorite coworkers, maybe people you'd double date with. And this
is what a social life should look like ideally, And
(16:46):
I want to give a caveat that when you are
going through a huge milestone change, you may not have
the bandwidth to nurture three to five close friendships. Like
if you're you just had a baby, you just lost
a job, you're going through depression. Like, it's okay if
you don't have them at the moment, but hopefully you
don't stay there. That this is the ideal, This is
(17:09):
something to work towards.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I love those analogies. It's so easy to visualize them.
I love thinking about it that way. So thank you
for that framework.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
We need to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back talking about friendship with Anna Goldfarb.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
And we're back, okay, Anna, let's talk about the Golden
age of friendship.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
What do you mean by that? Are we in it
right now?
Speaker 5 (17:40):
I wrote an op ed for the Washington Post about this,
that we should be in the Golden age of friendship,
but we're not. It's so easy to reach out to people,
you know, time and distance are no longer a factor.
We can just reach out to anyone at any time.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
But we don't.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
We know, my phone is full of people that I love,
but I don't reach out to them very often, So like,
what's going on here? And here's what I learned. Our
social life nowadays is like a supermarket. And you know,
when you're starving and you try to go shopping and
you add the most random stuff to your cart, like,
(18:17):
you know, mazzarella sticks from the hot bar. You know,
maybe like a random sandwich from the deli. Like you
just put whatever your cravings are screaming for in your cart,
and then you check out and you're like, how am
I going to make a meal out of any of
these random things I've just put in this cart. Now,
imagine grocery shopping when you're full and you have a
(18:38):
list and you know exactly what belongs in your cart,
and going food shopping isn't so overwhelming and you make
better choices. And that's what our lives are like today.
Our friendships are a supermarket. And here's what I mean.
When you go on social media and you see a
feed of all of these people that you know that
(18:59):
only have come in history with you, not with each other,
it's really overwhelming. It's like, oh that's my old coworker.
Oh she just moved. Oh I guess I missed it.
I wonder how she's doing. And you get distracted by
all these thoughts and it's really hard to feel full
and feel craving, you feel longing, you feel comparison, like
(19:20):
it's just it's a bad time. But if you go
and you know who belongs in your cart, if you
map out these are the three to five friends that
I'm committing to being a wonderful, wholehearted friend to, you
don't have that hunger. You're not scrambling to figure out,
like how do I keep these friendships spinning? How do
(19:41):
I keep it afloat? And that's what we need. We
need to be more intentional with who we commit to,
with who we extend interest to. So that's the conversation
I want to have, is we can have the golden
age of friendship. We just have to have a strategy.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Yeah, how about when somebody is not reciprocal, when they're
not a great teammate for you, how long do you
let that slide? People are you know, have seasons throughout
their life, say they're not a great teammate for three months,
six months, one year. At what point are they not
a great teammate in general?
Speaker 5 (20:19):
Well, I would say to understand what the clear and
compelling about is of the friendship, like why are we
why do I want to fight for this friendship or not?
Is the about really compelling to us? And I also,
as I've learned more about friendships, I've raised my standards.
For someone to be in my jacuzzi is someone I've
(20:40):
known a long time years. I see them with their
other other friendships. I see what kind of person they are,
so I feel more confident that this is someone I
want to keep close and I want to keep around.
But if friendships need to be well, it's actually okay.
If they're not always reciprocal, that's not a bad thing.
(21:03):
It's only bad if someone feels negatively about it, someone's
not feeling great. Because sometimes we're busy at work and
it's great that a friend reaches out more, and sometimes
you know, we're the ones who have a little more
bandwidth and can reach out more and initiate more and
our friends can't. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But
if their friendship isn't feeling aligned, then you definitely can
(21:27):
shuffle them to the outer edges and just move your
energy elsewhere. I'm not really a fan of like a
huge speech unless something happened, like a betrayal or something catastrophic.
I'm happy to just let friendships, like put them on
pause rather than just end them, and that can help
(21:49):
me feel less intense about it, Like you know, I'm
just gonna pause this friendship. Let's see if we can
pick up later. Because I've always been surprised about my friendships.
I don't know if this happens with you guys, but
sometimes I think our friendship is like dead and gone
and buried, and then I hear from them in a
few years and we actually pick up and we've evolved,
and it's been really surprising and a delight of Oh.
(22:11):
I didn't think the friendship was going anywhere. I'm not
all knowing. I'm open to being wrong, I'm open to change.
But that's what I would encourage, is like, maybe your
friendship needs a pause, but it doesn't mean that you
need to have like a dramatic ending. It's it's like, Okay,
I recognize that this isn't feeling great, so let's go
(22:33):
back to the basics. What's our about? Like, is the
about clear and compelling and go from there.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
I love that you mentioned the passage of time, because
I was so moved by the story of friendship that
you shared about your late dad.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Will you share it with everybody?
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share
the story. I talked about in the beginning, how I've
been reporting on friendship. And in June twenty twenty, I
had just written a story should you reach out to
that friend? Which we talked about, and I went to
visit my parents. You know, the co COVID was raging,
(23:10):
so we're outside in their back porch and my dad
said that reading my article opened up an old wound
in him, and it made him think of his childhood
friend Marty. And he didn't know why he stopped talking
to Marty. It'd been like ten or fifteen years and
he really missed him, but he didn't know. He was
(23:31):
scared of reaching out. He was scared of rejection. He
was anxious of like what if he ignores me? And
of course I'm a journalist. I'm like, Dad, let me help, Like, look,
here's his information right here, Like I'll write the message
for you. Just say, hey, Marty, you've been on my mind.
Do you want to get a call on Monday? Which
isn't like the most amazing message ever, but they hadn't
(23:52):
spoken in ten years, so I figured it'd be like
a start, and I wanted to I wanted to heal
this from dad. I wanted to show off, honestly that
I have been writing about friendship, like I can solve
this for you. And I kept pestering him for updates,
like did you reach out? What's up? Did you reach out?
And he never did. He never did. And six months
(24:15):
after we had that conversation, my dad had a serious
infection in his hip and he went to the hospital
for treatment. And while he was in the hospital, he
was exposed to COVID and he contracted COVID and he
deteriorated rapidly since his body was exhausted from fighting the infection,
(24:37):
and three weeks intil January twenty twenty one, he passed away.
None of his friends knew that he was sick. My
dad was a scientist, he was a surfer, he volunteered
at the Special Olympics, like he was a great guy.
And he only had four people at his funeral. You know,
(24:58):
my sister couldn't even attend. She lives in Boston, and
it wasn't safe for her to come. None of his
grandkids could attend his funeral, and it was just horrific.
I mean, it was horrible. And I couldn't stop thinking
about Marty, Like my mind kept turning to Marty. And
(25:18):
two days after my dad passed away, I reached out
to Marty's son on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I need
to speak with your dad. Could you please put me
in touch. Forty five minutes later, I was on the
phone with Marty and he was so happy to hear
from me. He was like, Anna, yeah, Like it's like,
it's like, how are you? What's going on? And you know,
(25:40):
I said are you are you sitting down? Like are
you somewhere quiet? And he said, yeah, yeah, what's going on?
And I said, you know, my father died two days ago.
And we had a whole conversation about how we wanted
to connect with you and reach out to you. And
he interrupted me and said, I bear responsibility here too.
I could have reached out to him just as easily
(26:02):
as he could have reached out to me. And we
talked for a little bit. He shared stories about growing
up in Queen's with my dad, how they went to
football games and tracked mud into my grandma's house with
her sneakers, which annoyed her, and through tears, he thanked me.
He thanked me for letting him know and just for
(26:24):
the conversation. And I gave Marty the gift of knowing
with certainty that his friendship mattered to my dad. And
I started this because I wanted to be a hero
to my dad. I wanted to solve this for him,
but I ended up healing his friend and letting him
know that their friendship was special and meaningful. And I
(26:47):
wrote this story in the book. This is the introduction.
And once after I talked with Marty, that's when I
knew I wanted to write this book. I wanted to
do something that explained why we talk ourselves out of
even though we crave it. And I know that we
all are thinking of that one person that we miss
and wish that we could reach out to and connect
(27:09):
and have a conversation with. And I just want I
want people to have the tools to understand, like, here's
why you haven't been in touch.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
But it's not hopeless, Anna, That story is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
It makes me emotional to think about this idea of
talking ourselves out of connection and how that can limit
us for our entire lives and we can miss out
on a connection as special as the one that your
father had with Marty. And as you were talking, I
also am thinking about my relationships with some of my
family members and how intentional we must be, not only
(27:47):
in our friendships, but in our friendships with family members.
Like I have this really unique situation with my brother.
He's my half brother. We didn't grow up together. I
found out that I had a brother when I was
twenty one years old. You can imagine it blew my mind.
I was an only child and there were a lot
of complicated situations that led to that or complicated circumstances,
(28:10):
and my brother and I we had a falling out
early on into our relationship, like soon after I first
met him. We had a falling out and didn't speak
for like four years, and eventually, thankfully, I talked myself
into connection with him and we have a relationship now
and it has this really beautiful redemptive arc that has
(28:31):
taught me a lot. And I know that you've written
extensively about your personal relationship, specifically with your sister, and
how that was a big motivation for your reporting. So
how did the work that you have done on this
topic empower you to improve that relationship.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
I love that you've asked me about this because when
I started reporting on friendships in twenty seventeen, I was
basically estranged from my younger sister. We were really having
a difficult time even getting through a meal, like even
getting through a meal without really bruised feelings and hurt
(29:11):
and just just it was just felt like her it
was pain. And as I learned more about friendship, and
I credit Shasta Nelson, She's like the OG friendship expert,
Shasta taught me that friendships need three things consistency, positivity,
and vulnerability. And I started applying that to my sister.
(29:31):
My sister had just had a kid, and I was
coming to terms with being child free and understanding that,
like I'm it doesn't look like I'm having kids and
I'm adjusting to that, and we just weren't on the
same page. So for consistency, I said, why don't I
come and help you watch your kid every Saturday, let's all?
(29:53):
And then I start coming every Saturday, and like, positivity,
what can I do? So I started bringing her little
gifts like I saw this lip gloss, I thought you'd like,
or here, I know this is your favorite tea, so
I got you a little box. Then the last one
was vulnerability because once I started helping and it was
consistent and I was positive, then she started being like
curious about my life and what are my challenges? And
(30:17):
it was those three things that set us on the
right path and created new habits for us. And I
realized that I was messing up because I had the
volume up on thoughts like why isn't my sister doing
more for me? Why isn't she care? Or why isn't
she happier for me? And I turned the volume down
on those thoughts, and I turned the volume up on
(30:39):
thoughts like what can I do to help her today?
What can I do to help her? And that was
a game changer. It changed our entire relationship and I
started seeing her for her needs like a person who
just has a kid, as you guys know, is drowning.
You know, one person's not drowning and one person is drowning.
So that's the difference. And my sister, I love her
(31:02):
and she was important to me, and I was at
this moment where I started asking what can I do
to help? What do you need? And honestly, she needed
a nap. So I'm like, great, let me come over.
You can take a nap. Every Saturday. I will watch
your kid and go take a nap and just it
doesn't have to be complicated. It was that simple. But
(31:23):
I was meeting her needs. And that's what we can
do for our friends, is say, what do you need?
I want to help instead of well, what about me?
What you're not reaching out to me? What about being
happy for me? That thinking didn't get me very far.
She made everyone annoyed at me, and I annoyed myself, honestly.
(31:45):
But now I approach my friendships in the same way
of what can I do to make my friends' lives easier?
What do they need? How can I help? And honestly,
they love being my friend.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Now the idea of selfless giving is like the cure
to everything, and so that's so cool that you're giving
that gift to your friends. You know, you've interviewed probably hundreds,
if not thousands of people at this point on friendship,
written thousands of words on it. What's the biggest change
(32:16):
that you've made to your friendships.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
The biggest changes I've started telling them that I love them.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
I was.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
I didn't grow up in a very affectionate, like a
verbal affectionate household. My grandma did. My Grandma'd be like,
I love you, But you know, my parents like weren't
as free with it. And it still feels a little
risky to start telling my friends I love them, but
I learned. Actually. I wrote an article for The New
York Times about sibling relationships, and one study said that
(32:44):
the number one thing that siblings want to hear is
that I love you more. That we always take our
siblings for granted. And I'm like, I noticed the same
thing with my friendships, Like I don't tell them I
love them enough. And for the friends in my JACUZZI
like they have a special position, they are in an
elite tier, and I tell them I love them all
(33:06):
the time. Now I just texted my best friend like
thinking of you, love you, and she's like, love you too,
And there's just no anxiety. Anxiety occurs when there's uncertainty,
and I don't want any uncertainty in my friendships. I
don't want my friends to second guess. You know, is
this friendship important is does it an't even care. I'm like,
(33:27):
fuck that, I care a lot. I'm just gonna let
you know I am in it with you, and I
love you, and I appreciate you, and I love our
friendships for the following reasons. And I've just been more
effusive because I know our friends want to hear it.
I know it means the world to them, and they'll
be more likely to invest in my life because they
(33:48):
see that I'm you know, I'm committed. I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Anna, you are such a good friend. Anybody who's friends
with you would be so lucky.
Speaker 5 (33:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
That is abundantly clear from our conversation today.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
Thank you. I wasn't always like this. I was a
bit of a cheap skate. I'm not gonna lie. I'm
not like some scene. Are you laughing that I like
to called myself a cheapskate.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I love the self awareness. It's amazing because, like we
all have evolutions. I don't think I used to be
a good friend. My mom taught me how to be
a good friend later in life, just by watching her.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
I really think our best friendships are ahead of us.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Like we can do this, we can do this. Thank
you so much, Anna, Thank you for I.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
Love talking with you both. Obviously a geek about friendship,
but I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for having
me on.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Well, You're in such good company because we are geeks
about friendship too here on the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
Cheers.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Anna Goldfarb is an author and journalist. Her book Modern Friendship,
How to Deepen our most valued Connections, can be found
wherever you get your books.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're back with a
brand new episode with Isolette Fishback, the author of Get
It Done, Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
You don't want to miss it.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect
with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram
and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok Oh, and
feel free to tag us at Simone Boyce and at
Danielle Robe.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
See you tomorrow, folks, Keep looking on the bright side.
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, as
we step into a new year, we're bringing you an
encore conversation about something we'll all be considering in twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Power of Friendship.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Author and journalist Anna Goldfarb joined us to explore what
we're getting wrong about modern friendship, what we're getting right,
and why this is actually the best time ever to
be a friend.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's Thursday, January two. I'm Simoan Boyce.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
I'm Danielle Robe and this is The bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, to laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Samal, we're talking friendship today. I'm excited. Yes, I'm so
excited too. This is our favorite topic.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
It really is.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
And there's a reason we call you our bright Side besties.
We love friendship and so we are here with an
expert today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Our guest is Anna Goldfarb.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
It's written extensively about friendships and relationships for The New
York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, the list goes on.
But she's also the author of Modern Friendship, How to
Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, and it's a book that
she actually started working on right after experiencing some friendship
breakups in her thirties, some unexpected friendship breakups.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
No, my friend says that every woman's Roman Empire is
a friendship breakup. Like that's the thing that we play
in our head all the time, Like men maybe think
about the actual Roman Empire. Well, women think about that
friendship that just soured and you had this really painful
severing process and you're still not over it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I think there's so much truth to that.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I had a friendship breakup the day before I started
high school, so going into ninth grade, and I was
wrecked over it.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I still think about it today.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Does it seem worthy the cause when you look back
on it now, does it still seem like, oh, yeah,
we should have broken up that.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I don't even remember what the cause was. I don't
know that I got the real answer from her. I
don't think we were mature enough to like have that moment.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, but it's still her.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
We're in each other's lives now today, like we text,
you know, once or twice a year, just checking in.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
But do you think about any of those those breakups?
I do.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
There's one friendship breakup that happened to me when I
was a new mom and it was a new mom
friend that meant a lot to me, and it was
really hard at the time. It's stung for a while,
but I think time heals all wounds, and I think
that I think about it a lot less today, and
when I do think about it, I'm like, huh, maybe
(02:40):
that was for the better, you know, maybe it wasn't
supposed to work out. But I'm always down to talk
about this because it's so relatable. It's something that we
all experience, and honestly, it's something that never goes away,
even as you get older. I hear my mom talking
about friendships that she I think needs to break up with,
so it is it's a universal conundrum. And Danielle she
(03:03):
covers so much ground in her work, which I think
is really refreshing, not just the breakups, but how do
you revive friendships? Like what does reconciliation look like? How
do we continue to connect with people as we get
older and we move through these different life stages. And
as a journalist, some of her most popular articles have
been about maintaining friendships, connecting with coworkers, and even dealing
(03:26):
with a friendship quiet season?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I actually feel like I have quiet seasons with friendships,
probably every three months.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
What do you mean by that? Like you go in
and out of being an active friend.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
This is a great question, and I think we need
to ask her what does a quiet season actually mean?
But if I were to take a guess, it means
you're going through a period where you're not as socially active.
Maybe you're not able to make as much time for
your friends as you would like. And I definitely go
through periods like that, like I either respond to your
text in three minutes or three weeks, and sometimes it's
(04:03):
going to be three weeks, depending on what life looks
like at that time.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
How about you? For sure? I think it depends on
what's going on in your life.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
And I feel that with all relationships, like there's moments
where I'm being such an active sister or daughter, and
there's moments where I'm like, Wow, I really suck right now.
But I've read a lot of Anna's pieces and she
said that we actually have to get rid of that guilt.
So I'm excited to ask her about that today because
I would love to release some of my guilt.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I'm so glad you brought that up, Danielle, because getting
rid of guilt is something that I am working on
right now.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well, Anna's touching on so much of this in her
writing and her book, but there's actually another really touching
reason that she wrote her book. She wanted to help
honor her dad after he passed away, because her dad
had this longtime friend that he wanted to reconnect with,
but she said he was always too anxious to actually
(04:58):
do it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And after his.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Passing, Anna learned that that friend felt the same way,
and so she called that experience a turning point for
her and part of the inspiration for her book. And
we have to dig into that because, like, what a
beautiful inspirational story for all of us.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
That is so heartbreaking to hear. It honestly makes me
want to cry. I want to avoid that at all costs.
I want to figure out, like, how do I live
a life that I can be proud of when it
comes to my relationships and friendships.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
What a beautiful story.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Well that's why we're here today. We're gonna dig into friendships.
We're getting into all things friendship with Anna Goldfarb. That's
right after the break, stay with.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Us, Anna, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, we're so excited to talk friendship with you.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And you know, my great grandmother lived until she was
one hundred and one years old, and in her late nineties,
I would call her and ask how she was, and
without a doubt, she would talk to me about the
drama at her lunch table or her friends at her
bridge game.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And I realized that whether we are.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
In our twenties or in our late nineties, we are
all trying to navigate friendship. And you have been dubbed
the New York Times friendship corresponding. I can't imagine that
you grow into a title like that without struggling and
navigating connection yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Why did you start writing about friendship?
Speaker 5 (06:33):
I started reporting on friendships in like twenty seventeen, and
I had no idea friendship experts were even a thing
like that. That blew my mind that it was someone's
job to analyze friendships and translate friendship trends, and that
just was like what I had no idea. And the
(06:54):
more I learned about friendships and how they work, the
more questions I had, and with the pandemic, it was
this incredible opportunity where everyone was re imagining their friendships
at once, which is historically wild. I mean, normally we
have our own dramas, our own hiccups, and we're trying
(07:15):
to feel around in the dark for how to move
through them. But to have this opportunity where everyone was like, well,
how does this work? How do we live in a
world where seeing a friend could be literally life or death?
So I just dove in and a lot of the
advice around the lockdown, if you remember, was reach out
(07:36):
to that friend, like send that message, send that email.
And I wrote an article for The Times saying should
you reach out to that friend right now? Because part
of my thinking was, well, why haven't you been in touch?
Like why has there been this lapse in your friendship?
Let's take a look at what's going on here. And
those kinds of articles got me the most excited because
(07:59):
I just felt like there was a real hunger for
this knowledge. This is this was like questions that people
had but didn't think to articulate, so or maybe they
did fight and hear it. So I hope to illuminate
what these issues are.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Anna what's the article that you've written that you get
the most engagement from.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Let me think, Well, one of the ones I love
the most was how to Handle a Quiet Season and
a Friendship? And I thought it was such a poetic
way to talk about the rolls that we have in
our friendship. And you know, it's so easy to generate
a narrative with very little information, so I wanted to
(08:42):
dive into that, like why do we fill in the
gaps with our silences from our friends? And how do
we handle it? Do you confront them, do you ask them?
Do you just hide in a hole and hope things change?
I mean, how do you handle the quiet season? And
part of that was, you know, people always say friendships
(09:02):
last reason or a season or a lifetime, and I
hate that. I honestly hate it because I'm like, well,
why why is it a season? Why is it a
Why is one friendship a lifetime and one a season?
Like tell me more old adage, Like I feel like
you're missing some steps here. So that was part of
the reason I wanted to write this book, was to
(09:24):
really unravel, like what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
We do hear that often that friendships are made for
a certain season of life. And you've actually written a
lot about friendship breakups.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
I mean that's part of why I'm obsessed with friendship
because I have a busted, tattered trail of friendships where
I didn't know if it was my issue, was I
flubbing the brief? Was it their issue? Is it just
living in America in twenty twenty four? Like, is it
that our culture friendships are so precarious nowadays? I mean,
(09:58):
it's so easy to break up with friends. That's because
our friendships are mostly based on interests. They're based on passions,
and our passions change, our priorities change, so our friendships
are like part of that chure and they're part of
that mix. Actually, studies show that we lose half of
our friendships every seven years, and that's such a staggering
(10:20):
stat It's like, oh my god, are we just monsters
and ogres moving through life like cutting down our friendships
left and right. But when I learned more about it,
it's actually I thought something beautiful. Because we change, we grow,
we evolve, and we seek out people who meet us
where our changing interests lie.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
That's so interesting. You're taking the guilt out of it all. Yeah,
I'm like, please, don't be guilty. It's really really hard,
you know.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
I spent a lot of time in my book going
over our culture and talking about how we live in
a hyper fluid society now, and this is historically new.
It's very different than our grandparents and great grandparents, whose
social lives were more like an oak tree, where they
had deep roots and they basically stayed in the same town.
They didn't have to try very hard to keep their
(11:12):
friendships going. They had these other institutions that helped keep
these give a framework for these friendships to practice in.
But we live in a society that's more like a
bicycle wheel where we're in the middle, and we have
these groups of friends from childhood, from high school, from
college if you went to college, from your first job,
(11:34):
your second job, and they only share common history with us,
not with each other. So the burden has shifted onto
us to come up with reasons to keep a friendship active.
So there has been this big shift in personal responsibility
to keep these friendships going. And we don't have any help.
(11:55):
We don't have an institution that's like we're throwing an
ice cream social on Sunday. Literally show up, you have
to spend no energy of But when are we going
to get together again? It is not in our imagination.
It is much much harder to keep friendships these days.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
I read this book by Robert Putnam called Bowling Alone,
and it's about like the individualization about American society.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Like there used to be bowling clubs on Wednesday nights
where people would gather, so I've never thought about that.
But it is harder to gather. There is more work
that goes into it. I guess I understand the title
of your book now more, which is Modern Friendship, and
you say it's a guide to creating wholehearted relationships. What
makes a wholehearted friendship? You know?
Speaker 5 (12:42):
I wanted a word to describe the kind of friend
I wanted to be, and I really couldn't think of anything.
I'm like, a good friend, a great friend, Like it
wasn't descriptive enough for me. And wholehearted means dedicated, committed,
and enthusiastic, and I'm like, that's it. That's the kind
of friend I want to be to my favorite friends.
(13:05):
I want them to think of me like that. So
I developed a paradigm called wholehearted friendship because I was
noticing a disconnect if I wanted to love my friends,
I wanted to support my friends, but they didn't feel
loved or supported. And I based this paradigm around the
study by doctor Jeffrey A.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Hall.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
He's a professor of communication in Kansas, and he found
that it takes two hundred hours of shared time to
go from stranger to close friend. That's a lot of time.
Two hundred hours a lot of time. But we have
that time when we're younger, when we aren't as many
things to as many people. You know, what are our roles?
(13:44):
We're like a child, a student, a grandkid maybe, Like
there's not much pulling on our time. But once we
reach thirty, our friendships fall off a cliff. But that's
because we become more things to more people. You become
a spouse maybe, or you're a significant other. You become
an employee, you become maybe a daughter in law, an auntie. Like,
(14:09):
there's all these other roles that take a lot of time.
So who do we spend time with? That's that's what
wholehearted friendship's about. It's three d's desire diligence, and delight,
and desire is who am I yearning to spend time with,
Diligence is who do I prioritize spending time with? And
delight is who do I actually enjoy this time I'm
(14:30):
spending with And those three things. It's all based on time,
because friendships are time. They're a story of time.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
The delight part is so huge for me. I decided
a few years ago that I'm not doing pity hangs anymore.
I know that might sound harsh, but if you don't
delight me while we're hanging out, and vice versa, if
I'm not delighting you, what are we doing this for?
You know, like, let's not waste anyone's time here. We
should be making the most of the time that we
(14:58):
spend with each other, because you're right, come so many
things to so many different people in that time diminishes
as we get older.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
So you have this analogy about fitting friends into groups,
and I love that they're aquatic theme. Do you say
friendships are supposed to fit into a bathtub, a jacuzzi,
or a swimming pool? Can you break each of those
down for us?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Absolutely. These numbers are based on Robin Dunbar's finding. He's
a British anthropologist. He is wonderful. He's done a lot
of work in social groups, and I rebranded these groups
to highlight how fluid they are. Our friendships are very fluid.
They can go from really intense to less intense all
(15:42):
the time for any reason. So the innermost here is
what I call the bathtub because it's really small, not
too many people fit in it. For men, it's usually
one other person in their bathtub, it's usually their significant other.
For women, it's usually two people. It's their significant other
and a best friend. So right there is showing like
(16:05):
the gender differences between how we practice friendships. The next
tier is your jacuzi, and that's because there's three to
five people and perfect size for a jacuzi. And these
are the people you'd think in an Academy award speech.
These are the people you'd call, you know, if you
had great news, if you had scary news. This is
(16:25):
your closest support group. And then the outer tier from
there is your swimming pool, and that's ten to fifteen people.
Those are the people you'd house it for, maybe coworker,
favorite coworkers, maybe people you'd double date with. And this
is what a social life should look like ideally, And
(16:46):
I want to give a caveat that when you are
going through a huge milestone change, you may not have
the bandwidth to nurture three to five close friendships. Like
if you're you just had a baby, you just lost
a job, you're going through depression. Like, it's okay if
you don't have them at the moment, but hopefully you
don't stay there. That this is the ideal, This is
(17:09):
something to work towards.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I love those analogies. It's so easy to visualize them.
I love thinking about it that way. So thank you
for that framework.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
We need to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back talking about friendship with Anna Goldfarb.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
And we're back, okay, Anna, let's talk about the Golden
age of friendship.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
What do you mean by that? Are we in it
right now?
Speaker 5 (17:40):
I wrote an op ed for the Washington Post about this,
that we should be in the Golden age of friendship,
but we're not. It's so easy to reach out to people,
you know, time and distance are no longer a factor.
We can just reach out to anyone at any time.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
But we don't.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
We know, my phone is full of people that I love,
but I don't reach out to them very often, So like,
what's going on here? And here's what I learned. Our
social life nowadays is like a supermarket. And you know,
when you're starving and you try to go shopping and
you add the most random stuff to your cart, like,
(18:17):
you know, mazzarella sticks from the hot bar. You know,
maybe like a random sandwich from the deli. Like you
just put whatever your cravings are screaming for in your cart,
and then you check out and you're like, how am
I going to make a meal out of any of
these random things I've just put in this cart. Now,
imagine grocery shopping when you're full and you have a
(18:38):
list and you know exactly what belongs in your cart,
and going food shopping isn't so overwhelming and you make
better choices. And that's what our lives are like today.
Our friendships are a supermarket. And here's what I mean.
When you go on social media and you see a
feed of all of these people that you know that
(18:59):
only have come in history with you, not with each other,
it's really overwhelming. It's like, oh that's my old coworker.
Oh she just moved. Oh I guess I missed it.
I wonder how she's doing. And you get distracted by
all these thoughts and it's really hard to feel full
and feel craving, you feel longing, you feel comparison, like
(19:20):
it's just it's a bad time. But if you go
and you know who belongs in your cart, if you
map out these are the three to five friends that
I'm committing to being a wonderful, wholehearted friend to, you
don't have that hunger. You're not scrambling to figure out,
like how do I keep these friendships spinning? How do
(19:41):
I keep it afloat? And that's what we need. We
need to be more intentional with who we commit to,
with who we extend interest to. So that's the conversation
I want to have, is we can have the golden
age of friendship. We just have to have a strategy.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Yeah, how about when somebody is not reciprocal, when they're
not a great teammate for you, how long do you
let that slide? People are you know, have seasons throughout
their life, say they're not a great teammate for three months,
six months, one year. At what point are they not
a great teammate in general?
Speaker 5 (20:19):
Well, I would say to understand what the clear and
compelling about is of the friendship, like why are we
why do I want to fight for this friendship or not?
Is the about really compelling to us? And I also,
as I've learned more about friendships, I've raised my standards.
For someone to be in my jacuzzi is someone I've
(20:40):
known a long time years. I see them with their
other other friendships. I see what kind of person they are,
so I feel more confident that this is someone I
want to keep close and I want to keep around.
But if friendships need to be well, it's actually okay.
If they're not always reciprocal, that's not a bad thing.
(21:03):
It's only bad if someone feels negatively about it, someone's
not feeling great. Because sometimes we're busy at work and
it's great that a friend reaches out more, and sometimes
you know, we're the ones who have a little more
bandwidth and can reach out more and initiate more and
our friends can't. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But
if their friendship isn't feeling aligned, then you definitely can
(21:27):
shuffle them to the outer edges and just move your
energy elsewhere. I'm not really a fan of like a
huge speech unless something happened, like a betrayal or something catastrophic.
I'm happy to just let friendships, like put them on
pause rather than just end them, and that can help
(21:49):
me feel less intense about it, Like you know, I'm
just gonna pause this friendship. Let's see if we can
pick up later. Because I've always been surprised about my friendships.
I don't know if this happens with you guys, but
sometimes I think our friendship is like dead and gone
and buried, and then I hear from them in a
few years and we actually pick up and we've evolved,
and it's been really surprising and a delight of Oh.
(22:11):
I didn't think the friendship was going anywhere. I'm not
all knowing. I'm open to being wrong, I'm open to change.
But that's what I would encourage, is like, maybe your
friendship needs a pause, but it doesn't mean that you
need to have like a dramatic ending. It's it's like, Okay,
I recognize that this isn't feeling great, so let's go
(22:33):
back to the basics. What's our about? Like, is the
about clear and compelling and go from there.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
I love that you mentioned the passage of time, because
I was so moved by the story of friendship that
you shared about your late dad.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Will you share it with everybody?
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share
the story. I talked about in the beginning, how I've
been reporting on friendship. And in June twenty twenty, I
had just written a story should you reach out to
that friend? Which we talked about, and I went to
visit my parents. You know, the co COVID was raging,
(23:10):
so we're outside in their back porch and my dad
said that reading my article opened up an old wound
in him, and it made him think of his childhood
friend Marty. And he didn't know why he stopped talking
to Marty. It'd been like ten or fifteen years and
he really missed him, but he didn't know. He was
(23:31):
scared of reaching out. He was scared of rejection. He
was anxious of like what if he ignores me? And
of course I'm a journalist. I'm like, Dad, let me help, Like, look,
here's his information right here, Like I'll write the message
for you. Just say, hey, Marty, you've been on my mind.
Do you want to get a call on Monday? Which
isn't like the most amazing message ever, but they hadn't
(23:52):
spoken in ten years, so I figured it'd be like
a start, and I wanted to I wanted to heal
this from dad. I wanted to show off, honestly that
I have been writing about friendship, like I can solve
this for you. And I kept pestering him for updates,
like did you reach out? What's up? Did you reach out?
And he never did. He never did. And six months
(24:15):
after we had that conversation, my dad had a serious
infection in his hip and he went to the hospital
for treatment. And while he was in the hospital, he
was exposed to COVID and he contracted COVID and he
deteriorated rapidly since his body was exhausted from fighting the infection,
(24:37):
and three weeks intil January twenty twenty one, he passed away.
None of his friends knew that he was sick. My
dad was a scientist, he was a surfer, he volunteered
at the Special Olympics, like he was a great guy.
And he only had four people at his funeral. You know,
(24:58):
my sister couldn't even attend. She lives in Boston, and
it wasn't safe for her to come. None of his
grandkids could attend his funeral, and it was just horrific.
I mean, it was horrible. And I couldn't stop thinking
about Marty, Like my mind kept turning to Marty. And
(25:18):
two days after my dad passed away, I reached out
to Marty's son on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I need
to speak with your dad. Could you please put me
in touch. Forty five minutes later, I was on the
phone with Marty and he was so happy to hear
from me. He was like, Anna, yeah, Like it's like,
it's like, how are you? What's going on? And you know,
(25:40):
I said are you are you sitting down? Like are
you somewhere quiet? And he said, yeah, yeah, what's going on?
And I said, you know, my father died two days ago.
And we had a whole conversation about how we wanted
to connect with you and reach out to you. And
he interrupted me and said, I bear responsibility here too.
I could have reached out to him just as easily
(26:02):
as he could have reached out to me. And we
talked for a little bit. He shared stories about growing
up in Queen's with my dad, how they went to
football games and tracked mud into my grandma's house with
her sneakers, which annoyed her, and through tears, he thanked me.
He thanked me for letting him know and just for
(26:24):
the conversation. And I gave Marty the gift of knowing
with certainty that his friendship mattered to my dad. And
I started this because I wanted to be a hero
to my dad. I wanted to solve this for him,
but I ended up healing his friend and letting him
know that their friendship was special and meaningful. And I
(26:47):
wrote this story in the book. This is the introduction.
And once after I talked with Marty, that's when I
knew I wanted to write this book. I wanted to
do something that explained why we talk ourselves out of
even though we crave it. And I know that we
all are thinking of that one person that we miss
and wish that we could reach out to and connect
(27:09):
and have a conversation with. And I just want I
want people to have the tools to understand, like, here's
why you haven't been in touch.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
But it's not hopeless, Anna, That story is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
It makes me emotional to think about this idea of
talking ourselves out of connection and how that can limit
us for our entire lives and we can miss out
on a connection as special as the one that your
father had with Marty. And as you were talking, I
also am thinking about my relationships with some of my
family members and how intentional we must be, not only
(27:47):
in our friendships, but in our friendships with family members.
Like I have this really unique situation with my brother.
He's my half brother. We didn't grow up together. I
found out that I had a brother when I was
twenty one years old. You can imagine it blew my mind.
I was an only child and there were a lot
of complicated situations that led to that or complicated circumstances,
(28:10):
and my brother and I we had a falling out
early on into our relationship, like soon after I first
met him. We had a falling out and didn't speak
for like four years, and eventually, thankfully, I talked myself
into connection with him and we have a relationship now
and it has this really beautiful redemptive arc that has
(28:31):
taught me a lot. And I know that you've written
extensively about your personal relationship, specifically with your sister, and
how that was a big motivation for your reporting. So
how did the work that you have done on this
topic empower you to improve that relationship.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
I love that you've asked me about this because when
I started reporting on friendships in twenty seventeen, I was
basically estranged from my younger sister. We were really having
a difficult time even getting through a meal, like even
getting through a meal without really bruised feelings and hurt
(29:11):
and just just it was just felt like her it
was pain. And as I learned more about friendship, and
I credit Shasta Nelson, She's like the OG friendship expert,
Shasta taught me that friendships need three things consistency, positivity,
and vulnerability. And I started applying that to my sister.
(29:31):
My sister had just had a kid, and I was
coming to terms with being child free and understanding that,
like I'm it doesn't look like I'm having kids and
I'm adjusting to that, and we just weren't on the
same page. So for consistency, I said, why don't I
come and help you watch your kid every Saturday, let's all?
(29:53):
And then I start coming every Saturday, and like, positivity,
what can I do? So I started bringing her little
gifts like I saw this lip gloss, I thought you'd like,
or here, I know this is your favorite tea, so
I got you a little box. Then the last one
was vulnerability because once I started helping and it was
consistent and I was positive, then she started being like
curious about my life and what are my challenges? And
(30:17):
it was those three things that set us on the
right path and created new habits for us. And I
realized that I was messing up because I had the
volume up on thoughts like why isn't my sister doing
more for me? Why isn't she care? Or why isn't
she happier for me? And I turned the volume down
on those thoughts, and I turned the volume up on
(30:39):
thoughts like what can I do to help her today?
What can I do to help her? And that was
a game changer. It changed our entire relationship and I
started seeing her for her needs like a person who
just has a kid, as you guys know, is drowning.
You know, one person's not drowning and one person is drowning.
So that's the difference. And my sister, I love her
(31:02):
and she was important to me, and I was at
this moment where I started asking what can I do
to help? What do you need? And honestly, she needed
a nap. So I'm like, great, let me come over.
You can take a nap. Every Saturday. I will watch
your kid and go take a nap and just it
doesn't have to be complicated. It was that simple. But
(31:23):
I was meeting her needs. And that's what we can
do for our friends, is say, what do you need?
I want to help instead of well, what about me?
What you're not reaching out to me? What about being
happy for me? That thinking didn't get me very far.
She made everyone annoyed at me, and I annoyed myself, honestly.
(31:45):
But now I approach my friendships in the same way
of what can I do to make my friends' lives easier?
What do they need? How can I help? And honestly,
they love being my friend.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Now the idea of selfless giving is like the cure
to everything, and so that's so cool that you're giving
that gift to your friends. You know, you've interviewed probably hundreds,
if not thousands of people at this point on friendship,
written thousands of words on it. What's the biggest change
(32:16):
that you've made to your friendships.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
The biggest changes I've started telling them that I love them.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
I was.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
I didn't grow up in a very affectionate, like a
verbal affectionate household. My grandma did. My Grandma'd be like,
I love you, But you know, my parents like weren't
as free with it. And it still feels a little
risky to start telling my friends I love them, but
I learned. Actually. I wrote an article for The New
York Times about sibling relationships, and one study said that
(32:44):
the number one thing that siblings want to hear is
that I love you more. That we always take our
siblings for granted. And I'm like, I noticed the same
thing with my friendships, Like I don't tell them I
love them enough. And for the friends in my JACUZZI
like they have a special position, they are in an
elite tier, and I tell them I love them all
(33:06):
the time. Now I just texted my best friend like
thinking of you, love you, and she's like, love you too,
And there's just no anxiety. Anxiety occurs when there's uncertainty,
and I don't want any uncertainty in my friendships. I
don't want my friends to second guess. You know, is
this friendship important is does it an't even care. I'm like,
(33:27):
fuck that, I care a lot. I'm just gonna let
you know I am in it with you, and I
love you, and I appreciate you, and I love our
friendships for the following reasons. And I've just been more
effusive because I know our friends want to hear it.
I know it means the world to them, and they'll
be more likely to invest in my life because they
(33:48):
see that I'm you know, I'm committed. I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Anna, you are such a good friend. Anybody who's friends
with you would be so lucky.
Speaker 5 (33:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
That is abundantly clear from our conversation today.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
Thank you. I wasn't always like this. I was a
bit of a cheap skate. I'm not gonna lie. I'm
not like some scene. Are you laughing that I like
to called myself a cheapskate.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I love the self awareness. It's amazing because, like we
all have evolutions. I don't think I used to be
a good friend. My mom taught me how to be
a good friend later in life, just by watching her.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
I really think our best friendships are ahead of us.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Like we can do this, we can do this. Thank
you so much, Anna, Thank you for I.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
Love talking with you both. Obviously a geek about friendship,
but I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for having
me on.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Well, You're in such good company because we are geeks
about friendship too here on the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
Cheers.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Anna Goldfarb is an author and journalist. Her book Modern Friendship,
How to Deepen our most valued Connections, can be found
wherever you get your books.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're back with a
brand new episode with Isolette Fishback, the author of Get
It Done, Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
You don't want to miss it.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect
with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram
and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok Oh, and
feel free to tag us at Simone Boyce and at
Danielle Robe.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
See you tomorrow, folks, Keep looking on the bright side.
Hosts And Creators
Simone Boyce
Danielle Robay
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