Speaker 1: For Mamma Mia, I'm Mia Friedman. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: No Filter. Three weeks before Elizabeth Day's 39th birthday, she
Speaker 1: had a really bad romantic breakup. It had been her
Speaker 1: first long-term relationship after her divorce and she felt like
Speaker 1: a total failure when it ended. She was looking down
Speaker 1: the barrel of turning 40 as a single woman without
Speaker 1: the Children. She so desperately wanted. This was not how
Speaker 1: she thought her life was gonna be
Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier. She'd already blown things up
Speaker 1: a little bit by quitting her job as a journalist
Speaker 1: at the observer newspaper and kind of randomly she decided
Speaker 1: to start a podcast called How To Fail, where she
Speaker 1: interviewed celebrities about their experiences of failure to reassure herself
Speaker 1: and everyone about our own failures.
Speaker 1: But this interview isn't about failure, even though Elizabeth's podcast
Speaker 1: has become iconic. Today, we're talking about friendship and the
Speaker 1: fact that Elizabeth is addicted to it, she calls herself
Speaker 1: a friend aholic. She's written a book about it. And
Speaker 1: while that may sound like a non problem, you can
Speaker 1: have too many friends. It very much is a problem
Speaker 1: and you're about to hear why my friendships underpin every
Speaker 1: aspect of my life. I don't think I could be
Speaker 1: married or be a mother or even do my job
Speaker 1: without my friends.
Speaker 1: But friendship comes with challenges. And Elizabeth points out that
Speaker 1: we have a whole vocabulary to explain and understand the
Speaker 1: ups and downs of romantic relationships. But friendships can also
Speaker 1: be really, really complicated, sometimes even more complicated than romantic relationships,
Speaker 1: especially when they end abruptly or go toxic or become
Speaker 1: one sided or just fade. There's nothing more draining than
Speaker 1: clinging to a friendship with someone. Just because 20 years earlier,
Speaker 1: you worked together or went to school together.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth said there's a big difference between being good at
Speaker 1: friendship and being a good friend. And in 2020 she
Speaker 1: realized she had a big problem if you stick around.
Speaker 1: You'll also hear my conversation with Elizabeth about her hugely
Speaker 1: successful podcast. How to fail and why a recent essay
Speaker 1: that she wrote about fertility privilege sent me into a
Speaker 1: rage spiral.
Speaker 1: Enjoy this conversation with Elizabeth Day. I did.
Speaker 1: This story starts with the moment you realized you were
Speaker 1: a friendship addict. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Speaker 2: Yes, that was the starting point, not only for the book,
Speaker 2: but for my own journey of psychological self discovery. And
Speaker 2: I think it came about because of the lockdown. So
Speaker 2: as happened to almost everyone around the world, when the
Speaker 2: pandemic hit our diaries emptied overnight. And when that happened
Speaker 2: to me, I was confronted by the truth of how
Speaker 2: I've been spending my time and I realized that I'd
Speaker 2: spent all of my time trying to meet the demands
Speaker 2: of people who I often liked but didn't know that. Well,
Speaker 2: they were people that I'd fallen into a kind of
Speaker 2: acquaintanceship with who I might have met sitting next to
Speaker 2: at a work function who I might have exchanged a
Speaker 2: few words with it, yoga class. And suddenly I found
Speaker 2: myself in this dynamic where for whatever reason I felt
Speaker 2: that we should be friends capital f friends.
Speaker 2: And what that meant was that I was trying to
Speaker 2: meet so many other demands that I wasn't spending enough
Speaker 2: time with the people who were the most nourishing to me. Actually,
Speaker 2: those people who are in my inner circle who I
Speaker 2: am incredibly close to, who have known me for many
Speaker 2: years and who would never place obligations on my time
Speaker 2: because they know how quote unquote busy I am. And
Speaker 2: I thought, well, there's something out of sorts there and
Speaker 2: it felt like the equilibrium needed to be addressed.
Speaker 2: And that was the, the beginning of thinking about friendship
Speaker 2: and what it meant to me. And what I realized
Speaker 2: was that I was a friend aholic. It's a term
Speaker 2: that I have coined in order to denote exactly as
Speaker 2: you say, an addiction to friendship, almost a codependent relationship
Speaker 2: with friendship.
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is that at some
Speaker 2: point in my life, it became more important for me
Speaker 2: to be surrounded by people, to have a lot of
Speaker 2: what I would term friends rather than to spend the
Speaker 2: appropriate amount of time building up my own sense of
Speaker 2: self worth or spending the appropriate amount of time focusing
Speaker 2: my energies and my love on a core group of
Speaker 2: people who were always going to have my back.
Speaker 2: And for me, the roots of that came from secondary school.
Speaker 2: When I grew up in Northern Ireland, I didn't have
Speaker 2: a great time at secondary school in Belfast. I was bullied.
Speaker 2: I felt very alone, isolated, scared. And when I changed schools,
Speaker 2: it became the most important thing in my head
Speaker 2: to make as many friends as possible. It didn't matter
Speaker 2: who they were. It, I was making no judgment call.
Speaker 2: I just needed to feel that I was accepted by
Speaker 2: a tribe of people bigger than myself. I maintained that
Speaker 2: mindset of thinking. The most important thing is numbers because
Speaker 2: I can't be left on my own.
Speaker 2: And actually it became unsustainable. And I'm sure many of
Speaker 2: your listeners will relate to this because when we try
Speaker 2: and spread ourselves so thinly so that we're trying to
Speaker 2: meet everyone's demands in our busy, personal and professional lives. Actually,
Speaker 2: what that means is that you're not doing yourself a
Speaker 2: service and you're not doing those other people a service
Speaker 2: because you're not giving them your best self. Every time,
Speaker 2: you're just too exhausted
Speaker 2: to have the energy to turn up as your full
Speaker 2: self in every single scenario. So that is a brief
Speaker 2: summary of what I believe a friend of holi
Speaker 1: is. You talk about Dunbar's number and there are two
Speaker 1: numbers that I want you to explain. One is five
Speaker 1: and one is 100 and 50.
Speaker 2: Yes. I'm so glad you asked me about Robin Dunbar
Speaker 2: because I'm creepily obsessed with him.
Speaker 2: He is, he's like the Og of Friendship Studies. He
Speaker 2: is a professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University and
Speaker 2: I've never actually met him. We've had some close run
Speaker 2: ins where we've been at similar events, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: the scheduling has never worked. And he famously coined what
Speaker 2: is now known as Dumb Ball's number quite a few
Speaker 2: years ago. And that's the 150 figure.
Speaker 2: And that is the number of connections that Dunbar believes
Speaker 2: the human brain can cope with where you will know
Speaker 2: a salient fact about that individual's life where you will
Speaker 2: be able to place them immediately, you know, their name,
Speaker 2: you know, something about their context. 100 and 50 is
Speaker 2: the number of people you would invite to a big
Speaker 2: wedding for instance.
Speaker 2: And it's a number that is replicated again and again
Speaker 2: through history. So it's the average size, for instance, of
Speaker 2: a medieval village. It's the average size of a Christmas
Speaker 2: card list in the days when we all still sent
Speaker 2: Christmas cards on pieces of paper. And that's Dunbar's number.
Speaker 2: And that's an interesting number because I think what I
Speaker 2: was doing when I was at the extremes of my,
Speaker 2: my friendship addiction was I kept trying to accumulate more
Speaker 2: and more people. And I have to say when I
Speaker 2: say that it sounds rather clinical and it wasn't, these
Speaker 2: are all people that I liked and that I felt
Speaker 2: some sort of kindred connection with, but it was ultimately
Speaker 2: unsustainable because Dunbar's number says in order to have a
Speaker 2: meaningful connection and context with someone, the human brain can
Speaker 2: only really go up to 100 and 50.
Speaker 2: Now, a few years after that, Dunbar evolved this theory
Speaker 2: into Dunbar's layers, which is the idea that the 100
Speaker 2: and 50 numbers still stands. But within that there are
Speaker 2: different layers of friendship
Speaker 2: and there are different layers of relationship that will mean
Speaker 2: something different and that will be able to meet different needs.
Speaker 2: And the innermost layer he says goes up to five
Speaker 2: key relationships. So that could be five really meaningful friendships.
Speaker 2: They are the ones that you will call at 4 a.m.
Speaker 2: when something goes wrong, they are the ones who will
Speaker 2: have your back, who think the best of you who
Speaker 2: you can pick up with instantly where you left off,
Speaker 2: even if you haven't seen each other for a while,
Speaker 2: they are your closest friends
Speaker 2: and they're the ones that need nurturing and they're the
Speaker 2: ones that need. The bulk of your time and time
Speaker 2: is very important here because there's been lots of other
Speaker 2: research done that shows it takes 200 hours at least
Speaker 2: to know someone to be able to call them a friend.
Speaker 2: And Dunbar says that if you
Speaker 2: have a meaningful romantic relationship, if you get married, if
Speaker 2: you have kids, that will generally cost you two of
Speaker 2: those key five relationships.
Speaker 1: So you'll only have three left.
Speaker 2: Yes, but you have outer layers. So in the second layer,
Speaker 2: it will go up to 10 friendships and they're people who,
Speaker 2: you know, you might invite for dinner once every three months,
Speaker 2: but you're not necessarily speaking to them every single day.
Speaker 2: And that was a real light bulb moment for me
Speaker 2: because I realized that I'd been trying so hard to
Speaker 2: be the quote unquote, best, most perfect friend to everyone
Speaker 2: in my life. But I misunderstood the fundamental nature of friendship,
Speaker 2: which is that there are different kinds and
Speaker 2: actually by spending too much of my time trying to
Speaker 2: meet the needs of those outer layers in the same way.
Speaker 2: And then to the same level as I was trying
Speaker 2: to meet the needs of the inner layer, I was
Speaker 2: doing a disservice to the people who were closest to me.
Speaker 2: So those are two Dunbar numbers that really help my
Speaker 2: own thinking.
Speaker 1: You talk about that sort of difference, almost the difference
Speaker 1: between the two numbers as the difference between being good
Speaker 1: at friendship where you might have dozens of friends and
Speaker 1: being a good friend, which Dunbar says you can only
Speaker 1: really do with five people.
Speaker 1: And in terms of being a good friend, you know,
Speaker 1: the way the book works and you interview different friends
Speaker 1: who have different roles in your life and you speak
Speaker 1: to one friend who's an older friend called Joan and
Speaker 1: she talks about the most important thing in friendship is reciprocity.
Speaker 1: Like maybe not every day it's completely equal. But, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes someone needs to lean in or some person isn't
Speaker 1: able to give as much. But when you've got that
Speaker 1: many friends,
Speaker 1: is it that they all want to be your friend,
Speaker 1: particularly since you've become successful and high profile and famous
Speaker 1: in the last few years. Have you found that you
Speaker 1: haven't evolved from thinking? Oh, if this person wants to
Speaker 1: be my friend, I have to be their friend too
Speaker 1: because I got chosen
Speaker 2: what a great question. So many things to unpack that
Speaker 2: first of all, you're so right to identify the difference
Speaker 2: between being a good friend and good at friendship. My
Speaker 2: best friend Emma
Speaker 2: describes it as there being a fundamental difference between being
Speaker 2: friendly to someone and actively wanting to pursue a friendship
Speaker 2: because part of the reason I wrote friend aholic is
Speaker 2: because friendship is one of the most meaningful, sustaining loves
Speaker 2: of my life. It has seen me through so much.
Speaker 2: I am so grateful to it and to my friends
Speaker 2: and I wanted there to be a language to express
Speaker 2: how much it meant to me. But
Speaker 2: you have to give it your time and attention for
Speaker 2: that to be a reciprocal friendship. It absolutely requires a
Speaker 2: great deal of importance in your life. You need to
Speaker 2: create space for it. And so there has to be
Speaker 2: a difference between being friendly to someone in yoga class
Speaker 2: and actively pursuing such a meaningful friendship. And I think
Speaker 2: you have identified definitely an issue for me.
Speaker 2: There's a number of things going on for me, which
Speaker 2: I one of them is I for whatever reason, have
Speaker 2: a fundamental lack of self esteem. That is part of
Speaker 2: my life's work is to sort of work out why
Speaker 2: that is. And I think if I can generalize a
Speaker 2: bit of a gender, a lot of women possibly feel
Speaker 2: the same because if like I did, you grew up
Speaker 2: in the eighties and nine
Speaker 2: nineties, we were conditioned in many ways to try and
Speaker 2: think about what other people wanted at the cost of
Speaker 2: what our own needs and desires were. And it became
Speaker 2: very difficult to understand, to name those needs and desires.
Speaker 2: And so I think I still am in a bit
Speaker 2: of that head space and I have to really check
Speaker 2: myself every single day
Speaker 2: that because there's part of me when I make a
Speaker 2: connection with someone you're right. I feel the glow of that.
Speaker 2: I feel approved of. Yeah. Like I've
Speaker 1: been chosen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly. And that really speaks, that really feeds that sort
Speaker 2: of people pleasing. I want to be nice and liked
Speaker 2: part of my conditioning. And also I love connection. I
Speaker 2: should say that that's a wholly positive thing in my life.
Speaker 2: I love talking to people and asking them questions and
Speaker 2: getting to know them.
Speaker 2: But you're right that I've had to become more aware
Speaker 2: of where that can lead to. Because friendship as a
Speaker 2: term is so broad, encompasses so much that it also
Speaker 2: means it's diffuse and the person that I'm having a
Speaker 2: connection with might have vastly different expectations of what friendship
Speaker 2: is and what I'm able to offer. So I think
Speaker 2: I've got a lot more honest with myself about the
Speaker 2: capacity I have to pursue any new
Speaker 2: friendship and hopefully a lot more honest with the other person.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't have to be as clinical as saying,
Speaker 2: by the way, I only have two hours a week
Speaker 2: to give to this. It can literally just be setting
Speaker 2: nonverbal boundaries where you're not instantly going to reply to
Speaker 2: a text that they send you, you might leave it
Speaker 2: 24 hours that in itself communicates something that is clear
Speaker 2: and worth communicating at the outset of any sort of
Speaker 2: platonic relationship.
Speaker 2: And that's very kind of you to say that I
Speaker 2: have grown in profile over the last few years, I
Speaker 2: have struggled claiming that because I don't want to sound
Speaker 2: like an egomaniac. No, you're famous now. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I am. Well, thank you for saying that. I,
Speaker 2: I don't, why do I struggle with it so much
Speaker 2: I think because it feels like fame is for other people.
Speaker 2: Famous for Cate Blanchett Fame. Fame is also something that
Speaker 2: in my head is quite two dimensional. So you don't
Speaker 2: really know the person, you have an image of them.
Speaker 2: Whereas I feel that if anyone has ever engaged in
Speaker 2: my work, listened to a podcast, read a book, you
Speaker 2: do actually know me. That's the
Speaker 1: problem, don't you think? Because yeah, with the paras social relationship,
Speaker 1: like I don't think I'm free
Speaker 1: with Sarah Jessica Parker even though I've watched hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours of her on television. But with you, I feel
Speaker 1: like instantly I can talk to you and that I
Speaker 1: know you in a different way because I've listened to
Speaker 1: your podcast and because of that paras social relationship because
Speaker 1: podcasting in particular is a really intimate medium.
Speaker 1: So that must be something to adjust to because people
Speaker 1: not only would like to be friends with you, but
Speaker 1: they think
Speaker 2: they already are. Yeah, it is something to adjust to,
Speaker 2: particularly for someone who is addicted to that adrenaline buzz
Speaker 2: of friendship.
Speaker 2: I think where I'm at with it is that I
Speaker 2: now understand so much more the difference between a connection
Speaker 2: that I make at a book signing or if someone
Speaker 2: sends me a really beautiful Instagram DM or I get
Speaker 2: forwarded an email because
Speaker 2: something I've written about fertility has really helped someone through
Speaker 2: their own journey. I now understand that that is a
Speaker 2: beautiful gift in and of its own right? And although
Speaker 2: I will try my best to reply to it, it
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be an ongoing relationship.
Speaker 2: And I think increasingly because we're increasingly versed in social media,
Speaker 2: I'm very lucky that a lot of my listeners and
Speaker 2: readers and followers are understanding of that and I'm very
Speaker 2: upfront about it and say, I'm really sorry, I can't
Speaker 2: reply to everything, but I do read them and it
Speaker 2: means so much to me and I ensure I think
Speaker 2: there are a few things worse in this world than
Speaker 2: feeling unseen or ignored. And
Speaker 2: part of my role I believe is to try and
Speaker 2: make people feel seen. But that doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: a full blown friendship every single time.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, if I can name drop for a second
Speaker 2: because she's a total hero of mine. And I met
Speaker 2: her recently and I sat next to her at dinner,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Gilbert, who I absolutely love and adore. And we,
Speaker 2: we were talking about this because can you imagine like
Speaker 2: the amount of people including me, the amount of people
Speaker 2: she has wanting her not only to be their life guru,
Speaker 2: but their best friend
Speaker 2: and she said she'd been taught this thing by a
Speaker 2: spiritual teacher
Speaker 2: about how, when you're having this sort of connected beautiful conversation,
Speaker 2: this two way exchange of affection and ideas, how she
Speaker 2: now says this thing in her head. She says, I
Speaker 2: appreciate your magic, but I don't need to take it on.
Speaker 2: I love that. I said to her as she told
Speaker 2: me that I was like, are you doing it right now?
Speaker 2: She was like, yes, yes. And I, I've started doing
Speaker 2: that because actually
Speaker 2: I think just telling yourself that in your head is
Speaker 2: really helpful and it's not just for people who have
Speaker 2: a profile, it's for anyone who struggles with boundaries. If you,
Speaker 2: when you find yourself in a situation where you're at
Speaker 2: risk of blurring a boundary and you're at risk of
Speaker 2: saying yes to something you don't necessarily feel wholeheartedly is
Speaker 2: a yes. If you just want to say in your head,
Speaker 2: I appreciate what you're offering, but I can't take it
Speaker 2: on right now. I respect it, but it's not part
Speaker 2: of me. I find that's really helpful because it means
Speaker 2: that I remind myself not to overpromise and under deliver.
Speaker 1: Does it remind you a little bit of flirting? Like
Speaker 1: I know that you're married and
Speaker 1: I am also, but there's a sort of a, like
Speaker 1: a that comes from the chemistry of a new friendship,
Speaker 1: like the energy of that that can be really addictive
Speaker 1: because obviously you don't have that romantic flirtation with that person.
Speaker 1: But I find that I often fall into this a lot. Like,
Speaker 1: if I've got chemistry with someone
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, we're gonna be great friends and
Speaker 1: then you just go, oh, no, I, I actually don't
Speaker 1: have time.
Speaker 2: Yes. I think there are certain similarities but where it
Speaker 2: differs for me is that flirting is ultimately a game play.
Speaker 2: And as someone who found herself a devil c single
Speaker 2: in her late thirties and had to do a lot
Speaker 2: of online dating and a lot of banter in the
Speaker 2: old messaging apps. I got so sick of it because
Speaker 2: it felt like there was a dynamic at play always
Speaker 2: that was about one party withholding and the other party
Speaker 2: wanting more. And so I think that sometimes is what
Speaker 2: flirting involves when there's a romantic dynamic at play. Whereas
Speaker 2: with a platonic connection, it is literally that feeling of,
Speaker 2: I would love to know what you think about the
Speaker 2: world and in hearing what you think about the world
Speaker 2: increase my understanding of who we are. And
Speaker 2: I love that. I have innate curiosity. Some might call
Speaker 2: it rabid nosiness. II. I really want to know, you know,
Speaker 2: with you now, I just want to know everything about
Speaker 2: your son and the fact that you're a grandmother and
Speaker 2: that your daughter-in-law gave you mag. But I want to
Speaker 2: know where you grew up. And I don't think there's
Speaker 2: anything wrong with that at all. I think it's beautiful
Speaker 2: and I love it when I find someone who is
Speaker 2: equally as engaged in that idea. And it's partly why
Speaker 2: I love reality TV. Some of because it teaches me
Speaker 2: more about how humans interact.
Speaker 2: I think it's just that I've got a lot clearer
Speaker 2: about
Speaker 2: where that ends and where a true friendship starts. And
Speaker 2: the ones that now at the age of 44 I'm
Speaker 2: willing to invest precious time in
Speaker 1: your best friend is Emma. She's a therapist and you
Speaker 1: guys have a podcast together called Best Friend Therapy, which
Speaker 1: I also love. And I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: being best friends with a therapist
Speaker 1: because the way you guys speak about each other is
Speaker 1: so beautiful. You know, that she says that she doesn't
Speaker 1: think of you as a friend. She thinks of you
Speaker 1: as a life partner even though you both have romantic
Speaker 1: life partners. But she's kind of like you're the person
Speaker 1: that she does life alongside, which, uh, a lot of
Speaker 1: women will hear that and think, oh, I would love
Speaker 1: that because not everybody does have that kind of friend.
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you about the challenges of
Speaker 1: being best friends with a therapist because something that I've
Speaker 1: noticed can be really damaging in friendships. And a couple
Speaker 1: of friendships I've had, have nearly run off the road
Speaker 1: at various times for me where one of us starts
Speaker 1: playing therapist to the other and giving advice to the
Speaker 1: other and it turns into, well, here's what you should do.
Speaker 1: How do you avoid that when your best friend is
Speaker 1: an actual therapist?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's, I've never been asked that before. And that's
Speaker 2: so interesting. I think she is a therapist. But to
Speaker 2: my mind also the world's best therapist, she's so brilliant
Speaker 2: at what she does that the problem comes about in
Speaker 2: those sort of situations when, as you rightly say, your
Speaker 2: friend is playing a therapist rather than actually being one.
Speaker 2: And the best therapists don't proffer un, asked for advice.
Speaker 2: And Emma is definitely one of those best therapists. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I,
Speaker 2: I'm in a dynamic with her where I genuinely like
Speaker 2: I seek her counsel. She's one of the two people
Speaker 2: and she's probably the most important. She, it's Emma and
Speaker 2: my husband that I will go to for advice if
Speaker 2: I'm really struggling with something. If I'm not sure about
Speaker 2: what decision to make, if I'm not sure how to
Speaker 2: communicate it, I'm extremely conflict avoidant. They're really good at
Speaker 2: helping me handle that. And I will always go and
Speaker 2: ask her and then she will tell me what she
Speaker 2: thinks and it's so unbelievably helpful, but it's always that
Speaker 2: way around.
Speaker 2: Emma would never therapize me unless I asked her to.
Speaker 2: And I feel incredibly blessed by this best friendship because
Speaker 2: there's such a confluence of her knowing me so well.
Speaker 2: And also her having this extraordinary professional expertise
Speaker 2: to help me through life challenges when and if I
Speaker 2: need it. And if Emma does ever feel that she
Speaker 2: needs to step in, if, for instance, she feels I'm
Speaker 2: unsafe and that has happened in a past romantic relationship.
Speaker 2: And she did feel that she had to intervene, which
Speaker 2: was very uncharacteristic for her. She will always do it
Speaker 2: as a question. So she would always say, have you
Speaker 2: thought about this or how are you feeling about this?
Speaker 2: Rather than coming in saying, I think you should leave
Speaker 2: him because I think
Speaker 2: it's toxic. And actually, she's taught me so much because
Speaker 2: I've gone wrong with that in the past. And actually
Speaker 2: the one time that Emma and I had a mild
Speaker 2: falling out that neither of us ever want to speak
Speaker 2: about ever again. It was in our twenties and she
Speaker 2: was in a toxic relationship and I did do that
Speaker 2: intervention where I was trying to therapize her by giving
Speaker 2: her a statement of you should leave. And I don't
Speaker 2: think that that's ever really appropriate. I think one of
Speaker 2: the key facets of meaningful friendship is the ability to
Speaker 2: listen
Speaker 2: judgmentally and Emma utterly exemplifies that. Now, the only thing is,
Speaker 2: and she won't mind me saying this because we've laughed
Speaker 2: about it when your best friend or maybe you are
Speaker 2: in a romantic relationship with someone who is training to
Speaker 2: be a therapist. Now, when they're training,
Speaker 2: you have to be
Speaker 1: quite on they
Speaker 2: need to practice and quite often. Emma, not really with me,
Speaker 2: but with her husband, her husband would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I forgot to put chili in the lasagna and she'd
Speaker 2: be like, no. Why do you think you did that?
Speaker 2: Do you think it was your upbringing?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's a cry for help? Not putting chili?
Speaker 1: You trying to be helpless?
Speaker 1: Amina? Art Tosa and her best friend. I've forgotten her
Speaker 1: last name.
Speaker 2: Um, oh,
Speaker 1: yes, that's embarrassing. Anne Friedman. I should remember. It's the
Speaker 1: same surname as me.
Speaker 1: They wrote a book about friendship called Big Friendship and
Speaker 1: she talks about friendship stretching. How there are times in
Speaker 1: every friendship where you'll have to do small stretches. So
Speaker 1: maybe it might be that one friend is getting married
Speaker 1: and obsessed with her wedding or another friend moves into state,
Speaker 1: but then there'll be like bigger stretches. So maybe one
Speaker 1: friend will become a Trump supporter or they'll have a
Speaker 1: baby or they experience something really difficult. She says that
Speaker 1: stretching can have a positive impact in terms of the
Speaker 1: resilience of your friendship.
Speaker 1: But what happens when something just stretches too far? Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: Ella? Yes. I, I'm so glad you picked up on
Speaker 2: the idea of stretches because it really helped me when
Speaker 2: I read that book, Big Friendship, which I highly recommend
Speaker 2: because they write it together. It's like written by a
Speaker 2: dual friendship and I've never really read anything quite like it.
Speaker 2: And you're so right that
Speaker 2: there are some friendships that you do want to accommodate.
Speaker 2: And so you will stretch your muscle. And as you say,
Speaker 2: it can be positive because just like stretching your physical muscles,
Speaker 2: you end up having more capacity because you're willing to
Speaker 2: do that. But you're right that there are certain friendships
Speaker 2: that ultimately
Speaker 2: either of you will think. I don't know if it
Speaker 2: is worth stretching. I feel like I'm stretching to the
Speaker 2: point of my muscles snapping. And I feel that I'm
Speaker 2: doing more of the stretching or they're doing more of
Speaker 2: the stretching and it's not reciprocal anymore in the way
Speaker 2: that it should be.
Speaker 2: And that can be for any number of reasons. As
Speaker 2: you identify, it can be one person having a baby
Speaker 2: and the other person struggling in fertility. And I've had
Speaker 2: that experience too or as was the case with my friend,
Speaker 2: Ella finding yourself in a vastly different life phase and
Speaker 2: moving geographically far away from each other.
Speaker 2: And Ella is someone that I mentioned in the opening
Speaker 2: chapter of the book because it was part of the
Speaker 2: function of my reassessment of friendship during lockdown was that
Speaker 2: I really evaluated the stretching that I was doing. And
Speaker 2: whether all of the friendships in my life required or
Speaker 2: could accommodate continued stretching to that level, and Ella was
Speaker 2: one that couldn't
Speaker 2: and it was for a number of reasons. It was
Speaker 2: that and I had bonded
Speaker 2: in our twenties when she was so much fun and
Speaker 2: we would go out and have lots of fun, capital
Speaker 2: letters together and we'd drink and we'd get up late
Speaker 2: and we didn't have jobs that were that important at
Speaker 2: the time. And it was, it was for a very
Speaker 2: specific phase in our lives. And then as we grew
Speaker 2: older I knew that I wanted to try for a
Speaker 2: family and I started doing a lot of fertility treatment
Speaker 2: and Ella had never wanted Children and she couldn't understand that.
Speaker 2: And that's absolutely fine. But at the same time as
Speaker 2: not being able to understand that or I felt to
Speaker 2: make the kind of cognitive empathetic leap to try or
Speaker 2: to ask me questions about it and to listen to
Speaker 2: what I was experiencing, she began to feel, I think
Speaker 2: quite resentful that I wasn't available for her in exactly
Speaker 2: the same way that I had in the past as
Speaker 2: the fun friend who could go out. And, and
Speaker 2: I've already mentioned the fact that I'm extremely conflict avoidant.
Speaker 2: And I think that makes me cowardly. And so for
Speaker 2: a long time, I wasn't being honest about the friction
Speaker 2: that I felt and I was trying to do that
Speaker 2: thing of making communication slightly less frequent and, and during lockdown, clearly,
Speaker 2: Ella was undergoing her own reevaluation and
Speaker 2: she to her credit, I mean, there was a Facebook
Speaker 2: message involved which I go into more detail in the
Speaker 2: book that really, I thought, oh no, I don't think
Speaker 2: there's any return from this, but she ended up sending
Speaker 2: me a text saying I feel that there's a distance
Speaker 2: between us. What's that? I'd really like to know. And
Speaker 2: I honestly, I'm so grateful that she did that and
Speaker 2: it was very brave of her because it meant that
Speaker 2: I felt safe being
Speaker 2: honest. But loving in my response and I replied saying,
Speaker 2: I think you're right and I think that we're in
Speaker 2: different life phases and it's nothing negative about who we
Speaker 2: are as people. It's simply that there's too much stretching
Speaker 2: involved to meet each other where we once did.
Speaker 2: And in the end, we carried on the conversation by text.
Speaker 2: And in the end, I said, you know, I wish
Speaker 2: you nothing but love and all the happiness in the world.
Speaker 2: But I think we're in different places right now and
Speaker 2: I have my own stuff and I know that you
Speaker 2: have yours and I send you love and she reciprocated
Speaker 2: and it's one of the most evolved things that has
Speaker 2: ever happened to me. And if I'm really honest, I actually,
Speaker 2: as a result of that, it sounds odd because
Speaker 2: Ella is no longer an active day to day friend
Speaker 2: in my life. But I feel closer to her. I
Speaker 2: feel that we know each other better
Speaker 2: because we created the space where we could be honest
Speaker 2: about that. And our friendship is in no way, a failure.
Speaker 2: It's like we've protected the beautiful thing that it was
Speaker 2: and that it might in the fullness of time become
Speaker 2: again in a different phase of our life. And I'm
Speaker 2: a huge advocate of the fact that a friendship ends
Speaker 2: or moves into a different evolution does not mean that
Speaker 2: you have failed that it's a negative
Speaker 2: because my relationship with Ella and my memory of her
Speaker 2: and the things that she taught me of life will
Speaker 2: forever shape how I live. And that's my way of
Speaker 2: still being an active dialogue with that friendship. And so
Speaker 2: that was the first time that I've had a friendship
Speaker 2: breakup where it felt that we were both grown up
Speaker 2: enough and
Speaker 2: evolved enough to be honest about it. And it was
Speaker 2: a really positive experience.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you broke up and stay friends like,
Speaker 1: you know, that you still feel fondly towards, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't always go that way. And you had a very
Speaker 1: different experience with Becca,
Speaker 1: which just feels mortifying. And I'm so so glad that
Speaker 1: you wrote about it because often when we're ghosted by
Speaker 1: a friend, we never find out why, which is its
Speaker 1: own form of torture. But also can you explain what
Speaker 1: happened and what you found out about why Becca ghosted
Speaker 1: you in the end?
Speaker 2: Yes. So Becca, this is now going back a few years.
Speaker 2: So this was before Ella, before I was the highly
Speaker 2: evolved person that I now am just joking. But it
Speaker 2: was at a time when there was even less language
Speaker 2: around friendship than now and friend aholic, as I mentioned
Speaker 2: is part of an attempt to correct that so that
Speaker 2: this doesn't ever need to happen again. But I was
Speaker 2: ghosted
Speaker 2: overnight by someone who I would have considered back then,
Speaker 2: one of my three closest friends. And it was an
Speaker 2: incredibly shocking thing to happen and it triggered a slow
Speaker 2: motion grief. The likes of which I have never experienced
Speaker 2: before or since it's a very specific kind of grief
Speaker 2: because you're right that when you're ghosted, someone drops out
Speaker 2: of your life, there is no explanation. And so you
Speaker 2: are left with your own narrative.
Speaker 2: And if you are someone who tends to veer towards
Speaker 2: self criticism, who has lots of feelings of guilt, you
Speaker 2: end up thinking you must have been an awful, horrible person.
Speaker 2: And that's how I felt for a really long time.
Speaker 2: And what happened with Becca is that it was one
Speaker 2: of those friendships that I was too quick to fall into.
Speaker 2: So it's taught me a lot in that respect. I
Speaker 2: went through a phase in my thirties of going to
Speaker 2: spin classes and enjoying the pumping music and the adrenaline instructors.
Speaker 2: And I would always be skulking in the back row
Speaker 2: because I never wanted anyone to see me sweat, absolute
Speaker 2: buckets onto the floor and failed to keep up the
Speaker 2: tap back rhythm.
Speaker 2: But Becca came in one day and just, she was
Speaker 2: one of the people who wore the most incredible sort
Speaker 2: of leopard print two piece gym sets and she clipped
Speaker 2: into the bike in the front row and could follow
Speaker 2: everything that the instructor was telling her to do. And
Speaker 2: she was just so impressive and charismatic. From the first
Speaker 2: moment I laid eyes on her and we bonded after
Speaker 2: that and we kind of met in the shower queue
Speaker 2: afterwards and then that turned into
Speaker 2: a coffee and then that turned into cocktails and then
Speaker 2: we were having dinners and I was going through a
Speaker 2: really difficult time in my personal life. So I had
Speaker 2: been married and my first marriage was in the process
Speaker 2: of imploding, although I didn't quite know it then.
Speaker 2: And Becca at that time was also in quite an
Speaker 2: unhappy place in her personal life. And so there was
Speaker 2: an immediate sense of bonding there. And I think that
Speaker 2: what happened is that we saw ourselves through a really
Speaker 2: difficult phase where we felt that our sadness was matched
Speaker 2: in each other's sadness. And so we became very close,
Speaker 2: very quickly and
Speaker 2: time moved on. And I got out of my first
Speaker 2: marriage and I became single and I started dating and
Speaker 2: I quit a job that hadn't been satisfying me and
Speaker 2: things started going a little bit better professionally. And I
Speaker 2: moved into my own rented flat around the corner by
Speaker 2: the way from Becca who suggested that she was like,
Speaker 2: we can hang out all the time
Speaker 2: and the hangouts never materialized because I now realize that
Speaker 2: my life was moving on and I still absolutely loved
Speaker 2: Becker and had loads of space for her. But I
Speaker 2: don't think that she was ready to move on from
Speaker 2: her own sadness or couldn't. And therefore being close with
Speaker 2: me was like holding a mirror up to something she
Speaker 2: didn't want to see reflected. And I think that was
Speaker 2: the start of this distance. So
Speaker 2: I would suggest meeting up for dinner and she would say, oh,
Speaker 2: can we make it a coffee instead? And it just
Speaker 2: became briefer and briefer until I got to the stage
Speaker 2: of thinking, I don't want to force her into something.
Speaker 2: Maybe she's going through her own stuff and I should
Speaker 2: give her space.
Speaker 1: She's just not that
Speaker 2: into me. Yeah, exactly. And I never heard from her again.
Speaker 2: And months after
Speaker 2: when I was still giving her space, I remember walking
Speaker 2: out of the tube station where I lived and walking
Speaker 2: up the road to my flat and Becca. So I
Speaker 2: should just say I've anonymized every single person in this
Speaker 2: book who belongs to my past. So
Speaker 2: I was walking up the street and I saw Becca
Speaker 2: on the other side of the road and I saw
Speaker 2: her seeing me, you know, you know, when someone clocks
Speaker 2: you and our eyes briefly met and then she just
Speaker 2: turned away and carried on walking and it was so shocking.
Speaker 2: I had been caught dead in the street. That was
Speaker 2: really my final verdict. I was like, oh, ok, I
Speaker 2: get it now. She does not want to be my
Speaker 2: friend anymore. And that was a very difficult thing to
Speaker 2: come to terms with
Speaker 2: many, many months after that. I met up with another
Speaker 2: former friend of hers who the same thing had happened to.
Speaker 2: And she said that Becca had felt suffocated by my
Speaker 2: closeness and I could have a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 2: that looking back because actually, I did think Becca was amazing.
Speaker 2: Do
Speaker 1: you wanna die when you heard that?
Speaker 2: Yes,
Speaker 2: it's awful, isn't it? And you look back and I
Speaker 2: looked back and I was like, I see where she
Speaker 2: was coming from because
Speaker 2: I respected her so much. And I did want her
Speaker 2: advice and I did want to be like her and
Speaker 2: I did want to know where she got her clothes
Speaker 2: and she was really generous and she was like, oh,
Speaker 2: you must go and see this osteopath and let me
Speaker 2: take you shopping because these boots would suit you. And
Speaker 2: she was like an older sister in so many ways
Speaker 2: for me. And because I was at that time, insecure
Speaker 2: and flailing in the rest of my life, I think
Speaker 2: I probably latched on to that.
Speaker 2: And so I could understand from both perspectives what had
Speaker 2: happened
Speaker 2: and that understanding has given me a lot of love
Speaker 2: and fondness for the friendship that we had again, like
Speaker 2: Ella and I've had to do that work myself because
Speaker 2: I haven't had someone to speak with about it and
Speaker 2: to work through it with. But I also understand that
Speaker 2: sometimes friendships can be so difficult and so nuanced and
Speaker 2: so complex and sometimes you can love someone so much
Speaker 2: that you just can't communicate what it is because you
Speaker 2: know that it's gonna hurt them.
Speaker 2: And sometimes it feels like the path of least resistance
Speaker 2: is just to drop out of their lives without a word.
Speaker 2: And so I have great sympathy for what she must
Speaker 2: have gone through. And
Speaker 2: I have now moved on with love from what happened
Speaker 2: to me. But I'm really glad I wrote that chapter
Speaker 2: because I knew that if I was going to tell
Speaker 2: the truth about friendship in this book, I also had
Speaker 2: to tell the things that were really uncomfortable for me
Speaker 2: that didn't paint me in a particularly good life. But
Speaker 2: that were about my being honest about what this thing
Speaker 2: is that we all value either because we have it
Speaker 2: in our lives or because we don't and because we're
Speaker 2: lonely and we want to understand more about it.
Speaker 2: And writing that chapter was really difficult. But it was
Speaker 2: also cathartic ultimately because I was able to put into
Speaker 2: words how I felt about it. And it gave me
Speaker 2: more of an insight into what I think was going
Speaker 2: on in Becca's mind. But the amazing thing about it
Speaker 2: has been the resonance it seems to have had with
Speaker 2: readers because so many people have got in touch with
Speaker 2: me to say the same thing happened to them.
Speaker 2: And that's been really reassuring in one way that it
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily just me acting like an awful suffocating person
Speaker 2: that it's happened to lots of people. And it's because
Speaker 2: we don't have the language.
Speaker 1: It's so common. Like you just come in too hot
Speaker 1: and yeah, like she came in too hot as well
Speaker 1: and then just went off reverse, which is what you've
Speaker 1: also felt with other people.
Speaker 1: So. Exactly. Yeah. One of the things I appreciate about
Speaker 1: this book is that you say that we have so
Speaker 1: much language and mythology and narrative around explaining romantic relationships,
Speaker 1: but so little around friendships. You know, even the idea
Speaker 1: that a friendship could end is like we expect our
Speaker 1: romantic relationships to end mostly, or we're certainly not that
Speaker 1: shocked when they do. We've all experienced that. But the
Speaker 1: idea that friendship should last forever, that's almost our default.
Speaker 1: And when they don't, it can be really confronting, can it?
Speaker 2: Exactly that there is such an unrealistic expectation of platonic love.
Speaker 2: It's the idea that if you sit next to someone
Speaker 2: at primary school purely because you share the same first
Speaker 2: letter of your surname and you become friends unless you
Speaker 2: are friends and remain friends for the rest of your
Speaker 2: joint lives. You have somehow failed. You are somehow a
Speaker 2: quote unquote bad friend.
Speaker 2: And you're absolutely right that we don't have that same
Speaker 2: expectation of romantic love with romantic love. There is a belief,
Speaker 2: an assumption that you might have a high school sweetheart.
Speaker 2: But it's quite rare for that high school sweetheart to
Speaker 2: turn into your lifelong monogamous partner that actually we expect
Speaker 2: ourselves to date to try out relationships, to end them,
Speaker 2: to see what happens. Even if we get married as
Speaker 2: we know one in three marriages end in divorce.
Speaker 2: And there is so much less moralizing unless someone has
Speaker 2: behaved terribly badly. But there is generally less moralizing when
Speaker 2: a romantic relationship ends. We understand that that is part
Speaker 2: of growing apart is part of life's evolution.
Speaker 2: The same thing we should also understand about friendships. There
Speaker 2: are some friendships that will serve an amazing purpose for
Speaker 2: one part of your life, but it doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: you need to keep them going forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 2: And actually, it's unsustainable because you're not creating space to
Speaker 2: let new experiences or connections in and you're not creating
Speaker 2: space to nurture the connections that are the really meaningful
Speaker 2: ones that are governed by reciprocity and generosity. And
Speaker 2: I am so passionate about making that clear and also
Speaker 2: making it clear that with romantic love, there's a whole
Speaker 2: set of social rituals that you can go through to
Speaker 2: show what your relationship is to each other, to the
Speaker 2: outside world. So you can have a wedding if you want.
Speaker 2: You can sign a piece of paper that shows your
Speaker 2: civil partners. You can move in together, buy a place
Speaker 2: together, have kids together. Even dating the formula of dating,
Speaker 2: you have a first date, which is like a chemistry check.
Speaker 2: The second date, you might go for dinner, the third date,
Speaker 2: you might discuss your shared ambitions and goals. We don't
Speaker 2: have that for a friendship and we think it's a
Speaker 2: bit cringe. And actually, it's so ironic because in a way,
Speaker 2: we have this misguided romantic principle about friendship, which is
Speaker 2: that you just connect and that's it then and you're
Speaker 2: locked in forever
Speaker 2: and we don't have it when we're looking for sort
Speaker 2: of actual romantic partners. But I've been doing a number
Speaker 2: of events around friend aholic here in the UK and
Speaker 2: at one of them in bath, someone asked a question
Speaker 2: and as part of the question said, you know, I
Speaker 2: totally agree with you about romantic rituals. And
Speaker 2: the day before I got married to my now husband,
Speaker 2: I insisted on having a marriage to my best friend
Speaker 2: where they went into the woods and they performed this,
Speaker 2: I know this beautiful commitment ceremony, which is not legally binding.
Speaker 2: But I just thought that that was so wonderful because
Speaker 2: you talk about what you expect of each other and
Speaker 2: what you can promise to each other. And I just,
Speaker 2: I'm a huge advocate of that. You don't need to
Speaker 2: go into the woods to do it, but just have
Speaker 2: the conversation. I love
Speaker 1: that. I love that.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Elizabeth gives the best definition I think I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of a toxic friendship. And she talks about
Speaker 1: the very specific and often unspoken pain of a friendship, breakup.
Speaker 1: Stick around.
Speaker 1: You talk about frenemies also, which I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: you have because you've put words around something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people find very slippery.
Speaker 1: You describe your relationship with one of your own frenemies.
Speaker 1: A guy called Ali and you describe frenemies as friendships
Speaker 1: that are so confusing. You never quite know what you're
Speaker 1: gonna get. They're the ones guaranteed to tell you a
Speaker 1: new haircut is interesting rather than giving a straightforward compliment.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who are secretly threatened by your success
Speaker 1: rather
Speaker 1: than rejoicing in it. They're the people who don't want
Speaker 1: to integrate you into their lives but will enjoy striking
Speaker 1: up intimate acquaintances with your other friends that exclude you.
Speaker 1: They will trigger feelings of uncertainty because they're capable of
Speaker 1: both love and withdrawal. They offer backhanded compliments and passive
Speaker 1: aggressive jabs and never seem entirely capable of being happy
Speaker 1: for you or do you still have this in your life?
Speaker 2: I do. But I have changed my response to it
Speaker 2: and that's why I can still have individuals like that
Speaker 2: in my life. So what I mean by that is
Speaker 2: a lot of people can relate to this, but there
Speaker 2: are some people and they're often very, very dear to
Speaker 2: you who for whatever reason and very often it's to
Speaker 2: do with what's going on in their lives
Speaker 2: can never be uncomplicated, happy for someone else, but also
Speaker 2: can never offer a consistent kind of love. And so
Speaker 2: it is that sense of any time that you have
Speaker 2: an interaction with them, you are not quite sure what
Speaker 2: their reaction is going to be, how they're going to respond,
Speaker 2: but you still love them because they also have amazing qualities.
Speaker 2: And Ali, who I mentioned in the book has so
Speaker 2: many amazing qualities. He can be so generous and you know,
Speaker 2: he can send me flowers out of the blue and
Speaker 2: just be so funny and charming to spend time with.
Speaker 2: And at his worst, he can also be passive aggressive
Speaker 2: and undermining. But what I realize about Ali is that
Speaker 2: it comes from his own insecurity.
Speaker 2: And actually I found a way of loving him for
Speaker 2: that too. That's big of you. I mean, I'm making
Speaker 2: myself sound like the hero here and I'm not by
Speaker 2: any means. I think I realized that if I didn't
Speaker 2: have Ali in my life, I would lose more than
Speaker 2: I'm currently losing. And I had a conversation with my
Speaker 2: husband about it
Speaker 2: and he said, ok, you have three options here. You
Speaker 2: either stop being friends with Ali or you stay being
Speaker 2: friends and it's the situation as it is and you'll
Speaker 2: go out have dinner with him and you'll come back
Speaker 2: and you'll feel really drained and upset and you'll download
Speaker 2: to me about it or you treat Ali as a
Speaker 2: sort of charitable service
Speaker 2: and what he meant by that was not that I'm
Speaker 2: some lady bountiful, dispensing my tokens from on top of
Speaker 2: my moral high horse. What he meant by that was.
Speaker 2: Can you concentrate on what your friendship might be bringing
Speaker 2: to Ali and exclusively try to focus your own energies
Speaker 2: on the positive things that Allie delivers. And that's a
Speaker 2: way of having a boundary in place that isn't cut
Speaker 2: and dried where you've just decided I've made the decision,
Speaker 2: I'll focus my energies here and not here.
Speaker 2: And I feel actually Annie is getting a lot out
Speaker 2: of this and therefore I want to do that for him.
Speaker 2: So that's really helped in terms of re categorizing where
Speaker 2: that friendship lies for me. And it's a bit like
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Gilbert's magic cloak like because I go in with
Speaker 2: that sense of I'm not going to give absolutely everything
Speaker 2: to every single complaint that he's got to tell loads.
Speaker 2: It makes me feel better about it.
Speaker 2: However, there are also other people who were more extreme
Speaker 2: than Ali in terms of their friendship, ambivalence who I
Speaker 2: no longer have in my life because they really did
Speaker 2: sap my energy in an unhealthy way. And if anyone
Speaker 2: is listening to this and thinking, oh, but it, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not that bad because sometimes they're nice.
Speaker 2: There's been a fascinating piece of research done by the
Speaker 2: University of Utah about ambivalent friendships ie frenemies where they
Speaker 2: got a number of participants to wear blood pressure monitors
Speaker 2: over the course of a few weeks and they measured
Speaker 2: the blood pressure when those respondents had interactions with people,
Speaker 2: they loved people, they actively hated and ambivalent friends where
Speaker 2: they never really knew what they were going to get
Speaker 2: from the other person. And they found that the blood
Speaker 2: pressure was wholly unaffected
Speaker 2: if you were having an interaction with someone you loved.
Speaker 2: And sometimes it even went down. If you were having
Speaker 2: an interaction with someone, you actively loathed. It also had
Speaker 2: no impact on your blood pressure because you were certain
Speaker 2: that you weren't going to like that person, they weren't
Speaker 2: going to give you what you needed. The ambivalent friends,
Speaker 2: they were the ones that caused a blood pressure spike
Speaker 2: because you were constantly having to recalibrate how you were
Speaker 2: according to what mood they were in any given day.
Speaker 2: And the same researchers went on to do future studies
Speaker 2: that showed that actually having too many ambivalent friendships negatively
Speaker 2: affects the formation of your DNA. It is actively bad
Speaker 2: for your physical health.
Speaker 2: And again, I found that quite liberating, I was like, OK,
Speaker 2: so that is a good reason for each individual to
Speaker 2: work out how many of those sorts of relationships they
Speaker 2: have capacity for in their lives because they are and
Speaker 2: they can be bad for you.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you spoke about that study because
Speaker 1: I've got a friend like that and I wouldn't think
Speaker 1: of her as a friend of me. But I like
Speaker 1: this idea of an ambivalent friend. She's so close to
Speaker 1: me and I adore her and I know she adores me,
Speaker 1: but she'll always just like point out that I look
Speaker 1: tired or that I've got a pimple
Speaker 1: that I've got dark circles and it doesn't make me rageful,
Speaker 1: but it would spike my blood pressure because I'm just
Speaker 1: not ready for it. And I don't know how to
Speaker 1: respond to it. I mean, when someone says you look
Speaker 1: really tired, what are you meant to say? So it
Speaker 1: catches you by surprise because you're in that vulnerable state
Speaker 1: because you love this person
Speaker 1: and then they just kind of
Speaker 2: jab you. It's, I'm not saying that this is what
Speaker 2: people should do at all. I once experimented and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people will relate to this in
Speaker 2: terms of family members too. But I once experimented with
Speaker 2: giving back exactly what I was getting in a single
Speaker 2: interaction from an ambivalent person in my life. And they
Speaker 2: would be saying, oh, you look tired, oh, silver boots. Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'd wear silver boots. And I
Speaker 2: experimented with just doing the same to them in that
Speaker 2: moment
Speaker 2: and they were wearing a purple top and I was like, oh, purple.
Speaker 2: That's very brave of you to wear just to see
Speaker 2: what would happen. Did it work? Did they? And they
Speaker 2: didn't know they stopped, but they also didn't know how
Speaker 2: to deal with it. They were like, well, I like
Speaker 2: purple and I was like, and I like silver. It.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's not an enlighten way to go
Speaker 2: about life. But it was quite interesting to me to
Speaker 2: see she didn't like it, this particular individual. And we
Speaker 2: just moved on because I felt like I made my point.
Speaker 2: I love
Speaker 1: that so much.
Speaker 1: I kept the tape running after that because I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to Elizabeth about all the ways her life
Speaker 1: changed so dramatically in her forties, how she's dealt with
Speaker 1: fame and success at the same time in her life
Speaker 1: as she's been dealing with massive disappointment and pain around her.
Speaker 1: Fertility is a
Speaker 2: taste at moments. I felt sheer panic and I absolutely
Speaker 2: did feel a great deal of failure and shame particularly
Speaker 2: over my marriage ending.
Speaker 2: But on the flip side of those spirals of panic,
Speaker 2: there was also massive opportunity because for the first time
Speaker 2: in my life, I was presented with an entirely blank canvas,
Speaker 1: you can listen to that second part of our conversation
Speaker 1: via the link in the show notes. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Cassie Merritt. The executive producer of No Filter
Speaker 1: is Eliza Ratliffe with sound production by Maddie Joan. I'm
Speaker 1: Mia Friedman and I'll be in your news next week.