Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
Speaker 1: and Frooms catch up podcast.
Speaker 2: It is Flex and Frooms on Cato. One of my
Speaker 2: favorite things to do here is pose a question that
Speaker 2: we sometimes will answer. But if you know how to
Speaker 2: read between the lines of chaos and humor, you'll see
Speaker 2: that everything we say is in fact apt and can
Speaker 2: be applied for your everyday life.
Speaker 1: And is also a joke.
Speaker 2: Never, though, no, never, do you think you should be
Speaker 2: someone's friend out of charity. Oh imagine if someone lonely
Speaker 2: considers you a close friend purely by proximity, should you
Speaker 2: stay in their life even if it's not quote unquote
Speaker 2: serving you. I've got a lot to say about consolation
Speaker 2: prize friendships, but this comes from the New York Times.
Speaker 1: They've got a column.
Speaker 2: Called The Ethicist, where people ask moral and ethical questions
Speaker 2: to the person who writes the column, and they answer it. So,
Speaker 2: Arita says, a person I've known for many years considers
Speaker 2: me a friend, even a good friend. Although I pretend
Speaker 2: to like him, spending time with him is seldom and
Speaker 2: jo and is actually often quite difficult. He is, I believe,
Speaker 2: profoundly depressed and has very few friends. If any He
Speaker 2: is invariably negative, and when questioned about seeming unhappy, is
Speaker 2: unwilling to consider any different perspectives, possible changes, or therapy
Speaker 2: down This person contacts me every couple of months to
Speaker 2: get together, and I put it off. Eventually I respond
Speaker 2: out of sympathy and guilt, and when I see him,
Speaker 2: I'm not gushingly friendly, but I try to be supportive
Speaker 2: and and make him feel both liked and appreciated, and
Speaker 2: I believe he finds me entertaining. In short, he seems
Speaker 2: to have a good time. He has remarked that I'm
Speaker 2: always direct and honest about my feelings. I do normally
Speaker 2: detest phoniness and have harsh feelings about two people in
Speaker 2: my own life who profess to be close, loving friends
Speaker 2: while secretly trashing me behind my back. So I feel
Speaker 2: for this person and would like to help him. But
Speaker 2: is friendliness a charitable act if it's insincere when someone
Speaker 2: is lonely and depressed, is it better to be a
Speaker 2: phony friend or not a friend at all?
Speaker 1: This is a wild one for.
Speaker 2: Me, because I just feel in my heart of hearts
Speaker 2: that being an active friend, like a proper friend, not
Speaker 2: a party friend, an acquaintance, a work friend, you know
Speaker 2: someone who's involved. It requires an emotional transfer that I
Speaker 2: don't think should be faked. I used to feel as
Speaker 2: though what someone got out of a friendship and what
Speaker 2: you gave didn't have to be equal, even in the
Speaker 2: same vein, because people have different needs or whatever. But
Speaker 2: the more that I invest in people, it becomes clear
Speaker 2: to me that at a baseline, we should have the
Speaker 2: same understanding what this friendship is doing for both of us,
Speaker 2: and we should like endeavor to keep that up. So,
Speaker 2: for example, that's why I don't think you should always
Speaker 2: transition party friends, because we should endeavor to ensure that.
Speaker 1: At the party this is popping.
Speaker 2: But when you start to transition it into like a
Speaker 2: day to day friendship, we're bringing like unresolved ideals from
Speaker 2: one dynamic into another. This one, though, is getting me
Speaker 2: because I remember having a friend who would only ever
Speaker 2: call on me when they had something to like complain about,
Speaker 2: which is fine, I love it.
Speaker 1: It's like juicy, I love gossip.
Speaker 2: However, in contrast with that, the type of friend who
Speaker 2: always had a new friend just couldn't keep new friends,
Speaker 2: could never see that they were the issue. Extremely judgmental
Speaker 2: extremely critical, extremely closed minded, just the layers and layers
Speaker 2: and layers and layers, And I for some reason felt
Speaker 2: really indebted to them because they'd spent all this time
Speaker 2: basically integrating me into their law.
Speaker 1: Why do I have permission to stop?
Speaker 2: But I remember this one kind of like a confrontation
Speaker 2: we had whereas like you have to start turning the
Speaker 2: mirror in.
Speaker 1: It is just not.
Speaker 2: Helpful for you to be nitpicking every single person who
Speaker 2: enters your life to the point of like obsolescence, Like
Speaker 2: you nitpick them out of your life and then come
Speaker 2: back and play victim and then do it again with
Speaker 2: no remorse. It's so crazy. The issue was aside from
Speaker 2: this person being the way they were, they were also
Speaker 2: actually going through it like real life stuff was happening
Speaker 2: in tandem for years.
Speaker 1: So it was one thing after the other.
Speaker 2: So it's always hard to discern which is just like
Speaker 2: a situational thing, or are you this person? But after
Speaker 2: that confrontation, I was expecting for there to be some
Speaker 2: kind of resolution and it didn't come. It came in
Speaker 2: in the groundhogs there the same thing again and again,
Speaker 2: and so I did what my sometimes avoidant self would do.
Speaker 2: Split ghosted, ran away, And it was so interesting because
Speaker 2: I was thinking when I was reading this. I've said
Speaker 2: it before as someone who's a big talker, a big
Speaker 2: chit chatter for me to ghost, it's actually quite difficult
Speaker 2: because I'm always chitchatt I'm always like letting you know
Speaker 2: how I'm feeling, what I'm going through whatever. So if
Speaker 2: you get me to the point where I don't want
Speaker 2: to talk at all, you've crossed the line. You've almost
Speaker 2: done too much. Because there are a lot of things
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, we just talk it out, took it out,
Speaker 2: took it out, like, let's see each other's point of view.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: This though, is friendliness a charitable act if it's insince here,
Speaker 2: yes and no. Yeah, but maybe not friendship friendliness? Oh
Speaker 2: for sure, I think I think friendliness you can definitely
Speaker 2: give someone that vibe and have it be insincere. Friendship, however,
Speaker 2: and it seems like this person, the depressed person, feels
Speaker 2: that they have a friendship.
Speaker 1: You gotta figure that out.
Speaker 3: For me, the barometer would be if you were friends
Speaker 3: with them before they started displaying these depressed tendencies. Stay
Speaker 3: the course part of the course, fom don't leave, but
Speaker 3: if it's more that they are a constant downer and
Speaker 3: it seems to be a personality trait that doesn't suit you,
Speaker 3: then jump.
Speaker 1: Misery loves company, as.
Speaker 2: They'll say, So that's always space in the misery.
Speaker 3: So I wouldn't advocate for leaving a friend who are depressed, clearly,
Speaker 3: but we all have years, months or years when we're
Speaker 3: a bit of a down vibe. Yeah, but when it
Speaker 3: comes back up, the gratefulness that you feel to your
Speaker 3: friends who's stuck around when you're in your darkest days,
Speaker 3: that's friendship, guys, That's yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the better question here is like how honest
Speaker 2: you need to be about your reason for not wanting
Speaker 2: to continue a friendship.
Speaker 1: It's not a good time to be like, you're not
Speaker 1: a good time mirror depress.
Speaker 2: I feel like keep that to yourself respectfully, but just
Speaker 2: you can say I've done a little a little evaluation
Speaker 2: and I'm at this stage where like.
Speaker 1: I can't hold space. Ill, Oh no, I just ghost. No,
Speaker 1: it's not that simple.
Speaker 2: I just feel like having a bit of a.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Flex and Frooms Daily podcast.
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