Lab 026: What About Your Friends?

Evite says the average American hasn't made a new friend in five years.

I was going to be shocked at first, but true true.

My first curiosity is when did evite jump into friendship research?

People are still sending evites? I guess Oh.

I hate when I get those.

I can never open it. I click it in that little envelope be halfway flipping over and it don't flip all the way over. Frustrating.

I'm just gonna call you and say, in thirty minutes, hop on.

Zoom, that's the type of friend my friend Zekiya is. I'm t T and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This is dope labs. I feel like friendships are always being tested, but more so now because of quarantine.

Yes, we know some of your friends partied on the fourth and now they want to come up to your house. So what you're gonna do.

Y'all not coming to my house with your COVID shirts and your COVID pants and your COVID hands. I'm not not in my house.

Not.

Let me tell you. She is laying down the law, and it's firm. A couple of weeks ago, it was my birthday, she showed up and stood out there in the blazing hot sun, fifteen to twenty feet from my door with her mask on. I'm surprised you didn't have on goggles on top of your glasses.

I'm not playing around. I don't want to get sick, and I don't want to get other people sick. I'm thinking about the global community. But that where y'all do not care.

But you do care, and that's something that I love about you as a friend. This TT is the most caring a right. You need something to balance out because you know on the other side.

Ruthless. Okay, I'm super excited about this episode today though, because we are talking all about friendship, and.

I know friendship has been on some of y'all's minds because I see you subtweeting your subtweeting folks when Insecure is on.

Yes, everybody's like, oh, I know a Molly, and I see a lot of people pointing fingers that Molly's in their lives. But it's so funny because none of y'all are saying, y'all are Molly.

How is that possible? You gotta hold that mirror up and you gotta say self, y'all already know we're best friends, but for this episode, we wanted to hear from some other best friends too.

So we brought in real life best friends and hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, Ann Friedman and Ami Na Tu.

So. My name is Ann Friedman.

I am Ami Not So.

We co host the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, and we co wrote the book Friendship, How We Keep each Other Close.

It's available July fourteenth wherever you buy books, but especially at your local indie bookshop, or please borrow it from your local library.

I already read it.

I already read it, and I have my hard copy pre ordered.

You'll hear them chiming in throughout the episode with their own experiences and thoughts about friendship.

Let's get into the recitation. So what do we know?

Well, we know most people have friends. Now, those friends you have might range and likability, but they're there.

Yeah, some friends are better than others, and some friendships are just for a season.

And some friendships turned into a podcast. That's right, But what do we want to know?

I feel like people use the term friend so loosely these days, so I want to know how do you define a friend like a real friend?

Yeah, and what makes a good friend.

Conflict is going to in every relationship, So how do you navigate those waters? And if you feel like you need to part ways with that friend, how do you break up?

You know, I often hear humans or social creatures, but is that unique to us? You know my stance, We're all just animals, So is there evidence of friendship in other animals?

And during this time in quarantine, when we're all in our houses and not able to meet up with our friends like we normally do, what do we do to combat those feelings of loneliness that we have because we're all separate.

And we know we run't alone with these questions. And and Aminatu had the same questions while writing their.

Book, and we know that you might have the same questions too, So let's jump into the dissection.

Today's guest expert is doctor Marissa g. Franco.

Hello, everybody, I'm doctor Borissa Gifranco. I am a psychologist and a friendship expert.

We asked her all our questions about friendship and how to make the most of it. Let's dive right in and start with the basic definition of friendship.

Mariam Webster says friendship is the state of being friends but that's not really helpful. What happened to not using a word to define another word?

Did y'all learn that room, Mariam?

That's exactly well, how does it define a friend?

It says a friend is a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.

But the rap group Houdini told us that the dictionary doesn't really know the meaning of friends, so we asked doctor Franco.

But for me, personally, I feel like I define a friendship as a relationship where there's mutual love that rejuvenates it replenishes me.

I mean not too and Anne explain the term that they coined, big friendship.

I think we were really looking for a term that was not best friend and also, so you know, something beyond like bestie or BFF, which feels, you know, a little younger, like we're in an adult friendship with its own adult pros and cons, and big friendship felt like an important way of staking out some new language for the kind of long term, really mutually supportive and intimate friendship that we have. And it sounds like you all have too.

So it's kind of like best friends, but in a suit all grown up. But what makes a good friend? Doctor Franco gave us three main things you should expect if you're looking for a good friend or want to be one.

The first one is a good friend should be rooting for you.

When we really become a friend with someone, we begin to incorporate them into our sense of our own identity. So what that means is that, like, if they feel hurt, we feel hurt. If they feel good, we feel good. The boundaries between ourselves and other people are emotionally decrease when we become friends with someone.

The second thing is that there should be some shared vulnerability.

Where you're sharing and revealing things about yourself and they're doing the same.

And the third thing is that you guys support one another.

I like to say that a friendship in general should be fifty to fifty in the book of the friendship, but each chapter will be different. In times of crisis, one friend might need a hundred while you're getting zero, and that's going to be shifting over time.

That sounds good overall, but getting that balance just right can be tricky.

Yeah, cause I'm sure some friends when you're given twenty five percent and they have to give seventy five percent. They might feel some type of way.

Here's what Anne says about this, and I think that's generally true.

But what's hard about it, like living it in real time, is like you don't know what the whole book is, Like you know, all you know is the chapter you're in, in the chapters that have come before.

That is such a good point, Like when you think about it, how do you know when it's your turn to carry the heavy load or if you should just cut your losses.

Sometimes that can feel like a lot of work for someone who's just a friend. But doctor Franco tells us that's exactly the problem framing it as just friendship.

We need to give friendship more dignity. It's not an inferior form of a relationship. We shouldn't be asking people, you know, when are you gonna get married, When are you're going to get a husband? We should ask them like have you found community? Because that's what's most important, like that you feel a sense of belonging with other people.

And the research shows us that these three points are important for friendships and romantic relationships.

The research says that one of the best predictors of whether people stay together and are satisfied with their romantic relationships is whether they feel like they're friends with their partner. So friendship does matter.

And so friendship is actually part of what makes romantic relationships last, like the sense of I feel like you fully see me, I feel like I'm fully seen by you. I feel like we show up for another and support one another. All of those traits that we see in our friends are also what makes romance buzz and continue and be sustained.

You already know how I feel about friendship.

Yes, Zakia is how do I say this? Sakia is an intense friend. She's a all no friend. But in bold italics and underlined, well, just.

For the record, we know friendship can literally change your life.

Absolutely. My life would not be the same without Zekiah. We would not be doing this podcast if Zekiah were not my friend.

Well, I've met more along the lines of what studies show us. But yeah, studies show us that friends improve your self confidence, your self worth, and help you cope with trauma and more. There's a correlation between a strong social support network and lower risk for health problems like depression, high blood pressure, and high BMI.

So we're getting double the benefits friendship and health, but I mean not too says you still have to do the work to get your friendship to that point, and that can be tricky.

There is not a lot of social support for how you're supposed to be in a friendship. I always feel awkward when I have friend drama in a way that I don't feel awkward when I have romantic drama. I'm always like, uh, I know how to deal with that, you know. I'm like, I have scripts for that, you know. I was like television says you like key their car, or you do that, you know, Not that I'm saying

You, right. No one wants to have those awkward conversations, But after you have.

Them, I feel like it makes you grow stronger.

Yeah, it's like the whole Like pressure make Simon's things. I think that can also apply to friendship, like the hard times makes it more beautiful, We.

Asked, I mean, not to an end, how to make friendship more official? So how do you get to the point where you and lockstep and just unbreakable?

It feels weird to say, hey, friend, I know we just met, but are you ready to take this friendship to the next level?

Hearing you say that makes me think about a communications professor we interviewed who was saying that one of the hallmarks of friendships that last a long time is that they contain these assurances wherein you have said out loud to each other that hey, we want to be friends for a long time.

This actually happened in Menzakia's friendship, where we said out loud, or Zekia said out loud that we were gonna be friends from friends forever. Minzekia had a disagreement.

Do you remember what it was about? I have no clue.

It was so long ago and I truly do not remember, but we had a disagreement. It was very early in our friendship, and you know me, I felt like, okay, well, we don't know each other that well, we've had this disagreement. That means we probably are not friends anymore. And so the next day I get at message from Zekiah and she's like, oh, come to my lab.

Yeah, I mean why not. That's what we have been doing every day before that.

And so I was like, well, dang, I guess she want to fight or something like she want to argue some more. I don't know. And so I went over there and I was like, hey, girl, what's up? Because I didn't know what to expect, and she don't stand offish, and she was like, girl, this happened.

Da da dada da.

Oh we need to do this, We need to do that, Da da da da, and just was acting like nothing happened. And I was like, oh, you know, I thought you were upset. I thought we weren't friends anymore.

I was devastated.

Zakia started crying. Well, if you know Zekiah, you know it really doesn't take much for her to her eyes to well up with tears. But she was just so she looked like she was blindsided. She was like, what we are friends forever?

Now?

You made me sound like a h This sounds like a hostage situation. It is it is someone help help.

I think I just thought there was some permanence that I had conveyed, you know, And I think from that, I felt like I haven't said the things to make you feel safe and secure in this friendship. And so I decided right then with that, Pipette id wed to friendship. I do, I do. We all know friendship is good for us, So why do we keep hitting these stumbling box Why do we keep fumbling the bag?

Yes, friendships are so complicated, but they are so important. And when we get back, we're going to talk about why you should prioritize your friendships and.

How to navigate them. Once you do, we're back and we're ready to jump right into the peaks and valleys of friendship.

Doctor Franco talked to us about how society has conditioned us to feel like our friendships are not important, but that's not true.

Like the ways that we have our society is set up. It's actually like if you're not in a romantic relationship, you're at a disadvantage. Like there's all these privileges that are afforded to people who are in a romantic relationships that are not afforded to people that live a life of deep connection through friendship.

Here's i'm Anato's tape.

Yeah, I mean, and for me, it's like that is such a reality of my life. It's like my four oh one K recipient is a friend my the person who has my medical directive and power of attorney is

So I was like, I like, the premise is flawed.

All this sounds good, right, Me and Zakia have had a really great friendship, but we both have friends that are no longer our friends, and that is when it gets really difficult. So we wanted to know how to navigate the conflict waters with your friends. Yes, those are choppy waters, Hella, choppy, those are like hurricane in the middle of the ocean waters.

Open pathtic conflict actually is related to having a deeper sense of friendship. But the reality is that friendship actually tends to be a relationship of things left up. Said, You're a lot less likely to mention a problem in a friendship than you are in a romantic relationship, and that's because I think people fear that if you bring something up, you know, because friendships we don't maybe have the same amount of time together as romantic relationships or

And I think that's true. I've heard of a lot of people including myself, who just kind of stopped talking to folks and don't bring up what the problem is and just say we're just not friends anymore. We had a falling out, we grew apart or whatever.

I feel like if I'm not close with someone, it's much easier for me to say this is what's wrong, this is what's bothering me. But for my close friends, I know that when I'm upset, nobody wants to hear those words. And I don't want to say anything that I don't mean, and so I just wait and wait, and I'm like, when are you When do you feel like you've really got it just down to a tee? And by that time I look like a crazy person. Five years ago, thirty seven weeks ago, on a Tuesday, you.

Said, and I'm like, what did I say?

No, we could all use some tips on getting a conversation started when there's conflict.

Like, it's not something that you learn when you're six years old and then you just you know how to be a good friend. It's like some people are good friends and some people are not. I'm like, no, it's just you have to constantly You were constantly challenged as a person.

Doctor Franco says that there is a best way to enter into conflict with your friend, and it's based on a theory called reciprocity theory, and it's basically the idea that people respond to you how you talk to them. So if you're kind to them, they're likely to be kind in return, and if you nice and nasty, they're gonna be nice and nasty back.

First thing you need to do is you need to be able to enter into this conversation from a place of empathy and perspective taking. And if you feel really angry and stressed out, then that is not the time to enter the conversation. So first you need to get your mind and your energy ready right.

So, if we're thinking about the whole conflict with Molly and Lisa, Molly could have really used these steps to help her talk to Lisa in a way that could have preserved their friendship and they could have been back on track a lot sooner. So first Molly could have been like, let me not assume the worst of her. This is my friend, We've been friends for so long. Let me come into the space with my heart open and ready to forgive.

Then you open up the conflict with a sentence that is welcoming and inviting and affirms the value of the friendship. So I think with my friend, I said something like, I love you. Our friendship is so important to me, which is why I want to make sure that I'm expressed things that are weighing on me so that they don't get into the way of our bond. So that's a lot better than you know, we need to talk because I'm pissed.

So Molly could have just said, Lisa, we've been friends for a really long time and there's something that has been on my mind. It's been weighing on me, and I just got to get it off my chest because I love you and I don't want it to get in the way of our friendship.

I love that this does not feel like an argument.

Then what you do is you share your internal world. You don't tell them about what they did. You tell them about they how what they did affected you. And that's what you share. You share that vulnerability because the vulnerability is what brings people's guards down and welcomes them to be vulnerable too. After you share your vulnerability, I statements not you, statements not you did a horrible thing I felt this way, and then you ask them to share their world what was going on.

For them, so Molly could have said something like what brought us to a have For me is when I found out that you had talked to Nathan to talk to my boyfriend about getting an ad for the block party. That made me feel like you weren't taking my feelings into consideration because we had had a conversation already and that hurt.

I think that's a way better approach than how we normally handle things, which is why was you talking behind my back and I already told you and.

Started a fight at ASA's job at the block party? That was so inappropriate.

Last you asked them for what you want to see in the future, so you say like something like, hey, next time when I need support, could you please just reach out to.

Me going forward, because I value you as a friend and I don't want to lose you as a friend. Let's just talk it out a little bit more. I think that conversation deserved more time so that maybe you could have understood my perspective a little bit better and we could have came to some other conclusion to try and help you out with the work. You were doing, because I know it's important to you.

And it's important not to beat up on ourselves as we go through this process. Friendship is not perfect. We're all just figuring it out as we go, and and says she and Amina Tou are no different.

In defense of our past selves. We're not really trained to recognize the like the emotions associated with awkwardness or conflict within a friendship, especially the kinds of stuff we write about, which are not huge, dramatic transgressions. They were like little moments when we were missing each other that later became big moments.

Right Because in their book they talk about this interaction or conflict that they had that surrounds this friend group called the Desert Ladies. Definitely read about it. It was very very interesting, and it was a conflict that they ended up not really resolving.

Actually what happened is that years later it just exploded in our faces that something that we hadn't talked about was one of the very original sins of many many disagreements that we'd had. And so I think that with the hindsight, with the knowledge of hindsight, is really understanding that if I am not comfortable about something and how I relate with someone else, like a special a close friend.

That's a really good point, and hopefully we can start to have these reminders to check in with yourself. Is this just in my head? Or did I say something out loud so someone else know? You know what I mean, Like, I know that sounds crazy alone. Yes, it's just in my head.

No, it's not just in your head. Say those things out loud. Probably most times it's not even as serious as you think. Or it's a misunderstanding that you guys can get over. But if you keep spinning your wheels in your head and assuming and thinking like all these awful things, then it'll affect your relationship downstream.

So these are some good strategies, but we all know that it doesn't always turn out like this.

Yes, me and as a kid have been friends for a long time, but we also have friends that we are no longer friends with, so it doesn't always end up with a podcast.

So when you gotta do it, what's the best way to break up with a friend?

I would say that the answer is going to differ depending on how close you are. If you're kind of like casual acquaintances, I think it's okay to like just kind of back away or be busy. But once you get into the stage where you're like actually close and you're actually friends, you want to have a direct conversation. And the reason that is is because if you don't,

I know this happens from personal experience. When I was an undergrad, I had a group of friends and I'm still friends with some of them, and some of them I'm not. I mean, it's not there's no bad blood or anything like that. We just you know, grew apart. But then when I was in grad school, I had one of those friends find me and reach out, like I hadn't talked to them in five six years, and they were like, hey, how are you? And I was like,

I've definitely been on the other end of that, on the other end of the STA, you know. So we told the story about a less casual relationship, but one of my big friendships we had a falling out and it was just just like Anne and I mean not too said. It was the piling up of things left unsaid, right, It was the weight of a thousand murmurs. So if you always get along with somebody, you never sharpen those

Wow.

And eventually, you know, we use some of these tools to get back to a better place, but it was not easy.

You know.

We assume that the only pain we experienced from relationships is romantic relationships, but friendship can also be a real heavy loss for people too, and there's less of a space to greet. It's just like, well, that was just a friend, wasn't your partner, wasn't your husband, wasn't your wife? But like friends cut deep, they can be just as close as like our romantic partners.

We need to start making safe spaces for folks to grieve their lost friendships.

The ghost of friendship past, that's what I call.

Them, because it's sad some people have you have these friends for years, yeah, and they know everything about you. They've helped you through really really tough times and so when the friendship ends, it hurts.

So we've covered all these different angles of having a friend, having conflict with a friend, and then breaking it off with a friend. But something we haven't discussed is loneliness that you can feel even when you do have friends. And this is more likely to happen now, especially with all of this increased social distancing. Yeah, I think it's been really tough. This is something that none of us

When we get into a state of loneliness, we have two desires. Want is to connect with other people, and the other is to protect ourselves. By disconnecting from other people, people become far more threatening than they are when we're not lonely.

Oh okay, So it feels like a heavier lift to reach out to people when you're feeling lonely, and so you're less likely to do it.

And so what the research finds is that basically, when you're lonely, and you interact with people, you're more likely to assume that they're rejecting you.

Wow, that's really crazy, your own brain tricking you like that.

It'd be your own brain.

But the most effective intervention for loneliness has actually been helping people deal with their thoughts and feelings that come out of low because once you're able to recognize that that's your lonely brain speaking, you are able to do the work of reaching out. And so there's this really fascinating technique called the third person method.

The third person method is when you talk to yourself in the third person. So I'd say, Zakiya is lonely right now, but Zakia is worried about being rejected, And yes, that feels both weird and goofy. But what it does is generate some psychological distance in my brain. So it allows me to kind of distance what I'm going through from what my thoughts are and what's beneath my thoughts, and you begin to realize, Okay, the thoughts on having aren't necessarily my reality.

This was so eye opening because I feel like I don't know a lot of stuff about myself, and like, how good of a friend I am or how bad of a friend I am. And so now I have these cues that I can think of when I'm interacting with my friends to try and be the best friend that I can be.

Yeah, there's definitely some great tools in here. You know. I pride myself on really cultivating my friends. You do, and I'm like, oh, girl, you got to go back to the drawing board.

And based off the stories that you tell me about when you were a kid, you have not changed like you have always been. No, for real, You've always been this really great friend that's really in tune with her friends, and people just love being around you, and you really like to bring people into the fold.

As you say, But that's not unique to me. A lot of what happens in our childhood really influences how we make friends as adults.

Here's ami not too.

The reason that we write about our childhood so much and how we grew up and how we were in our family is that actually so much of that informs the kind of friend that you are to people Like I come from a family where it's not that we don't fight. I'm like, we fight, and then like people don't talk to each other for ten years, you know, like that is it is, that is the baggage that

You know.

And that's the thing about friendship. Because now you're about to get me on my soapbox.

You know, yay, let me put it in place, sit.

It down on the ground for bett, let me step up. I think you know, yes, you are this whole person, but I think there's some real truth to that saying that you are, you know, the company that you keep ye, and I can say, you know, since becoming friends with you, I have I feel like a lot of my world has just blossomed. The things I was like, Oh no, girl, that's not my arina. I don't think I can do that.

You know that's because I know my friend can do it. And she also brings that energy to me in that she comes up with these ideas that she thinks is crazy. But I'm like, you have to have a certain level of confidence in yourself and your abilities to eat and come up with these ideas, and so that inspires me to have more and more ideas and not say, oh that's stupid. Oh that's not your lane. You can't do that. And Zakia is like, no, all these lanes are ours and.

The lanes for everybody.

Yes, And so the enthusiasm that I bring to her she also feeds to me as well. So it just feels like this, this friendship, this big friendship that we've fostered over the last ten plus years, is such a beautiful thing, and I am so glad that we are here.

I just want that for everybody.

Yeah, everybody should have Azakia.

No, that's not what I'm talking to you about. I mean I want that big friendship for everybody you know.

Yes, And I think if you are out there and you are listening to this episode right now, that you need to make sure that you get on social media and tag your friends, your besties, the people that you've been riding with for a little bit or for a long time, and so that we can see and we can share it on our page.

Yes, I can't wait to see all the big friendships.

That's it for Lab twenty six, but we have so much more for you to dig into on our website, So go to Dope Labs podcast dot com.

On our website, you can find a cheat cheat for today's lab, along with a ton of other links and resources in the show notes.

And if you want to stay in the know with Dope Labs, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter on our site too.

Special thanks to our guest expert, doctor Marissa Gfranco. She's writing a book called Platonic. You can find out more info on her website, Doctor Marissa Gfranco dot com.

Also special thanks to our guest hosts and fellow best friends Ann Friedman and Ami nati Soa. Their new book, Big Friendship, comes out July fourteenth. Go to Big Friendship dot com to pre order yours today.

Yes, also, we love hearing from you. What did you think about today's lab? Do you have ideas for future labs? Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and let us know. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast tt is on Twitter at dr Underscore, t.

S h O, and you can find Zakiya at z said So.

Follow us on Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts.

Dope Labs is produced by Jenny radalt Mass of WaveRunner.

Studios, mixing and sound design are by Hannes Brown. Our theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura, with additional music by Elijah Lex Harvey. Dope Labs is a production of Spotify and Mega Oh Media Group, and it's executive produced by us T. T. Show Dia and Zakiah Wattley. I want to see was anybody else doing rap squad poses?

You know?

I want to see what you were doing with your friends.

Yes, from just a few, from just a year, a few months ago. I love it.