Do all my friends secretly hate me?

Corner Piece

Melissa Fernandez explores the complexities and anxieties of maintaining adult friendships after experiencing a painful friendship breakup. She interviews journalist Anna Goldfarb and

Key takeaways

Anna Goldfarb explains that friendships are voluntary relationships between equals but lack cultural scripts, making them harder to navigate than romantic partnerships.
Dr. Marisa G. Franco introduces the concept of 'under-sociality,' where people consistently underestimate how much their friends actually care and value their outreach.

Main topics

Adult friendship breakups and grief
Friendship anxiety and vulnerability

Notable quotes

"Friendships are a risk. You know, this is part of the risk of showing people who you are."

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable psychological frameworks for overcoming friendship anxiety and

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Power at work isn't just about a title. It's about knowing when to tap into the power you already have from wherever you sit in the organization and step into your swagger. So how do you actually do that? I'm Anne Mora, CEO and leadership coach, my co-host, Frances Fry, a Harvard Business School professor, and I are speaking with experts on our podcast, Fixable, in a special series on unlocking your power at work. Hear from voices like journalist Kara Swisher and Haley Sachs, also known as Mrs. Dow Jones. Get honest advice for a more successful career, unfixable, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (0:42) When I was a kid, I had all these dreams of what I thought friendship would be like when I was older. Speaker 8 (0:50) Big apartments, large living rooms, pizza nights. The kind of thing that you'd see in the show Friends. I guess that's because my parents had it on TV all the time when I was younger. And what I've always found really beautiful about the show was the genuine connection these people seemed to share with each other. They have this casualness with each other and show up as themselves, unannounced, happy, sad, and everything in between. They laugh together, cry together, and are present in each other's lives. And I know that this is television, but when I look at the picture of friendship in my life today, Speaker 8 (1:32) It's very different than what I had imagined. Recently, I went through a pretty tough friendship loss or breakup. Speaker 8 (1:43) I think I just like thought I told myself that it was fine and I was over it but Speaker 8 (1:51) Okay. We were friends for years, pretty much all through childhood and into adulthood. But long story short, we had a small fight that unraveled into this year-long process of slow distancing. And now we don't really talk to each other. I guess when you're just like friends with someone for so long, I guess you have Speaker 1 (2:12) these expectations. And when things change so suddenly without any communication, you're just kind of like... Speaker 1 (2:23) you're just, I don't know, like feeling left wondering what is going on for over a year. You're just confused and so I just don't understand what the, I don't know what the play space is, you know? Speaker 8 (2:36) She was one of my oldest and closest friends, and I miss her a lot. And I think I'm still making sense of what happened and processing. Speaker 8 (2:46) The grief of it all. Like, I'm too scared to even text her. So, on this episode of Corner Piece, we're talking about friendship. Am I a bad friend? And what does it even mean to be a good friend? And not just the kinds that you see on screen. I mean, real friends. Speaker 8 (3:11) So I called my friends, Taha and Sabrina, to ask them how they maintain their friendships. Speaker 2 (3:17) Do you guys ever just call your friends spontaneously? Speaker 3 (3:22) So what do you think my answer is, Taha? Speaker 2 (3:24) You schedule in spontaneous phone call with Frank. And then you roll a dice and you have a system. Speaker 1 (3:35) I don't anymore. But when I was a kid, I used to. When I was in elementary school, I used to just call my friends after school. Elementary school? With a landline? Yeah, you just grab the landline. You were allowed? Yeah, I'd be like, hello, is Amanda free for a call? And then they'll be like, okay, one second. And then you'll just talk. And then when you're sick of being on the phone, you have to fake. Be like, oh, my mom's calling me for dinner. You have to face it. I have to go now. Because you could just talk forever. You have nothing to do. What homework do you have when you're in grade four? Like, go to your times tables and then you're done. She was really Speaker 2 (4:17) good at her times tables. Jeez. Speaker 1 (4:20) You brag about it. But not anymore. Not anymore. I don't call my Speaker 5 (4:25) friends anymore. She Speaker 1 (4:25) can't do math Speaker 5 (4:25) anymore. Speaker 5 (4:27) you Speaker 8 (4:30) This feels embarrassing to admit that I'm struggling to hold on to friendships as an adult. Like, it felt easier when I was younger. Less complicated and more fun. I had people that I saw all the time, talked to, and felt really connected to. Speaker 8 (4:48) I don't know, but maybe life was just simpler then. We didn't have the complications of adult schedules and emotions to deal with. And so I couldn't help but wonder if there's something more to friendship that I just seem to be missing. Speaker 3 (5:02) So my friends and I realized we didn't hang out for like over a year. And we were like, why? Like your close Speaker 1 (5:09) friends? My close friends and I, like we have a very Speaker 3 (5:12) active group chat, but we didn't hang out in person because there was just so many scheduling nightmares that were occurring. And so we try and make plans to hang out in person once a month, which means that there are about four to five weekends that we have to negotiate. And something you learn in your 20s is that. all of those weekends book almost a month in advance. And so it's just like, I just learned what they're doing on their weekends. It's fun. Okay. Speaker 2 (5:38) How many times do they say, well, no. Speaker 3 (5:42) I listen, my friends, we're all desperate for an opportunity to hang out. It's really like something has to be restraining us or somebody doesn't want to hang out. And that's I mean, like, it's not the right context for the hangout. So yeah, they'll, they'll say yes, there's a very little overlap in like times where I want to hang out. And they're like, No, you're not allowed to come. I Speaker 2 (6:02) think I have most things scheduled. And then I leave the door open for spontaneity. Speaker 3 (6:07) That's true. Do you want to talk about your multi calendar Speaker 2 (6:09) lifestyle? We can get in the weeds, but the way I construct my calendar system. Speaker 2 (6:18) is I have different calendars for different probability events. I have my high probability calendar. I have my low probability calendar. I have my unconfirmed calendar. Okay. Now this makes up the bulk of how I socially organize my life. Now, the reason I have these three different calendars is because I have friends of different levels of reliability. This Speaker 3 (6:43) sounds sweeter than I'm scheduling my friendships. You're like building out space for them. Speaker 1 (6:50) Okay. Is there a difference between someone who is an acquaintance and a friendship? Do you distinguish those two things at all? To me, someone who is a friend is someone who I can be myself with. Speaker 1 (7:04) And then there's just people that I know. Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:07) I feel like this collapses the idea of a friendship into a binary, which I would like to wholeheartedly reject. The not friends to friend. I actually agree Speaker 3 (7:18) with you. I think that I've just become very strict in my use of the word friends because I think that ambiguity really stressed me out when I was younger. And so I've decided that if there is not that reciprocity in the relationship. They can still be an acquaintance that I care about, but I would not consider them a friend in my book. I Speaker 2 (7:39) think I would. And this is just what I do practically, which is if they call me their friend, I'll just call them my friend as well. Because I'm like, all Speaker 3 (7:47) right. But do you call them your friend in your heart? Speaker 2 (7:49) I never in my heart think of the word friend because I think it's... Todd doesn't have Speaker 3 (7:54) friends, actually. Or a heart. I think Speaker 2 (7:57) I have friends who I definitely talk... to about my life and like what's going on in my life, what I'm struggling with, what I'm excited about, those type of friendships. And all of these aren't like neat categories, but there's a quality of friendship that includes that. And then there's another one, which is way more about enjoying each other's personality. That's like way more on the scale about... Speaker 2 (8:22) banter and having fun and laughing and enjoying the shared interests that we have and has nothing to do with what people's lives are like. I knew that one of them was like an airline pilot for sure and like the only thing we would talk about is video games and I didn't know how old he was. I knew that sometimes he would talk about airplanes and I was like that's okay whatever and I have people in my life that their actual personal lives are complete black boxes. I found out someone that I knew, I think for four or five years, has a wife. That was crazy. Speaker 1 (8:55) That's great. That Speaker 3 (8:57) is crazy. Classic man friendship. Speaker 2 (9:01) Yeah, I'm like, damn, when did you get married? Oh, 10 years ago. I don't think I could order my friends in terms of closeness. And so I also feel like when I tell people, oh, this person is my friend, like I wonder if one is closer than the other. In terms of like, I don't know where on that line anyone goes. Because there are some parts of my life that I would share with some friends. And there are other parts of my life that I would share with other friends. And neither of those parts of my life are more intimate than each other. I Speaker 3 (9:32) get that. I think, I think for me, I like... I contextualize my friends. And I know that might sound a little bit weird, but it's because I get to be a slightly different version of me when I'm hanging out with those people. So I am the type of person who very rarely will mix friend groups. I just, I don't like it. It makes me kind of uncomfortable. And all of my friends, the weirdest, the weird part of it is that when I do mix friend groups, my friends become different people because it's... It's a different environment. And I just, it's like a less enriching hangout because we aren't getting to be the selves that I really enjoy being when it's like a specific context. I'm really comfortable with acknowledging like the types of friendships that can exist, like the types of activities that type of person enjoys doing, what they enjoy talking about. And I'm happy to exist and build like this magic circle with them that is that friendship.