FRIENDSHIP: What is it and why do we need it now more than ever?
January 25, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Hi everybody.
Abby Wambach:
Hi.
Glennon Doyle:
Why are you laughing at me already? All I said is, “Hi, everybody.”
Abby Wambach:
I know. It’s amazing to me that it can sound the exact same every single week. It’s amazing. It’s a talent.
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, everybody. Is that different enough?
Abby Wambach:
Much and worse. Go back to the beginning.
Amanda Doyle:
Greetings, dull people. Greetings.
Abby Wambach:
Go back to the beginning.
Glennon Doyle:
Greetings, friends. Welcome back to We Can do Hard Things. We are shocked, stunned, and delighted that you continue to return. Since you return, so do we. Today we are talking about something that our pod-squad has requested of us for months, and that topic is friendship.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, help me.
Glennon Doyle:
How it matters, why it matters, how to get it, how to keep it, how to deepen it, how to end it. We have successfully avoided this topic until now for two reasons. Reason number one, nobody recording this podcast right now, you, me, sister, we don’t understand it. None of us understand friendship. Would you agree?
Abby Wambach:
Uh-huh (affirmative). Yep.
Amanda Doyle:
I feel like I understand it a little bit more at this point, having researched it for the past couple weeks. I’m like, “Ah, I see what you’re talking about.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, good. You can help us because I still feel as confused as I did. When we sat down to talk about it, we literally just ended up staring at each other blankly during our “let’s prepare for friendship” meetings.
Abby Wambach:
Confused and then confirmed in some ways, too. This is probably why we don’t have as many friends as we have. It makes sense.
Glennon Doyle:
We are three people who in fact do not understand friendship. We worried that if we tried to talk about friendship for an hour, you, the listener, might find out that we in fact do not understand what we are talking about.
Amanda Doyle:
Which would be a worst case scenario.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, and that might extend to other things. They might be like, “Wait, what if they never know what they’re talking about?” Then…
Amanda Doyle:
On second thought, let me listen to all their podcasts. They never know what they’re talking about. Let’s save you the time and just confirm that for you right now.
Glennon Doyle:
The jig is up. Friendship ruined us, okay? But then we thought, “What if the three of us are not an anomaly? Maybe we are actually representative of how the world feels about friendship. Maybe we are all a little confused about friendship because there are so freaking few agreed-upon definitions for what a friend is.”
Amanda Doyle:
Also, it’s both over-inclusive and under-inclusive because I feel like part of the reason that we’re so confused is this tomfoolery of the fact that we have one word to describe the phenomenon of friendship. The word that I use to describe the person whose photos I scroll through on the internet and the lovely person at school drop-off that I see once a week who I’m like, “They’re lovely,” is the same word for the people that are most important in my life, like doing life with. I feel like it’s that phenomenon where if something has come to mean everything it actually means nothing. There’s no cultural expectation because there is no definition about the significance and the expectations of that kind of relationship in our culture.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
Also, I just have to say, sister has this most unique ability to just throw in some fucking amazing words, tomfoolery.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s always said tomfoolery since we were little.
Abby Wambach:
Tomfoolery is just in the sentence, it just came off very easily. I just need to say that you are my friend because of that reason.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s just always throwing around words like tomfoolery, it’s so actually weird.
Abby Wambach:
Poor Tom.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so true. It’s like some cultures have 100 words for snow and we have one word for friend. When I say it, it means something completely different than what you’re thinking, which causes all kinds of confusion, unmet expectations, and frustration. Reason number two that we thought we should avoid this topic at all costs is because each of us on this podcast is either currently convinced or has historically been convinced that we are a bad friend. I have heard all of us say it a million different times. We’ve said it our whole lives. We’ve said, “Oh, I’m a bad friend,” like it’s a diagnosis, like it’s a condition, “Hi, I’m Glennon, 45, recovering addict, Pisces, an enneagram for bad friend.” That’s part of our identity. I say it as kind of like a warning…
Abby Wambach:
Expectation setter.
Glennon Doyle:
A get out of jail free card.
Abby Wambach:
You’re setting an expectation, for sure.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Yours is like a preemptive apologetic stance, just so you know this is how… whatever you think I’m going to give you, I’m going to screw up is what I’m trying to say when I say I’m a bad friend. But, why have you, sister, thought of yourself as a bad friend over time?
Amanda Doyle:
I have been thinking about this constantly the last two weeks and I feel so excited because I feel like I have a little bit of a self revelation right now. I’m so excited because I feel like… looking back at my life, what I am seeing is that I valued my friends. I believed that I valued my friends very much, but I think at a level I truly believed that I didn’t need to be in connection with my friends to value them. It sounds really odd to say it, but for me, the most important things in a friendship have always been mutual respect and real trust, like I trust who you are as a person, I trust the way you live, your integrity, your wisdom. I know who you are and I’ll be in your foxhole with you and you’ll be in mine and that’s all I need to know. It was kind of like done deal, that’s it.
Amanda Doyle:
I believed that our houses were sound and that was good. I kind of resented what I saw as kind of this housekeeping element of staying in touch, knowing what’s going on in your life, being there for non-emergencies. It felt like knowing your life wasn’t as important as knowing who you are and that I’ll show up for you. I kind of, in a way, saw it as a score keeping thing. I’m a better person because I don’t keep score, and other people who need you to call them back once every 10 times were kind of just less evolved. I realized actually that I am not exceptional. I need connection and I need friendship, and in fact that kind of connection, what I had been seeing as housekeeping, is actually the engine that builds connection.
Glennon Doyle:
It reminds me of what you… you had an old relationship where you said, “Why don’t you ever tell me that you love me?” He said, “I told you a long time ago and I will tell you if it changes.”
Amanda Doyle:
Oh Jesus. Yes, there’s that. Well, it is helpful because… it was last year I think… I have this dear, amazing human friend, Lauren, who we call Bonzo and we’ve been friends for 25 years. She is historically a friend that kind of calls me in. I remember when we were living in… we lived in a group of 12 women in college in this house together and it was a wonderful time. I was going through a lot of my eating disorder stuff at the time. I was stealing people’s food.
Glennon Doyle:
I used to do that.
Amanda Doyle:
In my binge eating, I was taking people’s food and everybody knew it was me, but it was like living in… they were posting notes, “Hey y’all, we actually can’t steal each other’s cereal and leave an empty box.”
Glennon Doyle:
Sister, do you get cringey about it? Every once in a while I remember back to those times, I used to steal everyone’s food. My friends wouldn’t even live with me one year because I would steal all of their shit just to throw it up. Sorry, go ahead.
Amanda Doyle:
I feel cringey and shame, but mostly I just feel so sad for that disassociated person who was living in that house who knew that everybody knew that was happening and everybody… and what is that about? Then, I also use it on myself now. I’m like, I’m the same person that was that so what in my life is that thing that I’m doing right now that in 10 years I’m going to look back and be like, “Oh, baby girl, you were doing that.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s a cool question.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
Anyway, but Bonzo is the only one who sat me down and was like, “I need to talk to you. Here’s what’s going on. I know it’s you. We need to talk about this. How can we…? It’s not okay,” but in the most loving, beautiful way. Anyway, she’s historically…
Glennon Doyle:
Hold on. What was the outcome of that conversation? I never had that conversation in college.
Abby Wambach:
Did you stop stealing food?
Glennon Doyle:
What happened? Were you so embarrassed? Did you feel loved? Did you feel scared?
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve always felt so loved by her that I think had it been delivered differently or by a different human, it might have been bad for me. I think I was thankful. I think I was relieved. It’s kind of like the jig is up. Gig is up. What is up? I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s jig.
Amanda Doyle:
Something’s up. It’s expired. I think that it was kind of what I had been holding together very ineffectively but pretending to wasn’t held together anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
Part of it’s like somebody help me, somebody see me, somebody help me.
Amanda Doyle:
That was a long tangent just to say that she has been that for me a lot of times. Last year, she just called, and she’s a very strong human. She called and she was like, “Doyle, what the fuck? I’m over this trope of you being like, ‘I can’t keep in touch because I’m so busy and woe is me and I’m so busy.'” She’s like, “It’s tired. I’ve been going through a really hard thing for the past six months that you don’t even know about. You don’t know about it because you’re not in community with me, you’re not checking with me.” Again, it was from a place of such love, a way of being like you’re missing out on what is the meat of friendship because you’re telling yourself this story about you being busy and it’s tired, but also at some point you’re going to have to choose.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s no situational exceptionalism out of relationship. You either have to choose whether to be in a relationship. Anyway, I think for me what I am realizing is that…and there’s a whole host of reasons we should go into as to why connection through friendship is actually the best thing you can do for your life and your health. It truly is.
Glennon Doyle:
What you said in the beginning is true. You said, “Friendship is who you need with you in the foxhole, but life is a foxhole.”
Amanda Doyle:
Correct.
Glennon Doyle:
The foxhole is now. In the daily day-to-day of life, loss, stress, and trying to be human is a freaking foxhole and that’s why we need connection consistently. Is that what you’re saying? Did you change?
Amanda Doyle:
I think it is that. It’s not like we pay this annoying price of being in connection with our friends so that when we need them they’ll show up. It’s that the connection we’re making with our friends is the showing up in each other’s lives that makes life more bearable.
Glennon Doyle:
The bearable is interesting. I have this feeling when I have had my small pockets of time where I make connections with friends and it is a feeling of being tethered to the earth. I don’t know how else to describe it, except that I constantly feel like a hot air balloon just floating out into the wilderness. I am completely freaking untethered from the earth and when I try, when I talk, and when I am seen by other human beings who are not in my family, by the way, it doesn’t work as well for family members with me, this tethered feeling. I feel like I’m one of those hot air balloons that had those stakes put down, like there’s a stake in this corner of my basket and I feel grounded.
Abby Wambach:
Well, don’t you think that friendship is also a vulnerability? I think that some of us, especially recovered from alcohol, I have a very confused relationship with friends, primarily because so much of my friendships were revolving around alcohol for so many years. There’s a vulnerability in your guard down, not just with somebody, but there’s a vulnerability in trying to maintain the friendship and the consistency of staying in somebody’s lives and having them stay in your life. To me, you will choose friends that you want to be in your life or not. But I think that, sister, what I’m hearing, and you, I think that some of the issues is you can’t control friends, you can’t control if Bonzo is going to call you and be like, “Yo, you’re fucking sucking right now, what is going on?”
Glennon Doyle:
Well, what happened after that?
Amanda Doyle:
I realized that I didn’t have what I thought I had. I had this beautiful friend, but I wasn’t being a friend to her.
Glennon Doyle:
But, did you have even the beautiful friend? You thought you had the friend because you thought a friend was like an ace in your pocket, but what she’s saying is you’re not even having the have. You’re not getting the benefit of what a friend is supposed to be on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. You’re not even using me. You’re not even playing your ace card.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. That’s what it is. I realized that in my story I was telling myself was that friendship was this kind of thing that people who were lucky enough to have enough time got to do, but I was depriving myself of this gift, that’s the people in my life. I really truly think when you talk about vulnerability, Abby, I really believed that I didn’t require connection in my life. I really believed that I didn’t need that, but the truth is that we all very much need it. It’s the best predictor of happiness and health in life. I’m just trying to evolve out of that kind of self-absorbed exceptionalism of I don’t need it and I can’t get by without it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s a really cool thing to say.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it could be self-absorbed exceptionalism, but I also truly believe that it’s an addiction to productivity also. It’s like the capitalistic idea of… because you just said, “The best predictor of health and happiness.” You would think that we would all think, “Well then, obviously we want to do that because health and happiness is our goal.” But in our culture, health and happiness isn’t even the most immediate goal. The most immediate goal is production. What am I making? What am I…? How am I…?
Abby Wambach:
Wealth. After that, happiness comes.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Friendship to me is such a wild resistance to capitalistic productivity addiction because you’re sitting with your friend and you’re like, “What freaking good is this hour? What good is this hour?” It’s like art. It’s like such a wild thing to commit yourself to because it feels like there’s nothing to show for it afterwards, except for, of course, your health, your happiness, your joy, and you’re being tethered to this earth and this life.
Abby Wambach:
It’s just also confusing because all of us have different definitions for it.
Amanda Doyle:
I can tell you the definition of what actually… that kind of magic of that is the most healthful. When they say it actually changes the rate at which your cells age, your immune system responds, your heart health and all of that, that is all the kind of magical friend template. There’s three things that go into that. First, it’s a stable or long term relationship. Second, it’s positive. Third, it’s reciprocal, meaning helpful, cooperative, like we help each other get through life. Those are the three. When the science says there is satisfaction with relationships is the best predictor of health at 80 years old, these are the three things that contribute to your health.
Glennon Doyle:
When you say relationships, are they talking about friendships because relationships can also be…?
Abby Wambach:
I’m your friend.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, but your partner, your children. Does this mean friendships, for sure? How many are we supposed to have? That’s the other thing.
Amanda Doyle:
I think that’s a big question that people have, how do I find friends? Do I have enough friends? There’s a woman named Lydia Denworth, she’s a science journalist. She wrote a book called “Friendship” and she studies all of this, and it’s fascinating. It’s an average of four people that are the people who you can’t imagine your life without. The average person has four of them, between two and eight people. It does not matter whether they are friends, so non-blood or family, but that friend template has to exist in the other relationship. If it is your partner, it has to still… it’s not like just because it’s your partner you can call it a friend, just because the person that your closest to counts as giving you that magic. It still has to be stable, positive, and reciprocal.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you know why I think it might be…? I have always been so concentrated on family that I haven’t put energy into other baskets often. Also, to be honest, I’ve always told myself that it takes me so much fricking energy to just get through the day because of mental health stuff that I don’t have the leftover to foster other relationships. But, I just thought of this and I don’t know if it’s going to sound weird, but the reason why the tethering I think happens when I do check in with people outside of my family is that when you have your own little family that you put all of your eggs into that basket, you can never be sure if anything that you’re doing or saying or the way you’re living is really all that healthy. You’re all coming from the same freaking little, tiny, F-ed up culture. All of our little families are F-ed up cultures. I’m sorry, even if your family, listener, is close to perfect, it’s still F-ed up.
Glennon Doyle:
We all have accepted the same storylines. We all have the same values. We all were raised by the same people. We all are living in these little twisted ecosystems. You could be bat shit crazy and losing it and all your little people are still going to be like, “You’re doing great. You’re crushing it. That’s right.”
Amanda Doyle:
That’s why no one ever finds out that their families are crazy till they grow up, get partnered up with other people, and then you both find out both of your families were crazy because you’re creating the new ecosystem.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. That’s one of the reasons I’m so nervous Chase is at college. I’m like, “Oh no.”
Amanda Doyle:
People are going to tell him.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, he’s going to find out.
Abby Wambach:
We listen to all of his stories. We’re listening if he tells…
Glennon Doyle:
Has he figured it out yet?
Abby Wambach:
Is he telling other people about our crazy or…?
Glennon Doyle:
Right. But do you know what I mean?
Abby Wambach:
I do.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like when people outside your twisted little world, they can offer you wisdom that you didn’t have. They can say, “Hey, I see what you’re doing and I think that’s healthy,” whatever it is.
Abby Wambach:
It’s a different mirror. It’s like somebody gets to bring in some kind of difference and it allows maybe a little bit of balance.
Glennon Doyle:
And wisdom, more wisdom from different planets. Different planets are coming in and giving you their weird ideas from their weird planet.
Amanda Doyle:
I think what that speaks to is that our actual needs as human beings have not changed the way that our culture, society, and economics have changed. I think that is why I give grace to people like me and others who are A, super confused about friendship, B, super confused about either living in a world where they’re desperate for friendship and are surrounded by people who don’t understand it and are not reciprocating or people who think that’s a little tangential to my major need, which is just to survive this day and the things I have to get done. Really, truly, in our… and just bear with me for a second because I think this is important to understand is that it’s only been in the relatively recent human history of agricultural and industrial societies that we have any kind of surplus of anything. For the longest time in the world, and this goes to you kind of looking outside of your family for needs, we are in these forager societies that were in bands of people. We had to survive for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
Amanda Doyle:
We had to work cooperatively with each other for food, resources, and protection. On any given day, everyone had to work together to share, to reciprocate, and to say, “You do this, I’ll do this, together we’ll survive.” We think that family is the basis of cooperation, but blood relationships only counted for 40% of those band societies. In other words, kinship wasn’t the reason for human cooperation, it was the outcome of human cooperation. People didn’t need each other because they were bonded, they were bonded because they needed each other.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re saying… me saying, “I don’t have enough time for friendship because I can barely make it through the day as it is,” it should be, “I need friendship because I can barely make it through the day as it is.” That’s not the thing I do with my extra energy, that’s the thing that will give me the energy that I need to live a little bit happier.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. We think, “Oh, I don’t feel connected. I don’t feel like I feel the need for that thing,” it’s because you don’t need that thing because you haven’t invested in connecting in that thing.
Glennon Doyle:
I got it. You don’t even know what you’re missing.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the same reason why… the Together Rising board, I would take a bullet for those people. It’s because we have so relied on each other and I love them because I need them and because we are mutually engaged in this thing that is vital to life.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, let’s talk about that because there’s a vehicle there. You’re talking about not friendship, just like, “Oh, I met somebody at the coffee shop.” You’re talking about friendship around a shared mission, like Together Rising. That reminds me of you because of soccer. How has friendship and soccer worked together?
Abby Wambach:
It’s just been kind of confusing. For a lot of my life, especially as a gay kid growing up in the ’90s, my friends in many ways had to be my chosen family because of fear of being kicked out, all of these things. Friends were and have always had this really important place in my heart. But from the time that I can remember being a child on teams, I had these friends. It’s like, “Wow. This is such a beautiful bonus of being a soccer player is I have all these built-in friends.”
Glennon Doyle:
Forced friends. They had to be your friends.
Abby Wambach:
The irony with that is that it was such a comfort during certain parts of my life. Then, now as an adult and in my retirement from soccer, it gives me time to think about a lot of these friendships, whether they were soccer-based… we talk about the Maypole a lot. The thing in my life for so many years was soccer and everything else kind of revolved around that.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re talking about the pole that has the strings and everyone dances around the Maypole, the pole for you is soccer.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. I have had so many beautiful… by the way, for those of my soccer friends who are listening to this, I actually still feel like such amazing… I have such best friends from my playing days. But the truth is I haven’t seen some of them in five, six years since I stopped playing. I haven’t even been in contact with some players, some of my friends that I considered some of my best friends. That’s okay because of the way that our friendships were set up.
Glennon Doyle:
It was around one thing.
Abby Wambach:
Going many months and sometimes years… some players would get injured and you wouldn’t see them for a couple years. I have always thought of myself, because of this system that was set up for me in friendship, that I wasn’t really that good because it was like out of sight, out of mind. Then, throughout the whole of my life, you throw in drinking as this other…
Glennon Doyle:
Maypole.
Abby Wambach:
Maypole. When I was in soccer camp and training with the team, I had a certain amount of friends. Then, when I was not in camp I had different friends. For a long time, I had some really, really close best friends and then I stopped drinking.
Glennon Doyle:
You lost two Maypoles right at once.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, I stopped drinking, I stopped soccer-ing, and I moved to Naples, and so that obviously changes things. I didn’t have set up friends there, but the irony is I didn’t really go out and create friends there because there wasn’t this Maypole. I think maybe my Maypole changed to family and I created friendship with you and the kids and that has been my world ever since. I do think that there is a real truth to all the things that sister’s talking about of us knowing deep down that the three things that define what friendship is, is important for our life longevity.
Glennon Doyle:
I think so. We talk about it a lot.
Abby Wambach:
As the kids get older, I think that we start to get a little bit like, “Oh shit.” No offense because I think that this is true in every marriage, you don’t want your kids all to go off to school or leave the house and you become an empty-nester and all you have is your partner.
Glennon Doyle:
No, we don’t want to be in our freaking hot air balloon, but now there’s two in the basket and we’re totally untethered and we’re just floating away to nowhere.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. We need friends in our lives and I’m committed. However, this is something that I think is really important and the difference between you and me, my threshold for what a friend is, is very different than yours.
Glennon Doyle:
In what way?
Abby Wambach:
I can literally walk into a store two times, same person is behind the counter, they’re my friend.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s true. It’s so freaking annoying.
Abby Wambach:
They’re my friend.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s like the mayor of everywhere we go.
Abby Wambach:
I go out surfing, I’ve got surfing friends. I don’t talk to them other than when we are in… the part of me that connection revolves around these Maypoles, that everywhere in my life I can see or create a Maypole if I want to. I think Glennon’s threshold or barometer of the kind of friend she wants is much more… how am I trying to say…?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, you don’t overthink it. I overthink it to death. I’m so scared of these friends you’re making out there because… I’m just going to say this. I have a few reasons. Feel my hands. Seriously, I’m sweating right now.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
I know. It’s so weird. First of all, I don’t understand what we’re getting into. I am more afraid to get into a friendship than I am to get into a marriage because with a marriage, I know how to get myself the hell out. There is an actual effing path. If things start to go wrong, there are people I can call there. There are lawyers set up for this.
Glennon Doyle:
There are support groups. I’m just saying there is a path out. But with friendship, we have not as a culture decided how we get into the slippery slope.
Abby Wambach:
What is what.
Glennon Doyle:
If you start to notice red flags, what do you do? There’s no, “First date, second date, DTR.” There’s no defining the relationship. You know what I mean? There’s no progression, so then there’s no getting yourself out. It’s just this abyss… a slippery slope of commitment and there’s no shared expectation of what it means to be a friend.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
I like clear expectations. I like to know what people need from me so I can decide whether I can give that to them and vice versa. When someone says to me, not that we even say this… we don’t even say, “Do you want to be my friend?” We just trick each other into it, I guess, over time. But, even if they did say, “Do you want to be my friend?” I don’t know what they mean. They could mean that they want to text every couple of weeks and check in. I could mean…
Abby Wambach:
By the way, if you want to get into a text relationship with my wife, I’m just… disclaimer here, she’s not texting you back right away. It’s just not happening.
Glennon Doyle:
But that’s the thing, then where does it end? I’ve told you this before. If I text you back, I check it off my list. Oh no, what happens? You text me right back. It’s a never ending cycle of hell.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, you are an intentionality junkie.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. What’s the intention of this?
Amanda Doyle:
Abby is a… she’s a joy seeker. She’s out there and she’s like, “Hey, did you meet the guy at the market? He’s my boy.” That’s the… Glennon is like, “What is the intention behind this arrangement? What is specifically my objectives? How is this going to work itself out?”
Glennon Doyle:
Where’s it going? Then, there’s the other thing that is real truth of why I’m scared of friendship.
Abby Wambach:
What is it?
Glennon Doyle:
I think, which I’m going to blame this on my sensitivity which has been an issue for me my whole life, good and bad, is that at the end of the day, I feel like most people are scary assholes. They are. Your little friends you made surfing, that’s great. That’s great, you’re out there surfing, that’s fine. But, if that escalates in the way that friendships often do, the next thing I know you’re going to come home and be like, “Sam the surfer is coming over for dinner.” I’m going to be like, “Okay,” because you know what’s going to happen? Sam the surfer is going to come over and we’re going to sit down and he’s going to say some shit. He’s going to reveal some scary assholeishness. Then, now what do we do? Now, I’m stuck at dinner, I’m sweating more. There’s no exit ramp for Sam the surfer. We’re stuck with Sam the surfer down the road for the rest of our freaking lives. Sam the surfer, like most others, turns out to be a scary asshole.
Abby Wambach:
But honey, less we forget, I have some pretty strong boundaries around you. I know my wife and I know that I get to decide on who I bring into this house and how.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m just saying Sam the surfer might not have revealed his full self to you yet.
Abby Wambach:
It’s just nice to have a conversation when you’re surfing. It’s nice to have people…
Glennon Doyle:
Well, you just keep it in the water. You keep it in the water, then.
Amanda Doyle:
I just think… what we’re drilling down on here is the difference. There are two very healthful things in our lives, one are that inner centric circle of the people we can’t imagine our lives without. We need to be able to say to them what isn’t working in our life. We need to be honest. We need to be reciprocal and positive with them. Then, there’s this whole other universe of connection in the world. We are so socially isolated right now that we are lacking even… this is when Abby walks into the store and makes a connection with the person behind the countertop. They’re not necessarily going to be in your lives forever, but the value of that connection in her day is important to her health, and that’s for all of us. We don’t crave it. They did a study where people on their commutes were… they planted people to initiate conversation with people on their commutes. None of the people wanted to be engaged in conversation and they were all initially super annoyed that people started talking to them.
Amanda Doyle:
Then, when they got off the train, the people who were annoyed to have their scrolling interrupted by conversation had better days than the people who weren’t interrupted.
Glennon Doyle:
This I can get behind because this sounds very quantifiable. What you’re saying is connection… we don’t crave it, but when we get it we’re happier and better like sex.
Abby Wambach:
That’s what I was just going to say.
Amanda Doyle:
Like exercise.
Glennon Doyle:
Like exercise, drinking, water.
Abby Wambach:
Never not once will you be like, “Oh, I wish that I didn’t connect with that person.”
Glennon Doyle:
I feel like I feel that a lot, but I do see what you’re saying.
Amanda Doyle:
But I think we mess it up, right? We are both under-investing in connection and some of us are over-investing in the friendships that are not positive. It’s like find the place on the circles, and this is Lydia Denworth’s research, this is Stephanie Coontz friendship research. We need to place people appropriately on the co-centric circles around us, but we also need to acknowledge that all of those connections are healthful for us.
Abby Wambach:
I have a question.
Glennon Doyle:
If they’re appropriately placed.
Abby Wambach:
I have a question. What about online friendships? Do those count?
Glennon Doyle:
They better, that’s all I’ve got.
Amanda Doyle:
The initial research came out about, “Online and internet is ruining our lives and our relationships.” It actually very much depends on what you’re doing online. The initial research that said that it was ruining our lives didn’t demarcate whether you’re watching porn all day online or whether you’re interacting with people online. On balance, it’s actually better for our relationship. It doesn’t replace the need for that innermost circle of people that you can rely on, but on balance it does create those kind of connections that are overall good for our health.
Glennon Doyle:
We are saying that this connection is healthful and good for us, but we have to remember what you said, that the ones that are good for us are the ones that are stable, that are positive, and that are reciprocal. All of these, especially women… I feel like these friendships that we feel duty bound to because we don’t culturally have a path of getting ourselves out when a friendship is not healthy. If a friendship constantly makes us feel bad or is creating trauma or drama over and over again and we’re only there because of some feeling of owing or loyalty, because that’s negative, that’s not positive. Or, if the relationship is one-sided, if we’re not… like Levy always says, “My friendships are charging stations.” If we are not leaving friendships feeling like… or time together feeling like in one way or another, we were expanded during that time, we were comforted, we were tethered, we were given more wisdom, we were helped, not in a transactional way, but in a real, human way.
Glennon Doyle:
If we’re the ones who were just always giving or always owing, then that is not the kind of relationship… it’s not any friendship that’s life-giving, helpful, and healthful. It’s relationships that are stable, that are positive, and that are reciprocal.
Amanda Doyle:
The interesting thing about that is that I think we… people are complicated. We all have a lot of relationships where there… maybe the value of the relationship is that it does score really high on the very longterm factor. I’ve known this person for 20 years, and so there’s a lot there that keeps us. But the interesting thing is that we all know toxic relationships are bad for our health, actually physically bad for us. That’s why a high conflict marriage is more dangerous for you health wise than a divorce. Toxic relationship is bad. But then there’s this whole other set of this kind of mixed bag, which many friendships are, where it’s both super satisfying on this level, but makes me feel like shit on this level. The most interesting research, and it’s just starting to be done right now, is suggesting that what… they call those ambivalent relationships. You rate it five on one factor but two on the other, that those ambivalent relationships are bad for us too.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like, what did Brene say? The near enemy.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not the opposite. It’s not the people who are enemies that are most dangerous to us, it’s our friendships that we’re wasting time with because they are ambivalent.
Amanda Doyle:
We say to ourselves, “Okay, the good outweighs the bad. They always make me feel like shit with this thing, but look at all these other good things, so we net out at a plus so it’s okay.” The new research is showing that ambivalence is rated closely to toxic.
Glennon Doyle:
Life is short and life is hard and good enough is rarely good enough.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good. I love it. It’s really interesting because I’ve had a couple of friends, in my getting sober situation, that I realized in my sobriety that it was just a one-sided relationship.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s a cold-hearted snake. I remember one person that you would just talk to on the phone and the person would not ask you a single question about your life ever.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
It would start and the other person would start talking about their life, you would ask them questions, and then the conversation would end every single time and the person would never ask you about your life.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s what we call not reciprocal.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what we call a hostage situation.
Abby Wambach:
I just think that it’s really important that your instinct on any kind of off-ness in a friendship to not want to participate in, the research shows that’s actually good. My lower barometer of the quality of a friendship is lower probably because I’ve had to be around people that have been pseudo friends for a lot of my life. I do think now though we’re being very intentional about the friends we’re making and we’ve made more friends, or actually been in friendships…
Glennon Doyle:
We’re dating, we’re starting relationships. We’re in the very beginning, I’m not ready to commit, but we are starting.
Abby Wambach:
I’m ready to commit with a friend.
Glennon Doyle:
You think they’re into you? I think they might be into us.
Abby Wambach:
I think there’s a friend couple that are into us, we’re into them, and we’re excited.
Glennon Doyle:
Interestingly enough, I can think of two couples that we… they’re both queer couples that we are dating and that we feel are positive and reciprocal.
Glennon Doyle:
I just want to go back to what you said. I actually like the way that you are more than I like the way that I am. When you said it’s good that you’re so judgmental about everyone…
Abby Wambach:
I didn’t say that.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s what you were saying.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s what you were saying.
Amanda Doyle:
Your constant critique of the world turns out to be accurate much of the time.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
By the way, what a constant critique of the world is and people and what I was talking about is it’s fear. It’s all fear. It’s like, “If I let that person close to us, what is going to happen? What if I can’t get out of it?” It’s fear. I actually love the way that you are with your more openness and I think that it would be wonderful for us to have a balance.
Abby Wambach:
I think we should meet in the middle somewhere because guess what? One of my deep fears is people not loving me for who I am, but loving me for all this peripheral bullshit, soccer or whatever. What I love about you, your structure, and your standard for friendship is that it weeds out the riff raff.
Glennon Doyle:
The people who would only love you for that. Yes, it does. I’ve got my eye on Sam the surfer, I’ll tell you that.
Amanda Doyle:
I think the whole thing is so interesting because it comes back to that idea of tethered. The opposite of tethered is untethered and there’s a lot of freedom and there’s a lot of control in that. You are unaccountable to anyone. You are living your life. People can see you from afar, you’re floating around, but no one can see you that much up close.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh Jesus.
Amanda Doyle:
When you are tethered to someone, there is accountability there. There’s a responsibility to that. They can see you. That’s the good news and the bad news.
Glennon Doyle:
That is so beautiful and so true. I think when you’re saying that, it’s like I figured that out in my relationship, my family, it’s the held and free. When it comes to friendship, I am free as a bird and not held in any way. It’s like wanting to be seen up close also. That is so beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m actually extremely excited about this topic now. I was dreading it, but I think that… I’m 45 years old.
Abby Wambach:
46.
Glennon Doyle:
Am I? I’m not 46. Are you being serious?
Abby Wambach:
I think so.
Amanda Doyle:
No, you were born in ’76.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you Google it, sister?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God.
Amanda Doyle:
You were born in ’76. You’re 45.
Glennon Doyle:
45, god.
Abby Wambach:
Sorry, it changes every year.
Glennon Doyle:
Anyway, I’m 45 years old and I think this is an important next frontier. I really want to explore the idea of friendship, how to have it, how to keep it, how to make my life better with it, and how to be tethered by it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s why we moved to LA. The good news is we are actually doing very well. We’re trying.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re doing well. I think so too. I’m sweaty about it still. Here’s what I want to hear, and I want to know if you both think this is a good next right thing because I know that some of the people that were listening to this related, and I think that there’s probably a hell of a lot of people who did not relate to what we were saying because they have really life-giving, long lasting or stable, positive, and reciprocal friendships, and that they have learned how to make that work in their lives. I want to hear from them. Pod-squaders, if you are a human being who is nailing this friendship thing, if you have friendships that are life-giving to you, can you tell us about them? Would you write to us or email us and tell us?
Amanda Doyle:
Call us.
Glennon Doyle:
You make it work. Give us your stories, but also, can you give us your friendship hacks? Can you tell us, do you ever have DTRS and do you ever…?
Abby Wambach:
Define the relationships.
Amanda Doyle:
DTRs?
Glennon Doyle:
Define the relationship.
Abby Wambach:
I also think a next right thing would be interesting because we’ve just gone through the holiday months, where we’re telling our family how much we love them and how much mean to us. Are we doing that with our friends as much, these friendships that you say we have that will bring us joy? When is the last time you had a friend tell you how much you mean to them?
Glennon Doyle:
That’s sweet.
Abby Wambach:
When’s the last time you’ve told a friend how much they mean to you? To me, I sent a friend a little care package for her kid and a friend of hers. She got on the phone and she teared up on the phone with me and she’s just like, “That meant so much to me and you mean so much to me.” Katie, if you’re out there, that meant a lot. It made me feel, not that I was a good friend, but that I had a good friend and that was really important. I don’t know. Go out there and tell somebody that you consider a friend, make yourself vulnerable and tell them that you love him.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s awesome.
Glennon Doyle:
Call us and tell us, 747-200-5307. To all of you, thank you for being our friends.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you for being a friend.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you and we will see you back here Thursday.
Abby Wambach:
Thursday.
Glennon Doyle:
When life gets hard, don’t forget, we can do hard things.
Abby Wambach:
Just not friends.
Glennon Doyle:
Bye.