Ep 12: Be a Better Friend to Have Better Friendships with Author of “Modern Friendship”, Anna Goldfarb
“True friendship isn’t about what people do for you, it’s about who you feel compelled to show up for.” - Anna Goldfarb
About this Episode
In this episode of Seeking the Overlap, Baily Hancock sits down with Anna Goldfarb, journalist, author, and friendship expert, to break down the modern realities of making and maintaining friendships. Together, they explore why adult friendships feel harder to sustain, the unspoken expectations that lead to disappointment, and the essential role of “abouts” in keeping connections alive. From navigating friendship breakups to rethinking what it means to be a “good friend,” this conversation will leave you with a fresh perspective—and practical strategies—for building more intentional, fulfilling relationships.
Topics Covered
The biggest challenges of adult friendships and why so many people feel like they’re the only ones struggling.
How unspoken expectations shape our friendships—and often lead to disappointment.
The concept of “abouts” and why every lasting friendship needs a clear and compelling reason to stay active.
When to fight for a friendship and when to let go without guilt.
Practical ways to be a better friend while maintaining balance in your own life.
Resources Mentioned
Visit Anna’s website
Check out Anna’s Substack
Get a copy of Anna’s book, Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections
About the Guest
Author Anna Goldfarb's reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Vox, Vice, and more. Her book, Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, explores the nuances of navigating adult friendships.
Timestamps
00:57 Three Truths, No Lies: Getting to Know Anna
03:58 The Challenges of Adult Friendships
06:53 Modern Friendship Dynamics
18:38 Personal Reflections on Friendship Breakups
21:43 The Disconnect in Friendships During Hard Times
27:53 The Importance of having an “About” in Friendships
35:07 Practical Tips for Maintaining Friendships
38:37 Final Thoughts on Friendship
Interview Transcript
Baily Hancock: Welcome to Seeking the Overlap, the podcast where we're creating a more connected world, one conversation at a time. I'm connection strategist, professional friend maker, and your host, Baily Hancock.
What if everything you thought you knew about friendship was wrong? We grew up thinking friendship should just happen effortlessly, naturally, but as adults, we very quickly realized that it is not that simple. Why does making and maintaining friendships feel so much harder now? And more importantly, how can we navigate the shifts in our relationships without feeling like we're failing at being a good friend?
That is exactly what we're diving in today with my guest, Anna Goldfarb, a journalist, author, and. Bonafide friendship expert. Anna has spent years researching and writing about the mechanics of modern friendship, and she lays it all out in her book, modern Friendship, how to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections.
If you've ever felt like you're the only one struggling to keep up with friends, wondering why they don't reach out or questioning whether a friendship is still worth the effort, this episode is absolutely for you and me. Stick around because we're about to rethink everything we thought we knew about Friendship.
Baily Hancock: Hello, Anna. Welcome to Seeking the Overlap.
Anna Goldfarb: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Baily Hancock: I'm so excited to talk to you because friendship comes up constantly, not just in my work, but in my life, because I'm a human with friends. And I literally, my title is professional friend maker. So friendship comes up a lot in my world. And I'm just so excited to talk to you because you literally wrote A whole book on friendship and friendship feels like, arguably one of the most important things about being alive. And I imagine writing a book on it, you'd, you'd concur. So really excited to chat with you today, but before we get into it, before we talk to you as a professional friend expert, I want to know a little bit more about who Anna is as a person.
Three Truths, No Lies: Getting to Know Anna
Baily Hancock: So I have a segment called three truths, no lies. And I'm going to ask you three questions and share as much or as little as you want to share about these questions. Good to go.
Anna Goldfarb: Yeah, let's do it.
Baily Hancock: Okay. What is one thing on your bucket list that you have checked off? And one thing that you haven't checked off yet that you're hoping to do so within the next like decade.
Anna Goldfarb: Oh, wow. Um, I mean on my bucket list, really, I mean, it's so cheesy, but writing this book
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: and feeling like I have something different to say, new to say to the friendship world. I mean, that was, That was my biggest dream and my biggest goal of what can I say? What can I add to the conversation? And I feel like I feel like I got to do that. Um, something I really want to do is in France for a few weeks and just vibe.
Baily Hancock: Oh yes.
Anna Goldfarb: I've gotten to go a little bit in the past year, which is I mean, just as I didn't anticipate that happening, but I ended up going to France a little bit I just loved it there and to get to hang out, have wine, cheese. all the pharmacies. Like, I mean, that just sounds like heaven. So I'm hoping at some point take two or three weeks and just hang out in the South of France. I mean, doesn't that sound like a dream?
Baily Hancock: I'm there. Just name a time and place. Give me the address. I'll be right there with you. Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: is my dream. I think about it like when you're stuck in traffic and you're, you know, your, your mind starts wandering. I'm like,
Baily Hancock: You go to the South of France. Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: That's where you can find me.
Baily Hancock: Okay. Next question. What's a book, movie, or TV show that you've read or watched multiple times?
Anna Goldfarb: Apollo 13 is one of my favorite movies. I mean, if it's on, I will stop everything and watch it. I'm a huge space nerd. I went to space camp when I was younger and I've just always loved space.
Baily Hancock: Okay. Final question. What is the last rabbit hole you've wandered down?
Anna Goldfarb: Oh my gosh, perimenopause.
Baily Hancock: Ugh, I feel like it's all over all of my everything.
Anna Goldfarb: my Reddit, like all my subreddits are like, lady, you're in your forties.
Baily Hancock: Right.
Anna Goldfarb: tenor of all of my internet searches.
Baily Hancock: my algorithm is definitely like, hey, you're turning 40 this year, we've got something you need to talk about and think about. Which I'm so grateful. Aren't you grateful that it's so readily available?
Anna Goldfarb: Yeah. And it just feels like I've entered this society that I didn't even know existed.
Baily Hancock: Right.
Anna Goldfarb: all this information about hormones and I'm like, Whoa, it's a staggering amount of information
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: taking in.
Baily Hancock: Well, if you could just do some note taking for me and just pass me the sheet behind you once you take the test,
Anna Goldfarb: Oh
Baily Hancock: then I would happily read your crib notes on perimenopause.
Well, thank you for playing three truths. No lies. I feel like I definitely know you a little bit better.
Okay.
The Challenges of Adult Friendships
Baily Hancock: So let's get into friendship.
I don't remember learning to swim. I just have always swam. Right. I feel like friendships are one of those things where it's like, you don't learn how to do friendship. You don't learn how to make friends, especially as a child, it just sort of Happens organically or so it seems.
And obviously as you age, it definitely feels harder and harder because you have less of those obvious places to just organically meet people. You're more self conscious, you're in your head, you've got other things going on. So of all of the friendship research that you've done, what would you say is the most challenging component of friendship as a whole for adults?
What do you hear over and over from people?
Anna Goldfarb: I think the biggest problem people have is that they expected their friends to reach out to them more. I did a survey of over a hundred people. And that's what I, what was one of the questions I asked was, what do you wish your friends did more of? And the most common answer was, um, Reach out to me. So I think that that's been the biggest shock of people. Just think, Oh, we had these, have these great friendships. We have all these happy memories together, but I never hear from them. Why?
Baily Hancock: And did you do a follow up question of how often do you reach out to your friends? Cause what's the correlation there, right? Are they doing all the outreach or they're just expecting it to come inbound?
Anna Goldfarb: I think people I really expect that friendship is a one way street. It's like something that we absorb, like we're the chosen person. You know, a lot of our media is like that. Like, know, you don't see people being a, the hero is the one whose friends are good friends to them. You don't see the hero being the good friend to the other people. You know, it's, well, to think of how to say that. Like, a lot of our friendship models are, here's a surprise party for, like, I want my friends to throw a surprise party for me. Like, that's true friendship. What they do for me. It's not, who do you throw a surprise party for? Who would you want to plan that for? That's not usually the hero of the story.
Baily Hancock: Right. That main character energy idea of like, you're my supporting cast members.
Anna Goldfarb: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Baily Hancock: you done for me? Like friendship is a thing you receive as opposed to a thing you do.
Anna Goldfarb: I think that is deeply ingrained in our, in our media and our models. a lot of TV shows show friendship monogamy where you basically just have the same set of friends forever. so it feels very to, to not have that modeled in your own life.
You're like, well, I have two friends. I just moved to Newtown. I have no friends. I can't go to the, you know, central perk with the people I've known. They've known me since high school. Like it's just very different than what reality looks like for a lot of people.
Modern Friendship Dynamics
Baily Hancock: It's so interesting. It almost feels like our cultural, um, content. By nature, it needs things to be structured. There needs to be a cast of characters. There needs to be storylines, but art, you know, life definitely imitates art and maybe there's something there around the fact that we are centered in our experience.
And so friendship does feel like something other people do for us. But isn't that the problem with everything in our culture, right? It's so individualistic. It's so what's, what's in it for me? Like, how am I going to benefit? Yeah. It's, I mean, what, what on earth do we do about that? It's not friendship based, but I feel like that's the problem with connection as a whole is people are too individualistic, right?
Anna Goldfarb: so much of our life is set up for our convenience. What do I want for dinner? I'll order it. What do I, what do I want to buy and what do I want to watch right now? Like everything's tailored to us and friendship is such a wildly different relationship where we have to worry about other people.
What are their preferences? What are their limitations? It's really jarring to shift from that. I think that modern life has made it so jarring to switch from what do I need for my comfort? What do I feel like? What do I want to, what's my self care in the moment to, Oh wait, I have to care about someone else's. Needs and preferences and emotional limits. Like, Oh, that's not fun. No,
Baily Hancock: Yeah. It's
Anna Goldfarb: it's fun. Um, it's very, it's a lot of negotiation and so much of our life. We tried to create as frictionless as possible. You know, you set up auto ship for my special cat food, but I make everything so frictionless. I think it makes other humans look enhanced friction because they are not. It's just a very different, kind of thing.
Baily Hancock: you're so right. And friendship, I think maybe people also have it wrong that they think friendship is only meant to enhance their lives. When I would argue, being now 40 the last decade for sure I've had many friendship breakups. Many, way more than I would have ever thought and with people I would have never thought.
I've gone in, you know, in and out of feeling sad and guilty and then mad and all the feelings right around why those happened and, and did they need to break up and, you know, all of those things. And at the end of the day, I think what I've come to is the breakup of those relationships. In and of itself, that experience of detachment, whether it was a slow fade or a breakup, breakup that contained so much growth potential for me.
And so many reflection moments where I could really say like, am I the bad guy here? And some of those, yes. The answer was yeah. Objectively, if an outside person was looking in, I'm the bad guy. And having to even sit in the discomfort of that was really impactful in my life. And so. Is there a reframe you think we need to have around the purpose of friendships?
Anna Goldfarb: We need a reframe. I think part of it is a lot of us, like you sort of said at the start of the podcast is we don't have any experience with this. We've never done this before. We have to do trial and error when we're children. We don't know what friendship looks like. And a lot of us have never managed all these different connections we've amassed from all different parts of our life. We've never had Experience juggling them. I mean, individually, we don't have experience and collectively, culturally, we don't have any historical experience of managing a social network, anything like the ones that we have now.
Like my grandmother was married at 18. She never went to college. She lived in the same town her whole life. when you compare that with her granddaughter's life, who's moved, lived in three major cities, you know, attended multiple. schools. Uh, it's just art. The connections that she had to keep up are so much smaller than the ones that a modern person is more likely to have.
Um, I'm more likely to have friends with people of different backgrounds, different races, different gender identities, different sexual orientations. Those are culturally new friendships for most people to have. We do not have a collective social memory of, well, here's how you handle being friends with an ex boyfriend. Like, that's just not something that's really, that's such a invention. You normally aren't,
Baily Hancock: Totally.
Anna Goldfarb: normally mom was married at 21, you know, like the women are getting married later in life and we're having different kinds of friendships that we have to negotiate. And it's, It's not our fault that we don't know how to manage these things perfectly.
Baily Hancock: Right.
Anna Goldfarb: our friendships look different. So different from our parents, even like, did you, did your mom ever have a best guy friend that she, you
Baily Hancock: No.
Anna Goldfarb: to negotiate with and had to figure it out when her guy friend got into a romantic relationship and how did their friendship move forward? Like, I think what I, what struck me most about learning about modern friendship is how, how. We're like pioneers in friendship. You guys, this is historically new to have so many different people from your life that only share common history with you, not with each other.
Baily Hancock: God. That's so true.
Anna Goldfarb: different. It is very different.
Baily Hancock: I mean, and then you throw on social media with visibility, my God, that alone, I imagine could be an entire book of like, what does being aware of what the people in your life past and present are up to all the time and who they're hanging out with. And you know, being able to keep in touch seemingly so easily.
That's like, you aren't supposed to know what your exes are all doing and who they're dating and where they're going on vacation. Like that's unnatural,
Anna Goldfarb: It's
Baily Hancock: is it
Anna Goldfarb: unnatural.
Baily Hancock: right? It's, it's certainly not the way things have ever been. And I mean, I think about. The difference even in my relationships and my husband's relationships with friends, like he is from the place he currently lives.
He went away for college and then came back. So he is currently friends with people he's known since middle school and sees them regularly. And every now and then he's added a new person to his circles here and there, usually through me. But me, on the other hand, like I've lived in multiple places. I've moved across the country.
I've gone to different schools. I'm a professional friend maker. So I pick people up like lint. Like, it's not a problem. I have friends all day, every day from everywhere. And we have such different perspectives. He actually asked me recently if like who my best friend was. And I said, well, I don't have a one.
I have different best friends for different things that like bring me different things or provide different things or like play different roles. And he said, he was like, oh, that's kind of sad. I was like, I think it's the opposite. I think I'm so lucky that I have a friend for every need almost. Right.
And I am different, a different friend to different people in different ways. Right. So I just think it's so fascinating that even within. The same generation, you can have such different perspectives on front. He's also very anti social media. So that probably helps his friend circle type, right? Like he's very insular with his friends.
I'm very aware and online all the time. So I just have this like massive community of people from across the globe and I am up on what they're all doing. So it's just so interesting. My God, the modern, the modern element of not living in your hometown your entire life. Getting married later, possibly getting multiple divorces, which is much more common nowadays, moving all over the place, like having different circles and then being super aware of what everybody's still doing.
It, it does feel like, my God, how does one manage that?
Anna Goldfarb: That's what we're feeling. It's true. I mean, that's the irony that we're in a loneliness epidemic
Baily Hancock: I know
Anna Goldfarb: never been more connection. It's like,
Baily Hancock: very messed up.
Anna Goldfarb: And I think the loneliness epidemic. Is because we see all these people that we know on social media, know, just around in our culture.
We have so many people that we know, but we don't have a that's helping us these connections. We have to do it ourselves. I really think people just sort of think like, does anyone care?
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: You know, you have so many friends. It's so hard to keep up with them all. And then it's so easy to think, well, does anyone even care?
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: you know, for your people, like your husband, they're not questioning, do I matter? Does my friend care? Like, they know, they already know who their friends are. They're not trying to keep up with all these different people who, you know, are all in different parts of the country. You never know what, you don't know when you're going to see them again, even a lot of our
Baily Hancock: Right. Right. Yeah. It's, it's super interesting. Like planning a wedding with him was, was wild because that guest list, one of us, it was very complicated me, the other him, it was very straightforward. He knew who his groomsmen were the moment we got engaged. There was no debate with me. I was like, Oh God, I mean, I have people that are my best friends from high school who I love, but who are not actively part of my life day to day.
Do I choose them over the people that I see constantly and who are.
Anna Goldfarb: Yeah.
Baily Hancock: going to be a bigger part of this wedding because of proximity. And like, I actually, two of those friendship breakups were due to them not being bridesmaids in my wedding, which to me said everything I needed to know about the strength of the relationship.
I was like, okay, if you needed to be in my MySpace top eight to know that you were a close friend of mine, then where are you? But yeah, it's, I mean, it's complicated. It's so emotional too, because we, I think, look at our friendships as a reflection of ourselves. Like we talked about at the beginning, and if People are mad at us, or if they don't think we're being a good friend, that is, it can feel like an attack on our, our moral character on our personality,
Anna Goldfarb: Yeah. And it feels like a betrayal. Like you should know me
Baily Hancock: right?
Anna Goldfarb: you think. Like it's just so fraught.
Anna Goldfarb: You know, friendships are really complicated and I'm learning more about the gender differences. I didn't get to get deeply into it, into my book. Um, but what I learned is that. In midlife, men want more independence from their friends.
Baily Hancock: Interesting.
Anna Goldfarb: they want, they don't want to be judged or criticized. They want their friends to like, think that they're cool and women want more interdependence. They want to be more involved in their friends lives. They want to share what's really going on.
They want to be vulnerable. They want, they want to know the real deal. So it's been interesting even seeing how the. what friendship means to different genders too. Um, not everyone's alike. And even, you know, those are generalizations, but within the same gender, not everyone feels regards their friendships in the same way. So that's been interesting too. Like women tend to do this, men tend to do that, but at the same time, know, has their own experience.
Baily Hancock: Yeah, of course.
Personal Reflections on Friendship Breakups
Baily Hancock: When I had those friendship breakups or fadeaways, and I identified that likely from the outside looking in, I was the bad guy. What happened in those circumstances for me to come to that conclusion was I did not uphold with like, I did not uphold my end of the friendship bargain.
So in one of the circumstances, the friend was going through a hard time. I had a newborn at that time. My mom was going through chemo for breast cancer. This was 2021. So we're still very much in the middle of the pandemic and she felt. Let down by my lack of attention to her during this hard time in her life.
And on my end, I was like, look, I got a lot of, I got a lot going on here. Like, I can't be a perfect friend right now. And she wanted me to get on the phone with her and talk this out and I couldn't do it. I was just like, no, let's, I just can't let's, can we just text? Because I want to text when I can, when I have the mental space.
And so it kind of fell apart because I literally wouldn't get on the phone with When I was explaining the breakup to another friend, I was like, I know it seems like all I needed to do was get on the phone. And I just didn't want to, I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to and couldn't do it. And, you know, with more time now, it's been three extra years.
Baily Hancock: Like I actually don't feel guilty about it. I feel like that was the headspace emotionally, mentally, physically that I was in at the time. And I have other friends who were, you know, of course, going through hard times at the same time too, that did not fault me for that. And we're like, yeah, of course we'll, we'll be fine.
Baily Hancock: What are the things that people often don't do, or do, in my case it was a not do, that can lead to a friendship fading or falling apart or breaking up, like, what are the things that we do wrong to screw up a good friendship? Maybe not a good friendship, but screw up a friendship.
Anna Goldfarb: know, I think when you have thoughts like, why isn't my friend happy enough for me? Why isn't my friend doing more for me? I think that that's a really place to be.
Anna Goldfarb: I think a more empowering question is what can I do to help my friends? Like, what can I do to help them? That's a different question and makes you feel more active. Um, I think people can talk themselves into really negative space with very limited information. Like what I heard from what you just shared was that one friend was drowning. You And the other friend is like, Hey, I noticed you're drowning. Can we talk about how that makes me feel
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: of, Hey, I noticed you're drowning.
How can I help you?
Anna Goldfarb: I see that as a very common pain point with new moms and you know, a friend who's grieving or a friend who's going through a hard time is that friend will feel abandoned.
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: feel like, well, you're not there for me. I feel abandoned. I need to talk about that. And the other friend is like, well, I'm in survival mode. And now you want to add something else on my plate, loving that.
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: that that's the disconnect. I would, tell the friend who's feeling abandoned, get that. But what if you asked, what can I do to help my friend who's in survival mode?
Cause survival mode is worse than feeling abandoned.
Baily Hancock: Way worse.
Anna Goldfarb: when you're, when you're abandoned, it's an emotional wound. Like you can, you can self soothe, to the friend who's in survival mode, that's where the attention should be. If you want this friendship to endure.
The Importance of Intentionality in Friendships
Baily Hancock: Well, there, there's the key, right? It's like, do you want to go to couples therapy or do you want to break up? And I think sometimes.
Anna Goldfarb: Hmm.
Baily Hancock: already have in our heart what we want to happen or what we're okay with happening. And for me, I think the reason why I was okay being the villain from the outside looking in was because I, I didn't have the emotional capacity to tend to somebody else that was so far down the totem pole of importance in my life at that moment in time, right?
Like there were very clear people at the top and myself included. And so to me, that was an indicator that perhaps there's misalignment here. And this is not the kind of friendship that I want at this phase of my life. This friendship was amazing. Five years ago, when neither of us had kids, it was pre COVID life was dandy.
Things were good, but things got hard. And the hardness of the time did not lend itself to the type of relationship that we had. So. I let go. I didn't want to get on the phone and work it out. That sounded like so much more emotional labor to me at that time. And I didn't have it. And I also have a, a deep, deep, um, desire for people to like me and not be disappointed in me.
And to get on the phone meant acknowledging that I had hurt her or that I had disappointed her and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. And so I let it go. And, you know, it's been three years and I still think about it all the time. And it's not that I, of course, miss her, but I don't miss having to put in so much extra effort to make something as, feel as, as beneficial as many of my other relationships feel without so much effort.
Anna Goldfarb: I think your friend misunderstood, the moment and that she indulged in the, in the negative feelings too much instead of saying that's on me to deal with how I'm feeling of being abandoned in the friendship. But as a, as a friend, I should, I'm here to help. Um, that's what we're here for our friends to do. I've seen this a lot in, um, essays that people write about friendship, um, like true friends.
Changing Expectations in Friendships
Anna Goldfarb: What's a true friend? A true friend is someone who shows up for you at 3 a. m. A true friend is someone who drops everything and flies across the country. I think that really sets us up for unrealistic expectations. then when a friend can't be there for you at 3 a. m., when they, you know, they have a baby, they're grieving, you know, their mom's sick, then it's like, is this a true friendship? I'm freaking out because you're not fulfilling this hero fantasy I have for what friends should be doing for one another.
Baily Hancock: Which likely came from the movies or TV.
Anna Goldfarb: like, of course, like, I'll be there with, you know, and when we were in our 20s, we could do that. We could play that heroic role for one another. Um, but as our priorities change, like you talked about, and roles change, our identities change. It's like, this is a fantasy. This is a hero fantasy of what a friendship is. And this isn't serving either of us. It's making one friend feel let down and abandoned and it's making the other friend feel like I can't live up to those expectations. So like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it.
Baily Hancock: Right, it's almost like you back yourself into a corner and you have to make a call that doesn't actually have to be made.
Anna Goldfarb: it's exactly.
Baily Hancock: Like, why? Okay.
Anna Goldfarb: know, I learned this lesson too. I had, um, I was estranged from my younger sister for a while and she started having kids and I didn't have any kids and I would get, you know, I had this feeling of like, why isn't she happier for me? Why isn't she more excited? I'm in the New York times this week.
Why isn't she like, why isn't she care? And I realized I had to change my thinking. I had to change it from wait, you haven't slept in a week and you have a crying baby. How can I
Baily Hancock: You don't even know what day it is. Like.
Anna Goldfarb: you know, how about if I stopped working myself up and listing all the ways that. My sister's letting me down.
What if I just said like, how can I help? Why don't I pitch in? And then I got the kind of relationship that I was yearning for. Um, and we can do that for our friends. We can give that to our friends. It's really as simple as changing your mindset and having mature, flexible expectations for our friends. don't expect my friend to come over at 3 a.
m. She has her own life and her own family. It doesn't mean that she doesn't love me. It doesn't mean I don't love her. It just means we have to be realistic what we're going through. true friendship looks like. And it's not who does what for us. It's who we feel compelled to, to be our best selves too.
Baily Hancock: Okay. So flipping this around at what point does it make sense to say, you know what? This doesn't seem to be a reciprocal relationship. I'm putting in way more than I'm getting like.
What are those circumstances? Cause I have to imagine there's also a huge contingent of listeners who are like. All I do is pour into my friends and I don't feel like I get anything back or I don't feel like they appreciate me or I don't feel like, like I'm always cheering them on. I'm in the group text being like, yay for you.
But when I do something, there's no cheers back. Like what are the circumstances in which out of self preservation or out of, I guess, pruning relationships that you can pour into ones that maybe are more reciprocal and symbiotic. What are those circumstances?
Fluidity and Abouts in Friendships
Anna Goldfarb: One thing I talk a lot about in the book is that friendships are fluid. They are expected to wax and wane. Friendships need an about, and the about needs to be clear and compelling for both people.
Baily Hancock: Oh, say more about that.
Anna Goldfarb: Um, that. Is the biggest thing I learned about modern friendships is that every friendship needs a reason to happen. Um, there's two kinds of friendships. There's memorial and there's active. memorial friendships are those ones where there's such deep affection, there's long history, but there's not really a reason to keep the friendship active.
Baily Hancock: Just longevity, right?
Anna Goldfarb: you just are fond of one another. Um, But there's not a real reason to keep in touch. And of course, active friendships are the ones we see in our life all the time.
And those are the ones that have an about, a clear and compelling about. We're in the same yoga class. We work together. We both are, you know, hot, same hikers.
Baily Hancock: They have an overlap. That's what that is. That's their overlap. Okay. Their overlap on the Venn diagram. That's their about. Oh, I love that.
Anna Goldfarb: and the about needs to be compelling to both people. So like what's compelling, uh, you know, career could be compelling, hobbies and passions, uh, backgrounds like, oh, we're both in Germany and we both speak English. Let's be friends. Like it can be all sorts of things. so that's the most important thing to know about friendships is every friendship needs an about.
Baily Hancock: It speaks to intentionality. Intentionality of not only forming and nurturing, but maintaining a friendship. If you don't have a reason in about an overlap, then it's like, you're perpetually having to tread water almost. And it's like, well, okay, what actually are we doing here?
Right. And maybe that's where a lot of the imbalance probably comes from in friendship is if I'm in it for this reason, and you have no idea that that's my about. Then you're not going to hold the same weight of this relationship that I am. That's such a cool way to think about friendship. It gives it so much more weight,
Anna Goldfarb: Yes. And about can change, outdated or be absent. they can change all the time. Like, Oh, well we met in, you know, school, but then we both realized we're both Jewish and we got involved with our synagogue. Kudos. Abouts change all the time. Um, an outdated about is one. Oh, we went to camp together. Well, how often do you want to talk about camp?
Like
Baily Hancock: right? Right,
Anna Goldfarb: So you can always negotiate a new about, you can say, Hey, I want to spend more time with you. What are you interested in? What do you want? What do you want to be doing with your time? Like, how can I help? Do you want to. Go for a walk in club. Do you want to learn chess?
Whatever. Um, so once you learn the importance of an about, it's not as personal when friends take a step back or aren't as in touch as much because it's like, well, what's our about? Oh, we don't have one. Oh, there's no reason for her to reach out to me.
Baily Hancock: right,
Anna Goldfarb: Well, I can change that. Like
Baily Hancock: right. Can we watch a show together? Can we binge a show on opposite coast of the country or can we read the same book or listen to the same po I mean,
Anna Goldfarb: Right.
Baily Hancock: that's, I've never thought about it this way, where there's truly like a through line that you're both part of. The friendships that have withstood the test of time are ones where we, we hop to new abouts, whether it's, we both listened to the same podcast and we'll text each other, being like, did you listen to this week's episode? Hated it, loved it, whatever, right? Like you still have those, those connection points, those overlaps. Otherwise you fall into that. Like, so what's new,
Anna Goldfarb: Yeah. And you're like, I have, there's no about.
Baily Hancock: how am I going to catch you up on everything?
Like, what's the context for this? Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: and it's, listen, we're not bad friends. Like we're not bad friends with each other. I'm not an ogre because I'm not reaching out to my best friend from sixth grade every three months. It's more, we don't have a reason to be in touch. It doesn't mean we don't love one another.
It doesn't mean if something really happened, I wouldn't make an effort perhaps, but day to day, there's no reason to be in touch and that's okay. Yes.
Baily Hancock: probably fall into the category of friends that when you get on the phone, it's like no time has passed, but you're likely not getting on the phone regularly or texting regularly because there is no about anymore beyond we've known each other for a long time.
We had a great time in 2010 together for a whole year. We were super tight, but now our lives are different. Our overlap is smaller. I think that that's That feels like such a relief and so, oh my God, like it does. It feels like a permission slip to not have to maintain constant contact with everybody you care about in your life, unless you decide.
Hey, I really want this to be a thing. I want you to be in my, my space top eight still, even though we are so long from middle school, where we first connected, like, let's find a thing. Let's find an about.
Anna Goldfarb: Let's find it about. And I'm telling you, it will make all the difference because friendships, our friendship networks have fundamentally changed from just a few generations ago. We have to come up with reasons to keep a friendship active. it's not. Horrible. It's just a change.
Um, we just have to be aware of the new rules. And this is why when people reach out and they say, Oh my gosh, Bailey, we should get together. We should get lunch. And you're like, Oh, okay. And then it never happens.
Baily Hancock: hmm.
Anna Goldfarb: because there wasn't a clear and compelling reason to get lunch. It's like, well, Bailey, do you want to get lunch?
So we could talk about, um, podcasting and
Baily Hancock: I'm literally having lunch on Friday with a friend who's like, I want to start a podcast. Can we talk about it at lunch? And I'm like, we've got an agenda folks.
Anna Goldfarb: you said yes, and you're going to show up.
Baily Hancock: Yeah,
Anna Goldfarb: And that's the difference. These strategies so, such a small shift,
Baily Hancock: it's huge. Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: going to be like night and day. You will, you will have much better friendships just making those few tweaks of understanding that people need an about to have a friendship active.
And we can do that with our invitations. We can explain why we want to get together. We can say, you know, make it easy for the other person to say yes. You know, that's. That's on us. That's, that's, that's the gig.
Baily Hancock: I mean, that's the gig across all relationships, friendship or professional, right? Like give people more context for what you want to get and, you know, potentially give and get in the connection in the, the meeting and the zoom and the lunch and the coffee date, whatever, like there's few things that annoy me more than when somebody's like we should catch up and it's like about what so we don't spend the first
Anna Goldfarb: Yeah.
Baily Hancock: about whatever. It's like, that's great. But like, what are we trying to do here? That's going to be, that's going to roll around in my head for a really long time.
So thank you for that reframe.
Anna Goldfarb: Of course.
Practical Tips for Maintaining Friendships
Anna Goldfarb: And we can model it for each other. And I model for my friends, how I practice friendship. And my hope is that it's contagious in a great way, in a good way.
Baily Hancock: Oh, I'm sure.
Anna Goldfarb: we show our friends, like this is how I extend invitations, you know, It's, we can help one another.
Baily Hancock: Can you give one example? Like if you're reaching out to a friend that maybe you haven't chatted with for a while, how do you tee that up? Like what's, what's the Barb way of being a good proactive about centered friend.
Anna Goldfarb: I told my friends who are my close friends and exactly why they're my close friends already. So I've already done some groundwork of know why the friendship is so special to me and I make sure to tell my friends all the time. Like I love being your friend.
You're so hilarious and intelligent and warm and caring. Like, I just love being your friend.
Baily Hancock: Oh my God, that alone makes me want to cry.
Anna Goldfarb: I know it's, it's I'm
Baily Hancock: so easy. That's so easy though.
Anna Goldfarb: So I don't anymore, have an issue like, why am I reaching out? Because we, about our abouts. Like, what do you think our abouts are?
What are some future abouts? What are some things we can do together? Um, but you know, if I haven't talked to one of my close friends, I'll be like, Hey, I want to hear how that project's going. Are you around? Um, I can call you in 20 minutes. So not so it's not out of the blue of like, Hey, like, what's top?
How are you? It's like, how is the project? I want to know how the project is. So it's directed and specific so that they, they can know to say yes or no. Or sometimes they'll say, Hey, no need to respond. Like just thinking of
like, feel free to heart this. Um, and I know that that means that you're, You were happy to see it.
Baily Hancock: Uh, I do that with new moms a lot. That's a big one because like when you're, when you're in that newborn stage of like up, you don't know what way is up and down and what time of the day it is and like you're responding or reading in the middle of the night. Sometimes when feeding a baby, I'll just do like wellness checks.
Where I'm like, hi, I love you. I hope you're doing great. If you want to give me an emoji that explains how you feel right now, I'll take it, but otherwise I'll talk to you when I talk to you, because I know when that, when I was in that phase, that felt like somebody out there was thinking about me and had no expectations on me.
Anna Goldfarb: That is such a gift to give to your friends is to say, here's how long, here's how I will interpret your silence.
Baily Hancock: Yeah.
Anna Goldfarb: like I'll say things like, if I don't hear from you by noon, I'll assume you can't make it. be in touch soon. Like things like that, that recognize that your friend is very busy.
They're juggling a lot of roles and you're here to support them. You're not another thing on their to do list.
Baily Hancock: Anna, thank you
Anna Goldfarb: Thank you
Baily Hancock: really.
Anna Goldfarb: Hmm.
Baily Hancock: is going to be so important for so many people to hear and it's not, I think some of this was not what I was expecting in terms of friendship advice and it feels so much more doable. Like it does, it feels, oh, okay, this is, this is what I can do. I'm already thinking like, Ooh, what are my abouts in my current relationships? And I can tell you right now, the moment you said that I was like, that's why that one feels a little bit unstable right now, because we don't have an active about, we have an outdated about. Oh
Anna Goldfarb: it.
Baily Hancock: God. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. This was so beautiful. So wonderful. Everybody go read his book. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. Is there anything else you want people to know about friendship before we go?
Final Thoughts on Friendship
Anna Goldfarb: Science says three to five close friends is really all you need. You don't need a ton. Just be a wonderful, wonderful friend to a few people where you have a clear and compelling about.
