Transcript for:
Dynamics of Female Friendships Explored

there's some research that finds that 40% of adults don't have a best friend really why i think it's because you found that there's this framework there are three affinities you call them that are necessary parts of female friendship i saw the same three things keep popping up in terms of what women highly prioritize in their friendships and what makes them close and so those three things are I think this conversation is important for the person who finds themselves about to grow cold or cynical to friendship itself because when we talk about from an aerial view needing more trust in community from a larger perspective it starts right here hey it's your friend Mel i'm so fired up that you're here welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast i'm so excited about our topic i'm so excited that you're here with me it's always an honor to spend time with you and to be together and if you're a new listener I want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family i'm so glad you're here and because you made the time to listen to this particular episode here's what I know about you first of all you probably don't have a lot of time but the fact that you found time and made it to listen to this means you value yourself and you also want friendship and I got to tell you something if you're here listening to this because someone forwarded this to you you know what that tells me it tells me that you have people in your life that really love and care about you and the person who sent this to you they did it because they want to be closer to you and they want you to feel empowered in your life and you know what that is exactly what a good friend does and this is a really important area of my life friendship and friendship with other women that I've gotten wrong for a very long time i've also gotten it wrong as a mom as I was trying to counsel my daughters through those really traumatic things that can happen in middle school and high school and then I read a copy of this book that I'm holding right now called Fighting for Friendship: The Science and Art of Conflict and Connecting in Women's Relationships and I learned so much this is the essential guidelines to creating and keeping female friendship alive in your life so I called up the author her name is Danielle Byer Jackson she's best-selling author she's also the director of the Women's Relational Health Institute she lectures around the United States on the topic of friendship and she is here today to take away the mystery and the drama and break down why female friendship matters she's going to share the unspoken challenges of female friendships the differences between male and female friendship how to navigate conflict and challenges and even when you need to let go of the friendship that no longer serves you and also you're going to learn how do you bring up something that bothers you like how do you deal with a friend who's controlling possessive jealous how do you deal with yourself when you start being like that in friendship i know I've been that way all of these experiences are normal and the good news is it's not you you got to understand the research and once you do you're going to also realize there's something you can do because you deserve amazing female friends and today you're going to get the road map to creating them so please help me welcome Danielle Byer Jackson to the Mel Robbins podcast so Danielle I am so excited you're here welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast thank you for having me this is awesome oh I have so much to learn from you i I feel like I'm about to get a therapy session that is going to help me understand my past and struggling with female friendship and as a mom watching my daughters struggle with female friendship and so I am just thrilled you're here i'm thrilled to dig into your amazing book Fighting for Our Friendships: The Science and Art of Conflict and Connection in Women's Relationships here's where I want to start i'd love to have you talk to the person who is with us right now they've either hit play this episode and taken us on a walk or you and I are in their car or at work or in their kitchen as they've got their earbuds in and I'd love for you to tell the person listening what might change about their life and their friendships and how they feel about themselves if they take everything that you're about to share with us to heart and they apply it to their life i think that by the time they're done listening or watching it they feel instantly more confident um less alone about any secret private struggles um that they're experiencing in their friendships and I'm hoping that it increases their level of optimism about all that is available to them in friendship that's what I'm really hoping for uh by the time that we're done with this conversation you know one of the things that I felt after reading your book is I felt like I understood myself better i felt validated and seen in terms of the struggles that I had making friends when I was in middle school and high school and college keeping friends and so I'm just super excited about this conversation because especially talking about that tension and frustration that thing that we can't quite put our finger on why are girls mean why is it hard to connect with women why do friends come in and out of my life do I need to have a breakup like what is up with the tension why do I miss people that I'm no longer friends with i can't wait to unpack this and where I want to start is you have such an interesting career how on earth did you find yourself in a career where you're writing books researching and teaching about female friendship um first let me say that becoming a friendship coach was certainly not on my vision board when I was 10 okay definitely something I fell into i actually started as a high school English teacher and so I had 10th and 12th graders who I was teaching and I noticed that between classes and after school the number one thing the girls wanted to talk to me about was friendship stuff so I didn't realize that at the time I was kind of unofficially coaching them through their weird awkward friendship drama and so the classroom was kind of the first place where I saw how issues of connection and belonging directly impact everything else uh their attendance because you're not even coming to school if you don't feel like you belong somewhere um their confidence their academic performance their mood all related back to whether or not they felt like they had people at school and so I did that for about six years and became the academic chair and then I left and I got into the world of public relations and I always joke that I made the foolish mistake of thinking you know I'm leaving that teenage drama behind because I'm working with adult women you know and it wasn't long before I realized that despite the fact that these women were charismatic high achieving extroverts they too were secretly dealing with friendship stuff and so I just thought wow at every stage of womanhood we're trying to figure out how do I better relate to the women around me it's not an age thing it it feels like the great equalizer it doesn't matter your background or or generation and so for the past seven years uh I've been leveraging my background in education to study what the research has to say about women's cooperation communication and conflict so are women and men's friendships different they are they are first I want to say because I know when we get into like the differences between genders we're all looking for the same thing we all want support we want to have a good time we want people who offer a sense of ease to our lives but the research continues to show that there are some differences i think the main theme I've seen in the research is in terms of intimacy of these friendships very different um with women they do experience more depth and platonic intimacy than men tend to in their samesex friendships um women tend to be more diatic so we're one to one which counts diatic what is that word you're an English teacher so I'm going to have to like be like "Okay wait what?" So like a d y a diet so one we tend to couple off and that accounts for that depth we experience right because we're in this private intimate bolt the two of us whereas men tend to congregate in larger groups they tend to collect a a bunch of casual friendships and when you're in a big group it affords you a certain level of anonymity okay when I've got all the guys in the room right um women also in our conversations we are more likely than men to talk about things like our mental and physical health and family things like that that tends to center the self those conversations but men are more likely than women to talk about current events in sports which desenterers self so even in our conversations it's very intimate and then they find that women tend to integrate their friends into their lives to the degree of a sibling men to the degree of a cousin and so you know I'm certainly not saying that men don't also experience these deep friendships they do but more often than not you'll see that with women you just threw so much at us based on the research that made perfect sense and if you're listening and you're a guy and you've always wondered why does my partner or my girlfriend have so much drama why did my sister have so many problems there was so much in what you just shared with us like even just the fact that it's true like if I think about my brother or my husband or my son they do kind of just travel in groups mhm and like if I think about myself it's like since the history of time I've been searching for that best friend i've been pairing off into one person and I'm sure we're going to dig into this but even just understanding that the research is really bearing out that we tend to go onetoone and the men and boys in our life tend to operate in groups and what you just said I thought was genius about how if you're in a group there is a bit of anonymity but if you're with just one person or small groups of people that you feel this deep sense of belonging to there's a lot more vulnerability and a lot more that seems to be at stake i know I've certainly felt that yeah it's it's hard to to hide when it's me and you at coffee and it's very reciprocal if it's just you and I you know you talk I talk there's no uh um confusion around whose turn it is to share i am more deeply known here i am more accountable here because it's me and you and I think that's also why we kind of see that running joke you know where your husband comes home from hanging out with the boys and you're like "Oh my gosh so did they have the baby why did they divorce?" And he's like "Oh I don't know i didn't ask." You know so it's like a running joke but there's some truth to that well and you also said this thing about how male relationships friendships tend to be more like a cousin yeah and your relationship with the girls or women in your life is more like a sibling and sisters fight that's right and sisters have drama that's right and yet there's a big difference between what happens with your sister and what happens when there's tension or jealousy or possessiveness with a friend you know one of the things that you've researched that I'd like to start with is that you found that there's this framework there are three affinities you call them that are necessary parts of female friendship so can you explain that yes so I call it the three affinities of female friendship and I got really excited when I found this because I started to notice that it didn't matter which discipline I was looking at uh anthropology sociology psychology i kept seeing these themes emerge and I got really excited because I saw the same three things keep popping up in terms of what women highly prioritize in their friendships and what makes them close and by extension if these three things are not there it's probably the reason why there's a little tension a little conflict and so those three things are symmetry support and secrecy symmetry support and secrecy yes so with symmetry women really value these feelings of sameness and balance and reciprocity and egalitarianism okay where we're all equal we're the same you are me you know even if you go to a bar and you see women talking you're overhearing them say you know me too oh my god same me too so thriving on that I am you you are me um and then when that symmetry shifts or we start to sense like oh we're on different paths or she's maybe not like me that tension of of we're not in the same lane what's going on here um so symmetry is really powerful um and that egalitarianism piece and symmetry feeling like equals so if you have a woman who you feel like she's starting to be judgy about your parenting or your business choices i mean the undertone or the subtext there is that her choices are better are superior right she's coaching you or talking down to you cuz we're supposed to be we're the same we're equals but does it also happen that it's not that she's necessarily talking down to you but that you're also beating yourself up because you're like "Well she's better looking and you know all everybody's attracted to her or she's getting more money than I am." And so you start to feel like not only are we not equal but I'm now looking at you and your example is a reason why I'm now beating myself up and feeling 100% and so much of this is perception cuz maybe she's doing nothing wrong but because of things happening in your life you're perceiving this imbalance right so much of it is is subjective um oh that was I was a walking friendship red flag you could have had an entire section of this book called Melanie Schneberger which is a mouthful of a name that was my maiden name i saw everybody's a threat like I I literally don't think I had that symmetry in a lot of my friendships and I can see how if you don't feel like we're in this together then it would create this conflict and tension in your relationship with somebody else sure because how do I befriend the threat that that doesn't even go together so seeing you as an extension of myself and seeing women in general as an extension of myself I am you you are me you're not my competition i mean it directly impacts the way that we engage with our friendships so that that symmetry piece is really important uh and then we have support you know there's some research that tells us that the number one thing women look for in their samesex friendships is emotional support so that means if there's nothing else I expect you have my back i expect some shows of solidarity some gestures of of emotional help um what makes that tricky is we so often don't uh articulate what support looks like because I think that as another woman you ought to know i shouldn't have to say it you know that will certainly make things complicated every time you say something I'm thinking about a dynamic that's negative with a former friend or something that I did because even when you said that sentence about support I mean how many times have we sat alone and then when a friend comes to you and is like I didn't even know you were struggling you're like well you should have you know you just kind of feel this sense of well you should have known yeah but you never said anything i wonder how much of that is you know how they say women have that sixth sense if I believe that to be true that women's intuition which I think we do have do I believe that you should be picking up my cues cuz we have that intuition so should I have to say the thing and I think a lot of us subscribe to the idea that if we are close me having to say what I want detracts from the closeness we're supposed to have so you just knowing it without me saying it is evidence of how much you get me but we don't expect that in any other relational context so it just feels really unfair that your friend should be mind readers but everybody else you anticipate needing to communicate what you need and so I I think if we can keep in mind that you'll never get to a point of closeness that transcends a need to communicate you're going to have to say the thing well I also just keep I don't know why the word silent treatment is coming up yeah but I feel as though if a woman feels like she's not getting the support that she deserves from another female friend one of the go-to immature behaviors and behaviors that create conflict and tension is you withdraw and in your research did you see a lot of that like the the the tendency to pull back sort of silently expecting that somebody's then going to come and ask you what's wrong so you get the support and the attention that you want oh absolutely um whether that's because we don't know how to articulate it whether it's because we have this belief that I shouldn't have to say it she ought to pick up on the cues i do see that um emotional distance followed by physical distance i'm calling you less i'm initiating less because I'm so turned off uh by that thing you failed to do i'm now silently stacking offenses and that's why you have so many of us who are like I don't know she kind of cut me off i don't really know what I did because I'm not going to announce it i've just been saving that up right and I expect that you ought to know I shouldn't have to say that it just kind of compounds the issue when we do that as you're listening to Danielle right now you're probably thinking of people in your life friendships where this has happened where you're recognizing that either the first affinity which is symmetry disappeared or something shifted it and the person no longer became same i'm in it too and whether you viewed them as a threat or they started talking down to you that that frenommy thing starts to come into play and then I certainly am experiencing as you're talking about support and the sense that well I'm not getting the support and you should know what I need because we've been in this close one-on-one relationship and then you start to resent the person so you pull away and it's so hard because if you ask anyone we all think we're giving adequate support like who among us is going to say "Yeah I don't support my friends." We all think we're doing a good job so there's obviously a gap here when there's those of us who are walking around feeling um a lack of support it can get really tricky um and then that third affinity is secrecy so this doesn't necessarily speak to like literal secrets but the essence of that so feeling like you and I are in this mutually exclusive vault where we engage in self-disclosure i share you share because that is the glue of women's friendship is sharing and as soon as I start to have tension with you I share less because me sharing and how much you know of me is probably indicative of how close we are right and then when there's tension I'm sharing less um or if I feel like you've shared outside of the vault if you're telling personal things to somebody else I begin to question our closeness I begin to question well do you not trust me and so you know of course intellectually I know you can have other friends but there's something around that sharing piece if you tell somebody else first about the promotion the pregnancy the health scare I do question well are we close because you didn't bring it here in the vault right i've even heard women who um are disappointed when the friend just doesn't share you feel like I'm the only one pouring into this she never tells me anything about herself so that really is the glue of women's friendship is that mutual self-disclosure when I was reading your book and I read Secrecy is one of these affinities of a female friendship that make it either very positive or very negative i was like secrecy wait what and then all of a sudden I realized wait a minute I to the women I feel the closest to it's we always joke you'll be my best friend forever because you know too much about me otherwise I'd have to kill you you know what I'm saying um but there have also been moments where close friends of mine have been struggling and I find out six weeks later that something has been going on and my first reaction is anger that you didn't let me know why am I hearing this from somebody else and so I realized I never thought about it in the context of it makes you question how close you actually are it makes you question whether or not this person trusts you whether or not this person feels that you're somebody that they can lean on and so it makes perfect sense but it's so counterintuitive yeah information is kind of like the currency uh in our relationships um and it's kind of the thing that we start doing as soon as there is tension is I share less right if I start to feel like I don't know things have been weird I'm probably not sharing things with you and so I think as much as we can remember if we're trying to keep the friendship strong as much as we can remember I've got to share things about myself uh I've heard women who um maybe were raised with different cultures who feel like sometimes that's counterintuitive because there's a sense of of pride or respect or an expectation that you don't share your business with others we don't do that and so I can honor that and respect that but for um the person who has that tendency or had that cultural upbringing that you don't share you you keep that to yourself i would challenge that person to think about the degree to which they feel close to people in their life if they're not doing that well what I love about this framework is that when you put it in the context of all the other research in terms of the trends and the tendencies of how boys and guys connect whether it's in groups where you can be a little bit more anonymous things are a little bit more casual you're bonding over the big thing you're doing a lot of stuff together versus women who tend to bond over kind of intimate conversations one-on-one shared experiences you can see why if the connection is grounded in those three deeper things and you feel connected to somebody because of this reciprocity so to speak why you start to have this very intense feeling because we've all had it where you've been super close friends or you've been part of a friend group of of women or girls and then suddenly you feel like you're on the outside of it totally and it feels like a deep betrayal and heartbreak and you're not quite sure why but I think you explained why because the intimacy that is demanded in female friendships is very different and it's also the source of all the conflict and the tension and the friction that starts to happen yeah and I do think if a person finds themsself on the outskirts or there's been some kind of like this tectonic shift that was happening slowly and you're like things are different to kind of look at those three things and see if you can trace it back did somebody perceive that there was a change and we can no longer relate to one another is someone secretly feeling like you didn't support me is someone feeling like I you know you've been sharing outside the vault or you're not my person to share with anymore it's likely that you can trace whatever your present conflict is back to those three things and you know just because there is tension that emerges in one of those domains doesn't mean immediate dissolution of the friendship you know that's information I can use to know how to recalibrate or to have a conversation so we can get back to our equilibrium you know but hopefully it's a good starting point for people who are struggling to find that language well I also think with the support piece it's interesting because when you go through a struggle in your life whether it's in a relationship or a health scare or maybe you lose a job or something's going on with one of your kids you tend to withdraw and then you do feel a little bit or at least I have in periods of my life where I struggle like what I'm going through is a burden to other people and so I don't want to share and so there's those moments where you withdraw because you actually need support but you're embarrassed or you feel just the heaviness of it you don't want to talk about it but then your friends are left wondering where'd you go where'd you go and so I can see how each one of these factors it really gives you both something to look at that makes it not personal but also something to look at it so you can be more compassionate with other people and you can be more compassionate with yourself because everybody's changing all the time and so is your life do you have an opinion about friendship breakups like do we need to actually stop being friends with people well I'll tell you this uh we do have friendships that end i think we know that intellectually like oh friends don't last forever but when it happens it becomes very difficult to make sense of yes I see that we have a lot of shame around that i think we put a lot of value on longevity in friendships so when it's over we start to think what's wrong with me what did I do wrong that I can't keep a friendship going i always encourage women to think about um if you're feeling that shame over not being able to make a friendship last how do you measure success in a friendship is it one that never ends is it one where we loved each other really well during this time that we were friends but friendship breakups are are really difficult and sometimes they do dissolve why are they so difficult i'm thinking about a friend of mine that was my most favorite human being when I was in college and we even to this day have matching tattoos and we had a very bad breakup and this was over 30 years ago and I still think about her mhm is that normal why am I doing that cuz I don't think about the boyfriends that I had huge breakups with and they were inside me for crying out loud and you know I like had the love like drug inside of us like why is it the breakup with a female friend cuz my husband has grown distant from people he's had breakups with people he doesn't think about them why do we do this okay so am I normal Danielle that's what I'm asking you uh you are you are I have some of those too and I kind of maybe see them as like my ones that got away maybe like a platonic uh could we have worked that out and I still see things and it makes me think of her um my theory is that because of how deeply we integrate our women friends into our lives naturally I'm still thinking about you when that's over right um and there are even some theories that find that women's relationships become a part of their self-concept so how I see myself is largely through the lens of how you see and experience me and if you think that I am interesting and funny and and lovable um and then that friendship ends or you elected to leave I'm questioning am I still interesting and lovable and funny if she would leave me um and so I think it's natural to still uh grieve over losing friends to still be confused about what went wrong what we could have done differently and then also have that kind of influence the way we engage in friendships moving forward right if you have a friend who told you you're just too much M am I going into new friendships a little tapered down cuz I don't want to be too much you know so it does leave a lasting impression when we when we have friendships with other women that end you made me have a bit of a breakthrough and epiphany about this topic as I was listening to you and I was thinking about my friend it made me sad about who I was at that period in my life and the fact that she distanced herself and it reminds me that I was not in a great place and I was not a good friend and because it's unresolved it keeps that part of me in some way kind of alive inside me does that make sense totally and that if she had come back into my life it sort of feels like it helps with the acceptance that you've grown as a person and that's why I also feel like I probably hold on to this a little bit that I have a lot of regrets about how I acted i was like that clingy possessive lying jealous friend oh my god thank God you and I didn't know each other back then and I'm a different person and so there's something about romantic relationships that I'm able to forgive myself and move on but when a friendship ends you don't really quite ever replace somebody in that category in that same way do you know what I mean yeah totally uh you know I think with romantic breakups as well it's so easy to dismiss it as well that wasn't my person i think that helps us to be able to move on you also kind of know going into a romantic relationship this might not work out you know let's just see that's so true but you're rarely expecting or considering the end at the beginning of friendship i just know that I like you so let's get this thing going i'm not prepared or even considering an ending and I think that makes it even more disruptive um when it happens um and then like I said because it's so integrated into our lives it becomes difficult sometimes to move forward what I love about your book Fighting for Our Friendships is that you not only go straight at this and you unpack all the things that we or I'll speak for myself I got profoundly wrong about navigating female friendships but what I also love is that the same three-part framework that you say is present for all deep connections between girls and women it also explains what's missing when you start to feel conflict and frustration and so let's go to conflict let's talk about all of the things that are really challenging about female friendships and you know if I turn to page 44 in your book there's this concept that you talk about i mean we even have a term for it former friendships i don't think I'd ever hear my son or my husband say former friendships and yet when I read your list the roommate turned bestie that I outgrew mhm the college friend who phased me out when she got a boyfriend oh that was me co-orker bestie who disappears when you start working somewhere else my mom friend who I grew close to but eventually lost trust in the friend I had to release because she didn't reach out enough the church friend who cut me off because I didn't reach out enough mhm i have every one of those or I've been that why is this a phenomenon there is research that shows that girls young girls um have more former friendships than boys but I want to say this because I know it's tempting for some people to hear that and say "Well yeah because girls are petty." Well yeah because girls are always upset about something and I hear that a lot from men and women sadly here's my response to that the research finds that our friendships are deeper but that they do dissolve at a faster rate really mhm why i don't think that's because we just always want to be in some drama i think it's because if you are so deeply integrated into my life as my friend okay we're sharing resources you're helping me raise my children you're giving me career advice like you're in this with me right then yeah it increases the chances that there might be some friction cuz you're all up in my business yeah okay i'm less likely to fall out with somebody who I'm not even close to so if men are keeping their friends kind of at a distance and we check in three times a year you probably aren't having fallouts because you're not that up close if you're in my business as my female friend there's a higher chance that there is going to be something that that goes wrong so I can keep you at arms length and be your best friend for 20 years no problem because I'm checking in once a quarter or when we go play basketball you know I'm not talking about details of my life we could be best friends all day right so there is a risk in having somebody who's so deeply close to you uh but then we've got to get to the business of you know trying to navigate that when those conflicts arise you know one of the things that I keep thinking about is that friendships don't end they just sort of come in and out and they're flexible and it's helped me be less judgy of myself but it's interesting that the research says that friendships for girls and women dissolve faster and more often than it do does for boys and men and I do think the missteps start to happen when we're little and we're forming friends for the first time because I'm not sure anybody ever teaches you how to make friends or why you need friends one question I have before we kind of go backwards is why are women so jealous of each other or at least why do we why can you tell like guys might be jealous of of some guy's car or his house or the vacations or you know that he's just a good dude that a lot of people like but you don't feel it you know first I'll say that I don't think um being competitive or envious is exclusive to women uh we're all competitive we all get a little envious and I think it's because we use our friends as a measure of our own progress you know so you're very close in my proximity so it kind of shows me oh are we having babies at this rate we're having how am I doing with my with my money and my style i'm looking to my friends purely from a sociological perspective to see am I on track right so we're all feeling a little like we're using our friends to gauge how we're doing um I think what's so hard around envy that women experience with one another I do wonder to what degree the patriarchy uh influences that if I'm hearing voices telling me I need to look a certain way and have a certain progress in my life and my friends are in very close proximity I'm kind of projecting that onto them um if they're making certain choices or making certain advances and I'm not I have them to look at to see how I'm doing um but I wonder also how much room we have to express that without looking like the jealous friend so we harbor it secretly or we monitor um because I don't want to look like I am jealous so I keep it inside and that comes out in terms of resentment or shade or frenemies right um so it does become kind of kind of sticky you know I want to build on that because I have a theory about this okay and especially given that you were a English teacher in a high school and you're a mom and I'm a mom of two daughters and you have a daughter here's my theory so if you take it as fact that the average age that a girl gets her period is the age of 12 like that's a huge life-changing event and what happens when you get your period at least in today's world is it's like a very public event it seems like everybody knows in your class all the girls know even the boys know and your body starts to change and you feel this loss of control that is very public and then there's an added layer around the fact that what do people say when you get your period you're 12 years old and what are the first thing they say oh well now you're a woman oh you're a woman now so you become sexualized and that also I believe in a very subconscious and subtle but not so subtle way changes your relationship to other women and I personally believe that two things happen number one it's been very well researched as you know how girls confidence drops off a cliff between the age of 12 and 14 the age of 12 boys and girls have the exact same levels of confidence by the age of 14 girls experience a 46% drop in confidence but check out what they're also saying in this research about friends that 60% of girls by the age of 14 are not confident that they can make new friends here's a girl who's 18 this would have been somebody in your English class i'm not confident in making friends because I'm afraid a afraid of making mistake i feel like everybody's so smart and pretty and I'm just this ugly girl without friends i feel that if I acted like my true self that no one would like me and there's this memory that I have of being in middle school and it's kind of when the dances start and I don't know if it's like this now i mean I'm literally talking 40 years ago but when the slow songs would start there's this phenomenon where the guys pick a girl to dance with and it's in that moment that you start to see that there are girls that get all the attention and I know in those moments I literally hated my best friends because they were getting picked and I wasn't and I I feel like there is something that happens then that really in many ways makes you feel like you're against the other girls in competition for something other than grades other than sports it's this social and sexual status that feels largely out of your control at least that's what I felt and I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about that there are researchers that lean into intraexual competition what does that mean what's interexual when you have women who are vying for the attention of males and some would argue that it's a purely evolutionary thing that when you do you know begin to menrate and your your body is now showing and developing that that does now attract the attention of males um so I could see that being the reason why during that middle school period we feel like something's shifting something's going on um you know I even talked to a woman her name is Dr hannah Bradshaw and we even looked at you know guys girls versus girls girls and she also said that during that stage um how women perceive each other maybe we start treating her differently if she does draw the attention of men and start hanging out with them but she finds that it's a birectional relationship that you know girls who are around boys and boys come sniffing around and they're hanging out we find ourselves looking at the girl like oof who does she think she is because she's around these males but if you ask the girl why she's hanging out with males all the time she'll say that she's over there because the girls are mistreating her so it's a sort of refuge and protection so it's kind of like this this thing that continues to emerge in a cycle and I definitely see that too well it's an important thing to talk about because I think these feelings are very normal and when you don't know what to do with them you either aim them at yourself or you aim them at the other person the other thing I wanted to talk about related to middle school is that you know this elementary innocence and kind of navigating friendship and everybody's trying to figure it out we're all in it together what the heck is that phenomenon that happens in middle school where everybody's like I need a BFF were Biffles and you start to become defined by oh well Danielle is Susan's best friend and even the seeking out of that alliance becomes something that is very prominent for girls that age but I don't see it happening in the same way for guys what is that about I think that goes back to a little bit of what we said earlier around guys just collecting just casual relationships being on a squad it's not really closer are meaningful but they're on a squad but we even uh kind of promote the idea to young girls we'll even ask them from a young age is that your best friend is that your bestie do you want something for your best friend and we've got the the chains with like the hearts you know from Claire's it's like best friend so from the very beginning being trained to identify who that one person is and I've also heard it said that you know relationships are a woman's primary resource and I wonder if it's kind of like this social currency especially at that age is how many friends do you have and we see the girl with lots of friends and what do I you know what determinations do I begin to make about her she must be likable and cool you know so the girl who's got a lot of friends but especially if you have a bestie because that means you matter this is your alliance you have somebody um who sees you as important um and so that best friend phenomenon I definitely see emerge at that stage what would you say to the person who's listening to you right now who either experienced not having a best friend or not feeling like they were part of a good friend group or they're seeing somebody that they care about experiencing it right now i would tell that woman um you are not alone there's some research that finds that 40% of adults don't have a best friend so there's a lot of people out here who don't have that maybe in this particular season of their life it doesn't make you any less important um or worthy or lovable to not have that one person and if you don't ask yourself if you can get all the things you need from the collective rather than the singular i think it's a romantic notion this idea of the one person who offers you multiple things she's your mom friend your happy hour buddy it's very cool when that one person satisfies all those things but until maybe you find that person can you find that from the collective from multiple people you're getting laughter you're getting growth opportunities you're sharing resources are you getting that from the village um because maybe right now that's more important than having the one person who satisfies all the things and so I I just need that woman to know you are not alone there are so many people who are in the same boat and to resist the urge to internalize that and to wonder what's wrong with you because you don't have that right now and if you're a parent or you're just worried about a girl or a young woman who feels like she's just been iced out of her friend group i I remember when our daughters were in high school of one of my close close friends her daughter was going through something and her friend group dropped her and I just remember how many tears her mother and I had over what do you do i mean this kid has been basically you know the words feel so dramatic kicked out of excluded just dropped by a friend group what would you say to a person that feels like that's just happened to them it's really hard especially as a parent to not want to drive up to that school and to find those girls and be like "What the heck is your problem?" It's hard so you're saying we shouldn't text them or their parents or get involved is that what you're saying yeah no it's hard right especially as a mama bear you're like I want my girl to feel confident and to to belong and how dare people reject her that is painful and it's painful to watch your babies go through anything you know in the meantime because we you know a lot of times we talk about handling what you can control that is hurtful and there's even research that finds that being rejected socially uh lights up the same parts of your brain as experiencing physical pain so you know she's not being dramatic it is hurtful to not have people and it's even worse sometimes when you don't know what you did wrong and so like what do you do or what should you say or do you not say anything at all do you just like give the person space to grieve do you acknowledge it like I I didn't I don't know what to do yeah yeah well one of the things we can do is is to share with that young woman who's in that situation is what she can do right now is to continue to show up let's say in this situation at school to show up to school to be kind to others to confidently go about her day and to have connections with people and if she feels comfortable going to one of the young women who she trusts most in the group cuz sometimes we feel like it's us versus this large capital G group so go to a person in the group who you trust most and say hey you know I'm noticing we're not talking as much what's going on right and to ask and at that point they're responsible for letting us know what it is or not but if there are people they would let us know if they were your people they wouldn't take pleasure in isolating you if they were your people they'd call you in and not push you out and so it could be a good exercise for her uh in terms of identifying who your people are and so suffering any kind of loss is really painful and like we said especially women's friendships cuz we're so deep but these are not your people and it and it's tricky because you think "But no mom they are those are my girls." But your people would never take delight in pushing you out rejecting you watching you agonize over what you did wrong and not coming to relief some of that confusion and distress they're not your people i had my one of our daughters use this term a ladder and she was remarking about how she's in this period of her life and she lives in a part of the world and is in an industry where she says that it's like you're with your people on a certain rung mhm and we're all in it together and we commiserate and we're bonded and we're kind of sort of supporting one another but then the second somebody goes to the next rung in the ladder either in this city in a social climbing group or in this industry and you get some success it's like the rung that you were with disappears and even seeing that that somebody that you thought that you were close with and next thing you know you're part of a bigger group and next thing you know you're on the outside but they're staying on the inside that is a painful thing cuz you lose the group and you lose the person that you were close to before the group 100% yeah that is really painful i think those are the moments where those three affinities of female friendship come out to play um when we no longer feel the same when we begin to take different priorities different values emerge and even though I have a history with you an affection for you it's just not working out uh I think sometimes it's even easier to release friendships when we can easily identify a villain it It feels easier when you betray me i'm I'm upset but it's easier to let go it's harder to let go when I still like you but things have shifted and it's simply not compatible despite my desire to stay in relationship with you might be even more painful because I can't make sense of it and I don't know why we just don't work but we don't and so again I think intellectually we know that friendships dissolve but it is really hard when it happens in real life i think you just actually answered it i think one of the reasons why there is a lot of frenommy and conflict and jealousy is because the process of not feeling as close to a friend is really confusing and painful and so turning somebody into a villain and blaming their behavior is I think in many ways your subconscious attempt to actually cut off the pain that you're feeling because you can't explain it if it's just we're just growing apart that doesn't feel as complete as they asked me out she's now like think she's better than me mhm that is I think something that we do to process that confusing feeling that I used to be close to you and now we're just not and I don't know what to do with it because I miss that closeness and this isn't making sense so I'm going to just leverage some anger and some judgment here what do you do when you're jealous of your friends yes okay this is a big one so first uh I like to look at the difference between envy and jealousy because I know sometimes we use them synonymously so the way I kind of separate the two is that envy involves two people and jealousy involves three so if I'm envious that means you have something I want this is between you and me and jealousy means I'm scared I'm going to lose what I have to this third party is going to come in and take my friend so like I'm jealous of my friend maybe a new girl enters the the villa and I'm like "Oh what's happening here?" Um but whenever we are feeling jealous or envious of a friend I think the first thing to do if we're feeling envious is to normalize that and I know people say that a lot but something I've noticed especially with women is that almost feels like the cardinal sin like we can talk about every other kind of friendship conflict but don't accuse me of being jealous i don't even want to be in the proximity of being you know an envious friend right so we've got to normalize if you have somebody you love who's closely integrated into your life and she starts to have things that you kind of want for yourself that it's normal to feel that way and I think it can signal to us our values and desires so if you you know get pregnant I've been wanting a baby and I'm like oof I felt that pinch totally normal cuz that's something you want for your life totally normal what do you do with it though i think the difference because we try we then avoid somebody right somebody's renovating their kitchen i now can't deal with being at your beautiful house when I go home to my hvel like somebody's getting pregnant and I just had a miscarriage i don't want to be near you you know somebody just got engaged and I just broke off a relationship of two years i don't want to be near you and I struggled with this profoundly i wanted to be happy for my friends i wanted to celebrate and be able to authentically feel joy for somebody else and there are moments in my life where I could not access it yeah i love the honesty in that to say I noticed that I couldn't have joy for somebody else because the lack in my life ran so deep that it went beyond the joy I was able to muster up for my own friend and then the shame you feel sometimes for that this is my friend i can't even be happy for my friend what's wrong with me so I think it helps to identify okay this is normal then I think the next step becomes working through that sometimes privately and sometimes with our friend depending on how close we are and here's what I mean um if I'm noticing gosh when I'm sharing space with her I notice myself maybe making passive aggressive remarks or I've got to get a hold on that because now it's messing up my ability to show up as a good friend because this thing runs so deep so I need to go and look at what's that about do I need to remind myself that there's no comparison and life is not linear and this is her path and and my path and things will happen for me do I need to uh evaluate the degree to which I'm operating with a fixed mindset because her having is not a sign of me lacking it's just her having and what's available to her is equally available to me and the timing is just different right i might need to go and coach myself through that so I can be a good friend around her if it is something deeply tender like infertility and things like that which I see I've seen women who have expressed to a friend you know I I love this for you i'm happy for you and they can share certain boundaries hey I don't know if I'll be able to um make it to the baby shower but I am sending you a little something girl cuz I I want your little one to have this right and having friends who can hold space for that you know I had a friend um share with me her her uh child was going through very very significant and difficult mental health challenges and she said to me and I will always respect and admire her for this mh she said "I'm so happy for you but I am pulling back on our friend group because every time I see one of your kids moving through life and hitting these milestones of graduating or going to prom it is such a painful reminder that my child cannot right now." M and having her say that instead of her forcing herself to show up and put on a fake smile which of course then you just feel totally as this real weird conflict and I think we do that a lot i think that is something where you said it your lack is so big or the struggle that you're in is so big you can't actually authentically access the joy or happiness to express for somebody else that is a normal thing that happens to us and being able to say "I love you and I wish I could show up and I can't but no I'm still cheering for you." And I haven't done that in my life but this person in my life did and I was like "Wow I totally understand this now and I feel closer to you." Right and I think we're afraid to admit these things because we're going to be shunned and it's the opposite that happens danielle how do you address a friend who just disappoints you whether it's in the category of not offering support like you know you experience a loss of a family member and they don't show up they missed your wedding or they miss your birthday they hated your boyfriend or your girlfriend or they currently do and you're aware of it they're not happy for you when you get that raise or you're able to buy your dream car what do you do in those moments where your friend's behavior or energy or attitude or lack thereof is disappointing yeah um so we are going to be disappointed by our friends because they are fallible regular people right um so I think making room for that upfront is helpful my friends are going to let me down i know that I would like to think of myself as a good friend and I have good girlfriends who could say "Yeah Danielle disappointed me that day with what she said or you know so I'm thankful for their grace." But I think a couple things to evaluate when that does happen um are the um severity of it how big was the disappointment right uh the consistency of it is my friend always letting me down in this way right a lot of times disappointment comes from unmet expectations oh you have research about this actually on page 45 of the book yes you do you've got great research about this oh my god let me read to you from your book this is on page 45 another reason why our friendships can be fragile especially compared to male friendships is because we have high expectations a review of 36 studies found that women wanted more from their close relationships than men did especially when it comes to reciprocity and self-disclosure which means we are setting and expected to meet high standards and this means that we also register more relational violations identifying more wrongs in our friendships one study researchers observed college dorms to monitor the number of roommate reassignment requests most of them came from women yes and so this research to me suggests that we have these super high expectations of people a lot of times we don't even tell them what they are and then when they don't meet our expectations the research bears out that we literally are finding wrongs yeah do you think that's part of the problem absolutely and that research goes on to say that this is in both romantic and platonic relationships have these higher expectations of what's supposed to happen and identifying more wrongs than a man might in our relationships um but there are some things that we can do to kind of close that gap the first is how often are these disappointments happening m the second is what are my expectations and have I expressed them which we said earlier a lot of people feel like but I shouldn't have to sometimes you do and then also can I communicate my disappointment afterwards you have permission to say to a friend yeah I'm kind of bummed cuz I thought you'd come to my event last night and I was excited to have you there you have permission to say that and the right people will express to you oh my gosh I had no idea that it mattered that much sometimes we underestimate how much the thing meant to you i thought that you know you have events all the time why i didn't know that you care so I'm more interested in the response after you say the thing not just that the friend disappointed you once I give you that data and I say "I thought you would show up." Or "When my dad passed I wanted you here i didn't want the texts i wish you came and sat with me." Yeah how do they respond what's next that's what I'm more interested in is there an expression of regret is there an effort to repair is this a moment to help facilitate oh okay now I have a better understanding of what you're looking for that's what I'm more concerned about as opposed to the friend disappointed me um and I think that can help and maybe stop us from prematurely ending some friendships well see I think this is a lot of what you also write about in your book is that all of this conflict and these moments that are normal and human and in every friendship it's a give and a take we both have a little bit of responsibility here in terms of what's happening that it's either an opportunity for you to distance yourself or an opportunity for you to lean in and actually join in with somebody and you know one of the things as I was really researching the let them theory and I know personally I have lived in fear of disappointing people my whole life and bent myself into knots to try to make sure nobody's disappointed is that all of a sudden it occurred to me well isn't it a good thing if a friend is disappointed that you didn't show up doesn't that just mean they wanted you there right isn't that a sign that somebody really cares about you and that you matter versus what I turned it into my whole life which is somehow it's some indictment against me like if you can look at it that way if somebody respects you enough to say "I was disappointed that you forgot my birthday and they want to talk to you about it." To me that's a green flag in a friendship absolutely and you know unless of course you're like you bet that you know they're doing all that stuff but what are warning signs that a friend is not or no longer good for you um one of the ones I like to lead with is if you don't like who you are when you're together i know I've been a part of friendships where I am not acting like myself when we're when we get together and I don't know what prompts that it like just happens so stealthily but when I'm with other people I enjoy who I am i'm proud of who I am so the first indicator is you don't like who you are when you're together another might be after you're spending time together you find yourself totally depleted it is exhausting whether she's super negative or you find yourself um doing the mental labor of performing and you feel like you can finally relax right um that could be a sign that it's not good for you if you feel like um certain goals you have for yourself are being delayed by being in this friendship whatever that looks like for you i know sometimes we have friends who are like "You're not like you used to be you used to be fine with this you used to be and there are things I want to do with my life new directions and goals that I have but I feel like I'd be betraying my friends by pursuing these new goals that I have for myself." That could be something to look at as well and then the last thing I'll say is um whenever trust feels like it's so lost that there's no way to to recover it and get that back that can be difficult uh for maintaining a a relationship as I'm listening to you I'm like you're right why do I ignore those things and stay in it work harder yeah yeah and it's hard because I know you know when we see these videos and on social media and it's like uh nine signs she's toxic or nine signs you know one thing I want to say about the whole toxic thing um is sometimes it's not that this person's so toxic even though there are people with with ongoing toxic behaviors but sometimes it's just our dynamic maybe it's not her it's just there's something that happens when we come together and it's not clicking i don't like who I am and and something's weird here but all your other friends that works for you they think you're delightful that's awesome but there's something about our makeup like quite literally our chemistry that when we come together it doesn't work and so I think it goes back to what we said earlier it's easier when you can easily identify the villain to separate and make sense of what's happening it's harder to just say I just think it's us i don't enjoy it and I don't like who I become um and that's harder sometimes because there's more nuance and gray area yes and it requires you to take responsibility for your part in it and what I love about that is that I hate it when people label other people toxic there's behavior that's toxic but the fingerpointing and the ghosting and the just dropping a friend without a conversation in my opinion that's a sign that you're the one that's immature and engaging in toxic behavior that not actually trying to work it out or have the conversation that there's something off with us let's take a little space and as I've gotten older my opinion about friendship ending has changed i just feel like friendships are very flexible they come they go if something ends at some point in the future a decade from now who knows what's going to happen and how life might bring us back together but leaving the door open for people to change and for you to change and for circumstances to change has really helped me in being a better friend in being more compassionate in seeing that in any relationship I own at least 50% of what's happening here because my energy is just as powerful as the other person's energy and as I change things are going to change you know one of the things I really loved about your book and I cannot wait to share this conversation especially with my daughters i would love to talk about having a friendship with somebody who's controlling or possessive because I do think that's a predominantly female thing in friendship what do you do if you've got that friend who has your location and you're at the dinner with somebody else and all of a sudden you get that text hey I see that you're right by me what's up like "How come you didn't call me what are you doing?" You're like "Oh my god." Like dude yeah i think a lot of what lives up under that controlling nature is anxiety and anxious attachment which women are um more susceptible to and so I'm anxious about you being away and where did you go and what do you think and what's going on and so you know when we have a friend who's controlling us controlling decisions we make she's anxious over the fact that you're making decisions that are not what she would make you're doing what she doesn't want you to do there's a lot of anxiety about not being able to handle or manage or predict the outcome yeah and having that tendency needs to get in check because it's hard to be in relationship with the person who needs you to think like they do be where they need you to be be available when they want you to be a beable because the whole thing about healthy friendships is there's space for us to be together and that interdependence and there's also space for me to be myself and also and always trying to do that dance between us and our togetherness and me and my individuality but when you have people who begin to suffocate that part there's there's going to be an issue danielle what do you do when you have a controlling friend and they're controlling nature is really starting to get annoying it helps to package it as an invitation and not an accusation oh wait a minute an invitation not an accusation how do I do that so because it's easy to say you know you're texting me all the time you have to stop or I'm overwhelmed right so I'm going to invite you to participate in the way that feels good to me so maybe instead I'll say "Hey I know you like to check in uh throughout the day but I think it's best for me to check in on the weekends." Like I love our little phone calls on the weekend do you want to do Saturdays or Sundays that's an affirmative boundary on where would you when would you like to talk because for me it's overwhelming right um and that's me kind of gracefully moving you toward what I need you to do i you just literally I just felt like his class in session with Professor Bayer Jackson i mean I just felt like a teacher who sort of redirects you with a smile which and and you know that's a part of it too is sometimes playfulness when I hear people talk about conflict it sounds really scary and and serious that's why I avoid it yeah there well that makes sense i got up with a fake smile even though I'm jealous of your whole life you know where appropriate we can address some things with playfulness and I think it's wise to do that sometimes because it helps us to relax right if you're being playful it shows that there's no threat around because we can be playful you can't be playful and feel in danger okay well here's another one here's a big one you've been invited to something and your friend has not so what do I do if I know this group is not going to invite this person that's always really tricky and we have to take into account things like um I know that they are not friends but they're inviting me so you know and you're trying to figure out how do I maintain a sense of loyalty but also being it's really tricky i I'll say this to the person who's being controlling if I may speak to her um there are a couple things that have to happen so that people don't experience you that way m one is you've got to figure out the importance of having multiple friends because you might unintentionally be be putting pressure on that one friend to be your everything and she wants to be so many things to you but it's not fair so how can you broaden your friendships the second thing you have got to figure out if you find yourself being anxious and controlling is what is the fear what am I afraid of if I loosened my grip am I scared I would be forgotten am I scared I might be left behind there's something deeper there that's got you so uh fixated on this friend um and I think we have to kind of look at those things because it's going to be really difficult to be in relationship with other people if that's something that begins to take over we've got to get it in check and I I sympathize with you uh because you know uh friendship stirs up so much you're bringing so much of your personal stuff to the table and we're working it out in the friction of friendship but if you want healthy friendships if you want to be deeply known and you want to deeply know others you have to find a way to offer space to people to be themselves and trust that they still love you even if they're not around um and that can be really hard but something to maybe work through or get support with so that you can enjoy a healthy connection i love your perspective on this i'm curious as an expert and researcher on friendship how do you foster long-term friendships with women especially as you're moving through different phases of life what's the research say yeah so life transitions are actually a big reason why women's friendships end and I also believe that there are a lot more uh prominent transitions in a woman's life and it becomes difficult sometimes to stay together during those disruptions throughout the life cycle so her getting married and then getting really really involved with that spouse and now you're like "Oh what are we doing here?" You know we're not spending time together her having a baby and now the topic of conversation is is butt paste and bottles and I'm not interested right so it can be hard to show up in those ways i think one thing that we have to do is give ourselves grace because we've never been friends like this before m we've never had to be friends with you having to also have this little baby you have to keep alive at home so the first thing to honor okay we've never done this let's get to the business of figuring it out um I also see people experience so much dissatisfaction because you're comparing your present to how it used to be and that chapter is no more or it won't return for a long time right while this new season is in and I have people feel a lot of uh disappointment around that it's not like it used to be it's not like it's used to be well we know again that friendships change but when it happens it's really difficult to adapt um and then the last thing I would say if you feel a transition coming on with your friendship is it's okay to say it because that takes a lot of uh power away from the fear so to say to a friend like "Listen I know you're booed up now i love that for you but can we still do FaceTimes on Fridays because I miss you and I don't see you like I used to." And I think that feels scary because it's more vulnerable it's easier to say "Oh got a man and forgot all about me." It's harder to say "I really miss you and I'm I'm happy for you i love how happy he makes you but I miss us what can we do about that?" And it kind of takes the power out of the fear of what happens next with us during this transition one of the things that I love that you've said a couple times is first of all you normalize how come it is to not have a quote best friend but to encourage us all to look to the greater group and the collective to provide all the different things that we need from friendship to support to someone to talk about like global warming like whatever the issues you care about somebody to have fun with that you don't just rely on one person and one thing I'd love to know is how can someone feel closeness to a new female friend uh well the first thing I'm going to say is look at those three affinities of female friendship how can you introduce those from the very beginning how can I highlight our similarities and play into that how can I offer tangible demonstrations of support how can I make it safe here for us to share with one another those are things that help us to feel close in those friendships and then again and I know this continues to be a theme in what I'm saying is you can announce it i I we've got to get permission to announce it you can say to a friend um I love getting to know more and more about you or like every time we get together I'm learning more about you and I'm loving it i'm loving getting to know you i mean sometimes saying it upfront helps the other person to buy in because so often we wonder do they like me do they not like are they as invested as I am so let me remove the mystery i really enjoy you do you want to do this more often and sometimes making it plain uh I think kind of relieves that pressure the mystery the game playing right i initiated last time but is that too much there there's no time for that so I think even explicitly expressing to somebody I'm so excited to get to know you more i'm always learning a little something every time we get together i think that sometimes can expedite the process of being close friends yes you also had interesting research about how women's friendships in particular when you're younger are a huge predictor for how your relationship with your significant other is going to play out can you say more about that yeah so we tend to put friendship into the margins of our lives and see it as like this extra recreational thing that's non-essential but it really is um and it has benefits that we might not even suspect um and there is a study that found that the number one predictor of the success of your romantic adult relationships is how well you did with your same-sex friends in adolescence really likely because things do tend to be segregated by gender in school you know girls go over here boys go over here i'm mostly with girls you know in school in these different groups and in class that's where I'm developing social skills i'm learning to negotiate i'm learning how to communicate how do I show up as a friend i'm learning that here so if I struggled with that in these formative years it's likely that those same skills that I need to have a successful romantic relationship some of that stuff's going to travel with me so these are you know it's an important time to figure out with other women when we're young how do we do this because there are surprising ways that it impacts everything else for those of us that look back on those years and go "Oh god I was terrible at this i was the jealous competitive oneuper gossipy we can change right I'm living proof hey that you can and I mean okay the same way we get all these books to be a better parent to be a better wife like that's that's awesome this can be learned too and and this is what I mean about like giving people more optimism there's something where we feel like well this should be organic why can't I get this right but we aren't learning about how to show up as a better friend because we feel like it should be something that's just natural and the extent of the conversation at one period about friendship is you know it was you either have friends or you don't and if you don't what's wrong with you there's so much more to that conversation so yes get the book around how to be a better friend or to get over your anxious attachment so you can enjoy healthier relationships yeah figure that out uh especially in adulthood yeah because the scripts that worked for you in friendship at 18 and can work at 45 at some point I have to sit down and get to the business of figuring out how do I do this how do I make time for friends with my other obligations how do I release you know my anxiousness cuz it that's been a theme in my friendships and it hasn't gone well how do I set boundaries without feeling like an awful person we've got to get to the business of figuring that out to enjoy the kind of connections that we're we're dreaming about what I love about your book Fighting for Our Friendships is that you not only go straight at this and you unpack all the things that we or I'll speak for myself I got profoundly wrong about navigating female friendships it also explains what's missing when you start to feel conflict and frustration i love the example that you give in your book and it's on page 110 and you need to send this episode and conversation and Danielle's brilliance to every person in your life that is getting married right now because let me read this to you you're talking about this sort of mismatch where you think the friendship is more important than it is to the other person i see this play out most often in bridal parties several brides to be or would be maids of honor come to me for the sensitive dilemma of bridal party selection there's tension when one friend assumes she'll be asked to be a bridesmaid but realizes the bride has no intention of asking her brides come to me with tearful pleas to help them figure out how do I choose and then how do I deliver the news to those who won't be included when somebody has a wedding why is there so much conflict and drama inside people's friend groups having a bridal party is probably the only time aside from the MySpace top eight where you have to put your hierarchy on display so if I'm going through our friendship assuming that we're on the same level and I'm not chosen as a bridesmaid I'm not chosen as the maid of honor and here I am thinking we're best friends for a lot of women they do say it's hard for them to recover after that with that new information that we're not as close as I thought we were because I've been going around thinking that we see each other the same and then when you have to make a public declaration of your hierarchy of friends I'm not up there it can be really hard to digest what's your advice well um the first is to ask yourself um about the history and the evidence you have in that friendship does she show up is she attentive if I need support she's there and can I be okay with that some women can't and some will say you know what she's a good friend we're good friends to each other i can find a way to be okay with this right so looking at what does the friendship offer me even though I might not be her top tier friend and to the woman who has to make these bridal party selections and feels really nervous about it to have those conversations in a way that still offers reassurance to the friends who aren't involved because the number one question they're going to have is am I more invested than you do I not matter do you not care that's going to be at the heart of that rejection that they experience so as much as I can tenderly assure you that this is totally a logistical thing and it has nothing to do with me and you the better because those are the things we're going to be questioning after you make that selection gotcha and by logistical how do you not cuz literally you're like "Well look my husband only has like two friends so I can't have 17 of you standing there my sister will kill me if it's not just her." Truly like I I know how expensive this is you've been in 17 weddings this summer and I've just decided to keep the bridal party small 100% but providing that more aerial view of the decisions you have to make and the things you're accounting for can help people to understand a little bit and to depersonalize a little bit if you can give them that overview so I've seen it be helpful in that way or you can scratch the bridal party altogether which I see more and more people leaning toward because of the other things that it you know brings into the friendship you also shared research in your book that I've never seen before that women replace about half of their friends every seven years yeah so men and women um yeah there's research that finds that we replace half of our friends every seven years i hope that that makes people feel a little less ashamed if they have friendships that don't work out because what that says to me is that there's this natural pruning that happens throughout your life i also hope that that has people release any shame around needing to make new friends because I hear people say "I'm out here making friends at 42 i should have had all my friends from high school really because I know some of the friends I had in high school it would not be appropriate for us to still be friends it wouldn't make sense to where I am right now or the values I have right now." And so if we are you know dropping or shedding new friends every seven years that means we need to be picking up new ones cuz what does that churn rate look like how am I positioning myself to invite new friendships into my life so I hope it shows us that we will always be having to make new friends when I hear that research I was so encouraged because I'm like "Oh my gosh it's a sign you're growing." Yeah that's a sign that you're like changing and so are the people in your life and that's cool yeah yeah and I love that visual that has been so widely shared i have no idea who to credit for this of the fact that there are three types of friendships just think of a huge tree and you're the tree and there will be tens of thousands of leaves that sprout in different seasons and then wither and fall off and there are branches that are very strong that are there through the standing of time but some will break due to the weather and the pruning m and then there are the deep deep roots that you often don't see but you know are there if you need them that keep you grounded and strong and every one of those aspects of friendship is critical because even the leaves that are only there for the season these are your sorority sisters or your work friends or the people that you were a young mom with or friends that you were on a soccer team with in high school that they were there for a season and while they were there they absorbed the sunlight and they gave you energy and they were part of what made you you and then the season changes in your life and those friendships wither and fall to the ground that doesn't mean they weren't wonderful it doesn't mean actually that they're not still there with you in spirit mhm but that you are growing which means new leaves are going to come new branches are going to grow and those roots that are meant to be there are going to be strong even when they're not right in front of your face i mean some of my most favorite people I'm so mad at them because they don't live anywhere near me and what I'm also realizing is maybe that's a good thing maybe that's a good thing because I'm a very deep person and if I lived next to you I'd be up in your grill all the time you'd probably think I was clingy and possessive and annoying so it's probably better I only see you once a quarter danielle you've shared so much with us i cannot wait for the person listening to really take all this wisdom and research and shift how they're showing up and shift how they're thinking about friends both past and present and future and I also can't wait to see how many women they share this with in their lives and and young women if there's just one thing from absolutely everything you shared with us that you would love for the person who is listening to do what would it be i want them to consider that the source of your hurting could also be the source of your healing and I know that there is a lot of hurt that's probably happened with other women and sometimes we close oursel off to female friendships because of that but allowing ourselves to invite the love of other women helps to do some of that healing to give ourselves the chance to see that women are tender and supportive and gracious and strong um I think helps to start to be an overlay and starts to gradually erase some of the hurt we have from before but the restoration lies in the courage to position ourselves um to try again i love that so Danielle what are your parting words i think this conversation is important for the person who finds themselves about to grow cold or cynical to friendship itself to their personal future um because they can't make sense of something right now or because they're starting to feel hopeless and I'm hoping that this equips them with language to describe what's going on and with hope for the future um because it should be exciting to know that you could meet your best friend in the next 5 10 15 20 years it could be exciting to know that you might have several best friends over the next 5 10 15 20 years but as soon as we resign ourselves to believing that how it is right now is how it will always be then we've lost and so I think maintaining that hope is really really important so much of the conversation we have around friendship is about this insulated relationship just me and you and we need that we need close friendships but when we think about the fabric of society it starts with me and you it starts with me being open to sharing with you having positive experiences with you and then you go and share that with somebody else it's a ripple effect right it starts with me being supportive of you and you now having a deeper belief in yourself because I affirmed you and spoke words of life into you as your friend that is literally what fuels society and keeps us trusting one another and having goodwill toward one another but it starts right here and so I I get really sad when I hear people who are discouraged about friendship and start to close themselves off because when we talk about from an aerial view needing more trust in community from a larger perspective it starts right here and so I feel like if we want a healthier more hopeful future as a society it starts with me being open uh to friendships personal friendships today and I I I would love for us to keep making that connection well I can see the emotion when you talk about that and I know I feel it i know the person listening to this feels that fear of growing isolation and discouragement in people's hearts and what I know is that women have the ability to change anything and we cannot allow our hearts to grow cold and this is a moment where we need to turn toward each other and rely on each other and support each other and what I love about everything that you have done in your work and in this book Danielle is that I truly understand and feel more compassionate about the little me who struggled with friendship i feel understanding and compassionate as a mother to daughters about how difficult it is but how it doesn't have to be and your framework offers us a way to see what's happening through the lens of both this is why female friendships are so unbelievably powerful and rich and deep and important and it's also why they can feel so fraught with confusing and hurtful behavior yeah and everything that you shared which is so amazing is it comes through a lens of both understanding matterof fact compassion and empowerment it is fully within your power as you listen to this to create better friendships it's fully within your power to leave the door open it's fully within your power to lean toward the people that disappoint you or upset you or that trigger jealousy or lack in you and actually talk about it that the connection that you deserve and that society needs that happens one person at a time is something that you can create and now that you've shared all this with us we can and so thank you thank you thank you for hopping on a plane for being here today for doing this research and for sharing it with me and with the person listening you truly made a huge difference thank you for having me of course and I also want to thank you thank you for making the time to listen to this thank you for sharing this with your sisters your nieces your daughters your female friends and how amazing it is it to know that one of the most important things that creates a meaningful life which are your relationships you have the ability to create better ones and I hope you do and in case no one else tells you I wanted to tell you that I love you i'm proud of you for listening or watching this and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life and relationships based on the research are what create a better life and meaning in your life so take everything that you just devoured and learned and go apply it all righty i'll be waiting for you in the very next episode to welcome you in the moment you hit play i'll see you there and thank you my friend here on YouTube for staying with me all the way to the end that's one of those three affinities support being together and since I know you're the kind of person who loves supporting your friends who are supporting you I got a favor to ask you there's something that I would love for you to do see my goal is that 50% of the people that watch this channel are subscribers so do me a favor and just hit subscribe it's free it's a way that you can tell me that you love these videos and you love meeting amazing experts like Danielle who wrote this extraordinary book and came here for free to unpack it all for you and for your friends and I know you're thinking "Okay this has been awesome mel what should I watch next?" Great question i think you should check this out you're going to love this and like a good friend I'm going to be waiting there to welcome you in the moment you play i'll see you there