Friendship Month kicks off with Anna Goldfarb, author of Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections.

Anna joins Doree and Elise to talk about what a wholehearted friendship means, how to determine the “about” of your friendships, why it’s okay for your friendships to remain more fluid as you become an adult, and how it’s okay to grow into (and out of) friendships gracefully.

Mentioned in this Episode

• Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections by Anna Goldfarb

• Fighting for Our Friendships: The Science and Art of Conflict and Connection in Women's Relationships by Danielle Bayard Jackson 

• Connect with Anna Goldfarb

• Friendship Explained Substack

• Anna Goldfarb

• Anna Goldfarb (@annagoldfarb) • Instagram

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode Ai generated.

Doree (00:10):

Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise (00:18):

And I'm Elise Hu. And we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums and I emphasized friends there. I dunno if you could tell. Yes.

Doree (00:30):

Love that. Love that

Elise (00:32):

Emphasis on friends, because this is the beginning of our series on Friendship. We are going to spend the next four weeks focused on the topic of friendship, how to make friends, how to keep friends, friendship as a life force, as a really key relationship in our lives. And today we have our first conversation. We're going to have a series of guests all on this topic as we did for midlife and menopause month. And we're also inviting you all to send in your questions about friendship so that we can tackle those in our mini app at the end of the series.

Doree (01:11):

So send those questions over to Forever 35 podcast@gmail.com. You can call or text your questions at 5 9 1 0 3 9 0. There's always new wrinkles to friendship

Elise (01:28):

And there's something called the Friendship Dip, I think that Anne Helen Peterson has written about that when we hit our thirties. That is the time in our lives where thirties and forties, where we're really having to be ballers when it comes to our careers because kind of peak earning years or you are starting families and then you're really kind of heads down with family. And what often gets put on the back burner or deprioritized are your non-romantic nonfamilial relationships, your platonic friends. It gets put on the back burner and yet it's such an important ingredient for making our lives feel whole. And so I'm glad that we get to kind of discuss it and dive into how to balance this type of relationship, if not prioritize it above some other types of relationships or on an equal plane as some other types of relationships.

Doree (02:24):

I feel like the friendship dipped for me got delayed because in my early and mid thirties I was still living in New York and most of my friends didn't have kids and we all just hung out all the time when I had a kid, it was funny because you had kids in your early

Elise (02:45):

Thirties when I was 30.

Doree (02:46):

Yeah. And I started meeting all these people who had kids in their early thirties and I was like, oh yeah, that's not where I was. I not ready for that. So I dunno,

Elise (03:01):

Oh, I also wasn't ready for it. And I've been kind of like in a suspended adolescence as you and listeners know. So my friendships have remained strong, but I feel like I have to do more work then on my romantic relationships because I tend to prioritize my friendships so much that sometimes places where culturally we might bring our significant others, like weddings and things. I like to bring friends and I think it was challenging for Maddie, my ex-husband, and then Rob feels excluded sometimes now too. So yeah, there's a lot to navigate and I'm really excited to ask our experts about it.

Doree (03:43):

Yes. Well, should we just get into it? I feel like our first expert had a lot to say. We had a lot to talk to her about.

Elise (03:53):

Well, today we are really delighted to have a conversation with Anna Goldfarb. She's a prolific journalist, author, speaker, and most importantly to us, a friendship expert. And she approaches her favorite subject from a place of empathy and experience. And in her book, modern Friendship, how to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, she can strike up and carry on a conversation about pretty much anything from literature and dating to classic emo bands, which you will be able to tell from our conversation with her because we could have talked to her for hours. And Anna's deep friendship research and storytelling are core to her step-by-step guide to understanding the fundamental mechanics of friendship. And we get into that as well. We just had a great, great sort of framing of Friendship Month with her Doree I thought. And

Doree (04:49):

I did too.

Elise (04:49):

It made me really excited about what's to come

Doree (04:52):

Same. And we already mentioned how people can get in touch with us, but I also just want to remind everyone that we have our website forever 35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We're also on Instagram at Forever 35 podcast. You can also join our Patreon where we have a ton of bonus content at patreon.com/forever five. Our newsletter is at forever 35 podcast.com/newsletter. And you can shop our favorite products at shop my US slash forever 35. And here is Anna. Anna, welcome to Forever 35. We're so excited to have you on the show. As I think you probably know, we like to start off by asking our guests about a self-care practice that they have. Is there something you're doing right now that you would consider self-care?

Anna Goldfarb (05:46):

Yeah, this sounds like a way higher version of myself than I normally am, but the best self-care tip I've been doing lately is forgiveness, is forgiving people for not knowing how to perfectly manage our situations or saying something thoughtless. Just trying to have more forgiveness for people and for myself. And I'm telling you in December, that got me through of I forgive my relative for not knowing how to perfectly manage this. I forgive my friend for not realizing that that statement was going to hurt me. I've just been handing out forgiveness like Oprah, I'm going to forgive you. I forgive. You're forgiven. You're forgiven. And let me tell you, my day gets better. Try forgiveness 2025. That's lovely. Get hit.

Elise (06:39):

Yeah, that's lovely. Well, Anna, you're a very special guest because you're helping kick off our series on Friendship by Popular Demand. Our listeners wanted to talk about friendship in a more concentrated way and you have authored a book called Modern Friendship, how to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections. So I'm curious, what is different? Do you think about friendship in our modern times than

Anna Goldfarb (07:04):

It wa s 20 or

Elise (07:05):

30 years ago?

Anna Goldfarb (07:06):

That's such a great question. There's so much that's different. I mean, even from our parents and grandparents, our social lives are just wildly different. The number of connections that we manage is exponentially higher than your ancestors ever did. You don't even have to go that far back. When you think of your grandparents or great grandparents, they probably lived in a small community, maybe religious. The roles were very limited of what they could do or not do. If you're a woman, you're not. There's only a few jobs you can have. Usually you get married and have kids and that's the vibe. Now we have infinite choice. We move around all the time and our connections are bound to reflect how hyper mobile we are.

(07:59):

And what I mean is that for me, I lived in three different cities and I have friends from school, friends from later school, friends from my first job, my third job, my 10th job, and they only share common history with me, not with each other. And so what that does is it makes us feel more disconnected, it makes us feel lonely, lonelier. We're not part of this cohesive group. My grandma was really active in her synagogue and she lived in the same house for 53 years and her social life is so different than mine. Things are different. I mean, your mom probably never had a best guy friend. You can't ask her. How did you manage your friendship when you started getting other relationships? We have so much flexibility on who we can befriend, but it's also never been easier to shed friendships. You can have a whole new identity, drop one set of friends and be perfectly fine with a new set of friends. So it's like pros and cons. I don't think it's worse, it's just different. Does it mean our

Elise (09:06):

Friendships are less close or intimate than they were before?

Anna Goldfarb (09:10):

No, not at all. I think that, oh my gosh, they're so much more intimate, but that also means the stakes are so much higher if you don't know how to meet the moment. Friendships in the 1950s, friendship for Women was really a reprieve from the drudgery of marital life. It was just like light someone to laugh with, someone to play a card game with. Now we expect our friends to be therapists, mothers, sisters, best friends. We expect so much more from our friends. And that's why I wanted to write this book. I felt that the stakes were a lot higher and our problems are a lot more complex than when we were younger. And I was having a lot of trouble knowing, am I a good friend? Are my friends good friends? Am I picking good people to be friends? I mean, there's just so much more about modern life that so much more complex than what our grandparents' friendships were like. There was probably a lot more simple. You weren't juggling all these things. It was really like, oh, I have children. I go to this church. You have children, go to this church. Let's be friends. Okay,

Elise (10:20):

Let's take a break

Anna Goldfarb (10:21):

And we will be right back.

Doree (10:30):

It is so interesting too because I feel like in the last, I don't know, 15, 20 years, there's been this real trend of people referring to their romantic partners as their best friends. And so there's been this weird conflation of romantic partner and friend. And to your point about how your friend doesn't need to be everything in your life and in fact probably shouldn't be, I would argue your romantic partner also doesn't need to be your best friend. In fact, maybe you shouldn't be.

Anna Goldfarb (11:04):

I'm so glad you brought this up, Doree, because there is a real schism for male and female expectations of their friendships in midlife. Women want more interdependence. They want to be involved in their friendships, they want to nurture their friends. Men seem to want more independence. Generally speaking, there's no monolith here. There's always shades of variation. But men want more independence from their friends. They don't want to be criticized or judged. And so that really impacts how we practice our friendships in midlife and beyond. Men, I do tend to put a lot more pressure on their partners to be their everything because men aren't great at being vulnerable. They're competitive assholes. And that's other guys saying that, that's just me quoting other guys talking about this. It's not even my judgment. I love men. I love men, but they're jerks to each other. They're very competitive. If you complain, if a guy complains to his guy, friend, I'm struggling at work, he'll be worried that his friend will look at him in a diminished light of like, oh, you're not killing it. So men don't want to be judged or criticized. So then they go to their partner who's loving and can listen and women are more conditioned to do those kinds of skills for one another. It's not that men aren't capable, they're just not as conditioned to do that.

Elise (12:38):

And

Anna Goldfarb (12:38):

Surely it's

Elise (12:38):

Connected to this crisis and loneliness that there's been a lot of talk about, but more focused conversation about men and loneliness in

Anna Goldfarb (12:48):

For sure. I'm sure women are looking around. I spend so much mental energy about my friendships and keeping them humming, keeping them going strong. And then you look at your partner and you're like, what's up with you?

Elise (13:02):

One thing that I actually really love about my partner, Rob, is that he has such close male friends from way back in high school and they still call each other on the phone. This is probably also because he's a Gen Xer and he still calls people on phones and they talk on the phone in the morning when they go on walks or runs and stuff. And we're talking about friends that he went to high school with, they got to know each other in eighth or ninth grade. Amazing. I think it's very cool.

(13:31):

But the real trouble I think is getting together in real life. Everybody has these very busy lives or big jobs or whatever it is. And so when I have gatherings, my friends will show up for parties and things, but Rob, when he invites his friends to the same parties, he doesn't have the same return rate, if you will. His really close friends, he sees in person way less. And so I think that this is about intention, which you write about and kind of having some friendship intentions in terms of what this friendship is about. So will you talk to us a little bit about that and how important it is to get together in real life?

Anna Goldfarb (14:12):

Oh my gosh. Getting together. Real life is the good stuff. That is the gushy good stuff. Well, let's back up. There's two categories of friendships. There's active friendships and memorial friendships. Those memorial friendships are more periodic. There's great affection, but just like Rob's friends, they don't spend a lot of time together. So the difference with active friendships is that there's a reason to get together. One misunderstanding of friendship is that I think people think affection is enough to keep a friendship active, going indefinitely forever into the future. But that's not really how humans work. Don't just people need reasons to get out of the house and interact with their friends. And the way I quantified this is about desire. I was really interested in learning where does desire for particular friendship come from? Why do I seek out one friend over another? Why am I more bummed if I haven't seen one friend in a while?

(15:22):

What's the magic at work here with friendships? And I learned that every friendship needs an about, and the about needs to be clear and compelling for both people. That's what keeps a friendship active. So what are some great abouts of a friendship? There was a study done in 2020 of the five reasons people tend to make friends. The first is career people who can help them with their career prospects. Second is mating. In our twenties, so much of friendship was going out, going to parties, trying to meet other people. Third one is emotional support. A lot of our friendships are, let's get together, let's share what's going on. Fourth is hobbies and passions. You want people to do the stuff that you think is cool. And the fifth is just being social, just joining a book club just to be around other people. So what's fascinating about this, those are great abouts in your twenties, you can see why you had the friends you had, what did they help you with, what of your interests, where is the overlap?

(16:31):

But then you can see our friendships fall off a cliff after 30. And that's because if you think about it, if you are in a different field than your friend, maybe career isn't as much of a draw. If you're both married, you're not looking for meeting from your friends. So that's window closes. So what do you have left? You have emotional support, hobbies and passions, and just being social. So if your friend has a baby and can't give emotional support, that can't be the priority. Then your friendship is going to, you could see the windows closing a bit of like, well, what are we connecting about? You can say, I want to spend more time with you. What's important to you? How can I help? And just start going through that rubric of one of my best friends. We overlap on career, we overlap on emotional support.

(17:18):

We overlap on hobbies and passions. I can see why she's my best friend because we tick so many of those boxes and that's why we make time for one another. And the beauty of an active friendship is you create memories together. Now with your husband, Rob, when you just talk to someone on the phone, you're not creating new memories. You're not like, remember that time we just chatted on the phone? I don't remember any phone call I've ever, I don't remember any text message I've ever sent. I don't remember any video call I've ever had. That's why it doesn't feel as nourishing. During the pandemic, we had all these video calls, but they're not memories. It's like this weird black hole of, well, I was in touch with people, but you can't look back and be like, remember that time we, yeah,

Elise (18:05):

We had a

Anna Goldfarb (18:06):

Great zoom. We great zoom. We all had a glass of wine or a ginger ale and I mean, it's like a non-member. It's a non-member. But we want happy memories with our friends because that will power us well into the future.

Doree (18:21):

Can we just talk about one of my favorite metaphors in your book, which is the pool metaphor, some of your friends

Anna Goldfarb (18:31):

Are the water features.

Doree (18:33):

Yes. You have your bathtub friends, your jacuzzi friends. Could you go through that and explain why those degrees of friendship are important?

Anna Goldfarb (18:45):

Yeah, I really wanted to highlight how fluid our friendships are. So I took the work from Robin Dunbar, a wonderful British anthropologist. He's written a ton on social networks, and he found these numbers of this is how people tend to organize their social lives. And I rebranded it. I actually sent it to him. I'm like, Hey, heads up. Is this cool? I don't want to annoy you that I'm taking your work and recontextualizing it. And he did say it was cool. So I feel like I covered my butt with that. But the first tier, the most intimate tier we have, I call the bathtub and I call it that because there's not much room in there for men. It's usually one other person in their bathtub. It's usually their significant other. But for women, they have two people in their bathtub, usually their significant other and a best friend.

(19:42):

So right there you see that men and women really prioritize their friendships differently. So that's the bathtub. The next outer layer I call the jacuzzi, and those are the three to five ride or die. It's called the support group. These are your, if you had an academy ward, thank these people. These are people who play really important roles in your life. My book will help you work through who's in my jacuzzi. I'll ask you a ton of not tricky questions, just like who could you go to for financial advice? Whose house could you stay over in a pinch? Who's most likely to give you a hug if you've had a hard day? Those kinds of things will help determine who's in your jacuzzi tier and the outer one after that, I call the swimming pool. That's the sympathy tier. That's the 10 to 15 people you double date with, your coworkers, people in your life that just, they're active friendships, but they're also kind of casual, maybe house sit for them or pet sit, and then it goes on from there.

(20:54):

I kind of stretch the metaphor just between us. I got the beach bonfires, the 50 people you'd invite to a birthday party and the water park is the 150 people for a wedding or a funeral. Those are those, the outer tier, the outer rings of your social orbit. And this, I really want to highlight how fluid our friendships are. Falling in love will cost you two friendships Dunbar found. And yeah, as your priorities change in your availability plummets, you're going to move some people from the jacuzzi to the swimming pool. And have you all been to those pool parties where you're hanging in a jacuzzi, they want to get a snack? You're like, I'm going to dip into the pool. So I want people to wrap their heads around friendships in this way of, there's nothing wrong. It's just that people dip in and out. They're very fragile. So I'm hoping that with this framework of this is fluid, these are fluid relationships. I encourage people to come back to the book in six months or a year and you can chart how it's changed. The people in your jacuzzi will have changed. And that's normal on this

Elise (22:06):

Matter of ending friendships. When we do want to step back from a friendship because values don't align anymore, we don't share the same kinds of interests as we did previously or really for any reason. What would be an honorable way to end friendships or to leave one?

Anna Goldfarb (22:27):

Well, this is funny. Almost every interview, someone asks me this, and I wrote a book about keeping friendships. So how do we get rid of that? How do we delete the DVR? We recorded all these episodes we don't want anymore. Is there a button we can just push? Part of so much of our conditioning as women is to keep friendships, not rock the boat. So it feels so body cringing to think about ending a friendship because it goes against so much of our conditioning of just go along to get along. A lot of it is what I'm hoping my book will do is help people understand what it give language to like, well, why aren't I interested as interested in this friendship? Is this something I can negotiate? Or are there behaviors that like you said, are a mismatch? And I've just outgrown it? We outgrow our friendships.

(23:26):

I never try to close a door unless there's been a catastrophic betrayal. Usually it's kind of pull away. I decline invitations. I mean, unless something horrible went wrong that you have to address. And Danielle Byer Jackson wrote a great book Fighting for Our Friendships, all about how to handle conflict in our friendships. So that could be a great resource if you want a little bit more instruction of what is the nature of the problem, what's going on here? But normally it's like people ghost each other all the time. It depends on what the reason is. Yeah, that makes

Doree (24:00):

Sense. I feel like this goes back to the jacuzzi and the pool, because if I'm remembering correctly, in your book, you talk about how it's important to be aware of where your friends are in that rubric. And also that helps you kind of set expectations because I think you give the example of someone who you thought was in the jacuzzi but actually turned out to be in the pool or something. And I do think that's been something that I've had to confront over the past few years. Like, oh, I thought this person was in my hot tub, but they're actually not. And how do I feel about that? Is it okay? Do I feel okay that they're in my Olympic sized swimming pool? Or am I just so sad that they're not in my jacuzzi anymore, that I can't deal with it? You know what I mean? So I think kind of recalibrating those expectations is kind of important and hard, right?

Anna Goldfarb (24:59):

Yeah. And there's some grieving,

Doree (25:01):

Yes,

Anna Goldfarb (25:01):

You have to grieve of this friendship isn't what I thought it was. Totally. My hope is that by giving language to this process, it'll make it easier to understand what's going on of it's not this question mark of when I first started reporting on friendships almost 10 years ago, my friendships felt like wild stallions that were just dragging me all around in the dirt. I was just like, which way are we going? Are we still best friends? Are we still close? I still call this woman my best friend. I haven't seen her in four years. Is that cool? Am I delusional? So I really wanted to bring language here. Friend is such an ambiguous word. We have so many friends, it's almost meaningless of, well, what kind of friend are we? Are you my best friend? You were before? Are we still today? And it really is the lack of specific language that I think creates a lot of confusion in our brains of, well, what is this relationship? It's special to me, it's important to me.

(26:11):

But I hope that by saying, oh, this is a memorial friendship. We don't have a reason to be active. Nothing's wrong. If I want to be more active, I can say, well, what's important to you? How can I help? And then you have a reason to be in touch. It's very different. We have very different challenges today. Give us some advice. How do we be good active friends? Oh my gosh. Well, this is the part I needed the most instruction with personally of, okay, so we have these friends, we've collected all these friends in our phone, so how do I actually meet their expectations and be a good friend? And so much of modern friendship is like a supermarket in that when you go shopping and you're hungry, everything your cravings will guide you of, well, I want this mozzarella stick. I want this. At the pizza station, you just put whatever in your cart that you're craving, and then you check out.

(27:17):

You're like, how am I going to make a nutritious meal out of these random things? I just put in my cart, I'm starving. And our friendships are the same way. When you open up Instagram and you see, oh, that's my old roommate. Oh, I miss her. And you write out like, oh, we should hang out. I miss you, and you don't hear back Then you see an old coworker, oh, I miss her. And you just feel rotten. You're like, how is this a social life? How is this anything? I'm sending out invitations. No one's really getting back to me. This is really hard. Now, consider when you are full and you go shopping and you have a list. It's so much easier to cut through the noise and realize I don't need to spend my energy on a relationship that's expired, or we don't have a reason to be in touch.

(28:04):

It's a better use of my energy to focus on a few people where we have a strong reason to stay in touch. We know why we're in this friendship, and you can just move forward without all the fraud cravings that come up. That's our challenge as people living in a hyper fluid society is we have to know the game. This is how people work now. This is how people pick their friends now. It's not like we're in some ettl where there's five girls in the village and you don't need to have, oh, I have kids. You have kids? Okay, let's do this. We have so many things competing for our attention, our time, so it's just a very different game to sort through it all.

Doree (28:56):

So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back. Can you talk about wholehearted friendship this term that you have coined and what it means and how to pursue it?

Anna Goldfarb (29:21):

Yeah. I really wanted a word to describe the kind of friendships I want, and I didn't see any words that really described it. Wholehearted means dedicated, committed, and enthusiastic. And I'm like, that's it. That's what I want. That's the kind of friendships I want. So wholehearted friendship is a paradigm I designed that's based around time. Jeffrey Aal is a fabulous professor at Kansas University. He did a study that found it takes on average 200 hours of shared activities to go from stranger to close friend.

(30:01):

So I'm like, oh my God, that's a lot of time. If you're looking for a new best friend, if you just move somewhere, you're like, well, how do I get these best friends I keep hearing about or whatever. So then I thought, well, why does anyone do anything? It's like, are friendships, is other silo or are they part of just the grind of why we do anything? Wholehearted friendship consists of three things. Desire who you yearn to spend time with, diligence, who you prioritize spending your time with and delight who you actually enjoy spending time with. These are the three prongs of friendship is who do I want to spend time with? That's desire. And what we learned that we covered is that desire, that friendships need and about and abouts need to be clear and compelling and abouts can change, be outdated or be absent.

(30:56):

So that's desire. Desire is gas in the car. If your friendship is a car, desire, if you don't have desire, your car's not going anywhere. You're not getting that Greek salad at Whole Foods. You're staying put. You need desire. You need a reason. Diligence to extend the car. Metaphor is about making sure your street legal, it's like, do I have insurance? Do I have registration? Did I do those adult things to make sure I don't get a ticket? And what that looks like in a friendship is am I extending invites that someone can reply yes to? Am I being specific of here's why I want to hang out with you. 10 years ago, I was living at home with my parents, writing freelance writing kind of on the struggle bus, and a good friend invited me to our house for a party. I was so excited. I was like, oh my God, this is great. I get there. It was selling jewelry. It was like an MLM thing. Oh no. And I was so embarrassed

(31:55):

And it just made me, you don't need very many things like that to make you jaded. So when a friend says like, Hey, come over. You're like, well, what do you want? Are you trying to sell me a legging? Are you trying to sell me a timeshare? We need more information to say yes to things. That's what I've learned is it's not enough to say, Hey, to a new friend, do you want to come over? Do you want to get lunch? Do you want to get a drink? It's like, well, why me? Do you want me? Why should I say yes? Why should I tell my spouse that they're on the road for dinner tonight? I'm going out with you. What do you want? We need a little more information. That's diligence. Delight is all about making sure that the friendship is a good fit for you.

(32:38):

My best friend may not be a great match for you, Elise. I could put you in a room with her and you could be like, not for me, but she's great for me. So delight is all about how can we make our friendships feel just snugly and safe and validating all those emotional support skills that we're not taught, but our friends expect us to have. And that can look like being really mindful of not giving. I don't want to do two negatives of not giving unsolicited advice, of only giving advice when asked. And this is a huge pain point in friendships, because friendships are a relationship of peers. We're equal. And when you start giving a friend advice, then the dynamic shifts of, well, I know what's best for you. I know what you should do.

(33:29):

And friends hate that. They don't want to feel like that in a friendship. That's what makes friendships so delicious is that we're equal. We're looking at the world together. We're marveling at the world together. And when friends start shifting the dynamic, it can feel really uncomfy to use that word from love is blind that everyone forgot uncomfy. So delight is like, okay, guys, this turns friends off. Let's try to learn these skills so that your friends will enjoy being with you. They will feel just like that word, wholehearted, dedicated, committed, and enthusiastic. I want my friends to love being my friend. How can I make sure that my words, actions, and thoughts align with that goal?

Elise (34:20):

We get a lot of questions from our audience about making new friends. If we've moved to a new city, and especially since we're past 30, or a lot of us are past 30 and our lives are hyper fluid like you talked about. So what is your advice there?

Anna Goldfarb (34:36):

Oh my gosh. Well, I think the first thing people do wrong with making friends is think what's in it for me? I want friends to care about me. I want friends to throw me at party. I want friends to do things for me. And this is kind of a problem with pop culture. So much of pop culture is this main character syndrome of I'm Harry Potter, I got my sidekicks. Look at us roll deep. But friendship requires us to be the Ron Weasley. Our goalposts are in the wrong place. The deal with friendship is it's an honor to share and witness your friends' challenges triumphs and to be a part of it. But I think people make the mistake of, I want friends for me. I want friends to check up on me and care about me. But studies show that people think they'll be happier with a lot of friends, but it actually feels better to be considered someone's best friend.

(35:37):

And that's because they're choosing you. They're pointing to you and saying she has wonderful integrity and inner beauty and good character. That's what makes us feel good. So when I think about making new friends, this is how I do it in my life, is I find someone who seems really cool. We have a really compelling reason to be in touch. Maybe they study friendship too, or they work in media and live in Philly too. And I reach out, Hey, I think you're cool. We both work in media and we both live in Philly. I'd love to talk to you and I explain why I'm reaching out. And my hope is that it's compelling enough for the other person to say yes. And then once we get together, I say, what can I help you? What are your dreams? What are your goals? How can I help you?

(36:28):

People tend to keep those around that care deeply about what they care about. What that means is my best friend, I see what's important to her, and it's important to me because it's important to her. I have relationships with her kids. I have relationships. I went to the vet with her dog. She loves her dog more than anything. So I went with her to pick up her dog when he had two surgery. It's like that's how you can make new friends is I care about what you care about. I'm interested. I want to be a part of it. One of the things, the most exciting things I learned was a small study by a woman named Carolyn Weiss. And she looked at groups of friends. It was a small study, like 67 young women in college, and she wanted to see who would be more likely to be best friends in four years.

(37:23):

And she found that friendships that practiced social identity support were much more likely to endure. So I'm like, well, what is this thing? This sounds like a magic bullet. Why aren't we putting this in a skywriter across the sky? Like, Hey guys, this is all you have to do this random term that brings nothing to mind when you say these three words together, social identity support. So I called her and I'm like, tell me what is this? And she said, it's seeing your friend for all of the roles they play in their life, the race, class, gender, and it's supporting them in those roles. And here's what I mean. We all have that friend. Maybe you're struggling financially and your friend's like, oh, I really want to get this sushi dinner for Friday night. And you're like, I can't afford that. And then you get resentful of, isn't my friend, why is she suggesting things I can't afford?

(38:17):

And it makes you less likely to want to seek her out as opposed to, Hey, I know you're underemployed. Let's just get pizza. Why don't you come over? I'll make you some dinner. And then you feel seen. You feel like, okay, my friend sees some struggles or what your religion is and saying, I want to be a part of it. I want to see what foods you grew up eating. I want to be a part of your cultural traditions. So much of modern friendship is about entertainment. Let's go out. Let's get drinks. Let's go somewhere. And it can feel like a grind of just what is this list of dinners I've committed to? I'm in my forties. Is there more? Isn't there more to this? And that's what we can give our friends is, I care about you. I care about where you come from. I want to see where you grew up. I want to see what bands you love listening to as a kid. I want to know you in a deeper way, and that's what we can give to our friends.

Doree (39:18):

Anna, before we let you go, can you just talk a little bit about how researching and writing this book changed you and the way you thought about your friendships, the way you approach your friendships? Did any of your friendships change while writing the book?

Anna Goldfarb (39:37):

Thank you for asking me this question. That's a great question. It has completely changed my life. Learning the game, learning what I can do. I feel so empowered because friendships felt so out of grasp for me. I've moved around so much. I will never run into the people I grew up with. I grew up in Chicago. I live in Philly. They're not even in the same time zone. I'm not just going to run into old friends. And that's such a deep loss for me. And I just feel so optimistic and empowered that our best friendships are ahead of us.

(40:17):

I don't think we get that message very much. I think people think, oh, my best friends, my best friendships were in the past. This is a sad thing for me to think about, but I'm here to tell you your best friendships are ahead of you. There is no reason why you can't absorb these principles and put them to work immediately. I included a 14 day friendship cleanse in the book, and it really just distills all the lessons that I cover in the book. And to me, it's a really elegant way to tell someone, here's how this works. All of the things I suggest are very low lift. I'm pretty lazy. I'd rather hang out with my cat and play my switch, then do anything. And I'm having the best friendships of my life, so I really want to meet people where they're at. I don't want to suggest things that are out of anyone's comfort zone.

(41:14):

I really want this to be about empowerment and optimism of this is achievable for me. I just need to know where to place my efforts and who to place my efforts in. Am I picking good people? Am I picking people who share my values? When I first started on friendships, I was estranged from a family member. We just couldn't even get through a meal without bickering. And I started learning about these friendship principles. And specifically Shasta Nelson, she's the OG friendship expert. She's brilliant. And in her work, she learned that friendships require three things, positivity, consistency, and vulnerability. And I immediately put that to work with my family member. Now we talk every morning. I see her every week. I put all those principles to use, and it's completely transformed my life. So these things are very simple, but they point you in a direction. And so I wanted to build off of Shasta's work of like, well, why am I picking good friends? Who am I picking? So then I went further with it, with desire, diligence, and delight, which is building off her work. So listen, this is an exciting time to be a friend. This is exciting. We can befriend people from all over the world with different genders, different backgrounds. We have so much freedom, but we have to learn how to exercise that freedom in a way that benefits us.

Doree (42:48):

Well, that is, oh my God, was that a lot? No, it was fantastic. That was just a lovely note to end on. Anna, where can our listeners find you?

Anna Goldfarb (42:59):

Yeah, you can find me, Anna Goldfarb on Instagram. You can check out my website and learn a little bit more about the book. I have a free book excerpt on the website so you can see if it's going to be a good fit for you. And also my substack friendship explained where I explain, I really have a lot of fun on my substack. It's OG blogging to me. I'm an old blogger and love connecting with that kind of blogging mentality. Very 2009 Tumblr for me over the beautiful. So friendship explains, it's anna goldfarb substack.com.

Doree (43:38):

Well, thank you so much, Anna. It was really such a pleasure to get to talk to you.

Anna Goldfarb (43:43):

Thank you for having me. I've been jumping up and down all week. I'm so excited to be here.

Doree (43:51):

All right. Well, what a great way to kick off Friendship Month with Anna. Absolutely. Really enjoyed that conversation. And now we are in our intention zone. Yeah, I always felt like we needed a sound effect there.

Elise (44:09):

Agree. Agree. Catch me up. Do.

Doree (44:12):

Yeah. Yeah. So last week I said I was going to keep going with Sticker Fest, and I got news for you. I kept going. I kept going. I actually just realized I am behind on actually putting the stickers on the calendar, but I have been doing it every day. You've been writing? Yes. It's often just like, oh shit. It's almost time for bed. And I haven't written my sentence, and then I write my sentence. But you know what? That is a sentence more than I would have written.

Elise (44:41):

Yes,

Doree (44:42):

You earned that sticker. You earned every sticker. I earned that sticker, and I have a big deadline for something else coming up next week. And then after that, I am going to kind of refocus and set aside actual time for my writing, and I'm excited about that.

(45:05):

Yeah. And then this week, I have a friend coming into town, actually, she timely here. She's someone I have been friends with for more than 15 years, and she lives outside New York, and she's just one of my dearest friends. She's actually on Forever 35, Elizabeth, spirit Olson. She is just like the best. And she, I will say she's someone who really makes an effort with her friends. And Elizabeth, if you're listening to this, I just want to say I appreciate you and I appreciate that. And I'll tell you this in person as well, but I feel like the greater audience of listeners needs to know. Yes, good shout. Shout out. Yeah. She'll come to LA to see me and her other friends here. And I feel like a lot of people don't do that. She comes specifically to see friends, which is not just like, oh, I need to be in LA for X, Y, Z.

Elise (46:01):

Can

Doree (46:01):

You squeeze in coffee at four 30 on Thursday? It's really nice that she makes that effort. And I see you, Elizabeth, and I see the effort you put in, and it is so appreciated. And so I think I mentioned this already, that we have plans this weekend to go to the Korean spa, and tonight I'm going to go to where she's staying. We're going to order in and watch traders just friend things.

Elise (46:38):

Oh, it's Traders Night for you? It's

Doree (46:40):

Traders Night. It's Traders Night in America.

Elise (46:45):

America, or, I mean, metaphorically. It's Traders Night every day in America. But it's true. She'll

Doree (46:55):

Be here all night, folks. Yeah. So there's a new episode of Traders on Tonight, and we are both Traders Watchers. She is a big Survivor fan, so this has been a fun season for her to be watching traders. So I'm excited that we're going to order from one of our favorite restaurants. Yeah, I'm just excited.

Elise (47:23):

It's going to be great. Yes. She's a survivor fan, much like Young Ava Blythe, my Spawn, Ava. I did mention to Ava, Hey, you're a big Survivor fan. There's apparently some survivor winners on the show traders where they play Werewolf for a tv. And she was like, oh, I could watch that. And I was like, and it's on Peacock. And she was like, oh, it's on Peacock. Oh my God, that's so funny. We don't have Peacock. It's so hard to find peacock. I guess I could just buy it. But it's been, I feel like that streamer is really, really tough

Doree (48:01):

To Okay, but here's something that I will say about Peacock, because until I had Peacock, I also felt this way about Peacock. And then we got Peacock, and I was like, oh, peacock's actually kind of secretly great. I watched Conclave last night on Peacock.

Elise (48:17):

They had the rights to conclave. Wow.

Doree (48:19):

Yes. I think it must be distributed by Universal or something. And they're getting wicked. They're getting wicked on Peacock.

Elise (48:28):

Wow.

Doree (48:29):

Okay. So don't sleep on Peacock. I'm just saying. And they have the whole Bravo universe. Don't sleep on Peacock. And they have the traitors. Yeah.

Elise (48:38):

Peacock somehow became the dog of the streamers.

Doree (48:42):

But you know what? Unfairly this episode brought to you by Peacock? No, I'm just kidding. What if my whole fandom of traitors was just a long gorilla market? Elaborating, right? Yeah. Yeah. For Peacock that even you didn't know about. Yeah. Surprise. Surprise. Anyway, thematically appropriate. My intention this week is to just enjoy friendship.

Elise (49:10):

Yes. Yes. I love it.

Doree (49:14):

Thank you.

Elise (49:14):

What about you and shout out to your friend Elizabeth. I am. This next week is, it's almost my birthday. My birthday's on the 17th. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So this next week I have a bunch of deadlines to meet, which means my intention is going to be to write furiously and be a content producing factory. I don't think that that's a really great self-care intention.

Doree (49:42):

No, but you know what? Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

Elise (49:46):

As we say in Texas, we got to get her done. So I'm going to have to get her done. I'm going to focus. So maybe the intention is focus, right. And that way I can have something delivered. I can have a few different things shipped before going off for my birthday weekend.

Doree (50:04):

Okay. This is exciting.

Elise (50:06):

I have never been, I'm very excited, but I'm going to Mexico City. Oh my

Doree (50:11):

Gosh. How cool.

Elise (50:12):

Yeah. Apparently it's like one of the best food cities in the world. So I'm excited to eat my face off so long as my gastrointestinal system cooperates. And there's so much speaking of friends, a bunch of my friends are coming down with me, and I think we could all kind of use it. Three of those friends work for the federal government, and I think we're still employed. So as of this taping. So I think it's going to be really a good recharge and a reset for a lot of us.

Doree (50:48):

Totally. Totally. Oh, that'll be so nice. Okay. Well, this has been great. It's been great to talk to you.

Elise (51:00):

Yeah, great to talk to you. And happy Friendship Month to all of you listeners. Don't forget to send in your questions and thoughts.

Doree (51:06):

Yeah. And Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir, and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and Acast is our network partners. Thanks everybody. Until next time. Bye.