00:02:02.000We haven't gotten a chance to chat since we worked on the She Wants More podcast, which was based on your wonderful book and talked about women choosing to have affairs and the motivations behind that.
00:02:17.700And you have a new book out that explores something else that we don't talk nearly enough about, how losing our female friendships can truly break us. And I think they can break us in a way that is even harder than a romantic breakup. And yet we don't have any language for it, right?
00:02:38.300Exactly. That's why I wrote the book, because it was just another one of those dirty little secrets that we do estrange from someone who was once our best female friend. And the book is really about how we get to the other side.
00:02:53.580Yeah, and it's called Estranged, How Strained Female Friendship Are Ended or Mended. And this hit me because in Everyone is Lying to You, yes, it is a thriller. Yes, it is about child wives and marriage. But at the heart of the story is a friendship breakup.
00:03:12.800And a lot of the early readers are telling me that it's the friendship breakup plot line that is just gut punching them because everyone, every woman I know has gone through something like this.
00:03:24.480Absolutely. And we don't not only do we not talk about it, but we really don't always own it. In other words, you know, women historically have felt like they are failing or they second guess what happened, blame themselves, fear of being sort of pushed out of a circle of friends.
00:03:46.340totally i mean i think about i've had a couple of friendship breakups in my life one was a slow
00:03:53.780burn one was an absolute ghost and i think about those so much more often than i think about
00:03:59.480breaking up with the dudes in my life exactly and in terms of how this book got you know going
00:04:06.680was seven years ago my beloved mother died and i was so surprised joe by which friends were really
00:04:14.020there for me. And the ones I expected to be had somehow disappeared. And I said to my agent and
00:04:21.020my publisher, you know, I really want to write this book and do the research. And they said,
00:04:27.400well, that sounds great. But and I had interviewed 25 women so far, because, you know, I always
00:04:31.900interview about 150 to 200 women per nonfiction book. And they said, you know, you have to hand
00:04:38.320in your novels first. So when I went back to the research two and a half years ago,
00:04:44.200everything had changed. And instead of only second guessing and only feeling like you failed,
00:04:51.600women were saying, you know what, after COVID, after what I've been through lately,
00:04:57.620I am feeling empowered to leave an unhealthy friendship.
00:05:01.520that is so interesting i have also i will say i have also felt more empowered as i've grown up
00:05:09.220to leave toxic friendships behind uh which i think for me it has just been part of being a grown-up
00:05:18.180being like you know what this person is an energy vampire they suck more from me than they are giving
00:05:24.900to me that it's time. It's time to end this. But again, that is also very hard because we don't0.87
00:05:31.940have nearly enough language in our society about it. And we're taught, you know, the societal
00:05:36.700prescription is that we're best friends forever. And we're always, as you and I have talked about,
00:05:42.500expected to be the good girl. And we know the price for that is very high. And that extends
00:05:47.840to female friendships because as a good girl, we wouldn't be breaking up. So, you know, you say
00:05:55.320that you've evolved and you feel more agency as you're older. And I agree with that totally. But
00:06:01.660the women I interviewed for this book were between the ages of 20 and 80. And what fascinated me was
00:06:07.920as women reinvent themselves at every stage of their lives, they're still seeking these very
00:06:13.920kind of sacred best friends. Exactly, exactly. And it's so, you know, the female model for0.99
00:06:22.280friendship is so interesting to me because we don't see men have those expectations
00:06:27.460that are the same as women. I think women, we set a very high bar for ourselves and we become
00:06:34.540perfectionists even in our friendships and that can make them really difficult as well. And,
00:06:39.880And, you know, female friendship is very fraught.0.78
00:06:42.020I think about this even as I watch my five-year-old, you know, start living her life with her girlfriends in preschool.
00:06:49.880And I watch those girls become friends and stop being friends.
00:06:53.340And one day one of the girls is cast out of the group.
00:06:55.940And the next day it's a different girl.
00:06:57.940And the fact that it starts this young is amazing to me.
00:07:02.060But it's just it's going to show me that female friendships can be really complicated.
00:07:09.240It begins so early. And yeah, she's in kindergarten. You know, it's all going very strong. And this is partly our nature as females to bond with females. You know, the theory of homogamy, like with like. We want to be with other girls and female, you know, young girls, high school, all of it. And the rest, you know, the rest of our lives.
00:07:31.820You know, if life is a pie for the female experience, which I think it is, these female0.78
00:07:37.480friendships are a big piece of it because all else can come and go, especially in our
00:08:13.340So after doing the research, the 150 women and then the questionnaire in the back of the book for another 111, I came to the conclusion that there were seven red flag friendships.
00:08:25.580and I can name a few. The faithless friend, the friend who's always there until something gets
00:08:32.420between you. So everything is going along. And then maybe you have a new love interest or she
00:08:38.740has a new friend from work, but someone else gets into the mix and it becomes a triangle instead of
00:08:45.760a dyad. And that really, it can break you up. A wayward friend. This is really a difficult
00:08:53.660situation. So that's the friend who has some kind of addiction. Drugs, alcohol, gambling. And you
00:09:01.100are the enabler. And I looked at a lot of research on that. And this is where the women say, you know,
00:09:06.880I really love this friend. And, you know, we've been together forever and all of the reasons to
00:09:11.140be there. But it puts you in a very difficult place. Another type of friend, the diametrically
00:09:18.200opposed friend, is something new. And this is really reflective of the last two elections
00:09:25.580and the idea of vaccine or not vaccine. And while in the past, we haven't always been on the same
00:09:32.700page as our very close friends in terms of politics and maybe even being vaccinated,0.90
00:09:39.300right now, women of all ages are saying, you know, I couldn't be with a friend who voted that one.
00:09:43.700I couldn't be with a friend who didn't get her children vaccinated.
00:09:48.200Yeah, I do think that the pandemic and everything that has been happening politically lately has made a lot of people reconsider many of their friendships.
00:10:00.320And it has been really, really hard for a lot of people that I know.
00:10:05.320I know my mom has gone through a couple friend breakups during this time period.
00:10:09.960so did you dig into what kinds of friendships could more easily be saved and which ones might
00:10:17.520be worth shedding the two types because i i had mentioned three i think um where i believe you
00:10:25.560could renegotiate the friendship the two the two categories or chapters one is called the
00:10:32.480flippant friend where you don't feel you get enough respect and she's hierarchical you know
00:10:38.140even have a section on friends with money. You know, say you started out the same and then she's0.99
00:10:43.220just either earned, inherited, and married up. But somehow she has a very different lifestyle.
00:10:49.820And those friendships often fray. And the friend could really sit down with her friend and say,
00:10:56.960you know, I feel like I don't count anymore. You could do it with that friend. And the other
00:11:01.000chapter, the disparaging friend, I think you could renegotiate. And that is where she's so critical
00:11:10.120and deprecating that you really are too uncomfortable, especially with other people,
00:11:16.980you know, other friends where, you know, mutual friends where you really need to say to her,
00:11:22.940if you have the guts to do it. And Joe, that's a whole other thing because women really don't1.00
00:11:27.300like conflict or confrontation. There's a lot of ghosting that goes on when we leave a friend,1.00
00:11:33.020but that could really be discussed. But when it comes to the last two categories, last two
00:11:39.380chapters, a green-eyed friend, we all know what jealousy does and how dark that is. So that one's
00:11:45.140tough to fix. And a thieving friend, the final chapter where a friend could steal anything from
00:11:52.700a person to an idea, that again is one of those, after such knowledge, let me quote T.S.L.A.,
00:12:00.220after such knowledge, what forgiveness. You really can't get past someone who's betrayed you on that
00:12:05.020level. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I want to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk
00:12:11.060about the fact that you put out there that maybe it's okay for female friendships, for some female
00:12:17.260friendships to have an expiration date and why we're so afraid of that idea.
00:12:22.700Okay, we are back. You say in the book that you think it's okay if a female friendship0.62
00:12:34.920has an expiration date. And I'm going to put a couple scenarios out there. There are women that0.55
00:12:42.560I became friends with when my babies, all three of them at different times, were very small and
00:12:49.040we were baby mom friends. And then we realized we had nothing in common besides being baby mom
00:12:54.260friends. And we had a definite expiration date. What do you think about that? I think it's really
00:13:01.840true. And you're right. It's applicable to the circumstance. And women of every age in this book
00:13:08.120talked about it. You know, we met when the kids were small. We were so consumed with the children
00:13:13.380that we had that in common. And then, of course, we had nothing in common, just as you described.
00:13:18.000of women whose children all go off to college, women who return to work, women who've never
00:13:23.780stopped working versus the stay-at-home moms, all these different reasons to be mirroring each other.
00:13:30.660And that's very inviting, and it's easy. I mean, I interviewed one woman who said,
00:13:36.340you know, I stayed in the city. I chose to be single. My best friend, she left her job. She
00:13:43.080moved to the suburbs, she has these two little children and she has no time for me. And what0.83
00:13:48.000are we going to talk about anyway? Meanwhile, the women who have become young mothers often say
00:13:53.160it's just easier to be with the other mothers. And then as women get older or even women who
00:13:58.160get divorced, you know, oh, I'm friendly only with divorced women. So there's a lot of that.0.91
00:14:06.540Yeah, I think that we have different, we have different needs at different phases of life. And
00:14:12.760that it is okay to reevaluate who you are, how you spend your time and how you want to spend your
00:14:21.220time as as life shifts and changes. And, you know, I think that we as women, we often do
00:14:29.560spend a lot of energy trying to hold on because we think that it's the right thing to do. We think
00:14:35.220that we're that we're a good person if we can keep nurturing these things forever. And it's
00:14:39.740just not always possible. I agree with you completely. I mean, we're taught that we hold
00:14:47.540on to this, that we're meant to hold on to these friends. And there are a lot of justifications
00:14:51.960that I heard among this diverse group of women whom I spoke with. I mean, everything from we
00:14:57.860grew up together to our daughters, just as you said, you know, our daughters were in school
00:15:01.680together, to our mothers were friends. We're from the same church. Our grandmothers knew each other.
00:15:10.060We were roommates in grad school. Our husbands knew each other and were friends. So all these
00:15:16.880reasons to be afraid to kind of break the pattern. But what's fascinating to me is that there's
00:15:23.160tacit approval to leave a marriage in this country or a longstanding monogamous commitment,
00:15:28.300but not to leave a female friendship and so I as well as the interviews in the book I've done
00:15:34.100research and one of the um people I reference um for whom I have great admiration is Margaret Mead
00:15:43.080the social anthropologist and she was once interviewed about her her marriages and the
00:15:49.580journalist said um how do you feel about your three failed marriages and she said you mean my
00:15:54.140three successful marriages, women need to understand, this is the famous quote, Joe,
00:15:59.260that marriage is terminal. And I think that, I paraphrase, of course, and I think that that's0.92
00:16:05.180really what we can say about these friendships, that they have a time and place and it's not
00:16:11.060always forever. And I totally believe that about marriages, too. I mean, right now,
00:16:18.120madly in love with my husband. I mean, madly is an exaggeration. It's an exaggeration. We have
00:16:24.520three kids, but I'm happy. I'm very happy. And I don't see that changing, but I've watched a lot
00:16:31.380of friends whose marriages just were not meant to go through another season of life. And shifting
00:16:39.920into something new has to be okay. Yeah. And longevity really is a part of this. Women live
00:16:47.600a long time now. And we get to reinvent ourselves. And that includes the kinds of friends that we1.00
00:16:53.720want. But what's definitely always happening is this yearning for real intimacy in our closest
00:17:02.620friendships. Always looking to be understood and to feel secure in those friendships.
00:17:08.380What did you learn about positive and constructive ways of ending a friendship?
00:17:17.860Is there a world in which we can do the Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin version of conscious uncoupling our friendships?
00:17:26.800Probably not so easily based on my research.1.00
00:17:31.120Women really don't want, excuse me, to sit down.1.00
00:17:35.860And, you know, we talked about those two chapters where it could happen.0.98
00:17:41.480But if your friend has basically seduced your boyfriend or, you know, slept with your husband, that's the kind of deal breaker where it's incendiary.
00:17:52.020And women often describe a really terrible scene.
00:17:54.880and other times and more often in my study women just do a slow fade or they actually ghost the0.56
00:18:02.660friend and you know stop texting and you know cancel dates and make excuses until the message
00:18:08.900is received so the estranger is the one who puts it into play and the estrangee is at the receiving
00:18:17.200end of the breakup. Right, right. But if you wanted to try, tell me some examples you found
00:18:27.240of people who have done this successfully. I interviewed a woman in her 30s who said that
00:18:33.860she and her close friend had come from the same religious background and community where it was
00:18:41.100very important. And they had gone separate ways and made distinctive choices as adult women,
00:18:48.220young adult women, in terms of how they would live their life and their commitment to this church.
00:18:54.660And the friend who really stayed with the pedagogy and stuck with all of it was very
00:19:01.760unhappy with her friend who left. And finally, after some dramatic incidents,
00:19:07.860they had a very civilized conversation about it where they said, look, we've really grown apart
00:19:14.780and we can't be together anymore. We don't look at the world the same way. And that is really a
00:19:21.400big deal if you don't have the same values as your close friend. Too much friction and tension
00:19:26.380and too much judgment. And Joe, since in a patriarchal culture, women are judged every1.00
00:19:32.320day for everything they do by strangers, by society at large, the idea that your best friend
00:19:39.120and you are now judging each other in your choices is really reason to break up. And so they did that
00:19:45.280in a very impressive way. And I love that. I love it when people behave like grownups. Unfortunately,
00:19:52.520most of us grownups do not always behave like grownups. Right. And also it takes a lot of,
00:19:59.560You're right. Maturity. But also it takes courage to sit down with someone who you once shared all, you know, with whom you shared all your secrets and expect you expected her to be there forever.
00:20:12.260But this but since you asked about other examples in the book, although for the most part, I get one side of the story.
00:20:21.300I have one interview per chapter. That's a long interview. And it's both sides of the story.
00:20:28.040I was really fortunate to get both the first, you know, both friends and the story of their breakup. And what was interesting about that, besides listening to both sides, which, of course, is almost like reading a novel, was the idea that one of the two, in three cases, yearned to get back together. And the other friend said, I've had enough. I can't go back.
00:20:54.060so you know that those conversations too can we salvage this would you take another chance very
00:21:01.660much like a romance really well because and again you know this is what we talked about in the
00:21:08.060beginning a friendship is maybe even more important in our life than a romantic partner in so many
00:21:16.920ways i mean when i think about the different stages of my life it has been the women who
00:21:23.180have gotten me through not the men the men seem very disposable when i'm looking back yes that's
00:21:30.600and that's really um in contrast to what we're taught we're taught you know the culture tells
00:21:39.000us that well these women friends are so important that you know one of the goals one of the glittering
00:21:45.040prizes is to have a partner you know a love interest who if you so choose you know you'll
00:21:52.620have children with and create a family. And marriage is still, as we know, quite a goal in
00:21:58.700this society. And yet 75% of the women told me that they feel more obligated to stay with the
00:22:09.560female friend than with the husband or partner. And I also had really nice stats on the women
00:22:18.700who felt that a friend had done something terrible, 80% of the women said that they
00:22:24.540had had a problem with one of their closest friends. Yeah. Well, I also, I think that
00:22:29.920we also live in a very reality TV show version of the world now where a lot of the reality shows we
00:22:38.340watch are about women friends catfighting each other. We've got the Real Housewives. Now we've0.97
00:22:44.060got the secret lives of Mormon wives. And we so often see examples of toxic friendships for women,1.00
00:22:51.180whereas we don't see us for men as often. No, it's not as juicy. And let's face it,
00:22:58.640I mean, women are more curious. And again, because we live in a patriarchal culture,1.00
00:23:06.760we're more multifaceted and more acrobatic, but we have been taught to compete only with other1.00
00:23:14.520women. And so that's why we see lots of nastiness and rivalry, because that's how we've been set up0.97
00:23:23.480in every stage of our lives. I mean, we are told that this is a not enough pie situation for us.
00:23:34.900If your friend gets something terrific, your sense is then you lost your chance.