Why Adult Friendship Feels So Hard Now: How Social Media, Boundary Confusion, and Performative Closeness Are Changing Connection with Nina Badzin

Okay but… why is adult friendship so hard sometimes?

In this episode of The Visibility Standard, I’m joined by Nina Badzin , author and podcast host, for a real, grounding conversation about the evolving landscape of friendship in 2025 and beyond—and why so many of us feel quietly confused, guilty, or unsettled about our relationships.

We talk about how social media has reshaped our expectations of closeness, why some friendships start to feel one-sided or performative, and how boundaries, forgiveness, and clarity can either repair connection—or reveal when it’s time to let go. This episode isn’t about blaming yourself or anyone else. It’s about telling the truth about what adult friendship actually asks of us.

In this episode, we explore:

• The difference between real intimacy and performative friendship
• How social media warps expectations of availability and closeness
• What to do when a friendship starts feeling one-sided
• Why boundaries and clarity are essential (not cruel)
• How to decide when to repair a friendship—and when to release it

If you’ve ever felt weird about your group chat, questioned whether you’re a “bad friend,” or wondered if it’s okay to let a relationship fade, this conversation offers validation and language.

Friendships aren’t meant to last forever just because they once mattered. You’re allowed to honor your needs, your time, and your energy. And evolving doesn’t make you disloyal—it makes you honest.

Tap in. This one gives a lot of people permission. 💌

you can hear more from Nina on her podcast Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to All Our Parts. Welcome to All Our Parts. If you are new here, I am Jasmine, the host, and I am so excited for my guest today. She is the podcast host of Dear Nina, Conversation About Friendship. Nina Badson, I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you

SPEAKER_01 0:20

for having me. You pronounced my last name perfectly. That doesn't always go that way. So thank you. I really try

SPEAKER_00 0:27

to crush pronunciations because it's so important.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

It is. I

SPEAKER_00 0:30

know. I have the same pressure as a podcaster So tell us about how did you get into the topic about friendship? You've been podcasting. You've been an author, writer for years on the topic. How did this become your passion?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

So as a writer, a freelance writer, you get passions. You lean into things that you're really interested in. And I've always been interested in friendship. A long time ago, I would say easily 18, 19 years ago, I actually wrote a I'm very grateful it didn't. But it got close. I almost got an agent with it. I spent years on this book. And it was about a friendship breakup. It was about a woman who was dumped by her best friend. And then she ends up connecting with two other women who were later in different parts of that best friend's life dumped by the same friend. And so the three of them bond over the fact that they've all been dropped by this woman. I was in my 20s when I wrote that. And then I put that aside for a while. That was fiction. in nonfiction, I'd written some things about friendship. But as I had more kids, I have four kids, I ended up writing about parenting a lot because that's what I was in the thick of. So I had articles and magazines and different places and I would write about parenting. And then when my oldest was 10, it became very clear that I did not want to write about parenting anymore for two reasons. First of all, I was living it. I was in the thick of it. And I didn't want to also have my work be about it. And also the kids were becoming more aware. And this was nonfiction. And it was a lot of like service type of articles and stuff. So I wasn't necessarily writing about them, but yet you are referring to them in some way, shape or form. Cause that was part of my quote unquote expertise is that I had all these kids and my oldest, I could just tell he, a couple of times I'd come up in front of other people, like things I'd written about, like I'd written about his piano recital one time. And he was like, you wrote about that. And I was like, okay, I could just see the writing on the wall. And I did not want to keep going with that around that same time, a couple of women who were starting a website for women wanted to focus on friendship and they wanted a friendship advice columnist. I'd had other advice columns. I had done a baby name advice column for a different website. That was a lot of fun. It was the first thing I wrote for that was like, please let me name your baby. Like I love baby names, but I was out of babies to name. And so I liked that advice voice. I also wrote an advice column for writers about how to use Twitter. This is like a million years ago, back in the early days. And I liked that voice. And so they hired me to write a friendship advice column. I was a little hesitant at first, you can imagine, because I'm not a therapist. I'm not a social worker. I'm like, who am I? I'm obsessed with this topic and always have been. But they were like, no, we'll make that the thing that you're just like a regular person who has an odd obsession with this topic. You're someone who will listen to someone's friendship problems endlessly and that I enjoy analyzing these things. That was back in 2014. So I worked for them for about four years and I just brought it to my own site when they changed directions. And in 2021, which which was almost four years ago, I started the podcast because that's the direction of, do people read anymore? I don't even know. I read still, but it seemed like that's where the audience was going and it was a natural podcast to do. And I was a very early podcast listener. So I knew I wanted one and I thought I had to wait to have a friendship book to have a podcast. And then I realized, wait, says who? So I did it. And podcasting is hard. It was a huge learning curve, but I love it now. Now I'm like teaching other people how to podcast I'm into it.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yes, I hear like early on, a lot of your inspiration was pulled from like your own life. And I imagine that was therapeutic for you like that allowed space to process. Tell me about

SPEAKER_01 4:18

it. Yeah, it's funny. I had not thought about it that way. But I think you're right, especially when I was writing that novel. And it was all about this painful friendship breakup I had. And I think it did help me process it. And then in the early parts of the advice column, I was hearing a lot from people who had breakups and that seemed to be the focus for a while. I have really shifted my focus, not that I won't talk to people about their friendship breakups or ends of friendship, but as I received information, I get a lot of anonymous letters and they're truly anonymous. I prefer them to be anonymous. I have a form on my website that first these other editors created it and then I copied it. It does not require an email address. So a lot of forms do. So people have to go out of their way to make one up or sign up for some anonymous type of email that doesn't have their name. To write to me, you really don't have to do that. So you really could pour your heart out. I can't use them all because the only way for me to respond without an email address is either it used to be in the column. I still do those in my newsletter on Substack or on the podcast. And I have a Facebook group where people also write in their problems. So back to your question about how I process things, I do think it helped me process the breakups, but I feel like I'm trying to help people think of friendship beyond that, like before the breakup, like how to be a good friend and how to make friends. Keeping friends and making friends are two different topics. And then losing a friend is a third topic. So I see friendship in your work. I bet you see this too. You'll tell me in these three buckets and they're not the same. The tips for making a friend are not the same as keeping a friend. It's not the same as how to end a friendship. They're different. I never talk about them all in my podcast in one episode. It's like a lot of my episodes are in that middle bucket, keeping friends. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 6:03

I think there's so much more information. We're having so many more conversations around friendship breakups, the grief, the loss aspect, a lot of the nostalgia that comes up, what the friendship meant to the person. But we don't do a lot of guidance around making new friends and maintaining the friendships. We get to these endpoints where we're processing and we're trying to figure out how we could have done things better. and we can be proactive if we choose to hold on to friendships, to cultivate new friendships, to create depth in these already standing friendships.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, exactly. We know each other from social media. I see so many patterns on social media and then it's hard to know how real it is or does the algorithm just showing me things that I'm already watching. But there is, and it tends to be people younger than me. I'm sure, I feel like I'm probably quite a bit older than you. I mean, My kids are old. I have a 21-year-old almost. He's almost 21. So I've seen different generations. My four kids are seven years apart. So I still have a 13-year-old at home. I see that. He's very different from my 21-year-old when he was 13. So much technology has changed. But anyway, a lot of what I see in social media that's coming at me, I think is from somewhat younger people. And they seem to be really distraught over what I call a confusion about reciprocity. And it could even be literally about social media. So I wonder if you see this, a lot of people get on there and they're very upset about their friends, not liking their posts. For example, that's like a huge topic that comes in front of me. That's what people write to me about it. And I just see it. And that to me is just a symbol of the issue out there of not knowing what's reasonable to expect from your friends. Like your friends. I really try to tell people are not your fans. They did not sign up to be your customer. your follower. They're your friends. They're not your follower. And they don't necessarily want to sit there and watch every one of your things and comment. That would be a part-time job to do that for everyone's friends. On the other side, someone might say, what's the big deal? Maybe they don't use social media that way. Maybe they use it more like TV. So they just consume, they scroll. I'm like doing this with my finger, like I'm scrolling. But they don't, they're not there to interact. But then they say, people will say, I see them like other people's posts. The set Second, you are testing your friends like that. You are watching how they behave with other friends. Each relationship is different. I just went off on a tangent, but it's a good example, the social media and how we demand certain things from our friends. Friends don't know that we're demanding those things. They don't know we're upset at them. You could say to a friend, it would really mean a lot to me if you'd like to post once in a while. You could, but now what? That might seem like a little petty. Are we counting the likes? Are we keeping score?

UNKNOWN 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Those of us who have podcasts or other people on there who are selling things on social media or they're influencers, it means a lot to them. But how much time are you spending on your friend's job? Did you go sit and watch them do a court case in the room? If they're a doctor or a nurse, are you sitting in the room being like, good job on that? You know, those stitches. It's a lot to ask, I think. Be somebody's forever fan and follower. I

SPEAKER_00 9:27

have been itching to talk about this. Oh, good. Let's talk about it. Because When I started making content, podcasting, starting my business, there was no expectation that my friends would then turn into my fans. And I have seen that discourse. It's free, like a repost is free. Yes, and I love my friends, but they are not my target audience. If I am curating my content to my friends and family, A, as a business owner, or I'm limiting myself so that that's not my audience and that's like an unspoken obligation that I don't need to give them their friendship is not based it wasn't based on content before why would I base it on like the engagement of my content now that's like an unfair expectation I think and it turns the reciprocity to more of a space of give and take than like genuine in reciprocity.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

It's very dangerous and very common. And again, I started that out by saying I'm not sure if it's horribly common or it's just TikTok keeps showing me people in that discourse. But I'm glad you're seeing it too so I don't feel like I'm imagining things. And people really argue with me about it. Sometimes when I get brave and I have the energy, I don't do it a lot because I do not care to argue with people on the internet. But once in a while, I get in someone's comments and be like, I don't think that's a great way to measure your friendship. And they'll be like... exactly what you just said. Oh, it's so easy to like, it's free. Or I'll see other posts that are like, here's how you can support your author friend, your podcaster friend, your influencer friend. And that assumes that people are out there just searching for ways that they can support their friends' businesses. I think people just want to be friends in real life. And it's just not a good idea to have that be the measure. And I think thinking about your friend's job, flipping it is a good way to think about it. Like how often are you even asking about your friend's job, being there to clap? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

How long are you sitting in their classroom where they're teaching a lesson? How often are you watching them? I'm like... Yes, support is free and that's not my customer. That's not what we signed up for the friendship to now be my support, like my fan club.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Marketing team. They're not your marketing. Here's how you support a friend who's starting a business. This is what I would say. Here's how to support your friend. If they have a new book out, they have a podcast, they are just trying to start a new business, they're in a private therapy practice and they're looking for new clients. The way to support them is to be their friend, which which is ask them how it's going. I always say, I don't care if my friends listen to my podcast. I do care, however, if we've been on an hour walk and at no point did they say, how's it going? How's the podcast going? I can see your author working really hard. Do you like it still? There's ways to just talk to your friend about what they do. That is supportive. Just be a friend. And I'm sure you would appreciate, right? If someone said to you, how is the business going? Do you have enough clients? Do you wish you were working more? Do you wish you were working less? How's the podcast? Has it been what you wanted it to be? I just want people to talk to me about what I'm doing, just like I ask about their jobs. But I don't expect them to constantly be leaving me reviews everywhere or it would just be annoying. Like you don't want to be annoying to your friends.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

I think there is another layered concept that comes with this conversation and that when people get into spaces where they're building something for themselves, relationship to their friends who maybe aren't in the entrepreneur space or in the social media space changes. Is that something that you've seen or heard?

SPEAKER_01 13:49

There is an awkwardness when your friend decides to be a very online person. I feel very self-conscious personally. That's something I deal with personally. Like I sometimes hesitate to post. I actually had somebody on my podcast recently. His name's Harlan Cohen. He does a lot of work with college kids and giving tips about college kids. He's a huge following, half a million people. So he's gotten to the point where he just gets out there and does awkward things, says whatever he wants, and people love it. And I was talking to him and I was like, God, I wish I could do that. I feel like I have a lot to say. I feel like I'm an outgoing person. But before every single moment I post, I think about my real friends and my family. And I'm like, oh, are they going to make fun of me? Even though I know they love me I do wonder sometimes are they like what's Nina doing are they rolling their eyes and I almost wish that they didn't follow me at all in a way it's like we need those initial followers but then I'm like I wonder if I'd be freer if they didn't don't even really think I answered your question but it was something that was on my mind I was thinking about how the relationship changes a little bit when people are seeing like your online self and like you're trying to be the same person but you're not going to be a thousand percent You got to be a little more like up online. It's a little bit of work. And then I always do worry like that I seem different or something. I don't think I am, but who knows?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, that does answer my question. I remember when I was first starting and I was like, what are my friends thinking? What are they going to say? And I was much more conscientious about how often I posted. I don't want to take up their feeds with me. my stuff.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Yes, I'm the same way. Like enough Amina, like she's so too much. But we don't want to be like that. You can't advance your own stuff if you're doing it in order to avoid people thinking negative things about you. And I'm giving myself therapy right here.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, it's once I got to a point where I was thinking about the people in my real life, it did give me the permission and the space to be more free online, to be more consistent online Yeah. In order to grow, to really see how this part of your life can expand, it's also creating community with folks who are doing the same thing, who are in the same season of life as you.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, that's how we met. And that makes a lot of sense to have basically colleagues. When you work alone like this, it's nice to develop those colleagues. And I think those are real relationships. Do you feel that way too? They are real relationships. They're different. They're probably not going to show up to your parents' funeral That's not that kind of relationship. But these are the ties that I think round out our life. Not everybody needs to be best friend that you speak to every day that will show up on your doorstep with soup. It's important to have a couple of people like that. And then it is good to develop these other relationships and for people like us or other people who have online lives, that is a more appropriate place to expect more of a reciprocity. If I met someone online and that was the basis of our relationship, our relationship and we're both podcasters, whatever. And I was constantly liking their stuff and they were never doing it back. That's a situation where I might go, okay, I'm going to probably move on. I think I do expect without even having said it out loud until now, some level of reciprocity in that. That's how you grow that connection. It's just not appropriate for our real life friends. People need to learn the difference.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah. I don't even think I've really deeply thought about these two until this conversation, which is so important. There is real life, genuine reciprocity, and then online space reciprocity. Like I know you're online, you have the same goals that I do. If I'm here to help you grow, expand, if we're having this conversations, the boat that I'm in, because you're also in that same boat, I hope you would return the jester and see how we can support one another. Yeah, there is definitely a little bit more of an expectation. I had a friend who I met in the online space who wouldn't engage with my content at all and I would consistently engage with her and reshare her stuff and all of this. I definitely felt more slighted in that sense versus if my friends that are in my real life who don't engage in social media the same way are not resharing and reposting because that's the foundation that we based the friendship on and so then to not have that reciprocity in that specific space. I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

I know that feels bad. I've had that for sure. I've had that where even if it's something, I mean, we're just like being really honest here, which is good. Sometimes it's good to get the pettiness out, but it's not petty. There's many people you could connect with online. So there's no reason to be chasing someone if it's not being returned. Like I've had to learn that myself. Like I don't need to be treating someone like they're a celebrity. And then I feel like this little peon, like, no, like we don't need to make ourselves feel that way unless it's an actual celebrity. That's different.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah. Yeah. That is it. I don't know why that reciprocity is. important to expect it. And again, I think is based on the foundational aspects of what you're building the friendship on. You're not building the friendship on grabbing coffee, going for a walk, meeting their family, talking about kids. You're basing it off of a different foundation. And so it's almost a very clear and tangible, oh, I support you, but you don't support me. I think that is fair to say in that specific

SPEAKER_01 20:10

space. It is an awkward thing because you're probably not even close enough of a to even say anything about it. So you just, I guess you do what we would do in real life, that quiet quitting. That's probably how you handle that. It's probably how I would handle it and probably how I have handled it, which is I stopped liking their stuff as much. It probably doesn't show up in my feed as much then. And then I'm not purpose ignoring you. It just, it truly is not in front of me anymore. So there's so many people, so many other people, and you just kind of move on. It's a bummer when you've actually developed a rapport with that person. like maybe off the, like you've emailed and other things. And at the same time, sometimes people get like a little too self-important and you're just like, okay, I'm moving on.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Does engaging so much in the online space also contribute to the level of disconnection that I feel is felt on a larger scale? Because we're talking about being the most connected we've ever been. We have threads, we have TikTok, we have Instagram we have all of these means in connection and as so many people have spoken on we're also in a loneliness epidemic where people are just feeling so isolated oh

SPEAKER_01 21:29

yes absolutely so there's all these memes out there that I see that make me bananas I don't like them I don't agree with them and everyone's ah they're so funny no they're not funny and it will say stuff like it's always about canceling there's a couple different buckets but it's all the same thing so it's it will be like hoping someone, your friend cancels. You've seen this kind of stuff. It's like, you're so excited when your friend cancels. That's usually said in a more funny way. There'll be ones about, oh, modern friendship is sending your friend 50 TikToks at two in the morning, but never seeing each other in person. And I always have to be like, that doesn't have to be. No, it doesn't have to be that. It really shouldn't be. That can be part of what adds levity to your friendship. Now I'm talking about people that, you know, maybe live in town with you. You are not seeing, you are instead just sending stuff back and forth. And listen, And I send stuff back and forth with my friends too. But I try to push people. You have to see your friends sometimes. It is not okay to say that adult friendship and adult life is just sending each other memes. It shouldn't be. I acknowledge that is what it has become for some people, but that's a bad idea and it will lead to disconnection and loneliness. It will atrophy your muscle of what it means to actually show up for somebody in person. I don't just mean in bad times. Just meet for coffee. Just go for a walk, not cancel. Show up, be an adult. Do what you say you are going to do. You have it on your calendar. You do it. You push other things aside. And anybody who says to me, oh, I don't have time to see my friends, because that's what's behind those memes is this idea like, oh, we don't have time to see our friends. Therefore, we have to just send each other these things. Show me your screen time and I will tell you whether you actually have time to see your friends and I do not buy it. If you could put that phone down for, and I know it for myself, I'm on the phone all the time. If you could put your phone down for an hour and maybe not all at once, if you shave off the five minutes that you're constantly checking and sending and copying the link and sending whatever, I bet you could go for a walk and at least talk to your friend on the phone. I bet you could stretch in your room while you're talking to your friend on the phone. Because I think talking on the phone these days is a huge step up from just texting or just sending memes back and forth. So that counts. That's a start. Let's make time to talk to our friends on the phone. And then you can make time to see people in person. But you have to make the time, which is one of the topics I definitely wanted to talk to you about is scheduling, speaking to what you were saying about being disconnected in person. I do think people have time, but you have to make the time and you have to schedule it. It's not sexy. It's not fun and exciting. And it could be last minute. It could be... You looked at your calendar the next day and you're like, oh, wait, I have an opening here. Let me reach out to three different people and see if somebody wants to meet for coffee just so I can remember what it's like to actually be with people in person.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Yeah, we have maybe normalized cancel culture a little as a preservation of self-care, of rest. While all of those things are important, I think we have gotten to a point where we need to show up. If we want that connection if we say that's what we're interested in then we have to show up we should also want to show up and I think that's more of an indicator on where the friendship is if you are seeing it on your calendar and you're like oh I need to go hang out with that's ambivalence that's a completely different conversation but when we look at our calendar and we have those scheduled friendship times we should want to show

SPEAKER_01 25:03

up yeah and a lot of times you even if you don't feel like it, because that happens, right? We're just so comfortable at home. We're doing our work. I'm thinking about people who work at home. And it's an effort to get up and stop what you're doing. And then nothing's just an hour, right? Let's say you're meeting someone for lunch or a walk or coffee for an hour. It's never an hour. It's 10, 15 minutes to get there, depending where you live more. Things are closer here. If you live somewhere with a lot of traffic, okay, maybe it's a half hour to get there. The whole thing could be two hours and that is interruptive. I get that. Or if you're going at night and it's like an investment though, you're making an investment in your future By the way, real quick, do you edit yourself? Yes. Okay, me too. I edit mine too. So sometimes when I stumble over my words like that, I just take a breath and say it again. It's so much easier to take out the whole sentence. What you're doing when you don't cancel and you push yourself and you go even though you don't feel like it is you are making an investment in your future self who will feel terrible if you don't have friends. So it's like I do think that way sometimes. Like I am doing this walk to invest in this friendship. so that this friendship is here when I need it, when I want it. I don't think any of us are going to look back on our lives and say, oh, I wish I scrolled on TikTok for an extra hour a day. I know I sound like such a bore. I scroll as much as the next person, but I do have to force myself to put it down and engage in my real life because we are not here on this earth to just be entertained at all times. We are here to connect with other people. And everything that's happening on our phone, whether it's work, or entertainment, it's part of life. But we are actually here to be in relationship with other human beings. And we have to push ourselves because it's much easier in the short run to just be entertained or continue your work. It's harder to make that investment, but it's worthwhile. Worth

SPEAKER_00 26:54

so much more than the time that I spend scrolling on TikTok or scrolling on Instagram because I can do that anytime. And B, it isn't offering me true connect. it's not offering me true engagement it's offering me a really temporary feeling of being connected of knowing what's going on out there but I'm not being an active participant in what's going on I'm just observing it I'm just an observer in what's going on and I think when we think about ways to maintain friendships is show up even when it's inconvenient, even when you feel tired, show

SPEAKER_01 27:39

up. Yes, it's that investment for the long run. Are you having to, I don't know if you can talk about this, but are you having to push clients in this direction? Is this something that comes up a lot? I think in

SPEAKER_00 27:51

the therapy space, a lot of it is looking at the people pleasing, is looking at your network and saying, who do I want to say yes to and who do I want to say no to? And I think what happens is when we have a lot of things that we want to say no to in those little bit of yeses, everything feels like a no because we are expending so much energy on the things we want to say no to that we do not have energy for the things that we want to say yes to. And so that's where I talked about the ambivalence to being more intentional in the quality time with your friends. I think so much in the therapies space is people get to choose your friendships and you get to be intentional and as you get older it truly is quality over quantity because we only have 24 hours in a day eight of those are dedicated to work we have kids partners families at home we've got to carve out some time for them as well we have a really limited space for friendships. And so if those friendships are not igniting you, they're not exciting, they're not inspiring you, you don't look forward to spending time with them, then there needs to be some evaluation as to why you still have that person in your life and what needs to shift in order for you to feel more excited about the friend time in

SPEAKER_01 29:29

your life. an issue with the actual relationship. There's a reason they're not looking forward to seeing that person. And I wonder if for some people, they wouldn't look forward to seeing anyone because they've gotten so comfortable. I know we keep talking about this, but it's true. Just being home. Are people canceling because they don't want to see that person? Or are they canceling because they don't want to see anyone? They just want to watch a show. They have to give and take. They want to just take. When I think of entertainment, it's just taking. You don't have to give much. You just are entertained. In a relationship, you have to give some. You have to questions. It's interesting. I'm about to record an episode on my concerns on chat GPT. And I'm so curious as a therapist, what you think of this. I think people are going to get addicted to it because you don't have to engage in a two-way. People think it knows you so well. It asks you endless questions. There's no human being who's going to ask you as many questions as chat GPT asks you a lot of follow-up, but you don't ask back really. You maybe ask the AI questions about what It's not like you're asking personal questions of it. It's a very one-sided relationship. And I think it's going to make this even worse. It's going to make people's social muscles even weaker because they only know what it feels like to have somebody endlessly interested in you. It's not how real life is. You have to also be interested in the other person. And so are people staying home because it's too much work to actually have to be in real relationship with people? I

SPEAKER_00 31:03

think people forget that you believe in yourself. build the chat GPT to basically be an extension of yourself and so even when people say oh chat GPT is a great replacement for therapy it's no because chat GPT isn't challenging you yeah GPT is there to appease you to help you process something but chat GPT is only as smart as you tell it to be

SPEAKER_01 31:29

yes exactly I don't see how people don't really get that. They love it. They're like, they love it. It's their best friend. And of course, everyone loves someone who loves to hear everything you have to say and is falling all over your every word and just dying to hear more information from you. Most people aren't like that, right? They also want support from you. You can't just take. So I was very in denial about AI. I didn't use it for a long time. And I thought I better understand what this thing is I have all these teenagers, college kids in my house that are clearly using it. I don't like to not be on top of things like that, technology-wise. I experimented it just this week for the first time, just talking to it, and then my mind was blown. I see that we are on the edge of changing. It does come up a lot about therapy. That's the word I see thrown around a lot, that it's my therapist, it's my friend, it's my therapist. That's got to drive you crazy.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Therapy. Therapy is valuable because it's one of the rare spaces where there is like human connection. And again, there is nothing more healing than human connection. And I know a lot of people say I'm paying you. So you're like paid to listen to me and stuff. I'm not, but I'm not paid to care. Like I genuinely care. That is free. That is ongoing. That is so genuine. Like you can't pay that out of me. And so when people say, chat GPT is my therapist I'm like you're missing out on the true healing qualities of therapy and it's not an intervention it's not some buzzword that we offer in the space to help you heal in two days it's the genuine connection the experience of being seen validated offered feedback in a human to human space

SPEAKER_01 33:32

and what you said earlier too is so important that you change challenge people to not just think everything they've already thought already, that you're not just neutral or affirming. And you could be both those things at certain times, I'm sure in the process, but then you also are challenging somebody to think about something differently. Think about our earlier conversation about whether your friend should like your stuff all the time. And chat GPT might tell you like, yes, that person's not supporting you. Like, that's what you are telling it. That's not, you have already decided your friend's not supporting you you're telling it it's not supporting you and it may affirm that yes a friend should there should be give and take with a friend someone like you could push the person a little and say is that what our friend is there for in terms of our business it's a more nuanced conversation about relationships and I hate to say people I hate to see people just throw away friendships over really small things that aren't really not worth I don't call it cancel culture I call it cut out culture there's because different than cancel It's cutting people out. It's this encouraging of cutting people out for basically just being human, for the slightest infractions.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah. Yeah. ChatGPT is my best coworker, I will say, when I'm thinking of planning a launch, when I am trying to brainstorm ideas where I save ideas. But that yes man aspect that ChatGPT has, I'll say I have this idea and they're like, heck yes, would you like me to create you a calendar would you like me like they are at my whim and that is wonderful as my co-worker as my assistant even that's not great in friendship that's not great in building a relationship I don't expect I shouldn't be expecting my anyone in my friendships and my relationships to be at my disposal in the same way that chat GPT essentially is I I'm looking for ChatGP to churn out calendars, ideas, reword, refine, edit. But that's not a relationship.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah, using it like a coworker or an assistant is smart. And I'm trying to learn how to do that because I know there are things that I do that take a long time that could be shorter. It is scary too, though, how smart it is. And it makes me worried for artists. But at the same time, it's not going to stop. This is here and it's happened. So I acknowledge that learning its ways is not a bad idea. It's probably good to be on top of it. Like that's cool what you said about the calendar. I did something recently just this week with it that was really cool. I'm going to be teaching a class here in town, just a one-time workshop on how to start a podcast. I've done an episode on it. I've written some things about it. So I was like, let me take this work I've already done. I took my transcript from my episode. I took other things I've written about podcasting. I put it in there and it made an outline for me on my presentation. So it took my own words and my own work that was long, It was like a 30 minute episode. I don't want to stand up there and talk for 30 minutes straight. I want it more organized and I want slides that I can use. And it broke it down for me in a minute. And I was like, okay, wow, that is cool. That is mind blown, right? And like, why should I take five times longer to go through my own transcript to make slides when it can do it for me? But you could see, I can see though how people get sucked into it. I really can see. I get it now.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Nina this conversation we have been able to cover such a lot I love like conversations that get to flow but also we've been able to touch on a lot of the nuances that are happening in modern day friendship right now what is your tip to people who are just trying to figure out how they can maintain their friendships in a climate right now that is exhausting and ever of and constantly unpredictable.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

I have three main tips. We've covered really two of them, so I'll just refresh on those. Number one is to look at reciprocity differently than you might be. I wouldn't spell it out like this earlier. We were talking about it on social media, but it's true for a lot of things. For example, if you are the friend who always reaches out first, instead of deciding to end that friendship because the other person doesn't tend to reach out first, I would look for other ways that friend has a reciprocal relationship with you. Maybe they are an excellent listener. Maybe they ask really good questions when you're talking. Maybe they always respond pretty quickly when you reach out, they're there, they schedule something. If you suggest a date to them to get together and it's always you doing it first, but they always respond immediately and say, oh no, I can't do that date, but how about this date? I try to tell people and help people to see that as reciprocity. That reciprocity in a friendship doesn't mean I do this thing and then you do do that exact thing the exact same way. And I think people would be more satisfied with their friendships if they were able to see that and not be so literal with the thing I do for you and then you do that thing for me. So that's number one. Number two really is scheduling. Like we said, you have to schedule, even if it's a phone call. If you let so much time go by, it gets that much harder to get together with the person because now it feels every time like new. And that can be its own exhausting. It's actually easier to spend time with people that you've been spending time with. It's more natural. It's not so forced. And then the third thing that we really haven't gone over that much is I think that we all need to train ourselves on being more forgiving. If you could be more forgiving in general, you would be able to maintain friendships longer because we all need forgiveness. There's times we drop the ball. We didn't email back. We didn't text back. Again, that's back to the theme of modern. Maybe you'll title this having to do with modern friendship. My card. car now. I don't know if yours does this. It can read text to you like on the Apple Play, whatever it's called, CarPlay. So sometimes I'll press the button for it to read me a text. But what happens when you do that is when you get home, that text is not highlighted anymore on your phone. Now it's been read. So I have a few times and I'm really on it with my communication. I'm just like, that's a strength of mine. I'm quick with my stuff. I'm probably because I'm on my phone too much. But I'd like to respond to people. I don't like to let things hang for days. Well, if the thing's not highlighted, It could fall in my stuff. And I have missed a few things since that CarPlay updated. Okay. Could my friend be insulted or wouldn't it be nice if they would just maybe know that something's up? Like I'm generally a good communicator. So instead of being like, oh, Nina doesn't care about me, it's, oh, no, something must, let me remind her. Oh, hey, can you let me know I asked you about, and that gives me the opportunity to say, oh, shoot, that fell in my text. Thank you for reaching back out. It's those little acts of forgiveness. that help keep a friendship, it makes it so that you're not telling yourself a story all the time. It's just like a little more communication and more forgiveness, like assuming the best, I guess is what I'm saying. And if you're not sure, ask. So forgiveness, assuming the best, and if you're not sure, ask. These are all like the little behaviors that allow you to keep your friends.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Absolutely. And emphasizing the forgiveness aspect. It's showing each other grace, being able to understand because you know that person and you try Nina, as a closing question for all of my guests this season, I am asking, what is your commitment to yourself for 2025? Oh, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

I did something this year already. It's born fruit. It's work related. So maybe that's not the direction you wanted to go. But I taught two writing classes a week for a long time for many years. And I let go of one of them and we lowered the pace of the other one so that I could really lean into the podcast, which is what I've wanted to do. I've been doing the podcast for almost four years, but I've wanted to really push it to the next level. And I couldn't do all the things. I couldn't be teaching as much as I enjoy it too. So that actually was not an easy decision because I love the adults I work with. They're adult students, so they're fantastic. I'm a writer. That's what I am. So the commitment was to push on this thing I really want to do and I've been doing it and now my next commitment is probably going to have to be for the second half of the year to also take breaks to not be on there's an endless amount to do and you and I both edit our own shows that's very time consuming right there and I don't want to only be on my computer on my phone I want to continue to be engaged in my real life so that's important to me

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Thank you so much for this engaging, thought-provoking conversation. Everyone, if you are interested in connecting with Nina, all of her details will be linked in the show notes down below. Thank you again for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Thank you for having me. And I cannot wait to have you on my show, by the way, because we're going to be talking on mine too. So looking forward.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

We're healing out loud together. We're healing out loud together. We're healing out loud together.