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In this special episode, Reshma joins two of the world’s leading voices on happiness and beloved podcast hosts Gretchen Rubin (Happier with Gretchen Rubin) and Laurie Santos (The Happiness Lab) for a candid, thought-provoking roundtable on the power of friendship. They dive into how our friendships shift as we grow, the right way to handle conflict, and why forming new connections in adulthood can feel daunting — plus, real strategies for making it easier.

Resources & Links Related to this episode:

• Four Tendencies Quiz

Get in touch: podcast@gretchenrubin.com

Visit Gretchen’s website to learn more about Gretchen’s best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.

Find the transcript for this episode on the episode details page in the Apple Podcasts app.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Reshma Saujani, Gretchen Rubin, Laurie Santos

Reshma Saujani  00:04

When I started this podcast, I thought midlife was about personal reinvention, figuring out like who I was, beyond work, beyond motherhood, beyond all the roles I had spent my whole life trying to do perfectly. Here’s what I realized along this journey midlife is also about friendship. Because here’s the thing, the friendships that got you through your 20s and your 30s, they aren’t always the ones that are going to carry you through midlife. Sometimes, look, friendships fade, sometimes they deepen, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, they circle back when you least expect it. Friendship was something that came up in so many of my incredible conversations. Mel Robbins called bullshit on the myth that we’re supposed to have best friends forever. People change. They grow. Friendships have seasons, she said. Chelsea Handler and Tamron Hall both talked to me about how the friendships we do carry into midlife, how they can become stronger and more important than ever, like friendships in midlife really become family. So today, we’re going to dive even deeper into this, and I’m calling in one of my friends, Gretchen Rubin to help. She’s a best selling author of five New York Times bestsellers, including the Happiness Project, which spent two years on the bestseller list. I joined her on her new podcast Happier for a roundtable conversation on how you make, keep and deepen friendships, so whether you’re looking for new connections or just trying to strengthen the relationships you already have, this conversation with Gretchen, it’s a not to miss chapter In your midlife playbook. So let’s get into it.

 

Gretchen Rubin  04:24

Hello, we’re here for more Happier, a podcast where we get more of the happier Podcast. Today we’ve got a very special edition of more happier. It’s the first of a new series of round tables where I’ll invite people to come in to discuss all different subjects that contribute to happiness. First up friendships. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and hey, I might have even made a new friend in the process. Because friendship is such a huge element to a happier life. It. Is a great subject for a round table discussion to go deeper. And three of us are here today to talk about friendship. I’m Gretchen Rubin, a writer who studies happiness, human nature and friendship, and I am the host of The Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. And also here today is Laurie Santos. Laurie is a professor at Yale University, where she has taught the most popular course in Yale history, psychology and the good life. And she’s also host of the Happiness Lab podcast, a terrific podcast that helps listeners improve their well being with the science of happiness. Hello Laurie.

 

Laurie Santos  05:36

Hey Gretchen, thanks so much for having me on the show. This round table is fun, and we’ll build our own friendship.

 

Gretchen Rubin  05:40

We’ll build our own friendship. There you go. And we are also here with Reshma Saujani. Reshma is the founder of successful nonprofits, Girls Who Code and moms first, and the best selling author of books including Pay Up, Brave, not perfect and the Girls Who Code book series. She is host of the terrific podcast My So Called Midlife, where she tackles the question she’s gotten everything she’s ever wanted, so why does she feel so unsatisfied? Hello, Reshma.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:10

Hi Gretchen. So great to be here.

 

Gretchen Rubin  06:13

This is going to be such a fun conversation. Okay? So friendship. Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that relationships are a key element to a happy life, and friendship is certainly an extraordinarily important form of relationship. Lately, I have been going through the empty nest phase of life, which I’m rebranding as the open door phase of life, and one thing that I noticed is how sometimes in this stage, people realize that they’ve been confusing friends with acquaintances. Like they thought they had friends, but they really just had friendly acquaintances. And as I started talking more and more about friendship, I could see that people were really fired up about this subject. People really understand how important it is, and we’re recording this in Women’s History Month. And while friendships are certainly not exclusive to women, there is something kind of special about women’s friendships, and so I’m so excited to talk to you both about friendship.

 

Laurie Santos  07:05

Yeah, this is gonna be awesome. Excellent.

 

Gretchen Rubin  07:08

So let’s talk about friendship in your own life. Have there been any special steps that you have taken in your own life to either strengthen existing friendships or to create new friendships? I mean, because what does it make new friends, but keep the old one is silver. The other is gold. What have you done in your own life toward this aim? Laurie, let me ask you first.

 

Laurie Santos  07:28

Yeah, well, one of the reasons I was so excited to have this conversation is I feel like this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, right? You know, I went through this period of feeling super burned out, and one of the things I recognized during that period was that, like, I hadn’t been investing enough time in my friendships. I too, felt like I had a lot of these, like, so called relational friendships, where it’s like, you know, maybe I would see somebody at work, or we were just kind of friends, because we happen, you know, my my husband happened to know his partner, or something like that. And like, it was, I was finding that I just, like, didn’t have the close connections that I thought and so, you know, like a dutiful, like, happiness scientist that I am. I was like, I’m gonna go up out making friends. I’m putting it in the lab, putting in the lab, right? Like, but it’s hard. It’s hard in midlife, I think, for lots of reasons, right? One is that we’re all so busy, right? It wasn’t the ease with which I made friendships with people, say, like in college or something like that, where you’re naturally running into each other. You meet someone at your yoga class, or I have this sort of movie night that I go to, you meet friends there, and it’s like you actually have to put something in the calendar, and that can be kind of prohibitively taxing. But having put some effort into this, I can say that it is possible in midlife to make new friends, but it does feel like it takes some energy and some work.

 

Gretchen Rubin  08:37

And was there anything specific you tried?

 

Laurie Santos  08:40

I think it’s like putting yourself out there and offering like, you have to be the one that says, like, hey, maybe we should go on a coffee date, or maybe we should go shopping together. Maybe we should go see this movie together. What I did find, though, was that if you can kind of get through the hurdle of, like, figuring out everybody’s collective schedules, people are usually really into it. Like, my experience has been like, when, when you kind of push people to, like, take the friendship and next step, most people are kind of into that. It’s just like, we’re all so busy it can be hard to get things on a calendar.

 

Gretchen Rubin  09:08

Well, and I know that there’s research showing that, like, people really do value relationships, and even though you can feel sort of awkward or self conscious by making that gesture to go deeper with a friendship, usually people are very welcome of it, like, if you want to be friends, probably they want to be friends, and that’s kind of comforting to remember. Comforting to remember totally.

 

Laurie Santos  09:23

And I think this is a whole set of biases that I think if we’re talking about friendship we need to acknowledge, which is that our minds kind of suck when it comes to thinking about friendships like we just have these biases that lead us towards anti friendship, or under sociality, as the researcher Nick Epley calls it, one of my favorite ones, is this effect called the liking gap, which is just like you assume that everybody in your life from your best, best ride or die bestie to like the person that you chat with occasionally at the coffee shop, you assume that that person likes you less than that person actually likes you. The liking gap is like such a sad series of studies like because they find it like even. College roommates like your college roommate that you’ve lived with for a year. If you ask, How much does your college roommate like you? A person will say, well, they like me like only  so, whereas the college roommate’s like, oh my gosh, I love them so interesting. It’s like, systematically pushing us, yeah, systematically pushing us towards less friendship, which is terrible. Our minds shouldn’t work that way.

 

Gretchen Rubin  10:19

Yeah, it’s reassuring to remember that, though that’s helpful, totally. And how about you, Reshma, what have you done to strengthen or build relationships?

 

Reshma Saujani  10:26

God, I mean, as Laurie was talking, I have so many thoughts. I mean, well, first of all, I always had a tight crew of friends, and so I have been someone who, you know, spends my life being extrovert, as both of you understand. And and so, like, I like keeping it tight and small, and I like being able to just, you know, when I have dinner with a friend, or we go on a girls trips, like, we’re just talking about gossip, about celebrity gossip, or about nothing, like, it’s just not serious. We’re not talking about our jobs. We’re not talking about, like, what we want to change that. We actually spend my whole life doing that. So I’m a really good friend. Like, I pride myself on it.

 

Gretchen Rubin  11:04

Right? Your identity,

 

Reshma Saujani  11:06

Yeah? Like, I feel like, ironically, even though I might be the busiest out of all my friends, like I’m the 3am phone call, right? I’m the friend when you’re going through substance abuse that is there, right? Like, I’m that friend. And so I think in order for me to be a good friend, I always kept my friendship circle really small, but my acquaintance pool very large, right? So I have a drink with you, right? You, I mean, we’ll catch up, but I’m not going to tell you all my secrets, right? Or like we’re not, you know, we’re not going to get there, because I just don’t think then I have the can, can give that way. So I think one that’s always been really important to me. So one of the reasons why I wanted to really start looking at midlife is, in midlife, things change, and even people you’ve been friends with for 20 years change, and there’s breakups, and if you’re somebody that like has kept your crew tight, that’s really hard. I think the second thing is, is that living in New York, everybody leaves, so all of a sudden, right? I feel like I found myself when my kids were really young. They’re like, oh my god, I got too many people I got to have dinner with, or see a Broadway show with, or do this thing with, to all of a sudden, like, looking at my 10 year old being like, what are you doing tonight? You want to watch a movie, right? Like everything shifted because nobody was there left and I had not learned. And I still don’t know. I still don’t I still don’t know how to make new friends. I really struggle. I can make a lot of acquaintances, but I really struggle with new friends. And if I was honest, too, I just also, like, had a little bit of judgment around it. And I remember I was reading my mentor Hillary Clinton’s book, and she wrote in there, like that, she makes a new friend every year. And I was like, really? Like, if Hillary can make a new friend every year, then I should be able to make a new friend, you know? I mean, every year. So that was a big eye opener for me.

 

Gretchen Rubin  12:53

Let me ask you a quick question. When you say you keep it tight. Like, what is that number? I’m just curious. Like, is that three? Is that 10?

 

Reshma Saujani  12:59

Like, under, it’s under, I would say it’s under seven, under eight.

 

Laurie Santos  13:05

All of rushman’s friends listening right now are like, they’re like, am I one of the seven?

 

Reshma Saujani  13:20

I think that there are many different types of friendship, maybe more than people say like, I think sometimes it’s like, Are you friends? Are you not friends? Or, if it’s interesting, Reshma, you were saying you’d have your tight, close friends, and then you have your acquaintances. And to me, it seems like maybe it’s good to think about different categories, all of whom maybe add to our life in a different way. And also, like you say, have different levels of responsibility, yeah, and like intimacy that we that we bring to it, and that we expect from it. But they can all add to our lives. But before we get into sort of our own colloquial sense of all these different kinds of friends. Laurie, what is the research showing about types of friendship as we’re thinking this through?

 

Laurie Santos  18:47

Yeah, what’s the science say? I mean, I guess a couple things. I mean, one is, what the science really clearly shows is that, like any kind of social connection, yes, yeah, the coffee shop chat with the person on the train, all of that’s good, right? So I think overall, what the research is trying to do is to categorize those forms of social connection. And so often researchers break up different kinds of ways that we could connect up to other people in terms of three different categories. They call them intimate kind of friendships, relational friends and sort of communal friends. And so the intimate one, it doesn’t mean like, intimate in a like, romantic, intimate sense. It means kind of, I think what Reshma is getting like, you’re right, your crew, like everything exactly right. The relational friends are the ones that you like do stuff with, you know? So you might like grab a glass of wine, you might go see a movie, and it’s like a one on one thing, but they’re not the 3am call in the same way Gretchen, I think this is what you’re getting at when you were saying that. Like when your kids move away, you realize a lot of people are in that relational category, but maybe not the intimate category, right? But there’s another domain that I think we often forget, which is a sort of communal or kind of community friends. And this is like your book club, like the crew of people you go to Pallavi. These with or your church group, right? Like this is like a parents and your parents in, like your kids class, like the soccer moms that you see, like, you know, on the field, right? And those are sometimes the people that we can see most often, depending on what those like community events are, they might be our most frequent other friends, and they’re really good for kind of having these shared values and these shared activities, but again, they’re a little bit different than the other ones. You might not with the soccer mom unless you take it to a new level. It’s definitely not gonna be a 3am call, but it might not even be the go to the movie together.

 

Gretchen Rubin  20:29

But it could be the first step toward an intimate friend. It could be a starter. It might have the capacity or the possibility of going further, even if it’s not, then if you wanna build a friend. Like Rush was saying, it’s hard to make new friends. Maybe that’s a place to find new friends.

 

Laurie Santos  20:44

Totally right, because you have to have some sort of connection with people to, like, move them from the categories. And I think it just takes some takes some work, right? You have to be at on the soccer field with the mom and be like, Hey, do you want to get a coffee later outside the soccer field? Or do you want to, like, go get a movie or share something together. And again, that feels vulnerable, like it feels scary to almost ask, like, because the person I’m like no or I don’t have time, and you’ll just feel like I got rejected.

 

Reshma Saujani  21:08

Laurie, where did your work friends go? Because that’s the other thing I found, like, I’m a workaholic. So I find that my work friends are now, like, my best friends, my teases me is, like, it doesn’t count if you pay them.

 

Laurie Santos  21:20

Oh, yeah, it’s tricky. No,  I think, I think work friends can be in any of these categories, right? You know, take the work friend that, like you all go to the softball game together, right? That might feel very communal, right? If it’s a work friend that you occasionally go out to get a drink for, but they don’t really know and you’re, you know, real intimate life or your big secrets, right, that would probably be more relational. But there are definitely work friends that are the Ride or Die besties that hear, you know, all this stuff, I definitely have had work friends that are my 3am call, right, and so.

 

Gretchen Rubin  21:49

I’m not sure that. I think that those three categories are very helpful, because it almost makes them feel like they’re in a hierarchy. But I feel like it’s almost more helpful to think about them as types of friends, or the role they play like a childhood friend? Yeah, they know us in a way. They know our parents. They know our childhood dog. You know, even if now we’re very far part of them in life, there’s something about the childhood friends, Laurie, you mentioned the couple’s friends, where, you know, you can go out on a double date. There’s sort of a special kind of thing. If you travel with people, and that’s maybe not even that. They’re so intimate, but you would travel in the same way people that you know online.

 

Laurie Santos  22:27

Oh, yeah.

 

Gretchen Rubin  22:27

Does that count like if you haven’t met people in real life, or like people that you’ve only seen on zoom you guys? I mean, what about parasocial relationships? I mean, I bet you all have people who consider you their parasocial friends. Plus I do, and then I also have my own parasocial friends and people who I listen to. So I don’t know. I mean, what other kinds of friends am I missing?

 

Laurie Santos  22:48

No, I mean,  I think you’re totally right, that it’s super complicated, although push back on the idea that those three categories I gave are hierarchical. I think we kind of need all of them, right. Like, I think, Well, that’s true. I definitely have been in situations, and even during my burnout situation, I would describe being in this where I still had my like intimate friends, I had my besties that I would call at night, but I had nobody to go to yoga class with. I had nobody to go for a walk with.

 

Gretchen Rubin  23:10

This has to go with near friends and far friends. And this is what you’re talking about. Is what about when somebody who was a near friend then becomes a far friend, well then that completely changes the energy of the relationship.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:23

Well, this is why I liked your categories, Laurie, because it made me feel almost like better, right? Like, I think one of the things that I’ve had to contend with in midlife is that it’s okay if friendship shift, yeah, they don’t have to be somebody who’s your intimate friend. Has to be your intimate friend forever. They can then become your relational friend. And that’s that doesn’t mean that you failed, because, I think, for women in particular, because we take our friendship so seriously, is that it’s very hard when they fall apart, right? And you’re like, I feel like I did something wrong, or I should have tried harder. And it’s different, because it’s unlike your parents, like, no matter what you’re stuck with them, right? Or your siblings, right? It doesn’t matter obligation, what happens with them, whether they turn into an alcoholic or become a raging bitch or like you. I mean, didn’t get this like you’re like, stuck with them, whereas with friendships, especially as you get older, I think people realize, well, I don’t have to be in this toxic relationship, like, I don’t have to do this.

 

Gretchen Rubin  24:20

Have you managed severe strife in a friendship yourself Reshma?

 

Reshma Saujani  24:23

I mean, most recently, I’ve had to contend with the potential breakup, which is the first time that’s ever happened to me. I’ve never, yeah, it’s never happened to me before. But I think part of without going into the details, right? But part of what I think I realized is that it’s okay, and that sometimes people are going through things, and you gotta allow there to be some distance, and that doesn’t mean it’s forever and that’s okay. You know, I think for a lot of us as women, we carry a lot of regret, and we carry a lot of envy, a lot of Woulda, Shoulda, couldas. You know, and I think the older you get, you realize that, well, that might not happen for me, and I think that that oftentimes breeds a lot of anger. And I think that a lot of people are struggling, as my monk would say, like a lot of people are really suffering. And friendships used to be the way you healed, right? Like, you remember that when you would go through a breakup and you’d be like, devastated, and you just had to sit in a room with your girlfriends and, like, drink a lot of wine and eat a lot of bad food and just cry and watch a movie and, like, it just after a week of doing that, you were like, you felt better. That’s just French. It’s just harder to do that these days because of all the commitments that you have in your life to really use friendship as a tool of healing.

 

Gretchen Rubin  25:48

Well so maybe that’s a good point, which is that we have to acknowledge that friendship looks different at different stages of life, and not and again, not feel like a failure if it doesn’t look the way that it used to look. You know, if you’re not staying up until 2am talking heart to heart with somebody, that doesn’t mean that they’re not a real, true, intimate friend the way they might have been.

 

Laurie Santos  26:09

Although I think we also have to get other people’s definitions of friends, because some of my friendship strife throughout the years has been realizing that, like, we’re just on a different page with how we’re defining friendship like, what like, so I had this very close friend, still my very close friend. I won’t use names, but she’ll know I’m talking about her who lived near me in New Haven, like, worked near me at Yale. We were like, you know, besties, besties, tight. And for lots of reasons, she wound up taking a job really far away. And you know, I was not just sad that my friend was moving away for all the reasons, I felt devastated, like I felt like there was like a break to the friendship, and she couldn’t understand this, like you felt betrayed, almost, that she took the job, that she took the job, and I knew the job was right for her. It was like, it was totally the right move. But I had this special sense of betrayal, and it was only through, like, a long conversation where we we realized she was like, oh, wait. Like, definitional to your idea of our friendship is that we hang out in person, see each other at our house, eat meals together, walk her dog together. And she was like, that’s not in my definition. Our friendship will be just as good a friends if we do all that same stuff on the phone or over zoom or once a month. And that conversation, I think, really helped both of us, because it was like, oh, under your definition, you’re this isn’t a friend break up to you in the same way it’s sort of feeling to me, and that just caused me to realize, like, oh, we all have these different definitions. Like, you know, if you don’t, maybe your definition includes, like, if you don’t spend your birthday with me, then we’re not a good friend or it’s like, you know, if we don’t give gifts to each other at Christmas, or we don’t celebrate our kids birthdays. I think we all have these kind of seated, intricate ideas of what matters for friendships that we haven’t told our friends, right? So our friends sometimes wind up violating these without without realizing they’re doing.

 

Gretchen Rubin  27:53

That is a really good point.

 

Reshma Saujani  27:54

And like life maturity, right? Because I think as you grow, you have more responsibilities. You gotta take care of your kids, or if you have a partner, or if you have, like, a challenging job, so it’s like the time that you can spend is just different. And I think for some people, like, for me, I judge quality of time rather than, like, the length of time. Like, I’m going on a girls trip with one of my friends tomorrow, who, like, lives in Atlanta, and maybe we talk on that, we see each other three times a year, but she is my best friend, right? And we know that we’re going to get together for 48 hours, and like, it’s going to feel like we spent a year together. And like, those are a lot of like, you know, the relationships that I have in my life where I don’t have to spend all of this time, but it’s the quality of time we’re together. We’re like, super into each other, and super engaged, and just not like nothing’s changed.

 

Gretchen Rubin  28:42

I would say that I think scheduling is the biggest obstacle in my life to friendship, which is just the sheer nuisance of, are you free? Okay, maybe you live in another country. Are you free that I can call you while I’m on a call in Central Park, and we can talk by phone, okay? What we got to manage the time? Oh, we want to go into Atlanta on a girls trip, I can’t do this weekend. What about that week? A No, this week. Oh, turns out I can’t. Can we move it back a week? No, we can’t.

 

Laurie Santos  29:10

Gretchen, it’s like you’re in my DMs right now. Yes, no, I’m sure I’m turning 50 years old this year. Congratulations. But, but maybe you’re going through the same thing, Reshma, which is, like, my college friends, like, I have this whole cohort of friends who are also turning 50, and we’re like, Wouldn’t it be great if we have, you know, a 50th birthday party all together. And literally, our whole DM is like, what about June? No, my in laws are coming in June. Like, I can’t do it’s like, oh, my God, then you just give up. You’re like, yes, that’s exactly what’s happened in my group bed is like, no one’s replied for like, the last four days, and I think we’re all just like.

 

Gretchen Rubin  35:11

Okay, now speaking of the question of understanding friends and maybe holding grace when people bring a different set of expectations or different understandings, okay, so my four tendencies framework, which is a personality framework that divides people into upholders, questioners, obligers and rebels, and it has to do with whether you meet or resist outer and inner expectations. Outer expectations like a work deadline. Inner expectations like your own desire to keep a New Year’s resolution, and I’m just going to go through this super fast. If people want to know more about it, they can just go to gretchenrubin.com/quiz and take the quiz and find out if they’re an upholder a question or obliger rebel, learn all about it. But just for this, just the nutshell version is upholders readily meet outer and inner expectations. So they meet the work deadline, they keep the New Year’s resolution without much fuss. Reshma, I know you’re an upholder and I’m an upholder. We’re a small group, small but mighty. A bigger group is questioners. Questioners, question all expectations. They’ll do something if they think it makes sense. So they’re turning everything into an inner expectation. So they have to know why, but if they know why and they understand why they can do something. Then there are obligers. This is the biggest group of people for both men and women. This is the largest group. Laurie, you are proud member of Team. Obliger. Obligers readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. So they’re really good at keeping their promises to other people, but they struggle to keep their promises to themselves, unless they have that outer accountability. And then finally, rebels. Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. So these are the people who can do anything they want to do, anything they choose to do, but if you ask or tell them to do something, they will resist. And typically they don’t sell themselves what to do. So they don’t like put anything on the calendar. And the reason why I think the four tendencies is helpful for friendship is that I found that now that I understand the four tendencies, I’m much more understanding of how different people are different and bring a different energy into relationships. For instance, rebels often don’t like to put something on the calendar. It makes them feel trapped. They don’t like it. So I had a rebel friend who I would try to say something like, hHey, do you want to go to a movie on Friday? And she would always just be really evasive. I’d be like, oh, there’s this great play. Do you want to see it? And I’m like, Does this person not really like me because they don’t want to commit to me? But then I’m like, no. Now that I know she’s a rebel, it’s much better to say something last minute, like, hey, I’m going to be in your neighborhood. If you’re going to be around on Saturday afternoon. You want to grab a coffee? You can let me know. I’ll just text you when, I mean, I’m outside your door, because then it’s spontaneous and she can do whatever she wants. But so that helped me understand how not to be angry or resentful when people behaved in a certain way. So I don’t know, as an obliger or an upholder, have you seen how this might cause conflict or explain things that you’ve experienced?

 

Reshma Saujani  37:59

Am I more likely to have a better relationship with, like, someone who is just like me and upholder or No?

 

Gretchen Rubin  38:05

Probably, yeah, right, because, because it’s like, no, but obligers get along with everybody. Obligers, they’re the ones that get along the best with all three tendencies, yeah.

 

Laurie Santos  38:17

Except, I think, except, you know, I’ve always, like, wondered about, you know, the like, scientific efficacy of the 410.

 

Gretchen Rubin  38:24

Oh, sure. I know Annie and Annie Murphy Paul, who studies personality frameworks, yes.

 

Laurie Santos  38:29

But there is deep truth into one part of the obliger personality type that you’ve talked about, which is this phenomena that you’ve called obliger rebellion, which is when the obligers have too many external demands on their time. Sometimes they’re just like, F it. I’m giving up on everyone. Yes, and definitely, I have been in that mode before. And the sad thing is, like, sometimes what has to give is stuff with my friends for which I’m really embarrassed, right? Like, I’m kind of like, oh my gosh, I’m overwhelmed for everything. But I don’t, you know, quit my podcasting job or not show up for my teaching gig, but that yoga session I was going to have with a friend, hey, can we do that another time? I’ll switch it up. Or that call that I know I was going to put out for a friend who was grieving. That kind of falls by the wayside. That’s interesting.

 

Gretchen Rubin  39:16

And I think this is a perfect example. If I’m your friend and I know you’re obliger, and I see obliger rebellion, I feel like the burning resentment and the burnout and the overwhelm happening, I can say things to you so that you don’t feel like I’m putting pressure on you.

 

Laurie Santos  39:28

Yes, exactly.

 

Gretchen Rubin  39:30

You know. Like, hey, you know you’ve got so much going on. I know we talked about doing it this weekend, but maybe we should push it to next month when the dust settles.

 

Laurie Santos  39:38

Oh my gosh, judging you just saying that, I feel like the weight on my chest was like.

 

Reshma Saujani  39:43

That’s great, yeah, because you don’t feel like it’s personal. You don’t feel like it’s personal, yeah. And so for, I think for an upholder, I don’t have those problems because I’m so disciplined and so scheduled that I’m like, I immediately think it’s personal.

 

Gretchen Rubin  39:58

Mm, right? Like, if you dropped the ball on me, why? You must have chosen, you.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:04

Must have not thought that I was You must have looked through your calendar. I’m like, well, she’s not important, so I’m going to cancel that.

 

Gretchen Rubin  40:10

Or if somebody, if you say to a friend, oh, well, you know, I’m going to be free Saturday afternoon five weeks from now, at 2pm and somebody’s like, well, I don’t really want to commit. And you’re like, what’s your problem? Let’s put this on the calendar so that it happens. If you’re important to me and I’m important to you, there’s a place on the calendar for that, and other people are like your bananas for scheduling out your life, you know, five years.

 

Laurie Santos  40:32

Someone who’s close friends with a few different rebels that just, yeah, it doesn’t work.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:37

Doesn’t work. Yeah, it doesn’t work. So I guess in midlife, though, should we just make friends with people like us? Because it’s easier.

 

Laurie Santos  40:43

No, you get so much out of friendships with people who are different than you.

 

Gretchen Rubin  40:47

Well, and I’m married to a question, and it’s super valuable, because I always have his voice in my head being like, why are you going to do that? Because as an upholder, my tendency is like, Okay, we’ll do and I think it gives you a grace for understanding how people are just bringing a completely different perspective in. So then the last thing I want to ask, and this is a really fun question, which is, do you have a try this at home? Suggestion for listeners, is there something that a person could do as part of their ordinary day to either deepen existing friendships or build towards new friendships? Because we’ve talked about both, and you sort of have to maintain and cultivate both, which sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time, which we do not have. Yes, but what are some simple, easy things that we can incorporate?

 

Reshma Saujani  41:32

I got one like so my friend Tiffany,  taught me this.

 

Gretchen Rubin  41:37

She’s an obliger.

 

Reshma Saujani  41:40

I can see that. So she well, this is an interesting story. So she was telling the story how she had, you know, she had a girls trip planned, and her daughter, Akua, said to her, oh, Mom, you know, I need you this weekend.

 

Gretchen Rubin  41:51

Ooh, okay, Laurie as an obliger, Oh, yeah. Is that tears on your buttons? Yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  41:57

It’s like, I need you this weekend. It’s really important. And Tiffany thought about it, and she looked at her and she said, No, I’m gonna go on my girls trip. Because if I don’t show you that, I’m gonna put myself first, then you are never gonna learn that that’s important to do that. And so I think the take home that I would say to all of us is we all need to do that, because it’s often the girls trip that gets canceled. It’s often the dinner with friends that gets canceled. It’s often our friendships, right, that take the back seat to like everyone else’s needs, and we know No, no, no, that when you die, the thing that mattered the most was your friendships and your relationship. So like that can’t be in the back. So I think every time we feel that push and pull, pick friendship.

 

Laurie Santos  42:41

Yeah, love that love that suggestion.

 

Gretchen Rubin  42:43

Can you think of an example in your own life where you had to have that struggle in your own mind of Part of me wants to keep working or buckle down or go to sleep early.

 

Reshma Saujani  42:53

All the time I have like, a five and a 10 year old who are two boys who make me feel guilty every single minute. I could be around them all day long, like, where are you going? I’m going to Miami with my girlfriend, Deepa tomorrow, and my son pouted all the way to school when he realized that I was leaving the next day. So I think, like, Mom, guilt is real and it is a constant exercise. You I mean that I know that I have to go through. And one of the things though, it has taught me, though Gretchen and I’ve really been thinking about this. I remember I go to a conference, and I would tell a story about that, that my son was upset that I was leaving, and the women in the room would say, well, don’t worry, Reshma, because he’s not going to remember. And I remember thinking to myself, but I’m going to remember. Oh yeah, so I think it’s really important to figure out what you want, yes, and what makes you happy. And it was interesting, Laura, as I was listening to you, I cancel other things before my friends. I need to be with friends. I need that girls trip, that dinner, that plate I like. I need my girl time.

 

Laurie Santos  43:53

Well, as Gretchen will tell you, obliger rebellion is not the most rational state to be in when you hit that point. Unfortunately […]

 

Gretchen Rubin  44:01

Well interesting that you articulate it for yourself in that way, and I think that’s helpful. Like my identity is I am a good friend. I show up, and when I’m weighing this versus that, friendship prevails. Like I always say to myself when I’m trying to think of how to spend my precious time, energy or money, I should always tried to spend it on relationships. And that’s just like a heuristic that helps me like, should I pay to go to my college reunion and deal with the hassle of making the things or should I stay on that really tiresome text chain? Or like you were saying, Lori, are you the one that has to bear the the awkwardness of the first want to get a copy where you feel like, oh my gosh, this feels so silly. So that’s, I think that’s a really great thing. And I think just being really spelling that out for ourselves, being very explicit is very helpful. And how about you? Laurie, what would you say?

 

Laurie Santos  44:53

So mine that I’ve been really trying to act on myself lately is remembering that we’re biased when it comes to like, connecting with. Other people, right? So I often am just going through the day and will have thoughts about friends. Like yesterday, I was carrying a bag that a friend of mine picked up on her trip to Africa. It’s this very pretty, like blue, kind of like grocery bag thing, and I was just using it to carry something, and I just had a positive thought about my friend, right? What we normally do is just keep those positive thoughts to ourself. But of course, I could have just, like, text her and be like, hey, have your bag today, still enjoying it, just thinking of you, or, like, just even sending a photo of you, holding you with the bag. I’m still using it. Yeah, and so this is something I’ve tried to do a lot more. When I have a positive thought about a friend, whether that’s a memory or especially a gift that someone gave you, often you’re still enjoying the gifts that someone gave you and noticing it, but you never like remind people like a mug they gave you exactly. And in fact, I did. I did just this this week with a friend of mine who literally gave me a mug that I was like, I’m enjoying your mug this morning. And it caused a conversation with a friend I hadn’t connected with, and she was like, oh, that’s so nice to hear this morning, because I’m right now sitting in palliative care with my father, who’s not doing well, and then I knew about and had I not texted her about the mug, I wouldn’t have known that situation. And so whenever you have an urge to give a compliment, a moment of gratitude, a memory thinking of you, just send the text, just put in the call, just drop it in the email, you feel like they won’t notice. It won’t matter to them. There’s literally studies on this that shows no it matters more than you think. It’s less awkward than you think. It means more to the person than you think our biases mean. We like are under reach out with that like moment of check in. You know, especially that story, I wouldn’t have known that something bad was happening in her life. And now I can check in, and we can reconnect, and I can be there to help in a way that I’m so happy I get to do that, right? I love that.

 

Gretchen Rubin  46:44

One way that I do that is I’ll often, in an idle moment, go back. I’m always sort of interested in, like, what was happening this day, eight years ago, or whatever. And it’ll often surface a picture of a friend or something that we shared, and I’ll just send it to them, and I usually just say, flashback. I don’t even, I don’t even, I can’t even be bothered to type a caption, you know. But again, I think it is the idea that you’re present in someone else’s consciousness. Yes, they’re thinking of you. They’re remembering you or, like, oh, some the sequel to a movie you saw together, like something even from the news, or something like that, yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  47:22

Because people are going through things, so many things, and I think knowing that someone may be thinking about them, it’s just it can shift their whole day completely.

 

Gretchen Rubin  47:31

Yeah, well, and maybe that’s a good thing to remember, which is, we think about how the friendships strengthen us and make us happier, but then you also think, well, but they’re being made happier the friend and palliative care, you didn’t even think of it, but you’re making that person happier. And so when you’re planning your trip to Atlanta, you’re happier, but then your friend is happier too. And so it’s easy to sort of think about, well, how is this boosting my happiness? But of course, there’s more than one person involved.

 

Laurie Santos  47:59

And usually your perspective is wrong, right? Like, when I’m thinking like, Oh, I’ll text my friend and young because using her bag and really appreciating it, yeah, I’m thinking like, well, how’s that gonna feel to me? Yeah? But of course, she’s on the other end, and it’s gonna hit her totally different. She’s in the middle of some random Wednesday and whatever stressor, and she gets this happy text, right? That’s surprise, which I didn’t feel when I was planning it, but she feels the recipient, and there’s like, you know, just like this warm glow that, yeah, about this is something else that some of the research shows that I’ve always tried to take to heart. This is work by Nick Epley and his colleagues. He finds that when we’re thinking about reaching out to someone, we tend to focus on what he calls our competency. Am I going to write the right text? Do I have time to not just put like flashback and write the whole thing, right? Am I saying it, right? You know, that’s what we focus on. But our recipient doesn’t see any of that. They tend to just focus on the warmth of it, like it’s out of nowhere. This person thought of me, it made me feel good, right? And so sometimes our ability to do something nice for our friends get stuck in the competency part. Yeah. Here’s just another example. I had a friend who is just, he and his wife just had a new baby. And I was like, oh my gosh, it’s been around since my friends were having newborns. Like, what do you do? Like, oh, you send food. Like, how do you send food? Or whatever? And I was all up in my head about, do you send lasagna? Do they like lasagna? Yeah, granola, I don’t know, yeah. And then I was thinking back to Nick’s research, and it was like, Wait, they’re not going to think about any of that. They’re not going to analyze it. Like, that kind of lasagna. They’re kind of lasagna, they’re just gonna be like, Oh my gosh, Laurie, out of the blue semi this nice thing that’s so nice. And so the idea is, like, whenever you get an urge to do something nice or to connect, don’t over analyze. They’re not gonna notice that. Just dive in and do it however you do it. It will feel good to them.

 

Reshma Saujani  49:36

The other thing is, you guys are talking. I think it’s also great role modeling for our kids. Like both me and my husband, like, really value friendships. People are always in our house. Like, you know, I mean, like, and it’s good, especially when you see how much more isolated children are becoming now because of technology and that we’re making the effort to go have dinner with people, or go to the next game with somebody, or go on vacation with somebody. It’s just good role modeling, too.

 

Gretchen Rubin  49:59

I think yeah, no. They see that you have a book group. They see that you’re going out with, yeah, right, exactly, that you’re going to birthday parties. You’re having a birthday party.

 

Laurie Santos  50:08

It also just makes adult life look less miserable than when we’re not, like, having fun with other people. I think a lot of times kids are like, man, adult life is like, terrible, but like, when they see us going to on a trip to Miami with our girlfriends or having that book club. It’s like, oh, it’s much more palatable than we thought.

 

Gretchen Rubin  50:23

Yes, exactly. Well, listen, this is so much fun. Laurie, Reshma, thank you for talking friendship with me. I feel, I feel elevated just having this conversation.

 

Reshma Saujani  50:35

Thanks so much for having us on the show.

 

Laurie Santos  50:37

This is so much fun. And we’re new friends now.

 

Gretchen Rubin  50:39

Yeah, we’re new friends now, yeah.

 

Laurie Santos  50:41

Miami trip next week. That’s right.

 

Gretchen Rubin  50:44

Let’s do it. Well, we hope you’re feeling happier after this episode. Remember, the best time to start a Happiness Project is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.