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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll wrap up our series on friendships in adulthood with the return of Jennifer Senior. It was her rich article on the subject in The Atlantic that sparked the segment and the series. She was here last week to kick off the series. We have since talked about fraying friendships in middle age for a central theme, friendships in your 20s, friendships around parenthood, a little about intergenerational friendships, and friendships in old age, with Margaret Atwood, who had responded to Jennifer's article on Twitter and then came on to talk about that here. We'll replay a clip for Jennifer in a little bit.

The article was called, It's Your Friends Who Break Your Heart. The older we get, the more we need our friends and the harder it is to keep them. Jennifer Senior is also the author of the best-selling book from 2014, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. Jennifer, we've had so many callers with so many experiences of friendship in adulthood and thoughts on the subject. Thanks for getting people thinking about it so well.

Jennifer Senior: Oh my God, thank you for continuing to explore it. It's so exciting. It is amazing, right? The deluge that you get, it is really something.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. I guess you've been getting it since the article came out. I thought that for our last call-in, listeners, on the subject, that we could base it on two things that Jennifer cites in the article. The obvious fact that unlike family, friendships are voluntary. The part of your article that's about the lengths some people go to keep friendships, like even seeing a therapist together.

Listeners, we're opening up the phones with Jennifer Senior. The question is, how do you think the fact that friendships are voluntary affects what they're like for you compared to your relationships with your relatives? Or tell us a story of how you've worked at a friendship that was having problems in order to help save it or help it succeed. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

These are not simple yes or no questions. So I'll say them again, how do you think the fact that friendships are voluntary affects what they're like for you compared to your relationships with your relatives? Or tell us a story of how you've worked at a friendship that was having problems in order to help it continue to succeed. Have you even gone to therapy with a friend, for example, as Jennifer uses an example of in her article? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I'll throw in one more wrinkle if it happens to relate to you. How have those dynamics played out for you in the pandemic, if they happen to be relevant to a current friendship? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 on our voluntary friendships, and working on them to keep them together. Jennifer, on these points, as calls are coming in, one very basic thing that makes friendships different from family ties, that's the premise here, it's so obvious, we probably never say it out loud, but you quote Stanford Psychology Professor Laura Carstensen, who says, "It's the whole idea that friendships are voluntary that makes them positive." Do you think that makes difficulties in friendship of a different nature than difficulties with family members?

Jennifer Senior: Yes. Well, let's start with the fact that there's no developed vocabulary for how to bring them up. Also, because you can opt-out, you can passively decide not to see these people, and nothing is compelling you to stay together. There's no law, you're not married, you don't have kids. There's no blood ties, so there aren't any annual holidays to force you to repair your differences. We also don't have good tools for that, culturally, I think.

We don't know how to approach it, we don't know how to [inaudible 00:04:15] I guess, marital counseling probably gives you some of that language and some of those strategies, which is why it was really interesting that in Big Friendship, the authors, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, went and did that together. I think that was an amazing move, but it's not usually how things go.

Brian Lehrer: It is an incredible leap of commitment. I think the word is to go to a therapist together with your friend.

Jennifer Senior: There could be compelling reasons to do it. Let's put it this way, I think you're going to see a giant portion of the population that remain childless as we get older. I think one-quarter of adults. Is that what I wrote in my piece? It was something like one-quarter of adults.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, a quarter or a third.

Jennifer Senior: Yes, don't have kids. We are going to be looking to all kinds of alternative family structures the older we get. By the way, if you have a child, we can't count on them to take care of you anyway. There are all sorts of ways that I think friends probably should be privileged, and they're not. Finding the right vocabulary to figure out how to work out your differences might be really valuable. I think it's worth everybody's time. By the way, I'm terrible at it. I stink at it. I'm sitting here saying these words and kind of half watching or listening to myself and thinking, "This is really rich when I have absolutely no skills of my own to bring to the table."

Brian Lehrer: I'd say that's the first step in getting good at something. Saying out loud that you're not so good at it yet. Leah in Harlem, I think, has a story for us. Hi, Leah. You're on WNYC with Jennifer Senior.

Leah: Hi. I just wanted to say I love the article. Funnily enough, my friendship story rotates around My Brilliant Friend, which you mentioned in the article. During peak pandemic, my friend who I was living with and we were quarantined together and we had COVID together, and it was just a very stressful situation to be in, we started this book club, and we're reading the Brilliant Friend series, and realized as we were reading, we'd had a very similar dynamic through our 10, 15-year friendship, and really had a couple skirmishes, as a result, these strange fights as a result of this book, and really had to take a step back and reflect.

Our friendship nearly broke over, just because all these conflicts came up, and we found a way to speak through it and go through old things. Being unemployed during the pandemic really gave us the space to do that, and came up much stronger at the end.

Jennifer Senior: Can I just ask [unintelligible 00:06:55]

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Jennifer, you want to ask Leah anything?

Jennifer Senior: Yes, sorry, didn't mean to jump in. What's fascinating there is, you said you were living with these friends?

Leah: Yes, it was the beginning of the pandemic, and we decided to all bunker up together. It was March 2020. We all got COVID. It was just a really intense period of friendship as family in that regard.

Jennifer Senior: Well, that's what I was going to say, that you were replicating the conditions of being in a nuclear family where you had to be with one another.

Leah: Totally.

Jennifer Senior: There you were. You had no choice. There was nothing voluntary about this arrangement in the end. You were in the soup together. I would love to know whether or not you used different strategies than you use, let's say, when you are arguing with siblings, or when you are arguing with various significant others.

Leah: What's strange about it is that you are still friends, so there is constantly the feeling in your back of your mind that, "Oh, this person doesn't need to stay with me." We became really dependent on one another during that time, but there's always this lingering sense that if you say something wrong, this could all fall apart, and that's 15 years down the drain.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Leah, thank you very much. A very illuminating story, and good to hear you interact with Jennifer who has obviously such good questions on this. Here's another Jennifer with another story of voluntariness turned into involuntariness. Jennifer in Boonton, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Hi, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What'd you got?

Jennifer: Well, my best friend became my sister-in-law. We met when we were about 14, and we were best friends, and then she ended up marrying my brother many years later. What was a voluntary relationship, the dimension of involuntary came into play when she married my brother. The challenge for me, it was really kind of a heartache the day they got married. I remember feeling really happy for them, but this loss feeling, because I knew our relationship would change in a way.

I've had challenges over the years on how to interact with her since she's now a family member, but I guess the way I've navigated it is to respect her privacy and never ask questions about their marriage, those kinds of intimate things about my brother. I'm happy to say we are still best friends.

Brian Lehrer: You would perhaps have been asking her more intimate questions if she hadn't married your brother?

Jennifer: Yes, we shared a lot. We shared a lot over the years, we really grew up together through high school. We shared a lot about relationships, those kinds of things that I didn't feel were right to talk about.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, to keep going, but you've worked it out. Jennifer, thank you for your call. Jennifer Senior, it's like a two-person natural experiment where a friend becomes the family member.

Jennifer Senior: Oh my God. Right. I would have said it was-- without having heard the story, "Oh, that sounds like all upside." Of course, you romanticize something like that happening. I wish I had a blood tie with you, but of course, she's pointing out something that should have occurred to me that didn't, which is, but now there are all sorts of discussion topics that are off-limits that used to be I bet the meat of their friendship, discussing their relationships. Not the meat, but a serious dimension that she just can't anymore. She can't complain about her brother. [laughs] There are all sorts of ways. It's fascinating. Not that she would, maybe they might have a perfect relationship, I don't know, but anyway.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it's good that she likes her brother because here's one tweet that's coming in. It says, from Rosalie on Twitter, it can be hard to maintain a long-term friendship when we don't like their new partner or spouse. That's classic, right?

Jennifer Senior: Well, I think it was one of the first things I listed, that you lose your friends to marriage or to children. It's often not just because they had the kids or they got married, it's that you don't like how they parent or you don't like who they married, so, yes.

Brian Lehrer: I think Rebecca in Tarrytown has a story. Hi, Rebecca, you're on WNYC. Thanks so much for calling in.

Rebecca: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: This is about doing the work. [crosstalk] Go ahead.

Rebecca: Yes, it's about doing the work as you get older in terms of friendship. I have my very best friend from college, and we've maintained a really close relationship throughout all our lives. We're now in our 40s, we have kids. She lives in New Hampshire, I live in Tarrytown. There's a while she's very proactive at keeping in touch and making sure we make the dates to see each other, and we make time to call one another. I would say I'm not as proactive.

There came a time when she called and she said, "I love you, and I love our friendship, but I can't be the one that always does the work. It's hurting me and I can't continue like this." It was a wake-up call for me. Yes, it takes work. So I started putting in more effort, I started making sure I would make dates to call, and we would carve out time to make sure our families got together. It's made a huge difference. I feel grateful that she was able to call that out and bring it up.

Brian Lehrer: There's a situation like that that's very heavily featured in Jennifer's article. I'm going to be curious to hear her take on it. It says something about you that you didn't get defensive when your friend told you that she was doing all the work. That can be very alienating. What do you mean you're doing all the work? It sounds like you heard that humbly, and you actually changed.

Rebecca: Yes, I'm a child of two therapists.

[laughter]

Rebecca: We grew up talking things out and I would also say my husband is very-- we talk a lot and that's been something that I've had to work on and feel the appreciation and the worth of doing it.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much, Rebecca. That could be our next series, Jennifer, children of two therapists.

Jennifer Senior: Oh my God. [chuckles] There's a lot of people to pick from actually.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, after your article on friendship in middle age came out, as I mentioned in the intro, the iconic writer Margaret Atwood surprised you by responding on Twitter about friendship in old age. She said friendships change again. She came on this show on Monday, and I asked her to give our listeners the radio version of what she said to you in a funny way, that your old enemies become your friends. Here's a little of Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood: Some of the people who were your enemies become among the few people left who can remember stuff you can remember. There may be a reconciliation there as the few of you sit around the fire and tell old war stories.

Brian Lehrer: Things look a little less intense after a certain point?

Margaret Atwood: I don't know, not always for everybody. Some people are very unforgiving, but it is also the way with romance, what was a tragedy or romantic tragedy when you were 17 becomes viewed in a jollier light when you're 30, and when you're 45, it becomes a comic anecdote. Then when you're 70, you can't remember that person's name. [laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Margaret Atwood on Monday's show being funny as well as deep as usual. Jennifer, one of the deep things that's also at the heart of your article is that we do get different things from friendships in different stages of our lives. You want to react one more time to Margaret Atwood?

Jennifer Senior: Oh, my God. Well, the first thing I actually thought when hearing her is just how formidable she is to interview. She says something brilliant, and you try and repeat it back and she corrects you, but then says something even more brilliant, and it's really funny. That was the [unintelligible 00:16:08] I have like 40 minutes of that on tape. Re-experiencing that was a pleasure.

It is true. I think that people surface and then disappear from view, and then he's back into view, or you drift apart. It's a little bit like marriage. It's very hard to expect one person to go the distance with you, and it's the rare kind of person that can and it takes work to do it. You obviously have to slalom around a lot of stuff and hope that your sensibilities are compatible enough.

I can't really put it any better than she did. That's a perspective I don't even have yet, which is what happens when there are so few in your cohort left that you're just grateful that they're there and that they share a common frame of reference? That had not occurred to me, and it was really profound.

Brian Lehrer: It's an interesting part of your article already about how we get certain things from our friends as young adults, other things from our friends in middle age, and she took that ball and carried it forward. I'm sorry to say that we have to leave it here.

Jennifer, I want to thank you so much again for launching this series of conversations and obviously for touching so many minds as well as hearts out there with this article. I think you've probably saved some friendships and also launched many, many conversations and a lot of introspection. Again, the article in The Atlantic was called It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart. The older we get, the more we need our friends, and the harder it is to keep them. Thanks, Jennifer, looking forward to your next thing.

Jennifer Senior: Thanks so much.

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