Do you have any friendship deal breakers?
Welcome to another episode of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin.
In episode 38, I spoke to author Diana Spechler about a piece she wrote in her Substack called “How to Make Friends.” It was a refreshing take on making friends when moving to a new city and on friendship “deal breakers.”
Trust me, I have read everything there is to read about making friends, and I found her piece different enough that I reached out to her and I said, Will you please be on my show?
What are your friendship preferences and limitations? Does repeated cancelling get to you? Is a friend who wants to talk several times a week asking for too much? Each of us has different “deal breakers.” Outside of a significant breach of trust, there is no right and wrong here–just personal preferences.
MEET DIANA SPECHLER
Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who by Fire and Skinny and of the New York Times Opinion series “Going Off.” She has written for The Guardian, GQ, Washington Post, Esquire, McSweeney’s Quarterly Tendency, Electric Literature, Harper’s Travel and Leisure, and many other publications.
Diana is an eight–time Moth Story Slam winner and has been featured on the Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, and NPR. She teaches writing at the MFA program at Cedar Crest College. And check out her newsletter, Dispatches From the Road, on Substack about the travel writing life. And it’s also where you’ll find her essay, “How to Make Friends.”
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Highlights from my conversations with Diana
Diana’s life as a travel writer and her eventual desire for more community:
I’m a travel writer. I’ve been doing travel writing since about 2015. It gets really addictive. So the couple of years leading up to the pandemic and then the first year of COVID, I was really adrift. At one point, I wasn’t even living anywhere. And I say adrift, but without the negative connotation. I mean, sometimes that was a really positive thing in my life.
And, other times, you know, well, it has a dark side, But I was living in Mexico. I was kind of [00:05:00] moving around to different parts of Mexico. I was renting apartments that were already furnished. I never owned furniture. I was just kind of drifting and going to assignments all over the world. And it was amazing. But you know, everything’s a trade off. We make choices. And when you make choices, you’re choosing one thing and choosing not to have other things. One of the things I inadvertently chose not to have was local community. So, I would sometimes really enjoy myself and feel high on the travel and other times just feel like utter despair and loneliness. And those were my years leading up to moving to Dallas where I live now.
Some of our friendship preferences:
–The need to make new friends in her 40s made Diana highly aware of her friendship preferences. I’m highly aware of mine too as I’m immersed in this topic all the time.
–There are things Diana and I each talked about that we do that probably bother other people. And she and I have a lot of differences in how we approach friendship. So, there’s no right or wrong. Especially the older we get, life is short and knowing yourself and your own—again, I’d say limitations—that might make it hard to ultimately get very close or have a very deep relationship with somebody.
–Diana talked about needing friends to understand she will fall of out touch, but it doesn’t mean isn’t thinking about them or wouldn’t be there for them. She doesn’t want to be “punished” for it or treated with coldness.
–This led to a longer discussion of my own personal issue with loyalty tests and punishing behavior.
–Neither of us likes feeling like we have to walk on egg shells. We both assume this is true for most people. It’s not enjoyable to have to be so careful at all times.
–We talked about clinginess.
Nina: You said something that really hit me. I needed to hear it. You said you don’t need every friend to be someone you can lean on in hard times. I thought that was profound and you might not realize how much. . . I like this point, that not every friend is going to be the one who’s good at that. Both in the bad times or the good times. And as long as you have enough who do each one, they don’t all need to do everything.
–We talked about how people tend to expect the same from friends that they give. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. I brought up teasing as an example. I really hate to be teased and therefore do not tease almost at all. But someone, like Diana, who sees teasing as a sign of love and fun, is not doing anything wrong in teasing per se. But if she and I were close, she would probably have to tone it down. OR, I would have to learn to hear the teasing differently and not let it put me so on edge.
–Giving the benefit of the doubt was a big topic.
The Literary Salon!
Diana’s efforts to make new friends in Dallas in her 40s:
–She reached out to writers to get together for coffee, etc., since she knows she tends to click easily with other writers.
–She encouraged listeners to remember that people tend to appreciate when you reach out. More people are open to making new friends than you might suspect.
Diana: I think a lot of people feel lonely or don’t feel like they have enough going on socially. So I would also say to your listeners, if you feel like you don’t have enough going on socially, chances are a lot of people are feeling like that, especially since COVID. So you’d be surprised how welcome it is.
–Diana’s most successful social venture was starting a literary salon in her apartment where people get together to write. She’s always the host and it’s become an important part of her social life. Friendships have been formed for others in the group, too.
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Latest posts by Nina Badzin (see all)
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