[00:00:05] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. I am covering two topics today that I’m excited to talk about. One of them especially has been one that listeners have been asking me to talk about, and that is male, female friendships. And the other one I just cover a little bit is because I’ve been yelled at recently on TikTok for my take on how you should handle friends who don’t like your social media posts.

And I will tell you just a spoiler alert that my take is you should not judge your friendship based on whether your friends are liking your social media posts. I think that’s a bad idea, but I had people yell at me on TikTok and say I was old and I didn’t understand how friendship works. I might be old or getting older, but I do think I understand how friendship works and I think sitting around Waiting and watching whether your friends like your posts is just a bad idea.

I don’t care how old you are. This is not a recipe for a healthy friendship. That’s just a little part of the show. My guests are really fantastic. If you don’t know about The Man of the Year Podcast, we have a lot of the same guests. We have a lot of the same topics. They are two comedians and friendship experts, Matt Ritter and Aaron Karo. Their podcast has been mentioned in New York Times and NPR, The Today Show. They are so fun. And they are really good at not just speaking to men, they have a totally mixed audience, but I think they do an especially good job speaking to men about making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, building a lifelong social fitness. They’re on a mission to change this stat that says 15 percent of men report having zero close friends. So a lot of their episodes speak to that. this episode is more about male, female friendships, like I said, and this whole sort of social media business. And we talk about giving friends the benefit of the doubt and lots of other friendship topics. So welcome to Matt and Aaron, but Aaron actually goes by Karo. So you will hear Matt call him that and me try to call him that, but mispronounce it a few times.

[00:02:02] Nina: So hi guys. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:03] Matt: Thank you for having us

[00:02:04] Nina: It’s not that common to hear men talk about friendship, which you mentioned a lot on the podcast, just how much you wish men would be more attuned to the importance of making time. I actually loved your episode about how much time you should spend texting your friends, hanging out with friends. I wanted my listeners to hear from you how you got into this friendship angle and just the whole concept of man of the year and the, I don’t want to say statue, the trophy

[00:02:33] Matt: Karo absolutely loves this part, the spiels.

[00:02:36] Karo: This is my job. Okay, listeners. So Matt and I have been best friends since second grade, in Plainview, New York, on Long Island. And we are part of the world’s greatest friendship tradition. We actually have a group of the same nine friends from childhood. Every year on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the nine of us all fly drive train in for wherever we live now.

And we have dinner at Peter Lugar Steakhouse in Brooklyn, very famous 150 year old steakhouse. And we vote on which friend had the best year. The winner gets their name engraved on our Man of the Year trophy and keeps the trophy for the rest of the year. you know, not only does the dinner incredible, but it keeps us together the other 364 days lobbying and jockeying for it.

And so, um, When we wanted to start a podcast, we thought, what do we have that nobody else does? And at the time there was a gigantic trophy sitting behind us. And we said, let’s talk about friendship.

[00:03:27] Nina: It’s brilliant. And it does all the things that both of us, all three of us advise all the time is makes a ritual and now you have something to look forward to. And all the things we would do to give advice to someone who’s trying to not just make new friends, because this isn’t really a new friend category. This is more maintaining the friendships you already have, which isn’t that easy. So it does the job for you because you got, I assume there’s a group text, all of that.

[00:03:49] Matt: Yeah, you know, and, and the thing about us entering the friendship expert world is that we sort of backed into it. You know, when we said, Oh, we want to do this podcast about friendship. Part of it was through the years leading up to the dinner, we would get all of these texts and emails and it started to become strangers messaging us.

On Instagram, like who’s going to win this year? Blah, blah, blah. So we realized that other people were invested in. And then when we started asking them, why do you care? It would always be the same thing. I’m like, I wish I did that with my friends. I wish I had a friend group like that. And that was sort of when we realized like, Oh, wow.

We’ve accidentally built these lifelong friendships by utilizing a lot of things that we now realize are great tips and hacks for maintaining friendship. We just sort of happenstance it worked out that way, but then we started reverse engineering and learning about all the things we did right and wrong. And that was sort of where we were like, Oh, we can apply this for the general public and, and everything we learned along the way, we want to share.

[00:04:44] Nina: It’s such a great podcast. I ended up in it in a different kind of way than you did. I don’t call myself an expert. When I go on other podcasts, people always go to introduce me as an expert. And whenever I send in my bio, I’m like, please don’t say that. Cause I consider myself an enthusiast. I’m just a friendship enthusiast. It’s like, I’m obsessed with this topic. I am a freelance writer. Who’s written about a lot of different things over the years, but this is the topic. It’s been a decade. I still don’t call myself an expert,

[00:05:07] Karo: our proper title is actually CFO, chief friendship officer.

[00:05:10] Nina: Oh, that’s perfect. Yeah, you need something. I think because there’s therapists out there who specialize in this, I feel like a little sensitive about it. Like, I have to say to them, I know I’m not an expert. You don’t have to tell me.

[00:05:20] Matt: We live in a world of charlatans and frauds and overly confident people, we kind of use the word expert pejoratively at first, but now we’re leaning into it. But we do always say in interviews, cause we’ll, we will go on NPR and they’ll have like a scientist, a biologist, you know, all this stuff.

And then I just always go on and I go, just so you understand that we respect their opinion. But I think it’s time to hear from a couple of schmoes who have had lifelong friendships.

[00:05:46] Nina: I like that. So our topic for today is one I know you’ve covered, and I get the sense you’re probably sick of talking about it, but I have not talked about it, and I want to tell you why. And to remind the listeners, the topic is male female friendships. Can I just tell you three reasons why I have not brought it up in three years of podcasting.

[00:06:02] Karo: You only get two reasons. We’ll see about the third.

[00:06:05] Nina: Okay, good. So the first is I feel bad leaving out an audience. I know that this topic, male, female friendships really speaks to heterosexual relationships. But then I was like, when I decided to do this one with you guys, all of my topics leave out an audience. I’m doing one coming up on college admissions and friendship. Cause you know, I have older kids. I do tons about teen friendships that leaves out a lot of listeners. Not everybody cares about whether they’re 14 year old girls got into the homecoming group and whatnot.

I do get some pushback on this topic. I have written about it once. It was many years ago and I think I was slightly small T traumatized by the pushback because my take was generally if you’re married, I mean, I was 23 when I got married, I’ve been married a long time. You’re not out there making new guy friends and vice versa.

And a couple of people wrote me such nasty comments that Took me this long. I mean, I think that might’ve been in 2016 or something. So it’s taken me this long to revisit it. And then the final is that I have a couple of friends, I think who have close, guy friends, let’s say, and I don’t want them to think I’m coming down hard on that. So that’s kept me from it, but I decided to be brave and just lean into it. Do people ask you about this topic a lot?

[00:07:12] Matt: Well, yeah, we did an episode, but I just wanted to say, I think it’s funny trying to cater to every segment of the population because ours is a different topic every week. So naturally, some people that’s going to be

[00:07:25] Nina: Yeah. Same.

[00:07:25] Matt: or less interesting. And we have gotten comments from people like, oh, yeah. You’re too heteronormative in your vernacular. And then we always try to be better. We’re always like evolving. And we never pretend like, Hey, we’re this perfect set of guys. Like you said, you’re always excluding somebody because some topics can be more naturally interesting to Somebody rather than the others Karo and I definitely come from a different place because I’m married with a kid and he’s single. So I think you’ll have, different views on this,

[00:07:51] Karo: Nina, don’t worry about it. We’re going to rip the bandaid off. We’re going to get traumatized together. We’re going to hit all the taboos. If you get canceled, you cancel. Listen, you had a good run. They’ll

[00:08:00] Nina: I did. I had a good run. So there was an article in The Cut. I’m sure you saw May 2024, where have all my guy friends gone? The vibe of that article was kind of a similar vibe to some of the pushback I got when I wrote about this, which was, it is so old fashioned and it’s so passe, aren’t we beyond this idea that if you’re married, you are done making friends of the opposite sex. I guess I haven’t really stated it. It’s just kind of obvious from what I’m saying that I really do think you aren’t making new friends most likely of the opposite sex when you’re married. this article that she wrote, , Sarah Wheeler was her name. She was kind of mocking a point of view that I might have, let’s say.

[00:08:39] Matt: Well, my point of view, I’m like Mike Pence. I need to be with mother all the time. My, my wife for me to be around other women. No, I jokingly say when we talked about this, I did come down on a, like a very old fashioned point of view, just cause I live on planet earth in reality in the U S where there’s certain norms and cultural mores, I’m not, some super outside of the box relationship. I’m in a pretty traditional marriage and I think there are invisible boundaries that we just try to stay within for a lot of reasons. Some of them I think were invented long before we got here and they just make sense. You know, and others, just cause it feels like maybe it’s a little weird and you have to balance those and communicate about those with your partner.

So I generally. I, now I have a lot of other married couples and I’ll communicate with the wives directly. And I consider those friendships like independent, but then like outside of that, I’m like going out and like making a random female friends. I have a lot. I would say I do have a lot. They exist somewhat independently of my wife, but not unless I made them before I met my wife, none of them are to the exclusion of hanging out with my wife.

[00:09:45] Nina: It’s the grandfathered in clause, I think a lot of people had that unspoken, if the friendship came before Then it works. And I, I think that’s true in, in my marriage too.

[00:09:54] Matt: That’s the overall big picture view. That’s mine.

[00:09:57] Nina: what about you, Karo?

[00:09:58] Karo: like how Matt said, Oh, you know, I’m not really out there with female friends and name like 17 exceptions. I mean, so if you’ve got a bunch of female friends that you knew before, and you’re making a ton of new couple friends and talking to those women independently, you both have and are making new female friends.

So, it’s, it’s all context. I’m sure Matt would agree. You know, it depends how you, how you meet them. Is it, I mean, if you. People have work wives. That’s fine. Matt’s got another exception there.

[00:10:26] Matt: Karo is my work wife. So

[00:10:27] Karo: yeah. Yeah. And you know, I suppose I’m coming from the other end, you know, I have a bunch of grandfather. Well, I’m not married, so it doesn’t really matter. Have I made any married, female friends? I mean, I have met some through couples that I’ve met. you know, I guess it doesn’t matter to me because I’m not a privy to the invisible rules that Matt, is bound to. So if there’s someone interesting that I would like to be friends with, then I just go for it.

[00:10:54] Nina: Well, I’m only coming from the married point of view because I’m married, but I am actually, this whole episode does not need to be about if you’re married. I’m curious for you if you feel you can be as close to a woman as a friend, maybe not as close as the right question, but do you feel you can be just friends? Actually really fast before you answer that when I told my husband I was hopping on this call to do this topic.

He’s like, oh, what’s there to say? We’re against it I go if we’re gonna talk about male female friendships, you know, I think he assumed from a married point of view He’s like we’re against that done. That’s the topic but like you’re not married. So it’s different

[00:11:25] Karo: Yeah. I can, I can do, uh, whatever I want. I mean, like, yes. again, so context. I have a female friend that I’ve known. As long as I’ve known Matt, she’s one of my, yeah. You can have platonic relationships with women, I mean. I suppose if I met a new female friend who I was attracted to, generally speaking, I’m trying to sleep with anybody that I’m attracted to.

So like, you know, that invisible boundary just gets real invisible, gets real translucent.Definitely, you could be friends with, women. I mean, that’s 2024. I think it’s a little, I think that part’s outdated.

[00:11:59] Matt: , I agree with Karo. It’s like, yes, I carved out all the exceptions because I do have female friends and I think they’re very much platonic I just think you need to know what’s really going on.

[00:12:08] Karo: Does your wife have male friends besides me?

[00:12:10] Matt: Work friends, a bunch.

[00:12:11] Karo: Are they single? Any of them? I

[00:12:13] Matt: I think so. Yeah.

[00:12:14] Karo: Well, send in the, send in the police.

[00:12:17] Nina: oh

[00:12:18] Matt: But I think what you were talking about, like, work for, you know, it’s all like context. It’s a different thing to be like, Oh, you know, I was out at a bar and I just met this woman. She’s great. We’re going to go hang out again next week. you know, it just kind of depends, but I, you know, we live, Karo and I actually live in, the entertainment industry where everything is social and meetings are like drinks and such.

It is true that you’ll go out for drinks with a female executive or whatever. that’s just part of networking or whatever, and you become friends. So I think I’m already backing off my hardline conservative stance. I think it’s totally fine and normal, but, but I still will stick with the idea that generally there are these boundaries and even in 2024, they’re still very real and they were put up there because it’s just good business practice.

[00:12:59] Nina: So I want to go another layer. I was thinking you guys brought up work. It’s such a good The letter I had reacted to that got me a little pushback. It came from a woman who isn’t working. She had young kids at the time her Feeling was, and I totally get it and relate to it.

Cause I work from home she missed having male friends, missed having that energy. And when you don’t have the workplace, there really is no socially acceptable place, generally speaking to go make new male friends. Like where is a married woman who works from home going to have that like male energy in her life.

And I want to read you one other tiny. Paragraph from a newer letter I got so the one I was just referring to it was from a long time ago This one’s brand new says dear Nina. I am a straight woman and some of the friends I like most are straight men. I want to deepen these relationships and develop greater emotional intimacy But I’m worried either that they or their partners will see me as flirting somehow. This has happened to me before and my friend wasn’t allowed she put that in quotes So she’s peeved about that. My friend wasn’t allowed to talk to me anymore any advice So

[00:14:00] Matt: We talked about that one, by the way, on an episode, we had a

[00:14:03] Nina: this concept, oh, interesting. I wonder if she wrote to both of us,

[00:14:06] Matt: going to say, maybe it was the same one. And I

[00:14:08] Nina: cause I’ve been holding onto this for like a year, this

[00:14:10] Matt: and I was like, again, I talk about living in reality. The reality is you want to hang out with me, then disarm my wife. and my wife’s not a paranoid person. And you know, she’s confident in our, we’re very communicative, but if you’re in a relationship where you’re not really that communicative as you need, obviously you need to be. And. If your partner is jealous, you know, whether or not that’s a good trait, it’s reality, then you got to disarm it. And if you’re the guy who wants to be friends with this person, tee that up a little, get you guys hanging out together.

They don’t have to be best friends. You guys can still be friends, but get them to see why you want to be friends with this person. And so that you can have that clearance.

[00:14:47] Nina: it sounds like it’s happened a few times that she’s tried to make friends with guys and the guys partners feel that she’s flirting with them. She might be,

[00:14:54] Matt: She might be

[00:14:55] Karo: Yeah. Even, even I would have to admit if you are a woman in a relationship and you make a new friend, who’s not a work friend. So just a someone out in the wild or a gym person. That is fraud. that’s just like this, who’s, , Jim, you know, so you got to bring them into the fold and, you know, I do joke that we, we all sound so like old fashioned, but like, you know, just got to meet the guy. Listen, that guy could be me. And then I may, I may be trying to sleep with your wife. she may be right. I don’t know. We don’t know.

[00:15:23] Nina: The term emotional intimacy was a red flag to me. And that was like the other layer I wanted to get to. what are you not? Maybe getting in your marriage and it may not just be the sexual energy. Maybe you’re just looking to have more fun or something’s wrong with your female friendships.

I’m not even gonna say there’s something up with your marriage I think something might be up with your friendships. there’s something you’re not getting out of the friends you already have

[00:15:43] Matt: if we’re going to just generalize, I will say, you know, you, you do get something different when you’re hanging out with a group of guy, I don’t know, a guy or a group of guys than you do, when I’m hanging out with a group of women, I, versus a group of men, I think there are different energies, different sort of ways that they interact. And so I could see wanting to be around that and feeling like you’re missing that. to me, that sounds valid.

[00:16:05] Karo: And you know, Matt and I, we do a social fitness score, which, you know, tests your friendship levels on various rubrics. And one of them is diversity and diversity, not necessarily meaning how we usually use it, but a diverse group of friends, men, women, people, white collar, blue collar. And so it’s good to have that mix. And also sometimes you need advice from the opposite sex.

[00:16:27] Nina: Mm hmm. I’m gonna summarize that it would be nice if we lived in a world where people didn’t feel threatened by other people, In each other’s lives that would be wonderful if I went somewhere and really hit it off with a guy and we had the great, fun friend, platonic energy, and we could go hang out at a bookstore and grab lunch or something. I know that my husband would not like that and I don’t blame him because I would feel the same way. So that’s the world we live in, but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand why people are missing this in their lives. I agree with you, Matt. I Consider the guys and the couple of friends are friends with my friends, but I wouldn’t hang out with them alone. I just wouldn’t,

[00:17:02] Matt: But we do, I do, I would say like, I. sometimes I’ll be away and Jesse will go somewhere with, one of the, like, if people are not available to do stuff, you know, I think they will, and I will, and I think that’s actually good.

[00:17:15] Nina: I guess I would. No, one’s really asked me to think about it. Maybe they don’t want to hang out with me.

[00:17:20] Matt: They’re like, your husband’s not around. Nevermind. Nevermind.

[00:17:23] Nina: Forget it. Did I miss anything in our summary? You guys.

[00:17:25] Karo: No, I think we’re good.

[00:17:27] Nina: Okay, so I have a whole different topic that I did not tell you beforehand. I’ve gotten into TikTok in the past, year and a half, I have only had one I would say somewhat controversial, very mildly controversial Tik TOK about friendship. I’m so curious to your take on it. I’ve been seeing a lot of people complaining about their friends not liking their stuff on social media.

And they get on there and they say with absolute certainty, I know if you’re seeing my Instagrams, cause they can see, right in the stories that they’re seeing them. I guess you can see that on TikTok. , I haven’t looked at that, but I know you’re seeing it.

Why are you not liking it? people get on there, they’re like red flag on a friendship. If your friend is seeing yourself on social media, but not liking it, they hate you. They don’t support you. You need to end that friendship. So I got on there and I kind of tried to speak to that audience to say.

That is a bad way to measure your friendship. I personally think that if you are looking for your friends to be your social media support, you’ve confused, business with friendship. And then a couple of people, more than a couple of people, one person said, I am old. Um, I got, people are like, Nope, you’re wrong. You’re not real friends. If someone doesn’t like your stuff, I’m so curious where you fall on that,

[00:18:30] Matt: You know, that’s a, that’s a good one. My initial take is our core belief is friendship is about two words showing off, but I think that means different things for different people. So like at first I was like, Oh yeah, I totally agree with you. That’s crazy. But like maybe to them liking their Tik Toks is like showing up to my party.

[00:18:50] Nina: but there’s three TikToks a day.

[00:18:52] Matt: know, I know,

[00:18:53] Nina: that seems extreme to

[00:18:55] Matt: I know. But I think if you don’t show up to my party, I’m, you know, I’m upset. maybe that’s their equivalent. Do I think it’s a good metric? No. And I’m just trying to like, understand what their belief system is for what high quality friendship is

[00:19:10] Karo: Well, it’s interesting because you only can see what people see on Instagram stories. But if you like an Instagram story, nobody else can see it except the person. So that like is sort of irrelevant to the greater world. I don’t really use Instagram that much anymore, but when I did, you do got to like your friends posts.

[00:19:26] Matt: all of them.

[00:19:26] Karo: Yeah. If I scroll through Matt, you gotta like it.

[00:19:29] Matt: I know. Well, that’s the thing then you’re like, I’m like, so what are you supposed to be pressing? Like all day long,

[00:19:34] Nina: Right. I do like my friends post you guys. I’ll be the first, But I’m like a high social media user, much more than most of my friends. I just, most of my friends don’t have a podcast or do anything on the internet. I have like normal friends. I call them citizens. I have citizen friends who just live like normal lives. Civilians, you know what? That actually is what I mean. and I’m like, that must be nice to live like a normal life sometimes offline. but I do, because that matters to me in some way.

Like I do like if people like it, I just don’t judge my friendship that way, but of course I appreciate it. And so I do it for other people. The younger set, by the way, like my teenage daughters, the comments under their Instagram posts, are outrageously over the top. Each person writes five comments. So it’s just showing their friendship. You’re so gorgeous. I’ve never seen you so gorgeous, like 800, you know, fires, like how hot they are.

And, and I think if their friends don’t, they are upset with

[00:20:23] Matt: right? And again, I go back to like, in our generation, maybe this is a better example, if you don’t return my texts, I feel slighted. I think that’s almost a little bit more of this is how they communicate. And so you’re basically shutting off your communication to that person or like not responding.

It’s almost like call and response weirdly, but I agree. It’s a crazy messed up way to evaluate your friendship. I mean, I think it’s toxic, but I can sort of appreciate if that’s literally how they communicate. And one person’s just not giving you the feedback that you’re requesting. Damn. That’s gotta hurt. It’s got sting.

[00:21:04] Karo: it’s also another example, right? Like social media is destroying our kids. I mean, I can’t even imagine if we had social media, Matt. I mean, it’s just, there’s no, it doesn’t seem to be any upside whatsoever. I mean, I think you should take their phones away.

[00:21:16] Matt: take them away. No phones till 25.

Your kids are 20. The oldest, no phone till 25. You’re afraid your brain isn’t fully developed till you’re 25. That’s when you

[00:21:26] Nina: yeah, it’s a disaster. I will tell you, my kids get phones and social media later than anyone I know, and it’s still probably, too young. and we have all kinds of rules. We, my kids don’t have Safari on their phone. we’re pretty strict, and it’s still their whole world, right? it’s one topic that I’m willing to be on the disagreeable side on I don’t mind being like the school marm of you shouldn’t judge your friendships this way because it’s making people unhappy. I wish I could say to all these people, like, what is the upside of this point of view? You are just searching for evidence that your friends don’t like you.

And why you get off your thing where you’re seeing who liked your, who showed. Or who

[00:22:00] Matt: did an episode. We just did an episode about how you should just view your friends. If they are your friends, you should view everything they do in the most favorable light. Not the least favorable. And it’s a selfish thing to do because when you do it that way in a good way, it’s selfishly protects your own mental health because the second you start viewing your friendships and their actions without knowing their motives in the least charitable way, it starts burning you up.

[00:22:27] Nina: Also, if you want people to assume the best of you, you have to assume the best of other people. I mean, I come to this conclusion in pretty much every episode. Which is, everybody wants to be excused for their own behavior, but give no excuses

[00:22:40] Matt: Yeah, yeah, there is that asymmetry, huh? I want, I want to be viewed in the most charitable light, but I want to judge immediately. I want to flamethrow anybody who didn’t five comment my TikTok.

[00:22:51] Nina: And so if you’re on social media a lot, and you’re posting a lot, and this is how you’re judging your friendships, I don’t see how you could have any healthy friendships. And then your friends are so on edge, just feeling like they’re constantly being judged for how they’re showing up, the showing up in real life.

It needs to count for more, even if it is a phone call, I don’t even mean literally in person, but showing off off social media, I think has to count for more. I think a phone call should count for, 10 times more than a like on social media. But of course I’m old for, you know, even suggesting that you should, God forbid,

[00:23:20] Matt: hates phone.

calls, so he’s not gonna, Karo hates phone calls, so that’s not

[00:23:23] Karo: got a schedule ahead of time. Happy to chat. You just got to reach out and see what I’m up to.

[00:23:28] Matt: You got to just pay one of those bots to go out and like your friends posts. You got to just pay 1. 99 a day.

[00:23:34] Nina: And also, it assumes, it’s another friendship thing I rail against, it assumes people use social media like you do. Some people, very passively use social media the way you watch TV. You’re not necessarily looking to interact with the thing these content people who are upset that their friends aren’t liking it are assuming their friends are all within the same planet of using social media. It’s just a

[00:23:54] Karo: I mean, listen, maybe your posts suck. I don’t know, like, maybe that’s why they’re not liking it. I mean, maybe it’s not worth it.

[00:23:59] Matt: I consider it a friendship red flag. If you think that that’s a friendship red flag.

[00:24:03] Nina: Okay, so we decided that well, I don’t know I still don’t really know Karo’s

[00:24:08] Karo: Yeah. I mean, I don’t really use, I’ve been on an Instagram cleanse for a while. So if someone was like, you didn’t like my post, I’d be like, I didn’t even see your post. I agree with Matt. You shouldn’t gauge your friendship fitness on whether or not you’re liking someone’s post. But if you do use Instagram a lot and you see your best friend’s post, I mean, just, it’s, it’s just a double tap.

Now, I don’t know if you know, you could double tap to like,

[00:24:26] Matt: Well, how else do you like?

[00:24:28] Karo: you can also just hit the heart button.

[00:24:29] Nina: I don’t think I

[00:24:30] Matt: Oh, I don’t think I knew. I don’t know. I think you just explained something new to me. I’m a

[00:24:35] Karo: Oh my God, guys, honestly. I

[00:24:37] Matt: there’s another way besides the little heart button that you put your

[00:24:41] Karo: Yeah. You double tap the photo.

[00:24:43] Nina: Oh, okay.

[00:24:43] Matt: then it just likes it.

[00:24:44] Karo: Yes.

[00:24:45] Matt: I thought that

[00:24:46] Nina: any faster. It’s just a

[00:24:47] Matt: You can’t do that for videos because that just press play,

[00:24:50] Karo: I think if you do it quick enough, it does it. Don’t worry. They’ve got, they figured it out.

[00:24:53] Nina: I’m with you on that. I, that’s why I like my friend’s post. I sort of feel like, why not if you’re there? But I also understand is people don’t use it that way. Anyway,

[00:25:00] Karo: Matt, if you don’t give me 20 fire emojis on my next post,

[00:25:04] Matt: 20 in a row on the same, like fire,

[00:25:06] Karo: also, you know, you’re, you’re describing grid posts, which nobody even does anymore. So I don’t even know what this even means.

[00:25:11] Nina: there’s the grid thing, but there’s also the, the stories. The people seem to be complaining about, The stories, because it’s only the stories that you could see if someone saw. You can’t see if someone saw your grid and didn’t like

[00:25:21] Karo: making a comment on a story only goes to the person who did the store. It’s not like anybody else can see those comments.

[00:25:26] Nina: Yeah, but I assume if a story gets more hearts and stuff, it probably gets I

[00:25:29] Matt: Shown more, right. It’s reached,

[00:25:31] Nina: yes.

[00:25:32] Karo: God, we, is this the end of America as we know, like, this is, ridiculous.

[00:25:35] Matt: we’re at, it’s near.

[00:25:37] Nina: All right, you guys, there’s so many things I, , would want to talk to you about I think all come from the same point of view of making a lot of effort, making friendship an important part of your life. I end every episode by saying, when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around, and I really believe that very deeply.

Like when, at least for women, when you’re having strife with a friend, I mean, everything else in your world can be great. That will take you down. You will perseverate on it. It’s constant, and my mission is basically to have people have less of that. Less misunderstandings, benefit of the doubt, not being upside down about your social media posts and, and all that. Any last thoughts?

[00:26:14] Matt: Yeah, I’ll just say for the men, women are better communicators. So we always say your friends aren’t mind readers. I think that’s a message that men need to hear more. cause they just assume sometimes it’s just like you assume somebody’s mad at you. They’re not, or you assume they’re not. And they are

[00:26:28] Karo: Yeah. And, and I would say, you know, even though our listenership skews male, the most inquiries that we get are from women. Actually, it’s mostly women in a, heterosexual marriage who are like my husband. Yeah. Yeah. Has no friends. My husband doesn’t get off the couch. My husband is so annoying. I like my husband, like he needs to leave me alone. so we are encouraging the WAGs, the wives and girlfriends to help their partners be better friends. Honestly, sometimes we’ll just like make a play date for your husband and another adult male.

[00:26:58] Matt: right? You’re already doing it for your kid. Do it for your other kid.

[00:27:00] Karo: also in making plans, Matt, we had that episode. We’re like, yeah, you as the wife make plans with your girlfriends that don’t include him, you know, we had a husband who wanted to go basically on a girl strip and she was like, no, just get a life like you need to use a little bit of a tough love. We’re actually like, pretty, dumb. So you need to kind of spell it out.

[00:27:21] Nina: I love that you guys are out there doing this. I think it’s great. And I think I actually probably did all those things for my husband when we first got married. It benefits me all the time.

[00:27:29] Karo: Matt, have we ever had a woman whose husband has too many friends or like too social life. And like, she’s complaining about that. I don’t think we’ve ever had that

[00:27:40] Nina: you know, where that comes up, you guys, when people have a husband who golfs nonstop, you know, that’s sort of, it’s not just a cliche. I mean, that’s a thing, right? They’re gone for the whole day or they’re on like several basketball leagues that

[00:27:50] Matt: We have a few that makes me think is this a recipe for divorce? The Saturday, Sunday, five hours when you have small children and you’re just gone. I don’t know.

[00:27:57] Nina: It’s a lot to be with your small kid all weekend while your husband’s out having fun. My husband’s not a golfer I’ve always been grateful for that. A Minnesota thing that you probably definitely do not encounter out in California Is that some people’s husbands are on hockey leagues that but you get ice time like in ridiculous hours ice time is super early in the morning or really late at night.

[00:28:16] Matt: Yeah, but that’s good because the kids are down. So let that, late at night wouldn’t if you have to, if you have to have a hobby, that’s 11 PM or 4 AM, that’s, that’s fair. You can

[00:28:25] Nina: That’s not the worst one. That’s better than like, you know, the prime time during the weekend, like for golfing.

[00:28:30] Karo: Ice time. I love that. We haven’t covered that

[00:28:32] Matt: golf guys should have to start at 4 AM. If you have kids and you want to be a golfer, it should be like four to 8 AM.

[00:28:38] Nina: All right, , I’m going to close this out. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. , listeners, you can find this duo at man of the year on YouTube and on Instagram. And are you guys on TikTok?

[00:28:50] Karo: Yeah. Man of the year podcast has our handle everywhere.

[00:28:52] Nina: Thank you Man of the Year Podcast and that will be in all the show notes and I hope I’ll see you guys around and Somewhere in the friendship space again. Hope we

[00:28:59] Matt: The friendship that experts and enthusiasts

[00:29:02] Karo: We’ll see you on the ice time.

[00:29:03] Nina: I know you love that. Midwest reference. Listeners as I always say I said it here already when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around. Bye