Nina: [00:00:00] welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. I am your host, Nina Badzin. I have been writing about friendship for over 10 years, podcasting about it for over four. I live in Minneapolis and I’m sitting here giddy with my assistant producer, Rebekah Jacobs, who is a writing professor in Bethesda, Maryland. We just did the most amazing interview and deep analysis of one of our favorite movies. We will give you one guess by this dialogue. I’m going to say the first line. And Rebekah, I’m going to see if you know the second line. This is from the beginning, but then, it’s said again later in the movie. These are two young girls who have just met and it’s actually a great lesson in making friends. Cause sometimes you just have to declare that you’re friends and the first character says, be sure to keep in touch, CC. Okay?
Rebekah: sure. We’re friends, aren’t we?
Nina: If you don’t know what we’re talking about, you probably do by the title of this episode, but you are going to get right now the best, deepest dive you have ever heard of. [00:01:00] Rebekah, you say it.
Rebekah: Beaches.
Nina: course it’s beaches. We focused on whether the elements of friendship demonstrated in that movie match with what science says about friendship.
Rebekah, can you tell us just a tiny bit about our guests and I’ll give their actual bios, but you are the one who said, Nina, I love this podcast. We had to have these guys on. What is the podcast?
Rebekah: So the podcast is Love factually. It’s a play on love actually a great romcom. And there are two professors, Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel, and they go into deep dives of our favorite romantic films and think about what they get right and what they get wrong. And it seemed so perfect, but we didn’t want to discuss rom-coms. We wanted to discuss our favorite topic, friendship.
Nina: And Rebekah said, Nina, we have to have them. The purpose of almost every episode of Dear Nina Is to have you walk away with an improved friendship with a different understanding of how adults get along or don’t get along, and why.
And even though this is more of a pop culture focus, it [00:02:00] seems, it actually gets so deep into relationship studies because we have these two professors. Let me tell you a little bit about them.
Eli Finkel is a professor of Psychology and Management at Northwestern University. He is the author of the All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work. He’s a guest essayist for the New York Times. The Economist declared him one of the leading lights in the realm of relationship psychology. his co-host on Love factually is Paul Eastwick, who is a professor of psychology at UC Davis, and the author of the forthcoming book, Bonded by Evolution.
His research and writing has been featured in outlets like New York Times, the Atlantic NPR, and many other places. It was a joy of a conversation. We just ended it, and both of us, it’s like almost like we’re blushing. Are we blushing
Rebekah: We’re giddy.
Nina: are we sweating?
Rebekah: I’m sweaty. Giddy. Because it was so fun . They pointed out how it’s really a masterclass in friendship and I think we knew it, but they really say how and why.
Nina: Right. We are [00:03:00] not social scientists, but they took what we just know as people who are huge friendship enthusiasts. We do do a lot of research. They validated so much of what we already knew and understood about the movie, but they gave it terminology, some that was familiar to us, some that was new to us.
And for those of you who have never watched Dear Nina on YouTube, this episode, like all episodes are on YouTube at Dear Nina friendship, where you will see Rebekah Jacobs wearing a t-shirt with Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler on it from the movie Beaches. It is really something you gotta see.
All right. We will turn it over to the interview. Hi Eli and Paul. Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship.
Eli: Thank you so much for having
Paul: for having us. This is exciting.
Nina: the two of you normally dive into romantic comedies. Your tagline is, movies teach us about love and romance. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. We’ll use science to sort it out, but are you ready to turn that laser focus to friendship?
Paul: Yeah, I mean this was exciting. It’s, it is a [00:04:00] bit of a different field for us. It’s, you know, sort of adjacent. So this was kind of neat to delve into it this way.
Nina: Which one of you is going to do the warning of spoilers, the plot, the chess pieces, all of that.
Eli: Paul’s going to get us started. I’ll do the characters. Paul, you’ll do the one minute summary.
Paul: it in one minute. I got it. I got it right here. We’ll see And crack my knuckles.
Nina: All right, Paul, let’s hear it.
Paul: Spoiler warning, you know we will be spoiling the 1988 film Beaches today. So if you don’t know that demanding too much attention will cause your mother to move to Florida where it’s peaceful, then go ahead and watch this movie and then come back to this show. So, Eli, tell us about the characters and couples in the movie Beaches.
Eli: The movie tracks the lifelong friendship of two women who first met when they were 11 years old. CC Bloom is a melodramatic narcissist played by Bette Midler. Brash and working class. She rises from a childhood in the [00:05:00] Bronx to a successful career in musical theater.
Hillary Whitney is an over controlled ice queen, played by Barbara Hershey, reserved and upper class. She grows up in San Francisco and becomes a human rights lawyer. Other notable characters include John Pierce, who dates Hillary, but then marries cc, Michael Essex, who marries Hillary. Richard Milstein, who is slated to marry a now divorced CC until she breaks off the engagement with him and Victoria, who is Hillary’s daughter.
Paul, those are the chess pieces. Are you ready to give us one minute on how the film moves them across the board?
Paul: All right. I’m going to need you to time me.
Eli: On your mark, get set. Go.
Paul: At age 11, free spirited child performer, CC Bloom meets the upper class Hillary Whitney, under the boardwalk in Atlantic City. They form a quick bond and promise to stay in touch writing letters for about a decade until one day Hillary walks out of her restrictive life in San Francisco to join [00:06:00] CC in New York.
While living together, Hillary works as a lawyer while CC star begins to rise, they meet John and Avantgarde theater director who initially falls for Hillary, but then Hillary has to move back to the west coast, and John and CC get married. Hillary visits CC in New York with her new husband, Michael and CC and Hillary have a huge fight about who is more jealous and selfish and they part ways for several years, but both of their marriages end. John feels CC has grown beyond him. Hillary catches Michael cheating, but Hillary’s having his baby and she seeks out CC in San Francisco and they make up. Fast forward about another 10 years and Hillary is still working as a lawyer and parenting her young daughter, Victoria. But Hillary falls ill with a fatal heart condition, and CC takes her to the beach house where they spend a final summer together.
We all know what’s coming. Hillary collapses. We get wind beneath my wings over the funeral scene Q the waterworks and CC becomes a godparent to Victoria.
Eli: Nice. 58.5 seconds.
Paul: I didn’t, I didn’t have to rush. Could have slowed down.
Nina: That was amazing. everybody on this panel will have had different experiences with this movie. we have the gender divide here [00:07:00] too. And we didn’t really go over people’s ages, but I, I think we’re all around the same age. I was 13 when I saw this movie in the theater, and I remember sobbing seeing it in the theater, and then I saw it. I couldn’t even tell you how many times after I’ve even seen it several times as an adult, but rewatching it for this episode , I pretty much knew every word, even though maybe it’s been 10 years since I’ve seen it. Every word, not only the words, the intonation, when the song’s going to cue everything.
Rebekah, what about you?
Paul: it gets locked in.
Rebekah: Same. I saw it in the theater. I was 12 years old. I was writhing on the floor. I think the only time maybe I didn’t collapse was when I watched it now and probably because I was taking notes. So a bit of a different lens. The movie affected me so much that my best friend Donna and I made a pack that should we die, we will go get each other’s daughter. And it made total sense, like no mind that you might have a husband, there might be other [00:08:00] kids no mind to that. Who else could raise your kid but me. because we are the keeper of the stories. Obviously now when I hear myself say that, there’s a lot of plot pieces that don’t, don’t quite make sense. But that vow that
Eli: keeper of the stories
Nina: My memory is long.
Rebekah: My memory is
Eli: I’m counting on it
Nina: Yes. Yes. Good job. Good job. What about you guys?
Paul: So I first saw this movie think it was, it was eighth grade and it was in a music class at school, it was twinned with the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors, and I think we were just going through the different ways that music gets used in movies. So Little Shop of Horrors being like a bonafide musical and this kind of being more like musical showcase. What I really remembered more than anything else were the songs. I mean, especially the Tit Slinger Brasier song. were the right as that started, I was just like. Oh, right, remember
Nina: We’re all Hillary. We’re all Hillary in that scene being like, [00:09:00] Ooh, that’s not a very tasteful
Eli: It is a bit
Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That absolutely melted my brain.
Eli: I saw this movie for the first time about 10 days ago, and I’m grateful.
Nina: Oh, I’m so glad. That actually is a
Eli: for the two of you. Yeah. To, to, to turning me onto it. That said, win beneath my wings was absolutely unmissable. And this is, you know, would’ve been when I was about 13 and I did have sort of a best friendship sort of relationship with this song because I, I really was the extroverted boisterous one, and my best friend, guy named Adam, still my closest friend. He is shy and introverted and so again, it’s not a perfect match. But I definitely remember thinking at 13 that he was sort of the wind beneath my wings. I kind of like that.
Paul: Oh wow.
Nina: I wonder, does everyone think that they have someone who they’re the Oprah and like the friend is the Gail, which is like another version of, although they’re both very outgoing and I have huge careers. I don’t know if you fellows know, but in women’s world, [00:10:00] that’s a dynamic that is discussed oh, you’re my Oprah. You’re my Gail. People don’t really say, oh, you’re my cc, you’re my Hillary. But I they’re saying the same thing basically. Like someone is the wind beneath their wings.
Paul: I confess that when I think about my closest friends, it tends to be more in the realm of groups of friends and that might come up a little bit later in this podcast. That distinction there.
Eli: my buddy definitely was like, no, I was the wind beneath
Nina: this is what I mean, like, but was, there was no confusion about the role. Yeah. Oh, that’s funny. We can’t wait to hear you guys talk about it and we will chime in on what works.
Rebekah: Well, I think Paul, you led us into it when you said, I think of groups and I think somewhere along the way, and beaches was probably a big part of this, especially for, people of a certain age where we started to romanticize that idea of that ride or die. That best friend that call me at 3:00 AM. I will help you bury the body.
You know, figuratively. I, and I was wondering, what the research says is this soulmate [00:11:00] friendship, is this some impossible standard that makes women or men feel like we’re missing out on something or not? Is there really this beautiful, lucky soulmate friendship,
Paul: it’s a great question. One thing that’s clear, and it’s really interesting to consider this question vis-a-vis the gender dynamics here. If you look at men’s and women’s friendships, it’s not like they differ that much in how many friends they have. this was from a recent survey that I came across, but if you look to see who’s got between one and four close friends , 55% of women say yes and 50% of men. So that’s like pretty close to the same.
Eli: Hmm.
Paul: But when men think about their friends, it tends to be more groupy. I’ve got this bunch of buddies and we get together every so often. When I post pictures of me and a friend online, it’s more likely to be a group, whereas women often think about their friends in a more dyad [00:12:00] specific way. It’s about us as a pair. That’s not to say that women have a ride or bestie and then no other friends, but they think about their friends in a more dyadic way, and when they post things on social media with friends, it’s more likely to be dyadic in that way.
Nina: I don’t about you, Rebekah, but I almost never post a group. It’s like my worst fear ever to leave someone out. But I would’ve no problem posting one person because That’s okay.
Rebekah: Yeah, it would also maybe stress me out to post just one, because then, you know, what if, like, what if you were at a group but you just posted one? We’re very complicated how we think about, what the posting but the adult version of me was like, oh, that. I’d actually be pretty tough to have that type of expectation. Although the friendship, enthusiasm me thought, you know, it’s kind of that big romantic gesture, but it’s for your best friend.
Nina: As much as I love this movie and I love it. Okay, so that’s obviously cards on the table on that. as a person who has been writing about friendship for a decade, podcasting about it for four years, it’s called Dear Nina because people write me a lot of letters. [00:13:00] There is so much anxiety about, I don’t have this best friend.
And a huge part of my mission personally is to help people see that the whole point of friendship, I think, is we don’t have to have just one. That’s the beauty. That’s how it’s different than a romantic relationship. We get to have so many. How lucky are we if you can do it and make time for it and know how to do it, maintain many close friendships. Doesn’t have to be a best friend. Close friendships. So if that one person can’t drop everything, there might be a few others, just a few. You don’t need 10, a few others who could be there for you.
Paul: I think there’s something too about this idea that you have this long history with somebody and that is very special and, and certainly not everybody gets that over the course of the many, many decades that this film spans. But there’s that great quote toward the end where CC, says, I know everything there is to know about you, and my memory is long.
My memory is very, very long and right. And how does Hillary respond? She says, I’m counting on it. We [00:14:00] want to remember this other person in all of their phases of life, and we want to be remembered as well by somebody after we’re gone. And so I think that that history element is often a big deal to people, if they can cultivate it, and it’s not easy.
Nina: It’s during this section and then we’ll move on to the next point about the movie that I want to say one little danger of this movie is where are the other friends? There’s only one tiny, and I mean tiny reference to other friends. It’s at the beach house towards the end and Hillary’s sick. CC’s picking up the phone, doing all the phone calls, and she says to Hillary, at some point, you know, your friends are going to think I’m holding you prisoner here. And I was like, oh, thank God. Somebody mentioned
Paul: somebody else.
Nina: other people in this world.
Paul: I didn’t even get that.
Nina: Oh, I immediately was like, and as a kid I wouldn’t have caught that. But in this part of my life, I’m like, does Victoria not have any other, friends with moms that Hillary has ever spoken to? Like where are, and CC too. Where are [00:15:00] CC’s
Paul: Yeah.
Eli: it’s interesting. This is Gary Marshall, the Gary Marshall movie, known for movies like Pretty Woman and, and Other Romcoms. And yeah, it does have a lot of the beats of a romcom, of a, this is the one. And I don’t know, is that necessary? It’s probably not the most productive way to think about friendship, but it is one way of thinking about it.
Nina: Maybe it was the way to make it fascinating enough to an audience that is used to seeing a romance. And so they mentally, it’s like we are expecting those beats, even though we don’t know we’re expecting them. I mean, you understand that because you analyze these movies all the time. All right, the next question is directed towards Eli and before we get to the question, I’m going to introduce it by saying, my theory on why this movie hits so hard for women is not just the sad piece, because that’s the part we remember a lot. We remember them on the beach and we remember CC saying that she’ll take care of Victoria and saying to Victoria like, your mom wanted me to take you.
And she says, can I bring my cat? And like everybody remembers that Pouncer the Wonder Cat. I don’t think it’s just that. [00:16:00] I think it is this fantasy we have that you can say any nasty thing you want to your friend, you can just dump on them all the stuff that you’ve ever thought that you were too polite to say and you can say it all and you can not speak and you can have this horrible breakup and you can reconcile.
Reconciliation I do think it’s real. I’ve done it myself, although it’s never as nasty as that, but it’s a fantasy. People are really upset about their friendship breakups. So over to Eli, what does the research show about apologizing and making up, and who do you think made the better apology? It’s such a powerful part of the movie.
Eli: This movie pulls no punches when it comes to the hurtful things that these two women say to each other and do to each other.
They’re having conflict and reconciliations throughout the whole movie, but to me there are two monster fights, one of which comes close to ending the friendship. This is the fight that happens in the department store, this is in New York. Hillary really picks this fight they end up saying things like, why you stuck up [00:17:00] little witch, when your father died, he took the best of you with him and then you tried to be an interesting person for a while, but look at you now, you’ve completely reverted to type.
You’re nothing but a small minded, tight ass snob. And then it’s not one sided, right? So Hillary says, jealous. What am I jealous of? Your insane ambition. No, it must be your new money. No, I’m jealous of your marriage of convenience.
That must be it. Aren’t you afraid you got him by default, I mean, they. Are vicious. So I do want to say a few things about this that I think the research literature, there’s this like discipline called relationship science that tries to study this stuff. I think they have some good insights here. And the first one I think is under the hood.
It’s nobody can hurt us like a loved one can hurt us. The line, aren’t you afraid you got him by default? We don’t have to worry about strangers saying that stuff to us. And what I love about this is it takes seriously the threat and the risk of actually allowing ourselves to be known actually pursuing [00:18:00] intimacy.
And here there’s this really compelling research program in our world on risk regulation. The idea is you can either be safe and not let anybody hurt you. Or you can have intimacy, but you cannot have both. And so all of us are deciding, am I willing to be vulnerable? If yes, then I am at risk of pain. If no, then I am safe, but I can’t have closeness.
And, and I think this line and the brutality of the zingers they are pushing at each other is an example of why this stuff is so brutal.
Nina: Absolutely.
Eli: A second thing that I think the scene really underscores, and again, luckily they have another fight scene later where there’s actually a reconciliation.
But in the research literature on romantic relationships, there’s this idea of certain behavioral patterns that are especially corrosive. And if you were to think of all of them, the one that is most corrosive at all is contempt. This is where we are acting superior to our romantic partner, in this case, our friend, often through mockery or [00:19:00] disdain.
I just don’t think we’ve seen a more vicious example of this stuff in any of the films we’ve seen. And the third thing that I think that, that this scene really underscores is why jealousy is so corrosive. It’s so corrosive because one of the things that we look to our friends and loved ones to do is to be supportive of our achievements.
It’s this idea called capitalization In our world, it’s this research in Shelly Gable who’s most associated with the work. But the idea is we’re not just looking to our intimate partners to help us when we’re down. We do see that in this movie too, but we also want our partners, including friends to help us celebrate the good times. And if Hillary is this jealous of CC, how can she ever truly savor and celebrate CC’s successes?
Nina: You can sort of not blame Hillary for being exhausted by constantly having to let CC know how wonderful she is and their whole friend ship is kind of based on that at the [00:20:00] beginning. Is Hillary being in admiration of CC’s talent? just like her mother says, like Paul said in the intro her mother, that’s a great scene with her mother that she’s like, do you know why I moved to Florida? Because I’m tired of telling you that I love you, that I support you, that you’re the best.
Eli: And one thing I liked about the scene with the mother is the mother clearly loves her. It’s not nasty that, I mean, there are some nasty scenes in this, but this one, like the mom needed to escape the amount of neediness that CC had.
Rebekah: Eli, I think you hit on it. I used to, I just call it the dagger, that’s not the research word, but it’s that one thing that only, maybe the person who you have let in can say, so sibling, a romantic partner, maybe that person who you really, who’s known you forever. So they, you know, they said the dagger and how do you, you know, sometimes it’s in so deep you literally can’t pull it out, but somehow they do. But it, it wasn’t easy.
Paul: I think what’s so fascinating about that scene too is that. Look, I think we’re all familiar with the generic love triangle [00:21:00] challenge that friends can confront and that can be very tricky for how to navigate that. But this actually isn’t a moment where the love triangle is a problem.
I think we are to understand at this point that Hillary is pretty happily married with Michael. At least we’re not really given any an occasion otherwise until she discovers him cheating. It’s just using your history with somebody to get at them. that’s really what it is. And yeah, that’s the risk.
That’s the downside of having somebody who knows you this well, is that if they want to turn on you, they’ve got a lot of dirt that they can dredge up. And so that’s pretty harrowing I think for that reason.
Nina: Eli, that leads us to the second fight,
Eli: Oh yeah.
Nina: that’s the fantasy I’m talking about. We said these ugly things, the worst things you could say to somebody because you know them so well and we used it against them, but we can [00:22:00] make up, I wouldn’t say magically, A long time goes by.
Eli: I actually love the way you set that up because I, this wasn’t magic. I mean, they could have ended forever there, and friendships do and forever over fights like this, especially because as sort of histrionic and needy as CC is, she does seem to be forgiving and she keeps reaching out. so there’s this long period of time after that major fight where CC is writing letters to Hillary. Hillary is not receptive, is not writing back. CC ends up kind of in harder times in her career and she ends up in San Francisco performing at something closer to like a dive club than the, the stages of Broadway. And is, isn’t this right? The snake pit What happens there is Hillary decides to show up, and I think this is going to be this big moment where Hillary kind of makes up to CC and they renew everything, but she gets off on the wrong foot because the way Hillary starts is she says, oh, ce, I’m so glad to see you. I feel awful for sending your letters back. I don’t even know what happened in New York. I don’t care anymore. I want you to know whatever it was, I [00:23:00] forgive you. And it’s kind of awkward to offer forgiveness to somebody who hasn’t apologized. and this is another one that I think is pretty interesting in our world, is, is there’s one way that you can think about forgiveness, which is just sort of getting over resentment and Sure, that’s fine.
Hillary’s welcome to do that, but there’s another one that’s basically canceling a debt. It’s like, what does forgiveness mean? you know, and I know that you did something wrong and for that reason you owe me, there is a moral debt that you owe to me. And so when I forgive you, I’m generously canceling the moral debt.
To do that effectively requires that we agree that there’s a debt here and CC is angry. And she says, this is a little later in the conversation, you took your friendship without even discussing it with me.
That friendship was more important to me than anything. I trusted it. I believed in it, but you didn’t, and now it’s gone. Thank you very, very much for forgiving me, but I don’t forgive you. I think this is a really terrific [00:24:00] illustration of why canceling a debt and acting like you’re in the position of moral authority, moral high ground, when the other person doesn’t agree, is a really dangerous way to go.
Nina: It’s some of my favorite lines in the movie. I also wrote them down. I wrote down that whole speech because I watching it again. It made me feel like, gosh, is this why I write about friendship? It was so instrumental I keep using the word fantasy because it is inching us towards the makeup scene that is so satisfying as a viewer, like as a movie viewer, but also as a person. Any person out there has had, maybe not this direct and vicious, but hard conversations and hard moments with a friend and you just kind of wish you could make up, but you don’t know how. good for CC. CC does such a beautiful job, I think, of disagreeing, but staying in the conversation. She doesn’t just say, get out. She continues to talk to her.
Eli: She’s on the fence. She’s like half in, half out. She does kind of turn on her heel and, and the pivotal [00:25:00] moment that you’re talking about happens right after that. And it’s beautiful. This is where Hillary says, finally admits it. She says, I was jealous. I was so jealous of you. I couldn’t see straight. You did everything you said you were going to do everything and your talent, this incredible talent, I can’t even yodel.
Paul: even
Nina: Hillary, what’s yodeling got to do with it?
Eli: That’s exactly right. But what’s wild about that is in that instant, the whole thing softened. Now why? Why is it that one second ago, there was no way CC was going to tolerate this. And then here we are literally one minute later and it’s almost over already, and I, and I think here again, our field has some useful things to say.
So in attachment theory research in our space, and especially in like the clinical research and attachment theory, they make this distinction between different types of emotions and they argue, this is Sue Johnson primarily. She argues that anger. Is often a mask for emotions that we don’t trust ourselves to [00:26:00] feel right.
There are scarier emotions for us, like hurt or shame or fear of rejection. And so we come in hot, we come in with anger because it’s not as scary for us to be angry as it is for us to be vulnerable. And finally, Hillary breaks down and she does the vulnerable thing. Pretty much that’s it. Like forgiveness is basically there. As soon as Hillary can say, I feel bad about myself and I’m sorry for what I did, and CC was totally ready to forgive at that point.
Paul: and I think what you hope for in a moment like that is that when you back off the anger and you show the vulnerability and you show the openness, that what clicks into place in the other person is the reminder of what has the history of this relationship been?
Why was it important, how far we’ve come? And you can get back into the pattern of being kind to each other, not being afraid of the anger and being able to support [00:27:00] each other. We kind of see CE do that in, in that moment.
Rebekah: Someone told me to think of anger as a glacier. It’s what you see, but the, the underneath is what’s really, you know, kind of pushing it and forming it up and, and making it move. so, yeah, that line for me too, when she said I was so jealous, she was honest and finally CC was like, there she is, there’s the honesty, like we’ve always been honest with each other and true.
Nina: She softens immediately. She says, you’re beautiful. You’re smart people. Look at you. It was all my fault. That’s what CC says immediately after and they say it was our fault. You know, that kind of at the same time, that is not the end of the movie, that seems like that would be the end of the movie, but there’s so much more to go.
That was one thing I realized when I re-watched it. It’s a pretty long movie. that happens at about it starts at an hour and 10 minutes is when they start to reconcile. We got a ways to go. So we’re going to keep going. Rebekah, you had a question Next.
Rebekah: well, I think there’s this idea, and we probably see it in [00:28:00] romcoms too, of these two opposite beings, And that is this ideal attraction where he is, a total slob and you’re a neat freak. Or she’s CC Bloom and and she’s introverted, Hillary, and, does that pan out?
Does that make a great relationship or is it like in spite of your differences, you can find a way to connect?
Paul: it’s a great question. It’s an evergreen question. It comes up a lot, and I think this movie is one of the best for illustrating it and illustrating how it works. When we look at what the science has to say about the possibility of opposites attracting, or sometimes it’s called complementarity, meaning I’ve found my opposite, and therefore we work well together.
The reality is that other than among heterosexual men and women, the tendency to be attracted to somebody of the other gender. that’s kind of it. there really isn’t much evidence for opposites attracting [00:29:00] or frankly repelling either. I think we often think that opposites attract because what can happen is that as a friendship forms and also as a romantic relationship forms, people often settle into roles . The roles can be complimentary by design because there are going to be some things that I’m like a little better at than you. And so it’s easy for us to snap into a pattern where, yeah, you know, it makes sense for one person to do one thing and one person to do another thing.
it’s not hard for a show person extrovert, like CC and a more introverted person like Hillary to make that complementarity work for them by sort of putting CC at the front and, and you know, CC is like in charge of their social life in New York and, and Hillary tags along with that, but then Hillary’s got [00:30:00] other strengths.
I think that’s part of where this complementarity idea comes from. But it’s actually more about a dynamic as relationships form and take shape than something about like, oh, like a magic pairing. If you could just like arrange it that way from the start.
Nina: That makes sense to me. Two friends don’t both need to be the people that book the plane tickets for a trip. Like somebody’s just better at that. So then they do it. They’ve done it two or three times, they. He always become the person who does it. The other person might do that in a different friendship.
They just don’t do it with this friend. It doesn’t mean they’re not capable. I like the opposite attract concept in this movie because I do believe that part of the point of friendships and why we have more than one back to that, why we don’t just have one, is to push us to grow. And so if everyone is exactly like you, you don’t have the opportunity to grow. And these two do challenge each other a lot on little tiny things.
Paul: And one of the exciting things about any kind of new relationship is that there’s this really popular idea in our world called the inclusion of the other [00:31:00] in the self. as relationships are forming. You’re meeting this new person and they’ve got interests and ideas and hobbies and traits and all of these different attributes that might be unfamiliar to you, but because you’re growing this relationship, you at least have the opportunity to maybe take on some of these things as your own.
As we’re motivated to form these relationships, you know, it’s very easy to be like, oh, like, you know, my new partner’s a rock climber. I, I’ve always been meaning to try that, right? So you can very quickly snap into like, oh, that’s me too. where you differ from somebody originally can be a lot of what makes a new relationship quite exciting.
Nina: And while we’re in the relationship realm, if you’re in terms of romantic relationships, if you’re ready to move on to this, we do have the love triangle a little bit, but it’s, it’s a big thing that starts to enter the first time they have an issue with each other. And how does this play out, do you think?[00:32:00]
Demonstrate it well in this movie. Is this like the typical way you see it in other romcoms?
Paul: This one’s interesting because it moves very quickly. I mean, the, I, I think the movie is fundamentally about the two women, obviously, and so. The romantic relationships take such a backseat that it seems like the beats are happening very fast. So I think the time span between John getting together with Hillary and CC marrying him, that might be five minutes. It’s very quick
Nina: Yeah.
Paul: in terms of
Eli: You mean screen
Paul: in terms of the time?
that we’re spending with in terms of screen time. Right. what what you, and actually this is something we talk about on love factually all the time, is that our universe of the science doesn’t actually do a great job studying triangles of any kind. We don’t do a good job looking at, Eli is dating one person, but he’s got an ex and like, how does his current [00:33:00] partner and, and his ex do? They agree. Very few studies look at these kinds of triangles or like the kinds of triangles that we have here. So I’m arguing a little bit from a vacuum here, but my sense is that it’s common, although maybe not the norm for somebody like, you know, like John to date one friend and then to seamlessly move to the other friend and kind of have that be okay. At least it seemed like their friendship was okay for a while. I think part of the reason we are to understand that that went okay is because at about the same time, Hillary is now getting together with Michael.
And does seem happy rebooting her very upper class San Francisco lifestyle. So I think it works, but it works in part because that love triangle, at least when they were in New York, didn’t inspire a deep level of jealousy before Hillary had to go.
Nina: Yeah, I think if Hillary [00:34:00] had to stay, if she hadn’t gone to take care of her father, it would’ve blown up like that friendship would’ve blown up. It seems to have been going in that direction. Rebekah, don’t you think?
Rebekah: Yeah, and I think in the end with Michael, with that relationship also. Imploding it does become more clear that this is their love story in a way. You know, it’s really about their enduring love and how do we all change , when we are the keeper of stories and we have known someone from childhood, like where is there room to grow and.
Nina: There’s a little scene I love when it’s before Michael and Hillary break up, they are still married and they had that huge fight in the department store and CC’s John’s trying to console her and she says, but what will I do without a best friend? And he says, you have me. And she says, it’s like the theme in the movie. It’s Not the same. It’s Not the
Paul: Yeah.
Eli: what do you make of that, Nina? I mean, lots of people will say that their romantic partner is their best friend, and in fact one of the interesting things we’ve seen over time is how wedding vows change. And [00:35:00] none of us would be surprised these days if we went to a wedding and one of the, the bride of the groom said to the other one, like, you’re my best friend and that’s one of the reasons I want to marry you.
Certainly 150 years ago, that’s really not the way people were thinking about this stuff. Do you look into the combination, the, the sort of idea that your spouse, your romantic partner also should be your best friend? Do you have thoughts about how that has developed?
Nina: I do, and I don’t think your romantic partner should be your best friend. I think you’re missing out on the opportunity for two separate special relationships. But I feel that way about a lot of relationships. I think your neighbor is its own special relationship. Being neighbors. Being a roommate is its own special kind of relationship.
You can be friends with your neighbor and you can be friends with your roommate, for example, but you don’t have to be friends, and you could still have a very wonderful neighborly connection the second you expect it to be a friendship. Now you’ve changed it, you’ve changed expectations.
You’re disappointed when you don’t need to have been because you actually are just neighbors. Same with roommates, but back to the [00:36:00] romantic partner, your spouse especially . It’s a lot of pressure to put on a relationship that already has a ton of pressure on it.
Eli: Yeah.
Paul: Eli, I’ll sit back and let you cook on
Eli: No, no, I mean, I, I agree. yeah, I mean, I, to the degree that I have a, a take on what you just said, it’s about that pressure way of thinking about it. I end up at a, I think, slightly non-obvious place of not that this is good or this is bad. That it is a massive ask that our romantic partner, our spouse, is all the things that they used to be, or at least many of those things, but now also our best friend and our career coach and, and those sorts of additional, more psychologically oriented things.
And yet it’s a lot, some of us are able to stick the landing on that. And I think those people do have really strong marriages, probably stronger marriages than people used to have in eras where they weren’t even trying for that level of connection, but that many marriages that would’ve been just fine a couple generations ago, are going to end up on the Shoals.
Crashed on the [00:37:00] Shoals because of these additional expectations we’re bringing.
Nina: I agree. Rebekah, did you have a thought on that? And then we’ll move on to our last question.
Rebekah: you may cut this out or you might keep it in. I mean, I think probably like if I was on a stranded island with my husband, I would say that may be enough for him, but he knows I would need to be on a stranded island with some people and with at least two to three female friendships. and I love and adore him, but he would be like John, saying he wouldn’t be offended. He would say, I know, I know you need us all for me to be my best self.
Paul: And this is a big thing too, that often women are better at diversifying their social portfolios. Men are very happy in their long-term relationships. On average, they get a lot out of it. And when those relationships break up, they can kind of be a mess. And one of the reasons they’re a mess, I mean this is totally the scientific zeitgeist right now.
One of the reasons they’re a mess is because they [00:38:00] forgot to keep cultivating their social networks, they forgot about their other friends, and so they can have a tough time in the wake of breakups for exactly that reason.
Rebekah: I think that brings us perfectly to the ending and the beginning. So it’s a real full circle moment, which I also saw, you know, it opens with my Mayim Balik, right? Like singing Glory of Love, and it ends in that way. And I really paused on the lyrics this time. And so we would love to turn it over, to you guys. And does it hold true? Do we have to give a little laugh a little? Sing the blues a little.
Eli: I’m glad you gave us a heads up that this one might be coming. I, gave some, I gave some thought to this. first I think it’s originally a 1936 song. It was, sort of not the era of deep introspective lyrics. there are, I think, five parts to the song.
There’s like an introductory section, there’s a bridge, but there are three verses and let’s actually go into what they say about love. So,
Nina: I hope you’ll read them.
Rebekah: Or sing them.
Paul: do [00:39:00] it. Do Paul is actually a good musician and
Eli: a singer, guitar that’s hanging behind
Paul: Oh gosh. Oh God. Does it even have strings? I don’t know.
Eli: Seriously. so the first of the three sort of main verses is you’ve got to give a little, take a little and let your poor heart break a little. The second of the three is you’ve gotta laugh a little, cry a little, and let the clouds roll by a little here, I confess, it’s a little abstracts for me.
And then the last one is you’ve gotta win a little, lose a little and always have the blues a little. you had said like you’d, you’d ask us to reflect on, degree to which this sort of matches with what we understand in relationship science. And I think the answer is more yes than no.
But I actually think that the movie has a bunch of pretty significant insights about how love and relationships work that are better than the insights in that song. So lemme just start with a reminder of some of the things we’ve already talked about. It talks about the risks of closeness. Like why is it scary to have like a [00:40:00] true deep intimacy with someone?
because they can really hurt us and the movie does a great job with that. The perils of contempt. So what is it that makes us really struggle in a relationship when we are shooting darts, disgust, darts at each other and standing from on high. capitalization.
That is the people there to celebrate with us when things go well. We talked about how to forgive and why it’s dangerous to offer your forgiveness to somebody who hasn’t yet asked for it. And then I think we also talked about, you know, for example, how hurt it gets hidden behind anger and that it’s like when we are willing to be vulnerable enough to live with the hurt rather than the anger, that’s when reconciliation is most likely.
I think all of those are more insightful than any of the 1936 lyrics, but I, I want to give the movie even more credit. There’s a. A few little things I want to mention that, that we haven’t even talked about. The movie does a great job of illustrating a concept called responsiveness, right? So the idea is that you not only need to support me, you need to support me in the way that’s sensitive to my needs.
And one of the moments that I love [00:41:00] most in the movie is near the end, Hillary is sick. It’s clear that she will die from this cardiac issue she is having. And she says, I need to go to the beach. I’m going to need some help. CC says, I’ll hire a nurse for you.
And Hillary says, look, I can do that myself. it takes a minute. CC goes off, she finds a photo from when they were kids. She comes back and she says, you know, I just finished recording an album. I’ll go with you. In both cases she’s like giving a little, in one case she’s like giving some money and another case, she’s giving of herself for the summer.
And I think it’s a meaningful difference.
Nina: thing I want to jump in real fast. That is so beautiful about that moment in friendship that people don’t do enough and I’m always pushing them. Hillary could have stood on ceremony and kind of been like, Hmm, she didn’t offer right away. Forget it. I’m just going to say people. To do that a lot. Women for sure would be like, Nope, it’s fine.
Don’t come. Don’t go to your concert. I don’t need you. And no, she softens immediately and says, thank you. I would love that.
Paul: we we have a specific name for this thing. It, it’s called Transformation of Motivation. And what that means is you are [00:42:00] thinking selfishly, and then you pause for a second and you think about how important this relationship is to you. And then you give a little, right? I mean, there it is.
And you find a way of accommodating both people’s wants and needs and interests in that moment. I mean, I think, and then we get the third act. I would’ve been sad if we hadn’t had the third act, because the third act is I, I think the most powerful part of the movie.
Eli: you know, Nina, you, you’re exactly right. I, I think that moment that you’re talking about here, when CC comes back and says, actually, you know what, I’d like to go with you for the summer, and Hillary, instead of being defensive, she says, I would like that. I think that’s her pivotal character moment. That is the, the thing that she has struggled with throughout her life is that she needs to be poised and dignified and not overly needy. And this is the moment when she knows she has a need and she knows that she needs CC CE specifically to be the one to be there for her. And she is willing to accept that [00:43:00] level of, dedication is a beautiful moment for them.
Nina: There’s one more moment just like that where CC challenges her a little bit, and Hillary at first is defiant and then backs down. CC says, you gotta get out of those pajamas. You gotta like basically live a little and, and Hillary’s like, I’m dying. And CC’s like, not yet. These are my words. But it was kind of, that was the gist.
Again, Hillary could have crossed her arms, stayed in those PJs. And we see soon after that she does put on some clothes and comes into the room where CC and Victoria are watching a movie and and Victoria says, will you braid my hair? And she does. And then she does that little wink at CC. I just melt at that moment. because again, I don’t think we see enough of that in real life where people back down from their position quickly so that they can get to the good part. we don’t have to stay in this
Paul: Yeah.
Eli: Mm-hmm.
Rebekah: Right. It’s also a moment where now she’s jealous of her, but in a different way because CC will get Victoria and she’s going to see Victoria, God willing, grow up. Hillary’s not going to get that. And it’s a jealousy, but it’s not a dagger [00:44:00] jealousy, it’s a like a, I don’t know if there’s no, maybe there’s a research term for it, like a, a loving jealousy, but it’s not anger.
It’s like an acceptant, maybe it’s radical acceptance of just where it becomes beautiful. And she feels very lucky. And even though she can’t get it, it’s not resentful. It’s you’re, thank God you have her especially, because there is no doubt in the, in the picture now. So that’s, who she has.
Paul: it’s such a complex series of emotions and I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that we study all that well. The other thing that I love about this portion of the movie is that, look, we many times live with our romantic partners. We have a daily life with them. That daily life can be challenging, but it’s also a lot of what makes our relationships meaningful.
But we don’t get to live with our friends for an extended period of time that often, it often, it takes a little bit more effort, at least, you know, in the contemporary West these days. But they get to do it while they’re at this beach house. [00:45:00] It’s pretty special. It’s the kind of thing that, like, I probably couldn’t even come up with a single research paper about what happens when friends live together. But it’s a beautiful idea and I think well executed here.
Eli: Yeah. I mean, and, and so when I’m reflecting on, do I think let the clouds roll by a little, sort of captures it? I, I think, well, if you’re going to leave a lot as an exercise for the listener, it kind of works. But, just a couple last things that I think I would have in there if I were going to write the Story of love or the Glory of Love . One thing that’s beautiful is, this willingness to sacrifice. It’s just not captured by, give a little, take a little. There is a big research literature in this space on, under what circumstances are we willing to do major sacrifices, which CC is certainly doing and she is right to do, but it is a big one.
If I were writing the song that I think the ideas in this movie warrant, I would focus on one other idea from our world, which is the distinction between work it out beliefs and soulmate beliefs. There’s research on this. People [00:46:00] differ in the extent to which they think usually for a romantic partner, but this could work for a friendship. We’re meant to be together versus, no, relationships require work and the resolution of conflict. And it turns out that when there’s a big conflict, it matters a lot, which theory you have of what relationships are because if you have a soulmate theory of relationships and now you’re fighting, the conclusion is, oh, I guess we’re not compatible. If you have a work it out theory of relationships, and now we’re fighting, it’s, oh, this isn’t that fun. But it’s an opportunity to learn together and grow together, and that would be part of the song that I would write if I were distilling this movie down into a song.
Paul: Go write it, Go
do Bette Midler could sing it.
Rebekah: you’ll come back and and sing it for us.
Nina: You guys, I’m going to end with a fun fact that is really only pertinent to me, but I think you’ll find it amusing. I actually read the book a long time ago of Beaches. That’s what the movie is based on, and there was even a sequel. Victoria is not the name of the daughter and the book, do you want to guess what her name is?
Rebekah: Oh.
Paul: it. [00:47:00] Oh, is it? Is it like Whitney? Is it? No, it.
Nina: it should be fairly obvious connected to the name of this show.
Eli: Nina.
Paul: Nina. Nina. Yes. I didn’t know that when I watched the movie. I only discovered the book later because I was a fan of the movie. Then read the book, read the sequel, and the whole time I was reading, I was like, why didn’t they leave her name Nina?
Nina: I was sort of insulted. It’s a great name.
Eli: much better.
Nina: The sequel follows Nina she’s kind of a messed up kid. Sorry to ruin the sequel,
Eli: Yeah.
Nina: there’s not a movie sequel, but there’s a book Sequel. Eli and Paul, I cannot tell you how much this is. Rebekah, was this the most fun we’ve maybe ever
Rebekah: I’m grinning from ear to ear.
Nina: We are such dorks about relationships, friendships, specifically the two of us together, but we’re not professors. So to be able to talk to people who study this so extensively,
Rebekah: One time we did in Defense of the Triangle, because we’re actually pro
Nina: did. It was about the Yeah, it was about it was about White Lotus who were a terrible triangle.
We said they’re not always
Paul: Oh, that triangle. Oh God.
Rebekah: time that wasn’t [00:48:00] great. But
Paul: That is devastating. Wow. You get to do an an, an episode on just those three. Wow. Oh yeah. There you go.
Rebekah: we did.
Nina: We said they’re not a great example, but triangles aren’t always bad. Anyway, every place listeners can find you in the show notes will be there. We cannot wait to get this episode out into the world.
Paul: Thank you so much for having us, Nina and Rebekah. That was a blast
Eli: It was so fun. Thank you.
Nina: Great and everybody out there come back next week when our friendships are going well. We are happier all around.
