Episode #89: Do you ever feel like you or someone you know is just not “good at” friendship? It's never too late to address negative patterns in our friendships or any relationship. Today's guest, author Christie Tate, author of B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found, set out to break decades of unhealthy cycles in her friendships. Do you think you "suck at friendship" as Christie thought before she started this process? There is hope! Christie is here to prove it.
We covered:
Meet Christie Tate:
Christie’s latest memoir is, B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found. Her previous memoir, Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life, was a New York Times bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon book club pick. You can find links to her many published essays and her writing workshops on her website. Find Christie's Substack newsletter here, and find her on Instagram @Christieotate.
* All transcripts are available on the main Buzzsprout "Dear Nina" site. Click on any episode and find the transcript tab.
Let's connect over all things friendship!
Episode #89: Do you ever feel like you or someone you know is just not “good at” friendship? It's never too late to address negative patterns in our friendships or any relationship. Today's guest, author Christie Tate, author of B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found, set out to break decades of unhealthy cycles in her friendships. Do you think you "suck at friendship" as Christie thought before she started this process? There is hope! Christie is here to prove it.
We covered:
Meet Christie Tate:
Christie’s latest memoir is, B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found. Her previous memoir, Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life, was a New York Times bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon book club pick. You can find links to her many published essays and her writing workshops on her website. Find Christie's Substack newsletter here, and find her on Instagram @Christieotate.
* All transcripts are available on the main Buzzsprout "Dear Nina" site. Click on any episode and find the transcript tab.
Let's connect over all things friendship!
[00:00:00] Christie: The triangle had the edges, right? Those sharp edges that I was always cutting myself on of the triangle had softened into a circle and it couldn't hurt me anymore. That was because the shape in my head had changed. And then guess what? The way that I operated in the world also changed. I don't know which came first, but I'm so glad that I arrived at the circle and was able to let go of the hierarchy and the triangle that had dogged me all those years.
[00:00:30] Nina:
Welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship. I'm your host, Nina Badzin. We talk about the highs and lows of friendship here, the good, the bad, the ugly. We get to all of that in today's episode. Over a year ago, I had a conversation with Christie Tate, author of BFF, a memoir of friendship lost and found. And before that, author of Group, which was a Reese book club pick. Group: how one therapist in a circle of strangers saved my life. Today's conversation really is about her book BFF is one that I've already played on the podcast. As the podcast grows, this summer, it will be three years, there are so many rich conversations about friendship in my back catalog. In the earlier times I had less listeners, obviously. I just can't stand to have those conversations just sitting there, not being heard by more people because.
There are some really helpful and interesting, I think, if you like the topic of friendship, you'll think so too, things in there that we don't always talk about with friends, what we kind of want to. And I'd love to have these episodes out there, even for people to share with a friend. Sometimes that's an easier way to broach a conversation with somebody that you've been wanting to have, but you don't really know how to say it in your own words.
And one way to do that is to say, what if you listen to this and then we talk about it. that can be a path in to having a hard conversation with a friend. What Christie and I talk about today is a great example of that, and it would be something maybe you can share with somebody where you want to talk about these issues, but you don't know how to bring it up. Here are the topics Christie and I cover in today's conversation, many of which come from her memoir, BFF, which is now out in paperback, which is the reason I'm also re releasing this conversation because a lot of people don't like to buy hardcovers.
Christie's been blessed by the way, by the cover gods. Her hardcover was fantastic and the paperback might even be better. Back to the topics. We covered that feeling of relief when you're insecure that your friends are having beef with each other but not with you, which of course is a scarcity mindset. Like when friends are getting closer or they have an experience without you like going on a trip for example, that can be hard to handle.
[00:02:46] Nina: And we cover assessing if you're acting out on insecurity for example, if you are subtly asking your friends to assure you too much, there is such a thing as asking for too much assurance from friends that you're important to them, that they like you. It can exhaust friends.
We talked about having compassion instead of jealousy for the it girl, helping our kids have. Compassion instead of jealousy for the it kids that may sound counterintuitive, but you'll have to listen to how we got there. We talked about owning our own ambitions and desires and goals as a cure to competition with people in our lives.
We talked about ghosting close friends and being ghosted and a lot of time on jealousy and envy. finally, we do talk about, as you heard in the intro, quote, the idea of softening friendship triangles into circles and having a different view of pecking orders. The circle really helps with that. this is a very frank conversation about working on our own friendship limitations about fighting ourselves on our negative friendship patterns, breaking cycles of friendship that would just make for healthier adult friendships.
All good reminders for not just how to get better friends in your life, but how to be a better friend. And that is the number one way to have healthier friendships is to first and foremost, be a better friend. Without further ado, I welcome back the wonderful, warm, honest, self assessing and straightforward Christie Tate.
[00:04:21] Nina: . Welcome, Christie
[00:04:23] Christie: Hi, Nina. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back with you..
[00:04:26] Nina: I would love for you to give people an overview in your words, and then maybe I'll give an overview in my words and we'll see if we describe it
[00:04:33] Christie: good, dueling banjos. So I had the experience that I spent a lot of my late teens, all of my twenties, in a big part of my thirties really focused on getting myself straightened out romantically. It took a really long time while I was doing that. Friendships were on the back burner. They were like my emergency calls when the boy broke up with me.
But I didn't really focus on them or put a ton of energy into them. when I finally settled down with my now husband, all of a sudden I looked around and I realized that I had as much work to do on my friend. that I had done to get him in my life as my healthy partner. And I knew that there were lots of ghosts and I, I would refer to my life as a friendship graveyard I'd been very careless, very hot and cold, and I wanted to work on that. the time was ripe at the ripe old age of 35. So it's never too late. It's something I want readers to know.
[00:05:30] Nina: From the reader point of view, they're introduced to the story through your friend Meredith. Can you explain a little bit about that?
[00:05:37] Christie: Sure. What happened was right when. Settled down. This woman in this 12 step program that I went to every week, I'd known her for years. She was not really on my radar, as a friend. She was a nice lady in a recovery program. And she tapped me on the shoulder and she said, well, now that you have settled down and maybe found your person, now it's time to work on friendship.
And I was offended and afraid, but inside when she said that, it rang like a gong. And she offered to work on friendships with me, She had just settled down too.
She wanted to work on her friendships. , we both had the idea that we sort of sucked at friendship and wished we were better and well too bad we sort of suck at this. And she's like, I think we need to change the narrat. And the book is about how together, shoulder to shoulder we worked on the lies that we told ourselves, our bad habits, our childhood traumas that were impacting our ability to bond with other women.
And we just went real deep. Just two amateur lady friends, working on friendship and it changed my life.
[00:06:39] Nina: I underlined so many quotes and I really had to control myself to what I wanted to bring here, but I have one appropriate for. This moment. I appreciated you pointing out in the book that women almost don't have a chance to do friendship successfully from the get-go. It's like we all really have so much to work on and we had to push ourselves past that.
And you wrote that after having your daughter, and these are your words now. I was carrying around a baby girl and listening to strangers, colleagues, friends, and family members project their fantasies of difficulty and drama onto her tiny fetal head. I felt compassion for all of us. Before we take our first breath, we are all written to a script about our difficult personalities, our emotional volatility, our fraught relationships, our propensity for so-called drama.
[00:07:23] Christie: I am getting heated thinking about it because I remember that, before my daughter even took her first breath. Everyone was talking about the drama, the middle school, the friends, Interestingly, reality sort of reflects some of that. But is that because we're telling girls since before they can breathe that this is going to be hard and you're going to be nasty to each other and that is not helping any of these girls navigate tricky, dynamic, rich areas of friend. , I think it's shunting girls into bad habits and locking them into this narrative. When we need to give them more space, we need to give it to ourselves and to them.
[00:07:59] Nina: And a lot of grace for the feelings we're going to talk about today, like envy, jealousy, this, this sense of competition instead of denying they exist. What I loved about your book is like you are talking about things we all feel, and we do all have issues with feeling envious, jealous, and we're going to separate those in a second. We feel that we are in competition with people, but to pretend we don't doesn't help. Let's separate jealousy and envy for a second.
[00:08:25] Christie: Yes. So jealousy is if there's a triangle. , if I'm jealous that my husband is flirting with Nina, I'm jealous of Nina. . But if I'm just jealous that Nina is perky and has this podcast and is just knows herself and is big and expansive as a person in the world, then I'm envious of her and my whole life really, until I wrote this book and had to nail down the language.
I just like the word jealousy. I've always used it. It's green. We know more about it, but really what I've struggled the most with is envy. wishing to have the great things that seem to go effortlessly to my women friends. That's envy. That's my understanding.
[00:09:07] Nina: I understand it that way too and I think actually both come up in the book a lot because in the Friendship Triangle stuff, and that really does. Several times. That's more the jealousy, but there is envy It's funny the way you described me, which is slightly off topic, but it actually does make me think of an envious thing.
I'm not saying you were envious of it, but, listeners might know who follow me on Instagram that I was in Palm Springs with Christie, who was leading, uh, writing retreat and I was really just a participant. but because I lead writing groups myself in Minneapolis, it's sometimes hard to just sit back like it is and you describe me.
You know, a big kind of personality, and I am. but I actually feel envious of people who can just sit back and zip it. I really do like, isn't that funny? I have to really control myself, not even just in that situation, because I'm also a teacher, in a lot of situations. I mean, I had to really self-talk and be like you don't have to jump in every two seconds. It’s like a constant voice reminding me how to exist in the world,
[00:10:05] Christie: Yes.
[00:10:06] Nina: and that's not about competition, that's more just me, I guess, wanting to be liked, you know? I have, that's like my thing.
[00:10:13] Christie: Yeah.
[00:10:13] Nina: people to think I'm pushy, and so I have a lot to say, but I have to, that's why I have a podcast, so I have somewhere to channel it.
[00:10:20] Christie: well, I'm not a real zipper person either, as you might have guessed. I think it's not an accident that I really love teaching, because you kind of get to hog the mic. I enjoy the mic. It's not subtle.
[00:10:30] Nina: Well, me too. And so when I see other people who just quietly wait their turn and then when they do talk, so profound and I'm like, God, that must be nice to just say the really sharp things and cut out the stuff you don't need.
And I'm envious of those people. So that's that jealousy, that's envy. what can you do? I'm not going to become a totally different person. back to dealing with real feelings, real jealousy, real envy, and the triangles.
Because somebody in my Facebook group asked me at one point, maybe a couple months ago to have an episode about triangles. And then reading your book, it was the perfect time. you start with, even back when you tried out for cheerleading, which you really, really wanted, you really wanted to make it.
I thought this part was honest. It’s so subtle, but I hadn't read anything quite like it. And as I've told Christie 800 times in Palm Springs, I read every book there is to have read about friendship and her book. It just has so original So this little moment about the cheerleading was, well, you, you talk about it. I like, we'll give you a chance
[00:11:30] Christie: Uh, yeah, I had a best friend. This is in Texas, so cheerleading is really, really important. Being a junior high cheerleader, we didn't have middle school, we had junior high, so you try out at the end of seventh grade, so you can be an eighth grade cheerleader and. . We were so intense. We paired off in September and tryouts were in April.
And my best friend paired up with someone else she had other friends, but I was so threatened that they were going to go get friendship rings while they were practicing their herkes. And I was really undone about it. Like, I would listen to them talk about that when they were going to get together to work on their routines and, and meanwhile, I had a wonderful cheer.
Partner as well who I really, genuinely loved so much, but I just wanted to be everybody's number one, especially my super, super BFF. It was one of those things where if they had any tension between them, I would feel so happy. Like I just felt safer. Oh, oh, something went down when they were working on their spread eagles and they were mad at each other or something. I was gleeful, truly gleeful because that's how insecure I was. And then it turns out I made cheer. , my partner made cheerleader and my B f F and her partner didn't make it, which I'd never considered.
And then I didn't want to be a cheerleader because I didn't want her to not like me because I did make it and leading up to it, my fear was they would make it and I wouldn't, I would be her sidelined friend and the whole thing was just preposterous and so fraught with scarcity and it's going to go away if, if I don't line up exactly. This thing, this friend, this friendship will go away forever. And I was beside myself.
[00:13:11] Nina: It was the perfect example because I think this even happens in adult life, like right now. This idea that if two people have an experience together, even. One weekend or something , we do. We have this fear that they're going to bond more. And so then you talked about in the book how then you were worried that the two of them who weren't on the squad anymore would also bond. That they would bond not being cheerleaders.
[00:13:34] Christie: Yes. The triangle thing is so real and I see them everywhere, right? There's this group of moms, there's three of us, and They both have one child, I have two, and I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God. They just have more in common. They have one daughter the same age, they're doing all the same activities. I'm running around to , all kinds of things. And I feel I've gotten over it, but I had to have a process. And it still feels a little tender. It's just a little.
[00:14:00] Nina: Yeah. And we're going to get to the process cause I think we need to help listeners. , another example Then Emily and Marni and I bring these up just because not everyone will have read it yet. And I just want people to be able to relate and get So that was more like in your thirties or twenties?
[00:14:16] Christie: Oh yeah. That was my thirties.
[00:14:18] Nina: No
[00:14:19] Christie: had
[00:14:20] Nina: it's, I could give you examples today for myself, so don't worry.
[00:14:23] Christie: Yeah, like that one was so painful. And the thing about me personally with triangles, triangles exist, there's a reason why if you say the word triangle to a woman, she's like, mm, not good, not a good configuration. And everybody knows that. It's a real dicey shape.
When Meredith and I began our excavation, I knew I was going to be dropping the pin right in the center of Christie, Marni and Emily because I made such a fool of myself, and I could not stop. I would call Marni and she would tell me, oh, I'm on the other line with Emily, and I would be, She shot my dog.
I would get off the phone. My lips would quiver hot tears, they both try to call me back. I'm not answering, you didn't pick me. And I was a grown woman. I was a practicing lawyer. I had a mortgage and this is how I was acting and I could not stop. It was so painful, what I discovered in the excavation that was empowering for me.
I am very susceptible to creating stories in my head that I'm different and therefore I'm a loser and I'm going to get kicked out of the triangle. Right? So again, just like the moms of single kids with Marnie and Emily, they were both married. I was out there dating and online and acting a fool there too.
They were both married. They both had a lot of resources. They didn't have bosses, they didn't have to do all the things I did, , I decided that made. Depreciated that, that was a diminishment. They were better than me obviously. And I was always like dog paddling to keep up with them in my mind.
Some of that I created and I brought to this scenario, maybe not all of it, but enough that there's a piece for me to look at and control around the narratives and what I tell myself and being a victim, and instead of just making it explicit, it's so painful when. Get off the phone with me to talk to Marni or, or whatever.
If I could just say it instead of all the shenanigans to hide it, which didn't work. PS. But that was really, really embarrassing.
[00:16:26] Nina: because even if you said it. I’m thinking like if someone had written me a letter, because I get a lot of anonymous letters, if somebody had written me a letter and said, my friend doesn't like it when I'm on the phone with my other friend. Right? Like, what would we tell that person?
We would tell them, well, you can, maybe the nicest thing would say, be like, I'm, I appreciate knowing you, feel that way, but she's, no one's going to promise, right. To not talk to the other friend of
[00:16:48] Christie: Yes.
[00:16:48] Nina: And, one thing you said in the book, I thought, was just so self-aware is that you realized that you were demanding assurance from your friends. You can only do that for so long. Like at a certain point people tire out of that.
[00:16:59] Christie: Yeah, that was the thing they were assuring me. The fact of the matter is they had a lot more free time. I worked downtown, I had billable hours, they had much more flexibility and just totally different day lives than I and night lives actually.
They were really good friends to me. And at some point it's like the buck stops with me Emily would seriously tell. and she was so patient with me, Christie, after my husband and my kid, it's you not in exclusion to Marni. Marni was probably there too, but she was very rightly keeping the focus on her and I. How much planer could she have possibly made it to me it was my limitation and immaturity.
I really had to grow and learn how to trust my friends, that was part of the work that was making the triangle so unmanageable. I didn't trust, I didn't take them at their word. Even though they were trustworthy people, that all comes right back to me. That was my work to do.
[00:17:55] Nina: the whole book is, is you acknowledging that, which I love it. I think, first of all, Meredith brought up such a, great point. I have so many quotes from Meredith, , but just in my own words, she points out. A few times this comes up that we all have patterns and that certain relationship issues just keep coming up again and again.
So it was the cheerleading and then Emily and Marni, and you didn't really have a chance to solve the triangle issue for yourself with Emily and Marni because they had a friendship breakup. Right. So it's like the, the issue kind of dissolved for you before you actually got to. , do it yourself, which is why, you know, it probably comes up again, , later with, you know, other people in the book because , if you think about what Meredith said, these issues come up again.
And I believe that too. As a spiritual person, like certain relationships, I think, come into our life in different forms until we learn to solve that issue. And it could be romantic, friendship, family, it doesn't matter. We, run into these same issues of triangles and jealousy and envy competing.
[00:18:53] Christie: It is super ironic that Meredith was always telling me it's a cycle. you'll get a chance to have this exact same situation and act differently. And I would think to myself, yeah, really. And then it turns out it was with her and myreen me of all frenemies. And I am still so humbled that whatever work that Meredith and I had done, I did get my chance to do it again. And what I saw, kind of what you were saying a minute ago earlier about how, , once I hit a certain age, am I really going to change? But when, Meredith was ill. This isn't a spoiler in the prologue, you know, she doesn't make it. When Meredith was sick, I knew it was going to be a problem because there were lots of potential triangles. Like who was going to get the information, who was going to be in her inner circle when she's very, very sick.
Because of course I wanted to be there I didn't want anyone else to be there, that was my first impulse. But very close next to that running parallel to that. , my love for Meredith and wanting her to have what she needed and that trust that I didn't have with Marni and Emily, I was able to have it years later, with Anna and Meredith and.
This woman who I, I struggled mightily with was the one to call me and tell me that Meredith had passed away. And I just felt nothing but love. And I was so afraid that when that happened, I would just be too busy being jealous. Like, why didn't I get the memo first?
Or whatever. I didn't have that. It was pure.
[00:20:17] Nina: I love that you got to that moment. I don't want to skip over Anna because Anna is a good example of envy and she's just one person, but I feel like we all probably have Anna. I'm going to read one thing you wrote about her. You said, my envy of all things Anna waxed and waned. Sometimes I could hardly sit still because I was busy wishing I had a body the same shape as hers. At her high up kitchen table,
I sometimes regressed to little Christie back at the dinner table in Texas, pining to switch places with Virginia. Who's your sister in the book? Like Virginia, Anna seemed to glow with beauty and grace I noticed, and I compared myself to her before, during, or after each session. How did she get her hair so shiny?
Why were her baseboards always spotless? , how come? After our meetings, she had twice as many missed calls from friends as I did. My envy, a secret stash. I managed by ignoring it or sometimes hinting at it with John , didn't threaten the relationship. It sat next to me while we wrote like a gun on safety.
I like starred that and underlined it and circled it.
[00:21:16] Christie: Anna is a really good person. People really love her. I really loved her and so did my friends. She was goodness. It felt much more complicated to me to be jealous of a person. I guess I was envious.
Look, I did it again. To
[00:21:30] Nina: It's hard. Well, we use them, so interchange.
[00:21:32] Christie: Yes. To be so, undo. emotionally by someone who was just a good person, a good friend to me who was just living her life. And I'm secretly in the corner, like a hamster on a wheel with , my rabid envy of, everything about her. It's like she touched it and it would be like, birds would sing.
I mean, she is great and wonderful and also I was bringing a lot of delusional black and white distorted thinking into the relationship, which eventually did get in the way. It's not true that I was able to just hide that and just hope that went away and the relationship would not suffer.
[00:22:09] Nina: Well, maybe if we admitted those things, kind of like we were saying earlier about even just , the self-consciousness of knowing two friends are spending time together. I wonder. , as we think about solutions to this kind of stuff, maybe things wouldn't get so out of hand and friendships wouldn't have to end necessarily.
If we could just say, it's hard to say: I find myself so envious of you, so if I sometimes don't ask about your trip, it's not cause I don't care. I'm probably just dealing with my own, I mean, I don't even know how you would say that, but
I'm thinking out.
[00:22:37] Christie: that is so interesting that you say that. I do think the power of naming it would really take some of the poison out of this. I'm thinking, has anyone ever said that to me? I one time had a friend say to me, I guess it was a triangle, but.
, one of the triangle legs was a man, and the other two of us were going off for the weekend to do a fun, fabulous thing. And he was just , super straightforward. He was like, I'm so jealous. , why didn't I get invited? And we were like, it's a girls' weekend.
, what are you talking about? And he was genuinely pouty about it. , it's interesting that my, one example of that is a. I mean, he probably felt entitled to come. So that's a whole nother story. I would love to channel some of that direct energy and , just name it.
I'm not asking anybody to do anything differently. I just need to say , your two families going to Cancun, and I'm here , , I feel really, really jealous.
[00:23:26] Nina: , maybe we just need to say that sometimes, what would someone say? They'd probably say, oh, we're going to miss you so much. , we're going to FaceTime you or something. And then it would be dumb. I don't know. To pretend like the trip isn't happening or
pretend you don't know about it.
Oh, that's like a whole nother episode
about trip. Well, the trips without you. , that's a hard one.
[00:23:43] Christie: yeah. You need to do a couple of trip e episodes,
[00:23:45] Nina: Oh yeah. Traveling with friends and, and all
people. And not being invited. Those are actually two separate topics, right? , , back to the kind of it girl concept, , I think everybody has an Anna that we feel in competition with, but, and they're not in competition with us.
That's always the funny thing. , it's imagined competition. , I've told my kids before, . It doesn't matter what school you're at, there's a couple kids who are the kids and sometimes people hate them. Unfortunately, when you're way up on top , there's only one way to go after that.
People wish for your demise. They do. People wish for the demise of the IT girl, the IT guy, and that person sort painted as , oh, they're a mean girl. Or they're a jerk because let's say I'm talking even as young as like fifth grade, fourth grade, everybody wants to sit next to so-and-so at lunch.
Well, so-and-so only has two sides of their body. Okay, so that person, let's say that day, chose friend A and friend B. Well, friend C is angry I almost feel sometimes for that person. They sort of can do no right, because someone's going to be left out, someone's going to go home and tell their mom. So-and-so didn't sit next to me at lunch. So-and-so wouldn't sit next to me on the field trip.
There's one seat on the bus next to that person. That is it. That person cannot please everybody.
[00:24:54] Christie: . I probably could not have written this book until I had children who were sort of hitting middle school and I could really. Have that extra lens about my own shenanigans in middle school. , When I would hear my kids come home and talk about, you know, the IT kids, it's so clear to me.
It's a system, a whole system creates it kids and hangers on and opt outers and the popular kid just wears a crown that they didn't necessarily even seek any more than anyone else did. I mean, I think we all kind of want the crown, you know? When I think about systems that create ins and outs and all the different permutations of that, that helped me realize my friendship story started way, way, way before I ever hit the cafeteria.
It started back home. The original triangle of my life is my mother and my. I guess my mom, my dad and me, but mostly my mother and my sister and , I could not imagine any other scenario than that I was the weak leg, the not as good, and I just brought that forward to every cafeteria table I sat at. Naturally it didn't go that great.
Not for any sustained amount of time.
[00:25:59] Nina: kind of back to the assurance thing, like people get tired of probably having to assure the third
[00:26:04] Christie: Yes. Oh my God. It's exhausting. I mean, I do see another triangle. There's a friend. . And she was very threatened by my having a baby and she thought she was going to lose me to the baby. And that was a triangle where I not in the diminish, I was in the reassure role.
Well, I ghosted, so I obviously don't love the reassure like after all the years that my friends prompt me up. You know, I had to do it for like six weeks and I was like, bye . So,
[00:26:29] Nina: Well, you were a little older then. I think it, you could only do that so much. It would be natural to, get tired of it. I'm glad you brought up your mother and sister. We won't talk about it much. People really should read about it in the book, but I think that answers one of my questions for you, which was going to be and still is, , how can people feel more confident in a triangle, not sort of demand assurance from their friends, not maybe be set back so much by the jealousy and the envy. And you already just answered that a little bit, which is figuring out what you are bringing to the cafeteria. I love how you said that, like kind of realizing your, stuff.
[00:27:04] Christie: The excavation of , what I brought to the cafeteria is just, what's the payoff? How did I magically always become the person that doesn't quite fit in. I was manufacturing my own apartness because that got stamped on me.
I was a sensitive kid and this, the way my household was run. I just felt like I didn't quite fit in. And the truth is I didn't exactly fit in. I was full of feeling. I wanted to talk about my feelings and write poems about my feelings, and everybody else wanted to go. I didn't exactly fit in whatever.
That's not tragic by any means, but by the time I got to having my own relationships, some of it was just familiarity, so simple. And the power of the familiar for me to go into social situations with my very comfy blanket of, I don't quite fit in. I'm either married and no one else is married, or y'all are all married and I'm still on J date. I always had a reason why I wasn't as snugly swaddled in the group as anyone else and looking at what's the payoff of that.
And really it was so simple, it's super familiar. So to drop that narrative and extend myself and trust, super uncomfortable
[00:28:12] Nina: what about with competition? I think that's
sort of a harder one, and we almost talk about that. Even less it's probably more comfortable to talk about being envious of what other people have.
Jealous of people's closeness. Like in the triangle situation, competition's a little different but it's related to envy
[00:28:27] Christie: yes.
I think where competition has been most problematic starts back at the fact that I haven't felt entitled to my desires, my hungers and my ambitions. Because competition for me stems from, I want. , I'm hungry for, I want to go for this thing. And because that's sort of unspeakable, I think I have the idea that that's not very feminine, that it's not attractive to be so hungry and ambitious.
That's some socialization that I'm working to shed, but put me in a social situation and there's things I want and other people. I'm quietly wanting them. It becomes not a shared experience. It becomes I alone, even though, you know, when I'm friends with writers, when I was early in my writing career, other people were getting things.
I mean, they're still getting things I'm not getting, but early on, before I had any of these skills or had really worked on that, I'd have to go to bed for the day if somebody got something that I had wanted or I even tried for it and I got a flush letter and they got a residency. I think that it was because I hadn't been able to own my desire.
It goes all the way back to the most gendered thing ever. I wasn't allowed to want. So it was a secret and then it was like a secret loss when I didn't get it. And as I've been a little bit shoutier about, I want things. I want other people to want things too. But it became okay to truly, truly root for someone else when I was able to own what I wanted and let them root for me.But if it's not a shared experience, I'm in so much trouble.
You are so comfortable, understanding yourself. That comes through in both books and I think a lot of people can learn from that. I want to tell you something totally different topic from envy, jealousy.
[00:30:10] Nina: I appreciated the point of view from somebody who has done the ghosting, because I was ghosted by a very, very close friend and on behalf of my own listeners or readers who, I get so many letters from people who have been ghosted or from people who suspect they're about to be ghosted. it's very rare to get your point of view.
You acknowledged in there that you also missed the friendships. I'm thinking especially of your friend Leah, your old, old friend. We won't say in the book what happens there, , I appreciated you acknowledging as you were the person who left that friendship or just going to let it go.
It wasn't a big dramatic thing, but just kind of let it end and, that you missed it and you worried that you'd miss so much and you worried that you would never be able to reach back out
[00:30:53] Christie: so I have so many feelings about ghosting. It's a topic I really like to talk about and I've had a ton of conversations. I have never talked to another ghoster, not in a friendship. Plenty of people have ghosted men or straight women ghosting men or love interest going whatever way.
I can't be the only friend who has ghosted? , I hope to God I would not do it today. I don't believe that's my mo. , I did not have the skills for anything except vaporization. I did not have the skills. I don't like that. I have that in my history at all. And where are the other ghosts? Email me, guys. Tell me your ghosting stories.
[00:31:29] Nina: I should tell my old friend who we don’t really talk. I thought of her a lot when I read your book and it was actually really helpful because like you just said, even and you, say it differently in the book, sometimes it was the other person, but not always.
It was like you didn't know what else to do in that moment, and it actually gave me compassion for my old friend. It did. Instead of anger, it gave me compassion for her to say, you know what, maybe that was all she could do at the time , for other reasons in her life she couldn't handle our friendship and, and I'm sure I had something to do with it too, because that is part of it. But it wasn't just me,
[00:32:05] Christie: right, right. Even in the relationships, the ones that I write about, with my high school friends, I drifted away out of shame. , I didn't have the word shame yet. I hadn't been to therapy. I didn't know. I was just like mortified by who I was and I was so lost and I just couldn't bear , what I perceived as their shininess and the face of my just like utter lostness.
It was easier to drift. but with a close friend, you know, when I was a new mom and I was just like, I didn't have the bandwidth. I just didn't.
[00:32:35] Christie: And when I think back to the most recent one, With a friend. We've since reconnected. I too have compassion for me and for her, and I remember thinking there's no way out. We have trapped each other and somebody has to throw open the window and jump. And that's how I thought of it as kind of an act of mercy, even though from her vantage point, it looks like it's just pure chicken shit. But to me it really was like a mercy killing
[00:33:01] Nina: Yeah, I get it. okay to close us up. Cause otherwise I will talk to you forever. I wanted to end with the image of the circle. Since we've been talking a lot about triangles, and triangles do come up a lot in the book and they come up a lot in our lives. But why don't you explain, , it's not a spoiler thing because we know Meredith dies, which is the whole premise of, of this.
[00:33:21] Christie: I really felt the full impact of our work and the, Stunning gifts of my friendship with Meredith when she'd passed away. And she had a lot of friends, , we had mutual friends. But we never hung out really in a group. what I realized, instead of imagining like I had my whole life a hierarchy, there's Meredith at the top, then who's next?
Is it me or is it Anna? Ooh, where's her husband? What's the pecking order, I'd spent my life trying to discern the pecking order and rise up. Or not fall down. What I realized around Meredith's death and planning her memorial service and all of us coming together is like I was visualizing a circle where there is no hierarchy.
I was like, oh my God, the solution is a circle. It's a circle that way there's no jockeying. There's just holding hands and moving around the circle. Anne Lamott has that quote that I think of all the time. We're all just walking each other home. The triangle had the edges, right?
Those sharp edges that I was always cutting myself on of the triangle had softened into a circle and it couldn't hurt me anymore. That was because the shape in my head had changed. And then guess what? The way that I operated in the world also changed. I don't know which came first, but I'm so glad that I arrived at the circle and was able to let go of the hierarchy and the triangle that had dogged me all those years.
[00:34:46] Nina: perfect place for us to end our conversation, for me to release you back into the world. One day when I'm in Chicago, we'll have to get together not for interviews and not for writing retreats, but just to hang. Although my mom lives in the suburbs, so
[00:34:58] Christie: I'll come out there. I'm going to visit you out there. I would love that
[00:35:01] Nina: , a couple of my sweaters that people liked in Palm Springs are from a cute store in Glencoe, so you'll have to come up to the burbs.
[00:35:08] Christie: A hundred percent. You've lured me with the shopping. We're done.
[00:35:11] Nina: Christie, thank you so much. I wish you so much success with the book.
[00:35:15] Christie: thanks Nina. I love this podcast. I love your focus on friendship as a complex, dynamic, really important part of life. So thanks for taking it seriously, and thanks for giving me your time and attention.
[00:35:26] Nina: Listeners, as I always say, when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around, and I really think that's true. I think Christie agrees.
[00:35:34] Christie: Yeah.
[00:35:34] Nina: And of course, if you liked this conversation, it got something out of it. I hope you will go to Apple podcasts and leave a review and five stars. I appreciate it so much. Have a great week.