Letter Spotlight: Friends Who Never Ask About You

Episode: #111  It's another letter spotlight episode! This week's anonymous letter is from a woman with two friends who never ask about her. She's fed up doing all the listening and none of the talking. She wants to know how to handle this friendship dynamic and whether other Dear Nina listeners deal with this same issue. Let us know in our facebook group, Dear Nina: The Group.

In The Letter Spotlight series I'll be reading one anonymous letter from my inbox every six weeks or so and sharing my answer. Last month's letter was about issues between sisters-in-law.

Want to send in a letter for the show or the newsletter? You can do that at https://ninabadzin.com/dearnina/.

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Transcript

Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. Today, we are doing a letter spotlight. I haven't done one in a little while, and I promised I would do these every so often because they are short and sweet. They tend to focus on issues that I hear from more often. That's what makes me choose the letter. Also, I will choose a shorter letter. just know if you write me a very, very long letter and I do get some long ones, those are very hard to use on the podcast. Actually, I can't use an extremely long one in the newsletter either.

[00:00:35] Nina: The newsletter is where I put the somewhat longer letters that I get, and these are all anonymous letters that I've been receiving since 2014. So I can't use them all, but I do try to pick ones that represent issues I'm hearing from other people. 

So the last podcast letter spotlight I did was about sisters in law. I get a lot of letters about sisters-in-law. This one this week is from a woman who feels that her friends don't ever ask about her. They talk a lot about their own lives and they don't ask how she's doing.

So I'm going to read you the letter perhaps you can relate. And if you can, then come find us in the Facebook group where I always post the episodes. Sometimes I'll post the question or letter before. I didn't get a chance to do that with this one. So it will go in the Facebook group once this episode releases. 

And if you have more to say, that's a great place to do it. And that's at Dear Nina: The Group on Facebook. 

Here is the letter:

Dear Nina. I seem to have at least two friends that seem very self absorbed and not very interested in what's going on with me. One is single and works full time. The other is divorced and works and has no kids. I work full time, I'm married, and I have a 10 year old daughter. 

Okay, so I myself had to read that part several times, so I'm just going to reiterate it. I'm not going to reread her words. So what we have here is two friends, and she says later that they don't know each other necessarily, so I think she must get together with one and then get together with the other is what I'm gathering. The letter writer is married and has a 10 year old and works full time. One of her friends is single and works full time. The other friend is divorced and works and has no kids. 

Then she continues, my family has gone through our share of problems, but it seems like these two friends, and then she writes, who don't know each other, separately don't ask about how this or that is going with me, but they talk quite a bit about themselves. And when they get together with me they want to discuss what's going on with them. I try to volunteer things about my life, but the conversation doesn't last long as I think neither is too interested. I value the friendships I just find this kind of annoying and wish they'd be more interested in what is going on with me. I guess I'm kind of venting but I'm curious if you or any of your fans have similar issues and if so what do they do? Thanks 

I think there are several issues wrapped up in one, uh, it's interesting. One of the tiny micro issues is something that I actually talked about last week, as a matter of fact with Dr. James Richardson, We talked about neurodiversity and friendships. That's not what's going on here, except there is a overlapping issue, which is a person who doesn't realize that they are kind of going on and on about themselves with no awareness of anybody else.

That is something Dr. Richardson and I spoke about because we were saying, what is a polite way of saying that you could help somebody realize like, hello, nobody else at the table has had a chance to talk and it's gone on too long. I shared in that episode, I'm going to share it here too, that frustrates me too.

I mean, I'm sure it frustrates most people when you're in a conversation and you feel like you have not gotten a word in, whether it's about you or not. Maybe it's just about pop culture or TV shows you're watching, you know, like, you know, Even politics or whatever, which is dicey to get into with friends.

But let's say somebody has just had the floor too long, whether it's about themselves or their opinion in the world, and hasn't had the realization that nobody else has spoken. That is very frustrating. I think I get particularly frustrated because it's probably something I used to do a lot more. Because I've forced myself through practice to have a lot more self awareness, it may be that makes it harder when I realize other people don't have self awareness. Like I'll think to myself, hang on a second, I have three more stories I could be telling, but I'm not because I want other people at the table to have a chance to get a word in.

That can feel irritating when you're like, I'm doing the work of being quiet. Why is everybody else not? Everybody is different. And we all have different personalities, different weaknesses, different strengths. There must be something about this friendship, or these friendships with these two women that has kept you in the friendship.

You haven't really said what that is. It's just not clear to me from the letter, unfortunately, what has brought you together, but I'm sure there is something. This I think falls in the category of, well, no, hold on back up. Okay. Let's stay with first the micro, micro, micro issue of how do you get a word in? I like that you said you volunteer information because that would have been one of my first pieces of advice, which is I do not advocate waiting for people to ask.

You just can’t do that. People don't know if you want to talk about work, let's say, so they don't ask about it or, uh, something's going on with, like, your daughter and maybe they think it's private. Did you say daughter? I don't know, your kid, 10 year old kid. Maybe it's, personal. I mean, I've actually done whole episodes on, um, how to avoid people asking you personal questions that you don't want to answer.

And so is it possible that in the past you've answered in a somewhat cagey way about certain topics and so they just don't want to ask you about those topics and they don't know that you're ready to talk about those topics, whatever they are. Is it possible that they are going through just much harder time in life than you are and need the support right now or that you're a friend who has given a lot of good advice in the past and so they look to you for that and this friendship dynamic has been created now where you're the advice giver. All these things are possible.

But if there is some way to be a little more direct, I would do it. So you've tried just volunteering information. I think it is okay if you want to continue these friendships, it seems like you do, just say, I would love a turn to tell you what is going on with me.

I think a lot of questions I get are asking for some kind of tricks and different ways to get people to do what you want. And sometimes the most direct way is the only way, which is to say, can we spend a couple minutes talking about what's going on with me? 

When I feel that I haven't talked about my podcast in a long time, or someone hasn't asked me in a long time. I'll just say it, not not in a accusatory way. I'll just say, Oh, hey, I would love to update you on what's going on with the podcast. And I say that because I spend a tremendous amount of work and time on this podcast and it's kind of a different kind of work than most people I know are doing. maybe a little strange and different to put yourself out there like this. 

Sometimes I feel embarrassed to talk about it cause I don't want anyone to feel pressured to listen to it. But I realize that if I want my friends to know what's going on with it, or that I have like a cool interview coming up, I will just directly say, I'm not saying you need to listen to this.

I just want to tell you I'm really excited that I booked this author, or you know, such and such. I think the less games we can play with our friends, the better. When you feel like you have to play games, you know, something's off. Like you should be able to directly say to somebody, I wouldn't say you always talk about yourself.

I wouldn't say that, but you can turn it more positive and say, I have something I really want to share with you. Even if it's not positive, it could be something, upsetting or you would say that differently. You would say, you know, there's something going on, at work or there's something going on with my kids, something going on with my parents, my siblings that is really hard and I want to talk about it. Any decent friend would zip it, lean in and listen. 

Okay. I really feel that strongly. But you may just have to say the words, just say it out loud. The other friendship issue that comes up for me when I read this, and again, I get a lot of letters in this subject, they would just come up differently than how this was written, which is that this is why I always say, and probably, you know, many people's parents told them this when they were little, and it's good advice, which is to not put all your eggs in one basket.

I have to assume you have other friends for other kinds of conversations. And if you don't, then definitely this would be the time to really consider that. That if you find that you have these couple friends and they never give you a chance to ask about you or don't seem that interested, like let's say you take my advice and you do just blatantly say, Hey, I'd love to tell you about what's going on with me at work, you know, something like that and they're still not interested and they change the subject after you are talking for less than a minute and they are like back to themselves.

I mean, this is probably not a friendship where you're going to get that feeling of satisfaction of mutual give and take. So my question to you would be, do you have other friendships where you do have more of a give and take. And if not, then that's something you need to work on because we have to have different friends for different reasons, because that is, just healthy.

Like I tell my kids all the time to, really value their different friends and different activities. And it's great if you can introduce people to each other because it just makes life easier and more efficient, but it's okay if certain stages of life that doesn't work or you're the kind of person who doesn't like to mix friends. Like none of that really is relevant actually. It's more just about for you, yourself, having different parts of your personality, your needs met with different kinds of people. maybe these are friends that you just like to grab a drink with or a dinner, you know. Maybe you have other friends that you go on walks with where the conversation really is the only thing happening in a walk.

It's like so important that when you walk with someone, you can have a good conversation. You know, a meal is different. You want to be able to have a good conversation, but there's also the food and there's people around. There's noise. There's the server coming back and forth, asking questions. It's not as fluid of a conversation as a walk where it's just conversation.

I would hope that you have other people in your life that you can have a better conversation with. I also assume being in a situation like this makes you more aware of making sure to ask others how they're doing, making sure that you're giving others the floor. 

So there have been lessons for you in this situation, but the biggest thing you can do is decide if you still want these friendships. If you do, then assert yourself and say that there's something you want to talk about. If they continually. interrupt you and change the subject, I think I would make less dinner plans with these two, lunch plans or whatever it is you're doing with them. I would spend less time with them because then you are having a frustrating experience.

If you're not getting anything out of it, I'm not sure why you're still getting together. So ask yourself what you're getting out of it. Lean into those things, appreciate those things, and make sure that you are doing other things, that you're joining activities, that you're saying yes to opportunities that come up, that you are keeping your social life healthy and keeping those muscles working to have other kinds of friends in your life. 

Okay. I hope that was helpful I hope for others who kind of have friendships like this where they don't ask about you I gave you something to think about. That is the bottom line and that's all I have for this short episode. Next week I have an episode about college admissions and friendship. I'm excited to bring that one to you because I have a senior in high school. I also have a freshman in college. So I've been through it. I'm going through it again.

That freshman in college took a gap year. So, we didn't do the admissions thing as recently with him, we did that during his senior year. now I'm back at it with my daughter. I have two other kids. And I've seen a lot of things with college admissions and friendship and competition. I'm talking about between the kids, but also with the parents really. I'm getting that episode ready for you. See you next time when our friendships are going. Well, we are happier all around. Thanks