Transcript | Age-Defying Friendship

MACKENZIE: I mean, there's nothing that we can't do together that I wouldn't do with anyone else. We do everything the same.

ANNIE: Yeah. You know, I guess. Right. Except go to clubs. I'm not going to a club with you, but neither am

MACKENZIE: I. So we're, we're good on that.

ANNIE: Oh that would be an adventure.

MACKENZIE: Maybe one day.

[UNLADYLIKE THEME SONG]

CRISTEN: This is Unladylike. I'm Cristen, and today on the podcast, justice for Intergenerational Friendships or IGFs, which I'm gonna call them because intergenerational friendship is kind of a mouthful.

Like, who's to say that your next BFF can't be an IGF? Who decided we can't have deep and meaningful friendships with folks who are way older or way younger than we are?

There is even a resistance to calling intergenerational friendships. Friendships.

Instead, since the 1950s, the prevailing theory of friendship and why we make the friends we do is homally, that is a fancy word for sameness or birds of a feather flocking together, which really saps the excitement out of friendship if you ask me.

I mean, just imagine. You are the fifth Golden Girl. You get a seat at the cheesecake table and eventually introduce them to edibles. Dorothy will take the most convincing, of course, but soon enough, she'll accept a gummy and proceed to have the time of her life on the lanai!

I mean, the spec script basically writes itself.

But in the meantime, let's get to this episode's leading unladies, IGFs and TikTokers, Annie Corzwen and Mackenzie Morrison.

[STINGER]

CRISTEN: I want to to do the introductions a little bit differently than normal. Could you introduce each other?

ANNIE: Okay, well, Mackenzie Morrison is 31.

She's my you best friend, even though I'm over 50 years older than she is. And, uh, Mackenzie Morrison changed my life.

CRISTEN: Beautiful.

MACKENZIE: This is Annie Corzen. I actually don't — are you 83? 84?

ANNIE: I just turned 84.

MACKENZIE: 84, ok. I don't even know how old my parents are or my friends are, or myself sometimes. So, 84. And Annie also changed my life, and I feel like Annie also elongated my life in a way as a woman that I feel very grateful for.

CRISTEN: What do you mean by elongated? You're the young one in the, in your relationship.

MACKENZIE: Before meeting Annie, I had a warped perception, possibly society based, definitely society based, that turning 30 as a woman, life was over and like things were now just gonna go, you know, in the opposite direction. And if I didn't have everything figured out by the time I was 29, it was going to be.

You know, all downhill from here and Annie has taught me that, oh God, life is just beginning. Not only is it just beginning, there's so much to explore and do, and Annie is always just, Annie's such a feminist and empowering woman in general. You know that for anyone, but especially for me, I think the moment in my life when I met her, she really elongated my perception of my capabilities.

CRISTEN: So I need to hear your, your meet cute. How did you two first meet and what were your initial impressions of each other?

ANNIE: Um, we actually both volunteered at a charity event, uh, something for the homeless. So we already knew we had something in common, you know, morally and politically and all that stuff.

Um, but it was very superficial. We started talking about vintage fashion and we thought maybe we could, cuz we both liked. Thrifting and vintage fashion, and we thought, why don't we see if we can sell stuff on postmark or something? And so it started in a very superficial way, but then we just kept talking and getting friendlier and talking about deeper thingsAnd one day Mackenzie said, you know, you should be on TikTok. And I told her she was crazy and she said, trust me. And the rest is history for me anyway.

MACKENZIE: And I always say too, which I think is interesting, we met the day before the lockdown in Los Angeles, we Oh, wow. So the next day it was like full blown quarantine time. So our relationship really began with. Quarantine and the pandemic.

ANNIE: That's true. I always forget that. You're right. You would come over and we would sit on our back porch because we didn't wanna go into that.

We wouldn't wanna be indoors.

MACKENZIE: Yeah. The first year of our relationship was all outdoors. All masked, all six feet apart. Yeah. Yeah.

CRISTEN: The Poshmarking together makes a little more sense then because I will say that I've, I've never met someone and started from like a Poshmark relationship. I like that you two quickly met and were like, let's get into business together.

MACKENZIE: It's very us. We're very, even in any down moment we have together, we're still working. We, that's sort of our shared love language.

CRISTEN: Could you give listeners a sense of each other’s style? Like was there a particular piece or aesthetic about the other that really grabbed your eye?

ANNIE: No. The thing is, of course, you know, Mackenzie is so drop dead gorgeous. Anything she wears looked great on her. But no, we always joke about she's actually more conservative than I am in a lot of ways. And she, she's always has a, a good eye for quality. But what was interesting to me was I, I was brought up poor, I've been a thrifty all my life cuz it's the way I was brought up, never to waste money. And I don't understand somebody who goes to a dollar homes and spends $50 on a, you know, pair of socks.

Um, But what Mackenzie introduced me to, which I was not aware of, is that there's a whole world out there now of young women thrift. They do it for financial reasons, they do it for political reasons, they do it for ecological reasons, because, uh, textiles and clothing manufacturing is a big, bad thing in the world.

And so she's like opened my eyes to that, that there's more to thrifting than just being a cheapskate like me.

MACKENZIE: Yeah, Annie's certainly more colorful. That was the first thing I noticed about Annie. We are kind of opposites. I'm more subdued. I wear a lot of silhouettes, a lot of black, and Annie always has full blown color, all like always has her nails done, always has the best jewelry, just always is fully put together and really beautiful.

ANNIE: When I'm seen, not when I'm alone. When I'm alone, I'm in sweatshirts and no bra, you know.

CRISTEN: But are they colorful sweatshirts? I imagine that they're still bright.

ANNIE: I try. If I can, I would.

CRISTEN: Was there a particular conversation that started to deepen the friendship, like something that started to move you all, you know, deeper than the, the thrifting level?

ANNIE: Uh, well, around the time, I don't know if it was in the beginning, or maybe it was later on, Mackenzie was going through some real emotional turmo.

In her personal life. And, uh, we just started talking about it and I think I was a good listener. But also the thing is, when you have a relationship that's so, um, uh, where there's such a large age gap, obviously, I've had, I've been through turmoil, I've been through breakups, I've been through dating and relationships and marriage, and, and so I've got a whole past life of experience that's led me to some kind of wisdom I hope.

And so I tried to share that with Mackenzie and I think she found it helpful. But that's when we, we started to relate on a deeper level than, you know, selling schmatta on the internet.

MACKENZIE: Yeah, I think I would come over once a week. We've essentially met up once a week for the last two and a half years, right? I think in the beginning, before Annie and I really became friends or were just, you know, had that deeper relationship, I would try to hide maybe some of that turmoil I was going through, and Annie would pick up on it, and I always loved how she would. , hold on, hold on. Let's take a second. Let's go to the porch and have some girl talk and then we'd sit down on the porch together and spend about 15 minutes just, and then I would feel much better cuz I was able to get it out and then we'd go in and do our thing.

But it was our porch, our porch hangs, porch hangs girl talk moments that I think really did bring us closer.

CRISTEN: What kind of insight or advice Mackenzie? were you getting from Annie and these, your, your porch time girl talks with Annie than compared to maybe the kinds of feedback and advice you'd get from friends in your, you know, in your own age group?

MACKENZIE: Yeah. You know, Annie just in general has such a humorous and positive.

Even like funny approach to life in general. she didn't make light of it, but she kind of got me out of the existential crisis I was in. But I do think did have a lot to do with my age. I think I was dealing with, You know, breakup as I was entering my thirties, and Annie would just sort of come to me with this humorous, more gentle, more funny look on it.

Like, everything's fine. What are you so worried about? I think when you're 30, you have a breakup of a relationship that's gone on for quite a while. It's like your life, you feel like your life is over.

ANNIE: But of course, from my point of view, what that, it's just a, it's just a dribble. You know? There's all kinds of things to come because I've been there. But also, I have to say in the other way, Mackenzie did something unexpected from me, which is, you know, being an older woman in America is, A good thing. You get condescended to, you get dismissed.

You get passed over. It's almost every day. There's a kind of an insult. You know, and Mackenzie suddenly started treating me like I was somewhat of value. She thought I was glamorous. She thought I was good looking. She thought I was smart. So that's when she, when she started this whole TikTok thing, I was still wrapped up in my, who's gonna wanna listen to this old yetta?

And she said, oh no, they would love you. But she saw, so in other words, she saw something in. That I would not have seen because American society does not make old women feel good about themselves in any way. Yeah. I don't see mentally, physically, sexually. They act like we're done. We are gone, and they're so wrong.

We've got a lot to offer. Yeah.

MACKENZIE: No, I don't see Annie's age at all. Annie, to me, you're way more vibrant and young than me. I think we're reversed in terms of age in so many ways. But also Andy and I are the same. Like we, I always just think of the way Andy and I drive whenever we're going somewhere in the car together, the way we talk it is like we're just two like teenage girls.

Like there is no a, we're laughing about everything. We're talking about boys. Talking about the boys I'm dating, you know, we're listening to music. We're arguing if we should get coffee before or after. You know, it's all . I know.

ANNIE: I think what Mackenzie and I discovered and what we should really. Preach about this.

People have lost their sense of play in so many ways, in so many serious ways. And you have to kind of retain it. We go, we play fantasies. Where are we gonna go on a first trip where we get rich and we can fantasize about that. So we go to a club that, we go to Hawaii, no, I wanna go to club in Cancun. No.

Should we go? Let's just go on a cruise, on a Mediterranean cruise. Uh, just go into those fantasy things and. I think a lot of times people have lost that skill.

CRISTEN: But yeah, I mean, it, it, it sounds, it sounds like a genuine friendship, you know? Totally. It, it sound from what I'm hearing. Totally. It's not a. Mentor, mentee or you know, there there's not, it a shared, there's a shared joy and maybe some shared wisdom there.

ANNIE: Except sometimes I get jealous of her real mother. I refer to her real mother as that bitch. , the other mother. Oh, your other mother. What did your other mother say?

MACKENZIE: But it is true to, to your point, like I don't see Annie as like a mother or grandmother or mentor figure. I really do see Annie as my friend, like it really. We've, we've, we have such a bond now that it's such, it's that comfortable feeling where you can say anything and you know someone's not gonna judge you for you.

Like they know who you truly are or you can, we have our little arguments and then we get over them and we always, we had our little marital therapy yesterday where we say the things that we, you know, that would upset us that we said one time two months ago. And then we get through it, then we laugh about it, then we get in the car.

So it's, we're kind of, we truly are.

ANNIE: The only thing we don't have is makeup sex.

MACKENZIE: Exactly.

CRISTEN: Oh my God. So, ok. Since you mentioned it, what do you all disagree on and how, have you learned to work through.

ANNIE: Once Mackenzie didn't like how I spoke to a waiter in a restaurant and she really laid into me and I thought I was being perfectly respectful, and she said, no, you don't understand. She said I was missing it and I, I think she was right. I mean, she taught me a l you know, I mean, it was, it wasn't a, our, our conflicts are not deal break conflicts,

MACKENZIE: It's also generational. I think I'm sort of the filter for this generation and how things have progressed or evolved. Cuz anything Annie ever does is never out of line, so to speak. I'm just sort of keeping us current with how things are handled today.

ANNIE: And she's also protecting me. She's protecting me from We ha, we have decided, we do on our TikTok. We never. Politics or mm-hmm. social issues or do we, a little bit of religion maybe, but, but we are very, we don't wanna be divi. We made a decision. We do not want to be divisive in any way. We want whatever we do to be somebody that brings people together.

So we're kind of careful. Sometimes more than I would like. Cause I tend to be very fragged outspoken. But I appreciate that Mackenzie is protecting me cuz we don't wanna, we don't want to, um, provoke the haters, the crazies, the creeps, and you know, they're out there.

CRISTEN: Annie. In those moments, especially maybe earlier in in the friendship, how did you receive that kind of feedback, though, in the moment?

ANNIE: Well, mm. Well, uh, when she would object to something, when she would say, I don't know if this is a good idea. I guess maybe first I would defend it. But in the end, I dunno how to say, there are certain areas in which.

I have to trust Mackenzie, and that's one area in which she simply has my trust. If she says, no, this is not a good idea, I just go with it. I may resent it. I may hate her for it, , you know, but I've decided it's Stu. It would be stupid of me. No, no. I insist we're gonna do it anyway no matter what you say.

That would be dumb of me because she just knows more about this shit than I do, you know? She d she knows about that world in a way that I don't.

MACKENZIE: I love how outspoken Annie is, though. I love like her edginess and just her wisdom.

She's incredibly intelligent and knows what she's talking about. I think there are it, there's another world to explore that maybe isn't on the TikTok app where we can really dive into these deeper ideas that I do. I, I mean, Annie and I get deep into. Conversations ourselves. Sometimes we do a TikTok, I will object to something, but then we will sit and talk about it for 30 minutes, and then this like deeper discussion kind of develops.

[AD BREAK]

CRISTEN: tell us a little bit, about the TikTok and what. What the, what the origin story was of like when, when you realized, hey, this is, this is a good TikTok, let's do

ANNIE: Well, I, you know, I'm an actress. I'm a TV actress, mostly comedy, not terribly successful, but I'm known. I mean, I'm, I have a certain amount of respect, but I don't. I'm not a, I'm not a famous actress by any means, and I don't do big, big roles. Uh, I'm the kind of person they call in, you know, they know that I can get a laugh on one line.

They know that they can count on my comedy timing, right? So, uh, but what I love to do more than that is I do something called storytelling. I don't know if you know what that is. And I've been with a Moth and I perform at la. Spoken word places. And what I like is speaking my own words. And I've done three solo shows.

And so during the pandemic, one of our porch conversations, I said to Mackenzie, you know, with the pandemic now there's no live performance. I can't do the storytelling shows that I love to do because everything shut down. And I said, I'm thinking Bec, maybe I could. Tape some little clips of stuff and put them on Instagram.

And that's when she said, oh no, you don't want Instagram. That's so in her 30-year-old way, oh, Instagram is so over. Instagram is toxic. Forget that. You want TikTok, and I told her she was nuts because all I knew about TikTok was young girls showing how to put on makeup, showing how to, you know, shake your butt.

And she saw something. She, she said, no, no, no. The TikTok audience would love you. And so there we go into that strange thing where she saw something in an older person that young people would respond to. I never in a million years would've expected that. My audience has always been, as I saw it, my target always has been women, over 45 or 50, mostly Jewish. That's who I have performed for and that's who I figured were the only people in the world who understood me, and Mackenzie showed me I was totally wrong. I get fan mail from, we got one from a 16-year-old boy in Afghanistan.He said, I don't understand how I'm relating to a Jewish-American woman in her eighties, but I am.

I really cried at that. Yeah, but Mackenzie saw something there that not in a million years will I have expected. Is that weird?

MACKENZIE: Annie's a total gem, though. I mean, I struck gold with you, Annie. Like everything you say is amazing. I, it's just so obvious to me, and I know this is a podcast, but if you saw Annie's home behind her, it's just dripping and art and color and collectibles and bases, and there's just visually, TikTok was the platform for Annie in such an obvious way to me because there's so Annie.

Everything in her life adds up. Like there's nothing that is not completely authentic about Annie Corin down to the mugs in her kitchen cabinet, to the pencils in her, you know, dress drawer. So that's what's so fun about Annie and, and shooting in her home and running around her home and, and taking, making these little videos in every nook and cranny of her place because there's, it's like a, it's like Alice Wonderland over there. There's so many fun things that just really do ha possess Annie's energy and vibe.

CRISTEN: Why do both of you think that intergenerational friendships, especially between women, are so rare?

ANNIE: I don't get it. I, it's too bad because not only, but it's really important. I've had it more than most just simply cause of the work. Like I was in a theater. So there were much younger women in the company, but of course we bonded because sometimes we toured, we stayed together.

So those, those women are my friends. Those women are still having babies and they are my friends. So I will say Mackenzie was not my very first, but, but, uh, the, those friendship are not as intimate as, not as close as what I have with Mackenzie. But again, I definitely benefited. From those relationships, those women, and vice versa.

And I don't know why people don't do it. I think for some, well, I don't know. What do you think people maybe think it's not gonna work, work. You can't, I don't know. Why don't they, McKay? Why don't you think people have more young, old friendships?

MACKENZIE: I wonder if it's somewhat cultural to, to America, because I think in other countries there is more of a, um, natural connection between old and young and here I think there, you know, it's not as common to kind of have friendships that are intergenerational, but it is, it's, Annie has completely changed my life in the sense that your wisdom is so separate and so valuable in a way that I. Feel so grateful that I have you to talk to every day, you know?

And also my best friend is 25 and I'm 31, 32 next month, so I almost feel like I have like opposite ends of I have Gen Z and I have Annie kind of giving me incredible advice, you know? And it is like we all as women should just be, you know, all over the place.

ANNIE: But it's true though. I don't know why it doesn't happen anymore.

I mean, one thing that's interesting is when, see, Mackenzie thought things were over when she was 30 cuz she had failed at something, failed at a relationship and with me. My whole life, I've always been a late starter with everything I've done. So I'm 84 now. I'm busier than I've ever been. I'm working more, I'm happier.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm getting more respect than I ever did. I, I, I'm kind of angry that I didn't, why didn't I have this in my forties? You know, , you know, in other words, I've spent my whole life basically being a failure and basically wanting certain things that I'm getting now.

you know, old people are still, if they're active, it depends what kind of old people, but active old people are still working, are still. I still have ambitions, still have projects.

They still have things. To share. They haven't stopped doing any, I don't think an a young person should be friendly with someone who has stopped. There are people who stop and who wants to hang out with them.

MACKENZIE: But it is a great question because it's almost like it's so hard to make a friend in general at any age. So it's like, where would you even meet intergenerationally? Like do you meet at a bar? Do you meet at a pottery class? So I think, just friendships in general are so special and you so unique to make, you know, once you're past 25 in general. So maybe we need to have more powwows where there's all different kinds of women together.

ANNIE: It’s very, it's very important for me because my friends my age, a lot of them. dead and dying. A lot of them are. See, when I hang out with Mackenzie and o you know, and, and other younger women, I forget how old I am when I go back to New York and I see all my old, old friends that, that I've known forever, you know, uh, I, I'm suddenly struck by my own mortality in ways that I don't appreciate.

Uh, so I, I, I think we gotta mix it up. We really have to mix it. It's stupid just to be, if you're just with people your age, then you're just with people who've experienced the world the same way, and American history the same way and the same tv. I'll sometimes, maybe I'll mention an old TV show, an old movie that I think Mackenzie should watch and she's maybe never heard of it, and I slap her, but , but you know what I mean, and vice versa. There are things that she knows that I really should know more.

CRISTEN: Yeah. Mackenzie, I do feel like you're living the friendship dream of the, you've got the, the Gen Z best friend on one side and . I know. I'm very lucky on the other side, like . Um, what does, I am curious what you know, uh, Annie, you were saying, going back to New York and seeing kind of all, all the old, your old friends there.

What do your friends in y'all's own age groups like, what do they think about this friendship? ,

ANNIE: My other friends, uh, I don't know how to answer that. I don't know. I don't, I don't know if they, I don't think they're judging in any way since they know me. We've always been friendly. I, I,

MACKENZIE: I don't, well, Annie has a very diverse, very artistic, very intellectual, academic friend group.

I, every time she has a party. Yes. And we're sitting in her backyard. I say, I feel like I'm on the upper west side of New York. Everyone is an artist. Everyone lives between LA and New York and Berlin and Paris and Denmark, and they're all just you. It's that New York sensibility in, in Annie's backyard.

Every time I walk into Annie's apartment in general, I feel like I'm in New York. instantly.

ANNIE: You can take the girl outta New York, but you can't take New York out.

MACKENZIE: It's true. So I don't think they notice. And and same with my friends too. And I. Don't notice. I mean, there's nothing that we can't do together that I wouldn't do with anyone else.

We do everything the same.

ANNIE: Yeah. You know, I guess. Right. Except go to clubs. I'm not going to a club with you.

MACKENZIE: But neither am I. So we're we're good on that.

ANNIE: Oh, that would be an adventure.

MACKENZIE: Maybe one day.

CRISTEN: I, I think that'll be, will that be the movie? Because I would also watch that.

MACKENZIE: We're both, we're gonna double date.

CRISTEN: Annie, what is the most unladylike thing about Mackenzie?

ANNIE: Oh my God. I have to think about that cuz I think Mackenzie is very ladylike. Uh, well, uh, Mackenzie is always late. She's always late . I am always, I mean, she cannot be on time. She has time management issues. She has serious time management issues. We were on our way to the studio yesterday. We had a half hour to get to and said, oh, could we stop and get some coffee somewhere?

And I wanted to slap her. No, we can't. You know that? I mean, I don't know. Is that, does that qualify as Yes, absolutely.

CRISTEN: I love that.

MACKENZIE: Yeah. If you want me to show up at, tell me to come at 11 because I will you next. I mean, what did I say that right? I don't even know. I, I do have time management issues.

CRISTEN: Mackenzie, what is the most unladylike thing about Annie?

MACKENZIE: Oh, gosh. She tells me I'm fired every week. . .

ANNIE: That's right. I do.

MACKENZIE: It's her. It's her way of loving me, and I love it because everything is always on the line, but there's always a deep sense of anxiety.

[AD BREAK]

CRISTEN: We're back talking to Annie and Mackenzie and hearing about how much their friendship means to both of them only made me more curious as to why IGFs aren't more common and how someone, say a podcaster in her late thirties, could seek one out for themselves. So I sought out some friendly advice.

[STINGER]

ANDREA: I am Dr. Andrea Boner. I am a licensed clinical psychologist on the faculty of Georgetown University. I'm the author of Detox Your Thoughts. And also a book called The Friendship Fix, and I'm a new podcast host myself, baggage check Mental Health Talk and Advice, which was based on the mental health talk and advice brand I built at the Washington Post. It just premiered in November.

CRISTEN: So big question maybe. Culturally speaking, is friendship, is it ageist?

ANDREA: I think very much so. And in fact you'll even see this in the lack of research on intergenerational friendships. I think the friendships that we're very much interested in are where two people are alike. Um, in terms of age we tend to think of friendship as the young person's game where people are hanging out at bars and coffee shops, and that's where your friends are most important. And then your friends kind of disappear because you've created this nuclear family and friendship isn't as important in those years.

And first of all, that's not true at all. Friendship is every bit as important when you are, you know, building a family or you're partnering off as it is otherwise. But intergenerationally, I. . There's so much ages in there because even some of the friendship research tends to frame intergenerational friendship as something just that is almost like the younger folks are doing a favor for the older folks, you know?

So it's framed very much as in the benefits for the older folks, it's framed very much as in, Hey, this is great for cognitive, you know, strength, and this is great for. Minimizing the isolation of growing old, and this is great for the mood of the older person in the relationship. But I think that's an inherently ageist proposition that, you know, oh, isn't it nice that the 30 year old has a 60 year old friend that they sort of take care of?

And in reality, Younger folks can get so much out of intergenerational friendships too, we all are interconnected and that it's not just, you know, hey, here's a service project for you. Why don't you go have coffee with an older person?

But I think there's so much ageism in our society anyway, and especially when it comes to women, and so I think it's a situation where it's hard for our culture to recognize that a 60, 70 year, 80 year old woman absolutely has something to offer in the way of friendship and wisdom perspective to someone who's in their twenties or thirties and not just in a grand parental type of role. Um, but we don't see it that way because where in our media do we see representations of this? We really don't. We see multi-generational families where, you know, the wise matriarch gives some advice to the dating teenager, but that's not the same thing as really looking at it in an egalitarian way and say, Hey, this wise matriarch actually is pretty hilarious. And is one of my good friends because I value her perspective so much just as a human being, not as my grandmother, for instance.

CRISTEN: Yeah, I mean, uh, like who doesn't want to be the fifth Golden Girl, you know? Like that sounds so fun.

ANDREA: Yes!

CRISTEN: How does motherhood and, and caregiving, I mean, you know, thinking about sandwich generations as well. , how does that affect the likelihood of women, you know, cultivating intergenerational friendships?

ANDREA: Yeah, I think it can work in both directions. You know, I think it can be a real asset because it's like, oh, now we have this huge thing in common. You know, my neighbor's kids are all grown now, but man, she had some great advice for how to quiet my baby, because you know, what worked in in 1998 still works now in terms of that or things.

But then on the other hand, I think I've also seen it work the opposite way, as in, ugh, when this generation raised children, they didn't have to worry about their kids on social media, and they have no clue how hard it is to have had kids home from school for the pandemic. And things are so fundamentally more complicated and raising children now that I would have nothing in common with another mother who did it back in the nineties.

Right. So I think. It really depends on perspective. it's like in my, you know, Washington, DC suburban area. Moms tend to be certainly older than the national average, whereas my high school friends, they had kids much, much, much sooner than my current friends. So, It's ironic that intergenerational friendships in theory could happen even more if you had something in common with motherhood, but I think it's once more, even like a dividing line, even among moms, and that's not even counting what happens to friendships when one person has children and what and when one person does not.

And I think often that can be an obstacle that people really, they get through beautifully. But other times, sometimes the friendship doesn't survive because of that, or at least it takes on a different form and the closeness is maybe somewhat different

CRISTEN: You are reading my mind because I am one of the, one of the last remaining, you know, uh, Friends without kids in my circle, and so I was, and wonder too if people who are child free Might have more, I don't know, interest in cultivating these friendships, at least maybe from an earlier age of like, okay, well if I'm not gonna have kids, let me create my village.

ANDREA: Yes. I think it's something that a lot of people feel the need to be vigilant about and should give some attention to because I've certainly absolutely worked with many women over the years who feel like the bottom fell out of their friendships.

They hit this cliff because there came a certain point where, , almost all of their close friends were dealing with diapers and daycare and soccer games and all of that, and they, it's like they blinked and said, wait a second, because of the fact that I don't want kids or I'm not gonna have kids, or whatever it might be, suddenly my life just has this gaping hole in it because, although I still love these other women, , it's just not the same.

So there's that opportunity there, I think, to relate in a different way and to find a different form of your friendship. But there's also the opportunity to say, I wanna grow my own social life in a way that is fuller than just these friends that I had before. And I wanna explore some intergenerational friendships, cross-generational friendships, and I want to be able to widen my social circle because right now I need more and.

In general with friendship, those times come up in our lives and we have to listen to them. There's a lot of shame about feeling like we need to make more friends, cuz it evokes this notion that there we are in the junior high lunchroom and nobody wants to sit with us. Right. The truth is we all go through periods where.

Making new friends is a goal, and I think there shouldn't be shame, there shouldn't be judgment. There's nothing wrong with it. This happens very naturally. So I think we can view it again as a positive opportunity to enrich ourselves rather than. Feeling so much like it's a deficit, like we've lost something. Because it is an opportunity, and I say all the time, you know, friendships have different seasons too. No one friend has to be the end all, be all.

You know, it doesn't have to fit into this perfect mold.

CRISTEN: So for those of us who want to age, diversify our friendship, but maybe don't know even how to start, if you had one piece of advice for initiating, kind of getting the ball rolling on expanding these friendships, What would it be?

ANDREA: Yeah, it's really about activities at some point. I know there have been attempts to sort of make the equivalent of online dating for online friendship, and, and some of them have been great, but I think there's not a critical mass of folks on those types of things enough. Um, but where there is a critical mass of people is people looking for activities together, and that's always a great starting ground for meeting any type of friend, whether it's someone your age or not, because at the very.

It's a shared interest to grow on. If you don't make a friendship, you've kind of done something cool. So I always recommend start somewhere with what you might be interested in. Start going to the same yoga class over and over again. Do some, some exploration of what volunteer work might be interesting to you.

But I think the tricky thing with this is that I realize it's not just about making that initial meet.

The awkwardness that I help people with all the time is, ok, I've, I've met this person, I have no idea how to actually turn it into a friendship. And there are a couple of important things that really can be helpful there. First, no shame. Right. Like you can even humorously refer to the awkwardness of it.

Like, you know, you've chatted with this person at yoga for four weeks now, and now you can say like, this feels really awkward, like I'm asking you out or something. But you know, Hey, I always love talking with you. I'm about to go get a smoothie. Do you wanna, do you wanna join me? Or something like that, right?

It's about making the conversation maybe a little bit more in depth where there's gonna be a back and forth. So instead of always starting at square one where you see this person that you volunteer with, you know, you say something that maybe they'll be able to follow up on next time, or you remember something they said, Hey is, you know, how did it go with your dad's surgery?

I think texting sometimes too, it's kind of nice because that's like a nice little segue to get somebody's number in your phone. What you wanna build is the ability to follow up, right?

You're not gonna necessarily meet your BFF the first time you try. Right? We wouldn't expect to partner off for the rest of our lives romantically with the first person we ever dated. But I think with friendships, there's so much shame, like, oh no, this, I tried to form a friendship, and it fell flat. That means that I'm the unpopular dork back in fifth grade that nobody likes. It's like, no, it's the same way. Not all friendships are gonna take off, and that's okay. It's a. Game, and you gotta just keep putting yourself out there.

So the more activity based things that you do, the better off you'll be because you're at least doing things that are interesting to you. And the great thing about that too is that you're more likely to meet people whose values are in line with yours.

CRISTEN: I'm gonna have a busy 2023 it sounds like. I gotta get, I gotta get outta the house!

[OUTRO MUSIC]

CRISTEN: Unladies, do any of y'all have an I G F or are you like me and now aspiring to find one of your own? Tell me all about it. I cannot wait to hear your I G F B FFF stories. Hello, at unladylike.co is where you can send emails or voice memos. You can also DM them to me on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at Unladylike Media.

Thank you so very much to Annie Corzen and Mackenzie Morrison. Ya gotta follow @acorzen on TikTok. And listen, if anyone in LA runs into them at happy hour, you better take a dang selfie and send it to me. Okay?

And thank you to Dr. Andrea Bonier. For more of her friendship expertise. You can read her book, the Friendship Fix and listen to her podcast, Baggage Check. Andrea and I talked a lot more about friendship and gender dynamics, and I will be posting the full interview to the Unladylike Patreon.

patreon.com/unladylikmedia is where you can go to subscribe for $5 a month, you get instant access to more than 130 bonus episodes, a new bonus every week, full-length guest interviews and more. Your Patreon support truly allows me to keep on making Unladylike. So if you like the show and want to support indie feminist media, head over there and subscribe.

Unladylike is a Starburns Audio production executive produced, hosted and written by me, Cristen Conger. Tara Brockwell is our executive producer. Katherine Calligori is our associate producer. Mixing and editing is by Ali Nikou. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin.

And til next week...

ANNIE: Remind me, Mackenzie, we should do a TikTok about this. It's a very good tool in life to let your fantasy go, let your imagination go.