To The Contrary

Funding for To The Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Park Foundation, and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

Intro Music Hello, Im Bonnie Erbe.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Female friendships play a pivotal role in women's physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

A theme will be exploring today.

Joining us is Danielle Bayard Jackson, a renowned friendship coach who teaches women how to cultivate and maintain better friendships.

Danielle has become a popular figure on the social media platforms including TikTok, where as she shares valuable insights on building and nurturing friendships in the digital age.

She shares practical strategies in her upcoming book, fighting for Our Friendships The Science and Art of Conflict and Connection in Women's Relationships.

So welcome to the program.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so excited to be here.

What got you into this?

How did you get started?

Did you, I assume you didn't grow up thinking I want to be a be a leader in social media?

something that I haven't figured out yet.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I always joke that it certainly wasn't on my vision board to be a friendship coach.

I actually started out as a high school English teacher for 12 graders, and did that for about six years, and then worked my way up to academic chair.

And I noticed that whether I was talking to the students or the teachers under my leadership who had their own student, we were talking about friendship issues and we had a front row seat, the staff and I, to how issues of connection and belonging were directly impacting everything else their confidence, their performance, even their attendance at school.

And so I also got to see how the boys and the girls, they congregated differently, they thought differently and was very interesting with my own little sociological study.

But then I left the world of education and got into public relations, and suddenly I was working with these charismatic, high achieving women.

And it wasn't long before I realized that the two secretly had, friendship issues of their own.

And so for the past six years, I've been studying what the research has to tell us about women's conflict, connection and cooperation.

Now, let's first talk about the connection, because it is we live in a society full of loneliness.

Young people, old people, everybody seems to have trouble connecting.

I don't know if digital if digital media have made that worse or better or if it's just the Covid isolation period that affected people's lives so much.

But what would you say is the most difficult thing about women?

Connecting for friendships?

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting because so much of it is relative.

But there are three things that tend to bring women together.

as I found them and I call it the three affinities of female friendship, and that is support symmetry and secrecy.

So support is the number one thing, according to the research that women look for in their same sex friendships, that emotional support.

So as soon as women feel like it's not there or they don't have it, there are issues and then symmetry.

So feelings of reciprocity, egalitarianism, balance, equal contribution, we really, really value.

And finally secrecy.

So that self-disclosure, that exclusive private vault, if we perceive a violation and any of these three things, it tends to be very disruptive to the relationship overall.

Now, is that what leads to conflict?

You talk about conflict being a constant issue in women's friendships.

100%.

I mean, at least that's what I continue to see in the research and then have confirmed by what women tell me and through, you know, anecdotally, my own experiences, these three things get in the way.

And the research tells us that while women's friendships are deeper than men's friendships, they're more fragile, meaning we have more friendship dissolution more often.

But it's not because we're so petty and dramatic and all these other negative stereotypes, but it's because you're probably not falling out with people you're not close to you, and women are closer in their friendships, so there's going to be a higher rate of dissolution.

And so when you put that together, you know, our friendships being so intimate and so deeply integrated into our lives, sometimes it does set us up to be, to experience disappointments more often as well.

So the women take their friendships maybe a little bit too seriously so they or have too high expectations.

And those expectations are maybe unrealistic.

Some women anyway.

Sure.

Yeah.

And we know, you know, I know I, you know, like to share differences between men's friendships and women's friendships just because I think it's interesting.

You know, I want to stress that we all value the same things in our friendships, but we prioritize them differently.

And to your point, yes, the research confirm that women tend to have greater expectations of their close relationships, both platonic and romantic.

So when you put high expectations together, with the fact that we're deeply integrated, you know, there's going to be some stuff that bubbles up there.

But there are so many benefits of women having strong connections.

We need that.

You know, it decreases our cortisol.

We are able to better regulate our emotions when we are friends with other women.

So there are tons of benefits, but it kind of goes hand in hand sometimes with the downsides of, of the friendship, what you're going to find in any human relationship.

Let's say I get in touch with you as a viewer on, of your work on TikTok.

here I am.

Let's say I'm 35 years old or I'm out of college.

I'm in a job, but there aren't many people, or particularly are other women there who seem like appropriate friends for me.

How do you tell me to go out in the world and find new women who are likely to be my friends?

Yeah, that's a great question because I do hear that often.

I feel like I'm starting from scratch and I don't really know what to do.

What's a strategy?

The first thing I always like to ask is what is friendship to you and what are you looking for?

Because again, with the point we just made about expectations, I want to make sure we're on the same page and I'm helping her find what she's looking for.

And we kind of moderate that a little bit.

But the first thing I encourage women to do is start by prioritizing engaging in one meaningful social interaction per day, which sounds very basic, but sometimes we're carrying around this big, lofty goal of turning everyone we meet into a bestie, or we're secretly auditioning her and giving and deducting, like these demerits.

When she doesn't share our humor or our interests, we take points off.

And so we say, you know what?

Let's put that pressure aside.

Can I position myself for one meaningful interaction?

Maybe we don't become best friends, but it was a really great conversation on a Tuesday night and I needed that mood boost.

So we start there because a natural byproduct of positioning yourself for that every day is friendship.

Friendship is sure to follow.

So that tends to be one of the first strategies that I offer women who want to get started and getting connected with others.

And, I do want to talk to you about symmetry, because I find that not so much, as I age, but particularly when I was younger, I got into all these friendships where, and I expected it to be equal back and forth.

But women, other women were just leaning on me.

maybe you start out equal, but then one person becomes very much more of a taker than a giver.

Yeah, that's so interesting.

And I appreciate you sharing that.

That is so interesting to me.

And I wonder if it's because a lot of times, like we said, for men, it seems like it's almost easier for them to compartmentalize things a lot of different things.

But for women, sometimes it's blended together.

So if we're getting along at work, then where's the line between also me kind of sharing with you things that I've got going on at home, because we know that women, we assume they're very good at, not only very equipped at doing this, but also willing to provide emotional support and give access and share resource sources.

And so I totally see how she would think, oh, it's totally okay.

We're sharing resources.

This is what we do.

But for you to be thinking, oh no, that's not the nature of our relationship.

That's not a way that I want to invest here.

And it feels out of bounds.

And sometimes it can be kind of trickier, awkward to to try to renegotiate that and to recalibrate.

What would you say in those situations.

And I'm not talking about my specific situation, but you find yourself because again, we weren't friends.

We were more like, I met her through work and, would you tell a woman, if you feel like you're being demanded of more than you're being given to, just check out, find a new friend, or try to repair it.

And how often are the women on the other end of those kinds of friendships?

The needy ones?

how often are they are they really going to be made to see that they're taking more than they're given?

Yeah.

And that's what makes it so tricky is because everyone defines that differently.

But we rarely have the conversation as women, because we tend to subscribe to the idea that she should know, especially as a woman.

We're like, you should know.

And my theory is because we had this whole, you know, women's intuition, we suspect that if you're another woman, you should totally understand why I'd be upset, right?

Why I'd feel offended, why this feels intrusive, you should know.

But a lot of times, sometimes we don't.

Yeah, we don't communicate because we believe that it should be something that's just understood.

And so, you know, I always say that if you are really invested in the friendship and you want more, it's worth the conversation.

But if it's kind of a surface level friendship and, and or acquaintanceship and you're thinking, you know, I don't think it's worth it to have a conversation, I totally get why people would opt out.

Now, when we're encourage people to have that conversation, to try to make it an invitation instead of an accusation.

So instead of you want too much of my time, you're asking me for too many things easily.

People feel offended.

They feel awkward.

They, you know, feel put off.

So I'm going to invite you to join me and what feels comfortable for me.

So I might say something to the effect of, hey, you know, I appreciate, you know, that you reach out and that's how you want to connect.

But for me, I don't do daily text messages.

I really prefer just a phone call on weekends.

So what do works best for you?

Saturday or Sundays?

And this is me redirecting you to what feels good to me because I personally feel overwhelmed with multiple messages every day.

But instead of telling you this is too much or you're too clingy, I'm going to renegotiate and co-create with this friendship.

Looks like.

And for me, that doesn't feel good.

This is what feels good.

Why don't you come and join me over here and the right people want that data on how to love you.

Well, the wrong people are going to be offended by that and leave.

But either way, that's a win win.

You talk, a fair amount also about male female friendships or how male friends differ in in their relationships from female friends.

Talk about that for a moment.

Yeah.

I just think this is so fascinating.

And I know many of us are reading the headlines about, you know, men being in crisis with their friendships and all this.

And I just like to emphasize that men are equally capable of forming close, platonic, intimate bonds.

They value friendship.

We all need quality relationships according to, Harvard's longest running study on happiness, they found the number one thing that dictates how long we live and how happy we are, is the quality of our relationships.

And that is not exclusive to gender.

So we all need these relationships.

However, due to a lot of cultural influences and societal expectations, things tend to look different when we congregate.

So men tend to congregate in groups.

Women 1 to 1, we're dyadic.

That accounts for the reason we often experience more platonic intimacy.

For women, it's also totally normal.

And it's what we mean by platonic.

Where we're feeling very close and very bonded with one another because we're in this, this vault.

That's it's me in you.

And that makes us very close.

It's easy to reciprocate when we're talking and things like that.

Whereas when you're in the large group, it kind of afford to a certain level of anonymity, and you don't really have to be very known to think that you got a whole squad, right.

And it's harder to compete for time to talk.

And then even the nature of self-disclosure, it's understood that women are going to share.

It's how we establish, negotiate, trust.

But for men, even though they do engage in it, unfortunately it happens less often that they're talking about personal things.

There's even research that came out, a Pew Research Center that analyzed the different things we talk about, even in conversation.

And for women, they're talking about their health, their mental health, work and family.

These are all personal things.

Men are more likely to talk about sports, current events, which affords you some kind of distance.

And so there are differences in what we talk about, what we value and how we congregate.

And I've just always found it very interesting.

How does team sports affect the difference between male and female relationships?

Because certainly team sports, women's basketball, women's soccer, they're all becoming much more popular than they were a generation ago.

But still, there are a lot more men on soccer teams, baseball teams, football teams than there are women.

So how does that change the nature of the kind of friendships both genders or all genders develop up?

And, how they, what they talk about, what they relate about?

Yeah.

I'm loving this this, this conversation around women's sports and how it's kind of blowing up.

I'm loving to see.

I used to play basketball and coach basketball, a high school basketball.

So I'm loving it.

And I think a lot of that is, you know, socialization as well that we're quicker to put a football in a little boy's hand.

And the girls go and play.

They go and play house.

So I think a lot of it happens, you know, from the very beginning of what we push them toward to engage in.

But I will say this, you know, I think team sports obviously very critical to learning how to negotiate, advocate for yourself, work together, solve problems.

All very important.

but something that's interesting is there are researchers who looked at both men and women sports.

I think this was specifically conducted by Doctor Joyce Benenson.

And she watched what happens after the game, and she found that the male players were more easily, kind of like slapping hands or touching each other.

Their opponents after the game, and engaging in physical contact after the game.

But women were less likely to do that.

And her theory is just kind of like when it comes to conflict with women, there is so much of it sometimes that becomes it feels very, very personal, where again, men can sometimes separate, compartmentalize.

So she was saying that even our reluctance to touch one another or to sit close to one another after competing together, because it kind of feels like it's straining the relationship and relationships are so central to our identity, that sometimes it's hard to separate.

So I'm glad that more and more girls are joining sports and it's a part of the mainstream conversation.

But even there, yes, there are.

There are some differences.

Again, let me go back to a question I kind of asked earlier, but about digital versus real life.

Somebody wants to make friends.

Where's the first place you send them to TikTok?

Facebook?

no.

What?

They're on another social platform?

If so, which social platforms?

Or do you tell them you know you're interested in bird watching?

Go join a women's birdwatching group or you're interested in reading books.

Go join a book club.

That's a great question.

One first of all, I'm always pushing them to go outside and touch some grass and meet some people in real life.

Okay, we're always starting there.

I need to have the energy of meeting with people in real time.

There are some interesting research around even our our brains.

When we have shared experiences with another human being, our brains are syncing up together.

I believe through and through we are designed to be connected to other people.

Now.

Technology is very helpful in supplementing, not replacing these relationships.

If you're in the middle of nowhere and it's hard maybe to position yourself in some kind of busy town square, I think it's really great.

I think it's resourceful to leverage technology to help you find groups to get connected to you.

But even all these emerging, friendship apps like Bumble for friends, which is wildly popular.

I mean, these are great starting points to help you find new connections, the people who share your lifestyle and interests.

But even they encourage you to go out in real life and meet up as soon as possible.

And so I think for long distance friends.

For safety reasons, for example?

because you don't really know who you're who it is and what they're pretending to be on the other end of your connection.

Well, it's.

More just about, you know, there's only so much that we can share digitally.

But eventually, once things feel safe and appropriate to both parties.

Yeah, ideally we're getting in real life and having a conversation and seeing how that unfolds naturally in real time, as opposed to sending text back and forth or even voice notes or video.

And so if it's possible, I know for some groups we have certain circumstance voices.

If it's possible to be together in real life, there's really nothing like it.

And it helps us to clock hours together, which is really critical to forming depth.

In fact, there's research that finds that it takes 34 hours to take someone from an acquaintance to a friend.

And so being in real life together, having meaningful conversations, laughing together and establishing trust, those things are really important to forming close bonds.

You said you focus more on physical, you know, meet ups in real life as opposed to digitally.

But what other problems should you warn women about if they're trying to look for friends online?

Yeah, I think online is a great place to meet people and to sustain relationships.

If you can't be together one on one.

I will say this.

I think there are a couple things to watch out for, when connecting with people online.

The first is you want to exercise wisdom and discernment.

Even in real life, people can trick you looking in your face.

Okay, but we want to make sure we're being careful and piecing ourselves with what we trust people with and what we share.

That's digitally or in person.

Am I asking myself, am I being observant of what this person shares?

Really listening?

Am I watching for what they share and what they withhold?

So kind of being able to match with those cues is important in any space.

I also think it's important when you're meeting friends online, outside of safety things.

But to remain positive, there are a lot of people who we go straight into venting to one another, or we make profiles on these friendship apps, and we are writing about the things we don't like and that there's not attract people.

So instead of saying, I don't like people who believe in this, I don't get along well with people who are in these kinds of groups.

Instead, it's I really connect with people who I really get along with, people who, and it helps people to readily identify, oh, she's my person.

she to get she's for me instead of bonding over the things we dislike, which I don't know that that's a great foundation for any friendship, whether in that digitally or in person.

So I think social media has a lot of benefits to connecting us.

and one final thing I'll say is the comparison game that is really hard on social media.

A lot of us see people with pictures with their friends on a boat and traveling, and it makes us feel inadequate.

We feel like we're behind and that can impact negatively our mental health.

And so I think in those kinds of ways, social media sometimes can be a disservice.

but there are a lot of benefits to having technology available to help us cultivate relationships.

How do you tell people to deal with that?

Like, yeah, it looks like she's on a yacht with good looking guys all the time, but that's not her real life or what do you do?

A lot of this is balanced by being with groups in real life, because you're around most times normal people, whatever that looks like to you.

I know, even for even body issues and comparing bodies, sometimes when you go out in the real world, you see a myriad of different body types, but your algorithm and social media might just feed you just one type you're constantly seeing and slowly starting to believe that that's real or that's common.

And it's not true.

I also advise people to unfollow or mute accounts that don't make you feel good.

Maybe the account holder is positive and beautiful and wonderful, but when you look at her content, you don't feel good.

And so just saying, I don't think I'm going to follow accounts that have me suddenly insecure about my appearance, about my relationships.

Because here's the thing with the loneliness academic.

A lot of times when we're talking about loneliness, people tend to conjure an image of a person who's alone in their dark room and crying in the corner.

And while that might be one image of it, one representation, loneliness is less about having a lack of friendships.

It's about how you feel about the relationships you do have.

So if I'm constantly looking at other people's friendships and I'm comparing, and I begin to feel more and more dissatisfied with the friendships I have that's going to increase my feelings of loneliness, because it's so subjective.

And so I think just being in tune with those kinds of things is one good start.

How is it different for older people versus younger people to make friends?

Yeah.

You know, that's very interesting.

When I look at through the life cycle, what do things kind of look like?

I'll tell you this, there is a friendship dip that happens in the 30s and 40s where our social networks grow and grow and grow until about the age of 26, at which point it decreases exponentially.

And we have this dip, and it becomes less about making friends and more about friendship maintenance because of what happens in our 30s and 40s, where you're clocking more hours at work.

You may have young children to care for, you're caring for aging parents.

So there's a lot of being competing for your time.

And people in their 30s and 40s, according to the research, have less, the least amount of leisure time than any other group.

I bring that up because I know that there are people who are feeling like this is starting to feel impossible for me.

There's so much to do.

I'm burnt out.

I don't have time for friends.

But I tell them to take heart because a dip naturally, by definition, comes back up.

And over time those, things that are competing for your time tend to fade away.

The kids become more independent, you know, work tends to be more settled, and now you have more leisure time to connect with friends.

So it's possible during that dip to make friends, to engage, we might have to be more strategic about it than we were when we were in college, and we were just in a place saturated with many of our peers.

And then it happens again.

Sometimes when people become more seasoned, they have more leisurely time.

They can engage in their hobbies and hang out with friends.

But we might have to be strategic down at the bottom of the stick and how to facilitate those opportunities for ourselves.

So two tips I give to people who feel pressed for time younger people, and they don't have the time to connect.

One is to create some kind of friendship ritual with your friends.

How can you put one aspect of your friendship on autopilot?

So maybe you have a phone call every Friday morning at ten.

That's your thing.

Or you meet up at the cafe every first Tuesday of the month.

And then the second thing I would tell a person, a young person who feels like it's so hard to make friends and I don't have the time is to really look at your relationship with work, because I know capitalism is real, but a lot of us are burned out.

We are, and so we don't have anything left in the mental reserves to hang out with friends.

And so look at your relationship with other things that are pulling you away from what's most important, and that is quality relationships with other people.

Next question.

What do you hope your book achieves in promoting healthier friendships in America and the Americans health, etc.

among women?

I hope that after people read the book fighting for our friendships, they feel more optimistic about what is possible and their friendship landscape.

They feel more equipped to be able to actually do something about it.

And, I hope that they feel a sense of urgency and see friendship no longer is just a recreational pastime, but as a wellness imperative.

That is my hope for readers of fighting for our friendships.

Thank you so much, Danielle Bayard Jackson, so much enlightenment and the best of luck with your TikTok platform and with your book.

And that's it for this edition.

Keep the conversation going on all our social media platforms and visit our website pbs.org/to the contrary, and whether you agree or think To The Contrary, see you next time.

But for a lot of us, if we're feeling disconnected, we're starting to feel isolated and withdrawn to ourselves like other people don't understand.

You're not in enough communities that affirm the various parts of who you are.

Tell yourself I'm a connector.

I value connection, and me reaching out to people is an extension of my values, and if we get rejected, it doesn't go well.

That's just a part of the game, but we're not going to internalize it.

Why?

Because we're here to make new friends in 2024.

Funding for To The Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Park Foundation, and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

For a transcript or to see an You're watching PBS.