Do all my friends secretly hate me? | from Corner Piece

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Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to How to Be a Better Human. Today, I am sharing something that is different than what you would normally hear on this show. I'm really excited about it. It's a special episode exploring the weirdness of friendship in adulthood. And this episode comes from a new TED podcast, which is called Corner Piece. Taha, Melissa and Sabrina are the creators of the popular YouTube channel, Answer in Progress. They're so funny and smart and interesting. And now they are hosting a new podcast with TED, where they bring their deep curiosity, funny banter, and their sense of adventure to exploring questions like, when do I split the bill? Why is there nowhere to hang out anymore? And is romance dead? I'm super excited to share this episode with you. I think Corner Piece is going to be an incredible show. And I hope that you will learn something today about the friendships that you have in your life. So now, on to this episode of Corner Piece.

Melissa Fernandes (1:42)

When I was a kid, I had all these dreams of what I thought friendship would be like when I was older.

Big apartments, large living rooms, pizza nights, the kind of thing that you'd see in the show Friends. I guess that's because my parents had it on TV all the time when I was younger. And what I've always found really beautiful about the show was the genuine connection these people seemed to share with each other. They have this casualness with each other and show up as themselves, unannounced, happy, sad, and everything in between. They laugh together, cry together, and are present in each other's lives. And I know that this is television, but when I look at the picture of friendship in my life today, it's very different than what I had imagined. Recently, I went through a pretty tough friendship loss or breakup.

I think I just like thought I told myself that it was fine and I was over it. But we were friends for years, pretty much all through childhood and into adulthood. But long story short, we had a small fight that unraveled into this year-long process of slow distancing. And now we don't really talk to each other. I guess when you're just like friends at someone for so long, I guess like you have these expectations. And when things change so suddenly without any communication, you're just kind of like, you're just, I don't know, like feeling left wondering what is going on for over a year. You're just confused. And so I just don't understand what the, I don't know what the play space is. You know?

She was one of my oldest and closest friends. And I miss her a lot. And I think I'm still making sense of what happened in processing the grief of it all. Like, I'm too scared to even text her. So on this episode of Corner Piece, we're talking about friendship. Am I a bad friend? And what does it even mean to be a good friend? And not just the kinds that you see on screen. I mean, real friends.

So I called my friends, Taha and Sabrina, to ask them how they maintain their friendships.

Taha (4:17)

Do you guys ever just call your friends spontaneously?

Sabrina (4:22)

So what do you think my answer is, Taha?

Taha (4:25)

You schedule in spontaneous phone call with friend. And then you roll a dice and you have a system.

Melissa Fernandes (4:35)

I don't anymore. But when I was a kid, I used to, when I was in elementary school, I used to just call my friends after school.