Lori Gottlieb: The Reprioritization of Relationship
“I think what COVID did was it really made people realize that the state of their emotions, the state of their relationships, all of those things that felt very optional, meaning they were important to people, but in the rushing around of daily life, you, you could kind of ignore them a little bit. Um, you know, you didn't have to really think about them or face them. They weren't, a mirror was not being held up to you in the way that it was during COVID. And so I think that the, the good thing that came out of all of this is that people really said, oh, I want to understand this better.”
So says Lori Gottlieb, one of my favorite conversation partners. Lori is a psychotherapist and the author of the bestselling MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE, which is a brilliant exploration of what it means to be in therapy and be a therapist—in her storytelling, she manages to touch on everything from existential anxiety to inconceivable loss. She’s also the co-host of the DEAR THERAPIST podcast, a brilliant show that tackles peoples’ real problems, like narcissistic partners and parental alienation. In today’s episode of this podcast, Lori and I get into the impact of COVID on our partnerships, the often uncredited grief of single people, and how we can come to deepen the intimacy of our most important relationships, whether they’re with lovers, friends, family, or even co-workers.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
We’re all unreliable narrators…(6:05)
Emotional egalitarianism…(16:00)
COVID and the great reprioritization…(22:53)
When is it time to let a relationship go...(36:44)
MORE FROM LORI:
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: The Workbook
Lori Gottlieb Ted Talk - How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE:
I saw you have a workbook. I need the workbook.
LORI GOTTLIEB:
Yes. I'm so excited about the workbook.
ELISE:
What's the idea just that people can sort of, what is it, your therapy practice distilled, or how do you what's the concept?
LORI:
Well, you know, it's interesting because I'm not really a workbook person, so I never thought I would be making a workbook. And now I'm a complete convert to workbooks. The reason I wrote the workbook is because when Maybe You Should Talk to Someone came out so many people would underline it, highlight, and post themes, or quotes, or ideas that resonated with them on their bathroom mirrors or over their desks. And everybody said, please make a workbook where I can synthesize all of this, where I can apply this to my life in a more systematic way. And of course, you know, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, the book to me, that's more of an experience than a blueprint. It's, it's kind of seeing yourself mirrored in the lives of my therapy patients and then me as a therapy patient as a therapist. And so, you know, I didn't really think I wanted to just pull themes from, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and make that a workbook.
It didn't feel like that was quite what would be helpful to people. And then later that year, when the book came out, I was asked to do a Ted Talk and it was about how changing our stories can change our lives. And that's a big theme in, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, how the story that we come in with is a different story from the story that we leave with. And that Ted Talk went viral. And it was then that I realized that's what I want to do in the workbook. I want to walk people through the experience of editing their own story. So if in, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, they were in conversation with the people in the book. I wanted people to be in conversation with themselves, with me as their guide.
ELISE:
I love that. I think it's such a powerful idea because stories can be clearly healing and it can be deeply resonant to read someone else's story and feel like it reflects your own or that you're not alone. And then they can also be something that we become overly attached to, wedded to, constricted by, where we can't evolve out of them. And how do you think about that sort of that, that idea of this is who we are, because we tell ourselves that this is who we are and how long is that helpful before you need to push people into a different version?
LORI:
Right. Well, it's interesting that you say this is who we are, because we tell people, we tell ourselves that that's who we are because we weren't the original storytellers. So you have to remember that the stories that we carry around are stories that we have taken in from whoever told us certain things, whether that's the culture, whether that's the family of origin that we grew up in, you know, the people who might've said to you, oh, you're too sensitive or you're too much. Or you're the pretty one, or you're the smart one or whatever the story is. Usually those stories were more about the storyteller than about the person they're telling the story about. So, you know, when someone tells you something about you, especially when you're a kid, usually that something about the parent that they are, you know, having trouble with, or being challenged by. You know, a lot of times when a parent doesn't deal well with feelings, they say that their kid who has a lot of feelings, you have too many feelings. But really that’s just the parent who is having trouble dealing with feelings.
So we internalize these stories, and then we think that those stories are accurate. And so that's why I say that we're all unreliable narrators, because partly we walk around with these inaccurate stories, but partly we tell inaccurate stories about other people. And I see this, especially in couples therapy where you have these, these two versions of the same incident, and they're wildly different versions about, you know, someone's motivations, someone's ability to be empathetic. You know, who the person is. It's really interesting how we, how we are all storytellers. And we don't realize that our version is incredibly subjective.
ELISE
In this weird time vortex that we're in too, in this idea of truth and who owns the truth. And what is that even? Which I don't want to sound insane, because I think we're also in this very messed up, lies passing as truth, like we're in a distorted reality in some ways, but there is something at its root that's truth. You know, it's in the eye of the beholder in some ways like, well, how do you distinguish fact from perception? And I feel like we're all being called, in some way, to process that in a way that feels very unsettling, really, to have your version of reality not be reflected. But that's, that's what happens, right?
LORI:
I think what you're getting at is this idea that there's some truth, that's just the truth. And, and, and I think that things are more nuanced than that. So, for example, let's say that you have evidence for two different things. Like you have evidence for the story that you tell yourself I'm lovable, and then you have evidence for a different story: I'm unlovable, because you have experiences in the world. Well, why do we tend to believe the one that's going to make us feel bad? You know, why do we focus on the, the things in the world that make us feel unlovable. As opposed to taking in all of the evidence for I'm very lovable. So I think that there are, if you ask different people about you, they would tell different stories about you, but what is the story that you hold about yourself and where do you focus the narrative of your story?
ELISE:
Why do we have such a negativity bias? Like, why are we so inclined to believe, to want to hear the worst news, to believe the worst news, to cancel out the good news or the more positive spin? What is that in our, why are we wired? Are we wired like that? Or is that a cultural programming?
LORI:
I think part of it is cultural programming, especially for women I would say. I think that women have a hard time just embracing joy, embracing, you know, feeling like, like they're, they can, they can enjoy themselves that they can delight in themselves. That somehow that feels indulgent. It feels conceited. It feels braggy as opposed to just, oh, I really enjoy who I am. I'm comfortable in who I am. We can't be. I know, like if someone says like, Hey, I really, you look great today. Oh yeah. But you should have seen me yesterday, you know? Or, oh, well, you know, like we always sort of like qualify it. We can't just say, thank you.
ELISE:
Yes. Or we reflect it back. We bounce it back because it makes us feel so uncomfortable and that is definitely cultural programming. That's the, if you take that in, then you're conceited, you think that you're all that, you know, you are asking to be put back in your place, which is very insidious and I think deep inside each of us, this fear, in some ways, it's, we're so desperate to be seen as people, right? Every person just longs to have someone who really, really sees them. And then there's this fear of like, if I am seen, if I am distinguished, if I, sort of called out, even in a positive way, it puts me somehow in danger, or I'll need to be immediately reminded that I'm not special.
LORI:
Well, right. We want to be appreciated, but we don't want to be perceived as better than, because better than is dangerous, then people won't like you. So there's this need to belong. And if you're better than, than somehow you're not going to belong. So I think that, I think this comparison game is really dangerous. You know? I think it's like, why can't we just take in the appreciation? Why can't we just take in something positive without worrying about, oh, well then are people going to not like me? Because then that puts me in a different place in their eyes.
ELISE:
And puts me into a dangerous position socially, even though we can dismiss all of that talking. And in some ways it's like, who cares? Who cares? It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. But there's some primordial. Are there’s some button than us that gets pressed around what that spells for our survival or our safety, or, you know, there's nothing… we've been raised to feel like we need, as you mentioned, belonging and relationships, that that's our birthright as women, which is pretty insidious. Not that those things aren't really important, but this is, but this is everyone's birthright. It's not just ours. We're the ones who fear the ex-communication.
LORI:
I should say that. I think that's, that's the human birthright. I think that that men want to connect so badly. I see this in my therapy practice all the time. They want connection and they need it. They need it just like we do. It's just so taboo for them. You know, it's like when I think about, when I think about guys and they talk about their friends, they can only talk about it in a therapy room, their love for their friends, for example, their male friends. Because they feel like, well, I can't, I can do that out in the world. It's not socially acceptable. You know, where they have a rift with a friend and it becomes a really big thing for them, but they can't act like it affects them too much. Just showing emotion for men, right. Showing how much they need their partner, showing that kind of vulnerability. It's, it's really hard for them. And partly it's really hard for them because we as women kind of, you know, we, there, there's this idea in the culture that, that it's men who are having trouble with expressing their emotions. And what we don't realize is that we as women send them messages, they're very subtle, but they're there that, oh yeah, I need you to be strong. And in our mind, strong is, you can't be vulnerable. You can't cry around me. You can't tell me how, how needy you are.
ELISE:
It's such a horrible vicious cycle because, and I've been, I was thinking about this and trying to tease this particular thing out in my book. But this idea that you mentioned, like we're not actually when our husbands, or our brothers, or fathers cry, we're, we're not necessarily like, oh, thank God. Like the dam has broken, like express, let it out. It's this well wait… like we took a Faustian bargain that we would be the subservient slash weaker, more dependent sex, which obviously I vehemently disagree with, but you can't now you're coming to us with need, like you've this whole system is in some, this patriarchal system gives you power. So you need to take your side of the bargain. And I feel like we just end up in this horrible vicious cycle, where as you mentioned, of course we want feeling sons, brothers, husbands, fathers who are whole, and yet we're terrified of carrying what feels like a burden. And it feels like, well, we're not, you're supposed to, you're not supposed to need us. It's something we have to break. And how do w break something like that? Conscious awareness?
LORI:
Well, so, so that's what I see so much in couples therapy, where if a heterosexual couple comes in and you know, it's often the woman in that couple who will say, like, I just want to understand your inner life more. I want you to open up to me. I want to be closer with you. And so then he starts to open up to her right there on the couch, and maybe he starts crying, and then maybe he starts crying a lot, and she will inevitably I see her body tense up. She will kind of look at me like a deer in headlights, like, oh my goodness, what do I do with this? And he sees that, you know, it's, it's like right there. And then he will start to shut down like a turtle, you know, going back into his shell. And so it's, it's really interesting to me to watch, you know, to watch that dynamic happen, where it's like, you specifically wanted that kind of closeness with your partner, and when your partner comes toward you, there's an idea about masculinity that you have in your mind that he did not meet in that moment.
And so what's the message that he's getting. It's very confusing. And this is why I should say too, that, you know, men, when they come in by themselves to therapy, they will literally say to me, I have never told anyone this before, whatever the thing is that they're about to tell me. They have not told a soul, just basic things that I think we, as women do talk to our friends, or siblings, or, you know, whatever. We talk to people about them. You know, women will come in and they'll say something like, well, I've never told anyone this before, but then when you actually talk to them, they're like, no, no, actually I told my sister, I told my best friend, or I told my mother, right. So they had someone that they've talked to about it before. Men literally have had no one, even if they're happily married, even if they have great friends, even if they have a great family that they're close with, they don't feel comfortable opening up in that way. So, so what is our role as women in perpetuating this kind of trap that they're in.
ELISE:
What do you think is underneath all of that in terms of our adherence to this idea of masculinity and what it represents. What do you think the fear is like at its core, from the women in these partnerships? What would, what do you think that it is?
LORI:
I think there's still some sort of going back to stories. I think there's some story that we have in our culture that we grew up with from such a young age, that we don't even realize it's there. Because if you ask someone, if you ask most women today, what the story is around what it is to be a strong woman, right. Or what they want in their partnerships, they want an equal partnership. They want egalitarian partnerships. But then what does that actually mean? So then you see what happens when they get that kind of emotional egalitarianism, where now everybody can be vulnerable. They don't feel safe. They feel like, I think there's some, there's something that women still have from, again, a young age of, I need you to take care of me emotionally. I don't want to be the one to emotionally take care of you in that way. I need you to be the person who, who is there for me emotionally. So that's what, that's what I think a lot of people like when I come to you with things that are, that I, that are delicate or tender for me, I want you to be there for me. But when you come to me with things that are delicate or tender for you, I get a little bit scared.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I can feel the truth of that and my body. It is something that I think we…do you think that we will grow out of that culturally, as we become, I mean, this whole, you know, when I think about the, how only recently women had access to credit, right? Like this is how recently it came to be that you actually can't rape your wife. Like we're still coming out of these really pretty barbaric ideas of what it means to be married or in partnership. And I like, we like to think of all of these things and all of these oppressive systems, whether it's slavery, any, any sort of, part of the bigger net of the patriarchy as being so distant. Right. But reality, this is all very recent. Do you imagine we'll shake this out of our systems generation after generation? Or do you feel like we need to, that there's like a bigger wound that needs to be staunched before we can heal?
LORI:
Well, actually I'm really hopeful for the next generation. I have a teenage son. So raising a boys really interesting when we think about these messages that the next generation is getting around masculinity and femininity and what is strength and what is vulnerability and all of that. And my son, who's 15 just started this platform on Instagram, called Talk with Zach. And he really wanted to model that boys can talk about emotions. They can talk about feelings, they can talk about all the things that that teenagers are thinking about anyway, but they feel like they can't really talk about, and he has gotten the feedback that he's gotten makes me so hopeful because so many guys, you know, on the one hand, they'll kind of like make fun of it right. A little bit. But at the same time, they're, they're watching, they're listening, they're participating, they're engaging.
And they're having conversations, even, you know, sort of outside of that, that they're talking to each other with a little more trust that they can open up to each other. They're testing it out in a different way, certainly in a way that I know that when I was a teenager, you know, and I had a brother have a brother. So, you know, I, I saw the differences between sort of how he related to his friends and how I did. And I think that that's changing. I think that boys are starting to talk to each other more and give themselves that kind of emotional freedom.
ELISE:
Yeah. It's beautiful and interesting and ironic that that's, what's actually brave. And, but I agree with you. I think it's, it's a hopeful sign. So going back to that room with couples and the stories, and when you see the woman sort of overwhelm or get tense and overwhelmed by other people's emotions, how do you coach people through that?
LORI:
I think I really call out what's happening in the room in that moment. You know, touch is a really important part of regulating our nervous systems. So both people are dysregulated in that moment. And so I will have them hold each other's hands. And you see what happens when two people can just hold each other's hands and sit in the discomfort together, it just reconnects them and they can talk about this, this paradox, you know, they can be, they can be more open about here's what's happening for me. And here's what's happening for me, and, and just be aware of it. And it really shocks them because both people think that they did not feel that way before that moment happened. I feel like when, when people come to couples therapy, it's like, it's like doing an experiment in real time. You can think all kinds of thoughts outside of the therapy room, but when you're actually having an interaction with someone in real time, and someone is helping you to slow down and watch what's happening, you've learned so much, not just about the other person, but about yourself and, and the beliefs that you're carrying around and your role in what's not working or why you're having trouble getting close with that person.
You know, like, is she having trouble getting close with him because he's not opening up? Partly. But is she also having trouble getting close with him because she's sending him messages about, I need you to open up to a certain degree, but not too much.
ELISE:
And for the men really, for any, for either when you talk about story and you think about cultural programming, how does memory come into it? And in order to clarify or move that story or transition it, do you go back to the memory or does that not matter?
LORI:
People think that memory is a retelling of something that happened. Like, like let's get out the film and let me just play the film for you, but it's not like that at all. So every time we call up a memory, the memory gets changed because now we're in a different place in life and our perceptions are different. So we don't remember things accurately. And that's really important. We remember the feeling very accurately. So that's what we remember. So how did something make you feel? That's something that's very accurate. Your body will tell you that, your body doesn't lose that, but the actual dialogue content, you know, all of those things they change. It's almost like, think about opening up a Microsoft Word document and you go into edit it, right? Every time you call up a memory, it's like calling up that document. Now you've edited it a little bit.
And then the next time you call up that memory, it gets edited a little bit more. And every time you open that document, you open that memory. It changes a little bit. And so, you know, after a while, the memory is just like a first draft to that later draft in the document, it's going to look very different. When people argue about the facts of something, you know, like again, in couples, when they argue about this is how it happened. First of all, two people had very different experiences of how it happened. And then also people's memory changes over the time that they've been, you know, rehashing this particular incident.
ELISE:
So I would imagine in COVID, which is now I guess, endemic and we're 18 months in, and I've seen sort of on your Instagram and throughout dear therapists, like so much people are, people are having a hard time. And also, I think people are, it's such a mix. It seems like it's a mixed bag for every single person, right? Like it's been the highs and incredible lows and our people, I think this was just on your Instagram, but when people come to you as couples and they're really in trouble because of COVID, do you think it's been a forcing function for people to actually have to face dysfunction in their relationship? Or do you think that the stress that there's just all this unnatural stress compounding, what might otherwise be a healthy relationship and how do people tell the difference?
LORI:
I think what COVID did was it really made people realize that the state of their emotions, the state of their relationships, all of those things that felt very optional, meaning they were important to people, but in the rushing around of daily life, you, you could kind of ignore them a little bit. You know, you didn't have to really think about them or face them. They weren't, a mirror was not being held up to you in the way that it was during COVID. And so I think that the, the good thing that came out of all of this is that people really said, oh, I want to understand this better. Now I'm seeing things that I wasn't seeing before, and this really matters. And I think people reprioritized too. They said, this is, this person is really important to me. My family is really important to me or my wellbeing is really important to me and I wasn't paying attention to it.
And so you can hear it's interesting because we launched the Dear Therapist podcast, which is where we do actual sessions with people. And we launched it during COVID, which was not the plan. We had no idea that COVID was about to happen. And we thought we were going to get all of these COVID letters from people. And that, you know, the podcast was just going to be one COVID situation after another. And it was not. COVID came into because people's lives were affected by COVID. But it was really about, oh, help me with this issue in my life that now I want to focus on. So we found that really interesting.
ELISE:
Do you think, and obviously this is a guess, but do you feel like people are going to come out of COVID having, and I know it's a mental health crisis, so I don't want to, but do you think that a lot of people will have actually made some significant leaps? Or do you see that even in what's reported about people, the great resignation, or like, do you think that this has been an incredible decluttering, or reprioritizing of people's lives in a way that will actually have positive impact? It's probably hard to assess.
LORI:
I think it's different for every person. And I think it's really hard for the people who are really struggling to hear these things like, oh, it's been a really positive experience for many people, even though it has. And I think for, um, I think just like in therapy, people come in and they feel like they're all alone in whatever they're going through. I think during COVID, because people's experiences were actually so varied, that a lot of people felt isolated in their experiences. Because if you read the news or if you read the news at the time, it was like, everyone's feeling this way. There would be all these trend stories. And if you didn't fit into that, you felt like, like, especially there were, so there were people who were suffering in certain ways that were not covered in the media. And then there were people who were not suffering in those ways and they felt like they could not say, I am really loving not commuting an hour and a half to work each day.
Right. I am really enjoying this time for myself that I have never had, because I've been working 24/7 for the last 20 years. You couldn't say that. And so everybody's experience was different, but there wasn't room for everybody's experience. It was like, as if your experience, is it having, having a positive experience would somehow make you clueless to the fact that people were dying, that people were financially struggling, that people were getting sick, that people were losing loved ones. Of course that was happening, but could you hold both? You know, I think in our culture, we have a hard time holding the both and of most situations.
ELISE:
So interesting. And even going back to this idea of story, there was this idea of like a conformity of story, because we were all going through something collectively really for the first time in most of our lives. Like this was the first, it was it. I mean, there's 9/11, et cetera, but there are very few moments like this that are collective disturbance. And then it becomes, what's the overarching narrative. And then how do I not fit into that? Or how do I subscribe to that? And then obviously we had the confluence of BLM and a really heightened understanding of privilege and systemic inequity. And then I think people, I would imagine are showing up in the practice, feeling even more fraught about feelings that don't align with what they have in the world.
LORI:
Right? Well, because we all were, you know, we all had the same stressor, which was COVID, there was this expectation somehow, that everybody was going to have the same reaction to the same stressor, you know, like we're all in this together. And it's kind of like, it reminds me of when there's something that happens within a family, like, let's say that there's a tragic loss, like a child dies in the family. Both parents experience the same tragedy, the child, their child, that they loved equally died, but each person is going to have a different reaction to how they're going to go through that grieving process, how they're going to deal with the loss, how it's going to carry forward in their lives in that way. And so people think, oh, well, they have the same loss. They're going to deal with it together. They might have radically different experiences of how they deal with that tragedy. So the same with COVID people had radically different experiences of how they dealt with something so devastating.
ELISE:
Yeah. How many people in your practice, or sort of within your, your, the sphere that you touch, are also feeling I'm imagining that you work with a lot of people who are single, who felt even more set back by this period of isolation. What did that bring up besides that desire for sameness or to not feel so lonely? Or what, what, what emerged?
LORI:
Here's another area where a story comes in and the stories that we tell ourselves. So, so many of the people who came to me who were single were saying, and so alone, and my friends, you know, they're, they're so busy with their families because their, their kids are doing remote school and they're all working from home and nobody, you know, and I'm just all alone here. And then I would hear from those people that they were talking about, the people of the families with the partners and the kids, and they'd be like, I'm going crazy. I don't know where my friends are. My friends don't call me anymore. I don't want to talk to my husband anymore. I don't want to see my kids anymore. Like, I'm sick of these people. I feel like I'm trapped with these people. And so my PSA to single people at the time was like, your married friends want to hear from you, your partnered friends want to hear from you. Like they, they are dying to hear from you. In fact, and once they reached out, they realized, oh, wow, they want to hear something besides what's going on in their four walls. And so I think we have these ideas that are very, you know, we're very sure that we're right. Like I can't call them because they don't want, they don't have time. And yet the real story was, they're wondering why you're not calling them.
ELISE:
For people who really want to be in relationship. How did that, were they able to get good work done in the interim in terms of even understanding… not that we create our relationship dynamic, but I know for me, when I, before I met my husband, I felt like something in me shifted where I suddenly, I had been going through the paces of dating and yada yada to the point where I was like, this is so boring, like boring, done, over it. And then something changed, which is hard to express. But do you feel like the people who are single, who are desperate seemingly for relationships put the time to good use?
LORI:
What shifted for you? I'm curious.
ELISE:
Because I think in some ways I was going through an emotional, like what shifted for me is there, I was so offended by the cultural projections about how I needed to be in a relationship. So I was sort of going through the motions of going on dates and never really dating anyone seriously. Not that anyone wanted to date me seriously either. But, and then I just got to a point in some way where I acknowledged simultaneously both a deep desire to be in a partnership, not because I felt pressured to do that socially. And I was sort of on the perspective from concerned family and friends, which is funny, but it's, I was 28, 29 when I met my husband, and was that I was like spinstering. And that I was, something was wrong with me. So I did this sort of, it was a concurrent acceptance of the fact that I actually really loved being by myself and enjoyed my own company, and an acknowledgement that maybe I, I actually did want to be in partnership.
And I, it felt perceptible to me, and subtle, and who knows. And then the other thing, this is TMI in some ways, but a guy friend of mine was like, you are like dessicated..like you are not running any like sexual energy. Like it's just not in your being, like, you are shut down and it's perceptible, not visual, but just perceptible. And he was like, you need to like have a one night stand. Like you need to just get going again. And he was kind of right. And that, that's also something that I did where, sorry mom and dad.
LORI:
You did a one night stand?
ELISE:
I did two. And then I met my husband.
LORI:
Interesting. So yeah, I would say that that most people who have been dating during COVID, you know, even before COVID, they really, really wanted a partnership. That's why they were dating. And I, I would say this for any gender, you know, it wasn't like just just women. It was anybody. I think that people inherently want, you know, the, the people who are dating inherently are they're, they're looking for that. They're looking for that, that partner. But I think during COVID it became even more urgent for them where, because there weren't all the other ways that we connect, you know, we have these things called soft ties, right? And soft ties are the people that you see on a daily basis that you're not really close with. Like, you know, the barista at Starbucks because you go there every day and you like, you like it when that person says hi to you and they know your name and, and you have a little chit chat or, you know, whoever you run into in the course of a day, those are soft ties, you know, coworkers by the water cooler or whatever it might be.
Those soft ties were all gone. So there was this incredible sense of isolation when we don't have those, those just the daily interactions with people who recognize us and we recognize them, and maybe we're like, Hey, how's the kid. Or, you know, whatever, it's not, it's not there. I think people got very clear. There was a, there was a study that came out, I think this week, that said that single people now are more interested in the number one thing they're looking for in a partner is no longer looks, it's emotional maturity. And I think that that is something that came out of COVID. I think that people realize that I want to be with a partner who is emotionally mature. That's what I'm looking for. And I think that's what people always were looking for, but I don't think that they articulated it in that way before. And I think they're much more, you know, when they're going through the apps, it's not just, oh, let me, let me look at what that person's picture looks like. But let me also see like the little blurb that they wrote does that resonate with me before they might not even have read that?
ELISE:
No, I, I love the idea of that as an evolution because you know, looks age and so does emotional maturity, but one becomes infinitely more important. It's interesting too, this idea of soft ties, because I think what has also happened, and maybe this is just my own experience of, of no longer working at a company is that we've been fed a little bit of a bill, or a lie. Maybe it's not a lie, but that work for so many of us has a type of family or in a very intense community. And then when you're either no longer physically in community, or as so many people lost their jobs during COVID, or left their jobs, you experience a severing of relationship that is also not ultimately not permanent. Right? I mean, you can make work friends that become lifelong friends. I think particularly when you're young, like my first job friends are still very good friends, but I think for a lot of us, we recognize too, like, oh, there's transactional relationships. There's the fun person to get a coffee with. That may be a little bit deeper. And then there are those really intense enduring relationships that need to be cultivated. And I think a lot of us have traded friendships that we might've had for a longer duration in our lives for work relationships and gotten confused. And maybe the pandemic, you know, you heard about people like Zooming with their best friends from college who they don't, weren't speaking to with any regularity and maybe there was a reprioritization of relationships.
LORI:
Yeah. There's something incredibly unique about being known at different times in your life. So the people who knew you in childhood, they knew you in a very different way than someone who meets you when you're an adult. And also depending on what period of adulthood you're in. And it becomes the truth is it becomes harder to make new friends when you're older, because people have their communities at that point and you don't have a lot of shared experience. So you have to create shared experience. So it's not that you can't make friends as you get older, it's just that it doesn't happen as organically. And you have to put a lot more effort into those beginning stages of cultivating.
ELISE:
Yeah. It's interesting too, this idea, these markers of story, right? And these people who knew you when, as you were evolving and changing and shifting, and then who still love you today. And I remember, I don't remember where I read this, but, or maybe someone had just said it to me when I was young and it stuck with me, but they were saying that one of the hardest parts of any breakup or dissolution of any relationship is that you lose the memories. That you no longer one, have someone to sort of reflect on those parts of your life. But sometimes those memories become painful and, or not appropriate right. In the context of your next life or next love. What do you, what do you think about that? Do you think that's true?
LORI:
Yeah, absolutely. That's what happens when somebody loses their spouse, right? Or when somebody has a rift with their sibling and nobody else knew what it was like to grow up in that house or knew your parents in exactly that way. We had someone on the podcast who came in with a problem about a friendship and it was, it was her, her childhood friend. And it was a group of friends who had known each other since childhood. And one of them had sort of broken from the group after an incident that the rest of the group didn't think was so big, but apparently to the other person it was, and she wrote to us in and was wondering, should she just kinda like, let this friendship go? And yet she obviously didn't want to completely because she wrote to us. Right. And so we did a session with her on the Dear Therapist podcast.
And it was really interesting how, how, again, with the story you come in with the story you leave with. The story she came in with was, yeah, this person doesn't really add much value to my life anymore. You know, we've kind of grown apart. That was the story she came in with. And the story she left with was, I really, I really miss this person and I really want to find out like, you know, and the other, and the other part of the story was, and I'm not really good at communicating. And I have these problems with my husband. And, I haven't talked to him about those either. So it was, it was a really interesting episode. And we give homework at the end of each podcast episode so that they have to go try it out. They have a week to do it, and then they report back.
So when we heard what happened, she had this really beautiful conversation with her friend. Spoiler, for anyone who hasn't heard the episode. But she had this, this really beautiful conversation that helped her in fact, to have a different kind of conversation or start to have a different kind of conversation with, with her husband. So I think our friends are incredibly important, not just because the friendship itself is important, but because they help us to grow as people, you know. A friendship is, is really a safe space to kind of be you in all of the ways that you're you and know that the person, within reason, is still going to love you. And it's a different kind of relationship. It's a different kind of intimacy than a romantic intimacy.
ELISE
I think, you know, in so many ways we live in a disposable culture and sometimes friendships can feel that way, particularly when it gets hard or there's conflict or upset. And when, when is it appropriate to drop the ball versus, and I'm sure it's different in every situation, but when is it time to just say, oh, this was an incredible relationship for a certain number of years, and now we're different people, or we want different things, or this feels unhealthy. When is it okay to drop the ball versus like, when do you, when is it really important for your soul to have appropriate either closure or a fix it, a repair so that you can move forward?
LORI:
I think that COVID handled a lot of that for us, in the sense of we realized who was nourishing to us and who was not, because we just didn't have the bandwidth for that negative energy coming in. And there was so much of it just in the air anyway. And I think, you know, a lot of people realize, first of all, like who makes the effort to maintain the friendship during COVID and who are the people where if you're not talking to them, you actually feel better because, right. So that's sort of a, like a body test with yourself. Like, oh, I haven't talked to that person in a long time and that, you know, and I don't really want to, or I don't look forward to it or it doesn't really feed me. And it's not that your friend is supposed to sort of provide something, you know, provide that nourishment necessarily.
But I think what I think that, you know, when there's something happening between the two of you, that feels good to both of you. And so, and, and there's like that lack of reciprocity too, that people started to realize like, oh, I've been giving way more in this friendship than I've ever been receiving. And that imbalance doesn't feel good. And so, you know, some people will immediately drop a friendship, obviously have a conversation about it because you don't know how the other person is thinking about this friendship. Maybe they pulled away because they sensed that something was up with you. Maybe there's something going on in their lives that they didn't feel comfortable telling you about. You don't know. And so I think the conversation is always really important to have. And then based on how they respond in the conversation, are they interested? Are they willing? Are they receptive? Are they able to hear your perspective, even if they don't have the same perspective.
ELISE:
And I think it goes back to another point early in our conversation, too, where as women we're conditioned to sort of crave those relationships and cultivate them and keep them. And in the same way, we carry around old stories that may no longer serve us. We sometimes carry around old relationships and not to inspire us to just dump people left and right. But that we are allowed to assess and have boundaries and say, actually, this is not equal, or this doesn't serve me, or this mires me in negativity or this feels dissonant. And I need relationships that nourish me.
LORI:
I think that there are different kinds of friendships and that sometimes you might be craving a deeper friendship, but maybe that's not the person to have it with, but they're really fun to like, you know, go do something with right. They're really fun to go take a walk with, or they're really fun to like go to a movie with, or they're really fun to like, you know, whatever is, do some activity that you both enjoy. So it's not like every friendship has to meet all of those criteria. We have different reasons for wanting to connect with different people. And so I feel like sometimes people put so much pressure on a friendship, like, well, I do enjoy this person, but I can't really talk about deep things with this person because that person just doesn't really like going there. That's okay. You can still have the person in your life in a way that, that you feel is valuable to you.
ELISE:
It goes to that idea too, that like no one person can meet all of our needs. And back into that room of couples therapy, often we expect our, our spouses to do that, or our partners to sort of hold the bucket while we vomit up all of our feelings and emotions about every single thing. And maybe that is our responsibility to each other, but it can also be shared.
LORI:
Well, that's right. I mean, so many people say, you know, my, my partner is my best friend, and it's like, no, actually Jane is your best friend. You know, like I know Jane is your best friend because you have a different relationship. So, so your partner might be the person that is most important to you in your life. Okay. But that doesn't necessarily, you know, what does that mean to be the best friend? And I think that for a romantic relationship to thrive, you're not going to like share every single thought, feeling, idea that comes across your mind in any moment. And some people mistake that for intimacy, they think, oh, I should be able to share anything with you. And there's a difference between privacy and secrecy. So privacy is we all need private spaces. And maybe that's the thing you want to talk to your friend about, or maybe it's something you just want to keep to yourself. Secrecy is when you're holding something back that you know, should that the other person would want to know or should know. Privacy is just, oh, these are my private thoughts. These are my private feelings. I don't need to share every single thing with my partner. That's not necessarily intimacy. And that won't necessarily create a closer connection between us. It might actually do the opposite.
ELISE:
Hmm. I love that. Again. Like, not that we conflate those words, but I do think that there's an idea, culturally, that everything needs to be on the table. And I like that. You should have your private life. You should be able to hold things back.
LORI:
Well, another, another sort of misconception about intimacy is this idea that you can like, just let it all out, right. Is like, you can, you can act in ways that you would never act in public. And why would you treat your partner, this person that you say you love in an unloving way? You know, like, you know, it's okay. I can, I can yell at you because you yelled at me or I can yell at you because you did this thing that really upset me. If somebody else upset you, would you yell at them? Probably not. So why do we feel like, oh, well, because we have this intimacy that I can just be myself and have any reaction I want to have. No, that's not intimacy either.
ELISE:
Well, Lori, thank you for your time today. I could. It was actually really fun to have this conversation with no agenda because I can go down and you can go down any path.
LORI
Yeah, it was like the long delayed coffee we haven't had.
ELISE:
Some day. We're doing it. It's great to see you.
LORI:
It's good to see your face on zoom.
ELISE:
I love any opportunity to talk to Lori Gottlieb, her book, as mentioned, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Just a great title is a fantastic look, both at what it is to be a therapist because she recounts her own therapeutic process and her relationship with her therapist and having all the same questions that so many of us have about our therapists as well. She goes into sort of the lives and stories of several clients who are disguised obviously for anonymity and protection, but really, really beautiful and powerful resonant stories. And what's so fun about Lori, which you can see in her podcast is she can just pick up any thread really. And it's informed her responses informed not only by her clinical practice, but by her deep understanding of story and obviously a massive intelligence. So I love talking to her and I hope you enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure she will be back in time.