TSS #037 - April 28th, 2024
I have finally assembled some of the BEST posts on friendship!!!
Hello friends,
Greetings from another coffee shop in Austin.
This time I got to draft today’s newsletter alongside some other awesome ATX writers via the atx writing club — thanks to
for hosting!As for my weekly brief updates:
This week was our Funga offsite! It’s always so lovely to see these humans I spend so much time with on the screen, IRL. Grateful to work alongside these folks.
Lots of swimming, sessions pertaining to our growth and product (even one calculating our own carbon footprint!), and maybe most importantly…LAZER TAG.
I also got a chance to be a part of the most rowdy (and friendly) Psychedelic Porn Crumpit moshpit as well as bear witness to the legendary tones of Courtney Barnett.
I am more than exhausted and trying my best to find some rest this weekend. (whilst also continuing with the 75-medium and wrapping up this month’s ABP challenge 😅)
What’s the theme/agenda for this week’s newsletter?
friendship!
ie - sharing some of my favorite reads on friendship
my current Aussie rock obsessionsThis post got too long — saving this for next months AV study!
the regula stuff
link to mymonthly blog post I committed toI did not finish in time for this post
a thematically pertinent quote I am pondering
fun things below the fold (for my readers who always make it to the end ;)
Let’s dive in!
on friendship
I’ve been wanting to assemble some of my favorite posts on friendship — specifically the ones that are more pertinent to the mid/late twenties. Here they are!
(Can I call this group of writers the “Friendship Avengers” or maybe The Avengers of Friendship..? idk - ykwim)
Please reply or let me know in the comments with any more writers/posts to be included in the friendship-616 multiverse ;)
@ on connection and what it means to *click* with people
Ant’s notes+quotes:
“I’ve come to understand that being on the same wavelength as someone is some combination of (1) admiring them, (2) sharing deep elements of yourselves (values, interests, principles, current inner context), and (3) being socially compatible (having similar ways that you like hanging out with one another). If you align on any of these, you’re going to connect. If you align on all three, you’re going to click.”
“But sometimes you really want something to work. You are convinced you should be there, it should feel good. But it doesn’t! You’re not finding your people, you are not feeling at home in yourself, you are struggling to self-express. You know you need to leave but for some reason, you really don’t want to. It feels like admitting defeat. So, you resist your nature. You try to ignore the inner signals telling you to go somewhere else.”
This is an oldie but a goodie (one I shared in a tSS last year) If you liked this post, I highly recommend checking out her part-2 on people pleasing!
@ on his evolving motley crew when “life happens,” and also… AI friends?!
Ant’s notes+quotes:
“Prioritize those friendships that are generous, generative, and reciprocal. And try to make more of them.” It worked. It really worked. You could say that I “right-sized” my friendships. I developed realistic expectations. My mood and my relationships improved.”
“You can’t recreate the bond of a shared milestone. You can only experience high school, your first year in a foreign country, your first job, and your first victory or loss once. The relationships with the people who were there with you have meaning you can’t recreate, no matter how much you adore the new friends you make when you know yourself better.”
—My favorite part of this post is how candid David is about his fading/past relationships. How letting go is better than passive-aggressive resentment.
@ on expectations and what requests you are allowed to make of friends
Ant’s notes+quotes:
“I’ve been thinking lately that friendship to me is a term that encompasses everything—the familial, the romantic, the nostalgic. My friendships have helped me understand what I never liked about dating, which is that I don’t want to get to know people unless I’m going to keep knowing them.”
amen 🙏🏽🫡
“Friends don’t exist just to make you feel like you have friends when you need them. There’s the work of maintenance, there’s the need to be there at the birthdays and engagements and breakups and dinners, there are the conversations that have to be had, negotiations and renegotiations.”
I highly recommend reading her list of questions at the end of the post. It makes you ‘feel friendship.’ If you are still here reading this — it’s worth it.
@ on lasting friendship, vulnerability, and the fear of abandonment
Ant’s notes+quotes:
This meme is goated:
“Serious vulnerability is not just talking about how you were struggling at some point, or that you were overwhelmed with emotion previously but are fine now—it’s sharing these things as they are happening, expressing your anger and anxiety and sadness while you still haven’t resolved them.”
“If you’re like me, the thing you fear most is abandonment, and the thing you avoid most is putting yourself in a position where that might happen. And so you do everything you can to become self-reliant, you organize your life around independence, you develop an exhaustive list of practices to manage your own psychology. All of which are good things on their own. But I’m starting to wonder if, rather than avoiding helplessness at all costs, rather than fearing the day that I finally fall apart and truly need someone else, I can welcome such a day…They will hold your hand and they’ll tell you, not with their words but with their actions: This is the moment at which I could abandon you. And I won’t.”
this hit me like a ton of bricks. honestly, I never thought I had a fear of abandonment. After reading this, my hesitence with dating, becoming ‘dependent’ on other people, and constant striving of being independent/fulfilled/enough on my own…makes me feel like I might. Something to discuss in therapy next week lol.
@ on frictionless friendship and a guide to making friends as an adult
“In order to cultivate a deep and lasting connection, the defining factor is time. Time spent together in conversation, on walks, at the movies, in each other’s homes, on vacation, in the park, at the gym, in the bowling alley. Relationships need time. Hundreds of hours—this much is clear.”
“Each time you choose to mold yourself to someone else’s liking—whether it’s in a personal, professional, platonic, or romantic setting—you add just a tiny bit of friction to the relationship. And this friction builds and builds. Until eventually, it burns away your resolve to keep going.”
“And when you’re trying to form a real, deep relationship, you’re not just climbing any old mountain. You’re climbing Everest. In fact, you’re climbing an infinite Everest.
On a journey like that, what kind of friction can you afford to have?”
“I played this same game for a long time. The game of trying to become the alpha and the chameleon. I tried to scale the social ranks and become the life of the party, and convince people to fall in love with me. And I can say with full certainty, it’s exhausting, and meaningless.
In the end, the people we’re trying to spend our lives with are not our customers. They’re not a one time interaction. They’re people we’ve chosen to go the distance with.
Don’t erode your ability to go deep, and build lasting relationships, by building them on a foundation you’re destined to resent.”
I don’t have anything to add beyond what Zac has already written. The line on being the alpha and the chameleon hits me hard. Makes me ask the question — but how do you know who do go deep with??
But in a weird way…I think we all know the answer to this. We just have a hard time accepting it.
“We disconnect with how we made friends as a child, and forget:
Time together matters
Everyone is multidimensional
Vulnerability connects people
Friendships aren’t found, they are created”
I’ve thought about writing a “how to make friends after college/as an adult” post for awhile now…but Zac hits the nail on the head! So no need to recreate the wheel :)
Friendship is simple, not easy.
Ant’s conclusion on friendships
Again, I include some of my favorite exerpts and notes from each post to serve as an appetizer. If you feel any tugging on your heart or brain after reading, check out the whole post!
In an ultra-distillation, great relationships need:
Shared values (or interests)
Intentional, quality time
Each individual to feel comfortable being themselves/vulnerable
A mutual understanding of each others needs/boundaries.
like a house plant - some need a little more water (time/attention) at different cadences than others…and if you neglect it…it withers away and DIES.
Lastly, something that I am thinking about after rereading these posts is the role of “admiration” vs “respect” in relationships. I used to think you had to have the utmost respect for your friends (which you should still have), but now…I think having admiration or admiring, your friends is actually a level deeper.
You can respect someone that you don’t admire.
I don’t think you can admire someone you don’t respect.
Right? Idk - still chewing on it. Maybe something for another post.
quote I am pondering
“A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.”
—Anne Lamott
As always, if you’ve made it this far, thank you.
If you have any questions, comments, or ways I can improve this newsletter, please reply to this email!
ML,
Anthony
(p.s. - if you made it below the fold today…you get extra goodies!)
this guy took a blind date on a trip to Tokyo!!! Highly recommend checking this story out. I am inspired.
Who is taking me to Tokyo??
in response to my questions in the last NL - here is a great post on being “enough”
yeah, I skim-read it too — tl;dr: “gratitude is de wey”
I like this Saturday roundup format and aspire to copy it. I also like the format of the ATX writing club and am wondering if there is something similar here in Oaxaca. I’m going to ask around. Thanks for the mention and, more importantly, for pointing me to other great perspectives on friendship. That Anne Lamott quote is gold.