Origin Stories: Summer of Friendship #1
6/29/20 - We kick off a summer dedicated to friendship—its joys and its difficulties—as we get ready for the release of Big Friendship. On this episode, we talk about our friendship origin story, and interview our mutual friend Dayo Olopade about how she knew we'd hit it off. Also, we're looking for your voicemails about long-term friendship—stories about difficult patches you've survived, and also your questions for us about keeping friendships strong in the long term. Leave us a message at (714) 681-2943.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
TRANSCRIPT: ORIGIN STORIES: SUMMER OF FRIENDSHIP #1
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Welcome to the summer of friendship Ann Friedman!
Ann: Oh! I really am so looking forward to everything that we have virtually planned for this summer because it is all virtual. [Laughs] Summer of our book? Summer of friendship?
Aminatou: You know I love a celebration about friendship.
Ann: So in honor of the fact that our book is coming out in mere weeks, July 14th, we have planned a special ten-episode series all about the different facets of friendship. Specifically big friendship which is a term we coin and explore in our book. So it is definitely distinct from the book, you should obviously still buy and read that, but it is kind of a deeper dive into some things that we wanted to talk about more in this format which is fundamentally different than the process of writing the book together.
Aminatou: 100 percent. And if you've been listening to our podcast from the beginning some of the stuff will seem very like duh Aficionado Magazine to you. [Laughs] And you would've picked up on some autobiographical details, how we met, and you would've known where we lived and what jobs we've had and stuff like that. But the truth is it was . . . it was not possible for us to tell that story in a podcast format and so we really had to write a book to get all of it in one place because chronologically, emotionally, physically it is taxing in all of its different ways. [Laughs] And so I am just really excited that we were able to tell this one joint story and I'm really excited that over these next couple of episodes we are also going to talk about a lot of the ideas that are in the book and a lot of the concepts that we have been really trying to explain to ourselves and also try to hold onto as we think about how do you stay close to your friends?
[Theme Song]
(2:30)
Aminatou: Well let's get into it Ann.
Ann: Start at the very beginning. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Let's start at the very beginning. You and I met at prom. To be precise it was the prom episode in the first season of Gossip Girl.
Ann: One of the prom episodes, let's be real. There are multiple. [Laughs]
Aminatou: One of the prom episodes, right? I mean it's high school, there are multiple proms. Little J had to go to all of these proms.
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: But the concept of the younger person going to prom will never not be exciting to me. But anyway, you know, we were both invited to this TV watching party at our friend Dayo's house and that makes us seem like really ancient dinosaurs but it's true. There was a time where in order to watch television someone had to have cable and cable is very expensive and when we were in our 20s not a lot of people had cable. I had cable but that was a foolish financial decision.
Ann: You always have priorities. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Right. I was like I'm poor, I can't afford to take the bus to work and back but I definitely have cable. [Laughter] You know? But it's funny even dating it that way because it really is that era of cord-cutting was really becoming a norm, right? For so many reasons. So in order to watch this television show we really liked someone had to invite you to their house to do that. And Dayo was a new person to me, I had only ever hung out with her once before this and she invited me to her house and you were there.
(4:00)
Ann: Ugh. And I want to back up just a tiny bit because in a different iteration of our book it was really kind of 50/50 about how we make close friends and then also how we stay in close friendships. We kind of realized the more we got into it that we were much more interested in that latter question of how do you stay friends? So this early chapter or two of the book and some of these ideas about how we meet people who we really want to stay close to for a long time, those ideas are condensed. I would say only the best stuff remains. [Laughs] And it is true that Dayo brought us together but it was in the whole process of thinking about why did we actually become friends? Like why did we hit it off when we sat next to each other at this TV viewing party and what did that really look like? And did we know that we were going to be in each other's lives for this long? It was super interesting to consider.
And, you know, one of the interviews we did was with the writer Angela Chen who has a book coming out this fall about asexuality. She had some interesting things to say about attraction. She's someone who does not use the barometer I guess of wanting to have sex with someone or not as a factor in her feelings as she tries to figure out how she wants a new person to fit into her life going forward. So it was interesting to hear her talk about this idea of attraction as a kind of more mysterious and nebulous feeling that you might know that you are really hitting it off with someone or that you just love everything they have to say or that you are really feeling like an easy rapport when you go back-and-forth. But you might not exactly know what else is behind that feeling like do you want to date this person? Do you want to sleep with this person? Do you want to be friends with this person? At the very beginning it's often unclear and the researchers we talked to said the same thing: attraction is attraction is attraction. And I thought that was so interesting given that this is a word that we almost always use in like a sexual context.
(6:15)
Aminatou: Right. It's like the language of attraction and the language of seduction and all of those things are always mapped on culturally onto like sexual romantic relationships and it was really interesting to really explore that as it actually maps onto platonic relationships. Because speaking just for myself I know that the excitement and the thrill and that like I've got to keep up with this person and this other low-level butterfly feeling is also definitely there when you're making a new friend. I just really enjoyed having expert voices either confirm or totally shut down assumptions we had and really rethinking the concept of what does it mean to think about the beginning of your relationship? Because the other thing too that is true for you and I is we tell the story of meeting at the Gossip Girl party because it's a meet cute. It culturally dates us. It says a little bit about who we are and what we like about pop culture and it's so specific to you and me. But the truth is that, you know, we would've probably met someway, somehow in our DC life because we just had so many tethers, you know?
We had Dayo in common but outside of Dayo we had literally dozens and dozens of people in common. We had institutions in common. You know, we lived about 15 minutes, a walk from each other, and we worked really close to each other and we were also part of this very nebulously large group of 20-somethings. So even if you and I had not met that night at the TV party I think it's fair to say we would've probably been invited to the same party or we would've been invited to the same dinner or we would've had to do a thing for work together.
(8:00)
There's so much of that unknowable like oh, how do you actually even meet? And how does the way that you talk about the way that you met, how is that part of the story you're telling about your friendship and the story that you're telling about yourself?
Ann: Yeah. And it's funny because I find myself thinking about the classic reality TV like I'm not here to make friends because the other thing that we really realized in retrospect is we were both there to make friends. I specifically went there because I wanted -- not because, I mean I also wanted to hang out with Dayo and other friends, but one of my motives for the night was that I specifically wanted to befriend you, a person I'd heard about and seen on the Internet in a way you see someone who's part of an extended friend group and was like oh yeah, she's someone I would want to be friends with.
And I think that part of it also is really interesting where we had this kind of very sweet intentionality I think, like there's something very charming about the fact we can own that we were both there because we wanted to make friends in a very sincere way.
Aminatou: Well speaking of very charming there are children in my quarantine pod so if you are hearing ukulele noises or piano noises that's what's happening. That's how we live now. Apologies from this side of the audio but we are just going to roll with it. [Laughs] Shout-out to hardworking parents everywhere. I have been humbled and fully in love with this concept.
Ann: Shout-out to also friendships with people who are way younger than you and might be children. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I know! I know. I know. Ugh, love my parent friends and I love my children friends. Yeah, I'm really excited that today we are talking to Dayo on this podcast because she's the person who introduced us. She's also someone who we're both still incredibly close with which is exciting. Everyone knows the story of like uh, this person introduced us then you cut out the middle man in the transaction. [Laughs]
Ann: Or at least one of you does, yeah.
(10:05)
Aminatou: Right, or at least one of you does or whatever. But I think a thing that always I remain very happy about is we both have a joint friendship with Dayo and also a separate friendship with Dayo and she's a recurring main character in both of our lives. It really just goes to this idea of really like friends as a community and friends as a tether. I also want to touch on this thing that you said earlier. This book is really about how you stay close to your friends. It's not about how you make friends. Because I think for many reasons, right? One, it's not something that in that period of my life I particularly struggled with and I think it's fair to say that's true for you as well. Answering that question of how you make friends really requires a kind of expertise and a kind of thoughtfulness that is not my core area of competency. [Laughs]
And so I think it's important to make that distinction, right? We were really in this place of exploring like okay, you have one significant friend or you have many of them. How do you solve the puzzle of where do these people fit in my life and how do they fit in my life for a long time?
Ann: Yeah. And I think for us, you know, we ended up focusing a lot of this book on things that were hard for us, like things that were difficult for us to navigate. And because the specificity of our story is at the center and we didn't actually struggle with this early part of friendship it ended up just not quite fitting. There wasn't as much material there as when it came to things that happened later in our friendship that were more challenging.
(11:40)
And so I look forward to the many, many friendship memoirs to come where people can really focus on maybe having the rocky early days of friendship or some other friendship pattern that also doesn't fit our story. Because the world has space for all kinds of versions of this story.
Aminatou: Right. Stay tuned for the many next installments of this series that are just about the rocky later days of our friendship. [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, wow, yeah, a preview for the rest of Summer of Friendship. I feel like there's going to be some Summer of Friendship doldrums where people are like wow, we're really going back into this difficult emotional work again? Like it's August. [Laughs] But yeah.
Aminatou: Listen, August is the perfect time. Yes. Spoiler alert, friendship, it's hard you know? [Laughs] Like all things rewarding it's very, very hard and I'm just really looking forward to exploring that because I think that, you know, this podcast has always been about friendship at its core and I think we are all really good at talking about every . . . all of the facets of friendship that are positive and that are good. Of course who doesn't want to shout about those? And they are very, very important. Often where it has been harder and something that has been a stumbling block for me personally has been talking about the difficulty of it and the work that goes into it. So it feels good to really look back on something that we've been working on for the last two years and saying okay, great, I am finally ready to share that with the world.
Ann: Absolutely. And share it in a way that we can both really feel good about because I think when it comes to friendship strife part of the problem is often that you have really different accounts of what's going on. And our process of working on this book allowed us to come to a joint accounting of some really difficult periods where we had very different experiences and reactions to things that were happening in the friendship. So that is material for this podcast now in a way it never was in the past and I am also very excited to get into it.
Aminatou: Well stay tuned all summer because we'll be talking about those things but in the meantime here is our lovely and wonderful friend Dayo Olopade. Dayo is a wonderful writer. She is a journalist. She's the author of a brilliant book called The Bright Continent. She also has a newsletter that we are both obsessed with called Two Nouns that you should subscribe to and she is really a tornado of tech brilliance, a brain that thinks about everything at the intersection of journalism and media and tech and we are both so proud and honored to know her and really, really, really grateful that she introduced us to each other so here she is telling that story.
[Interview Starts]
(14:20)
Dayo: So I remember having met Amina -- well I remember meeting Ann very, very clearly because we were at a Show for the Blow at the Black Cat.
Ann: It was a time. It was a place. [Laughs]
Dayo: An extreme, deep throwback.
Aminatou: LOLOLOL. [Laughs]
Dayo: Exactly. I think I was standing in line and I had met you because I was a coworker of your partner, Ann, at the time and I was just like this extremely tall, amazing woman just seems great and we will never be friends because I don't know how to talk to her. Got over that instinct. But I remember meeting Amina and also having a very immediate like oh my god, this is going to be so great. I think we went to get some ramen in Washington.
Ann: We did. We went to get ramen. I remember that very clearly.
Dayo: And then thinking oh my god, you need to meet my friend Ann. I think Ann and I had at least a year-and-a-half under our belt as friends and fellow travelers. I was like oh, this is going to work out great almost the way like a yenta feels mostly because it was always going to be generative. I felt like oh, it would be great for all of us to be hanging out. This feels like a really natural fit with what I'm doing with my life and the "hey, what are you doing tonight?" crew.
And then I remember thinking -- I probably sent you an email, Ann, being like "I want to introduce you to this person. You guys should come over." And I think at the time we were watching Gossip Girl with some frequency, another huge time like dating reference, and I wanted to host it at my house so that I could invite you I think. I think it would've been a little weird. What's the etiquette for inviting a new person into someone else's situation? I'm very cavalier about that these days but I remember feeling important that it be at my house. Yeah, then I think you guys just came over and we watched Gossip Girl and there was much discussion. I don't have much signal on what the rest of the night looked like but that was what it felt like.
(16:12)
Ann: There's definitely, Dayo, like a Gchat conversation between you and me where you're like -- where you're planning . . . where you in particular are planning this logistically like okay, I'm going to host so that you can meet this girl Aminatou who I love. You know, it was very much like, you know . . .
Dayo: There's been . . .
Ann: Yes, exactly. It was not just like a whoops, we ended up at the same place. Yeah.
Dayo: Yeah, there was a little bit of like planning.
Aminatou: Meanwhile I remember feeling very nervous because I was going to your house Dayo and I knew there would be other people there and I was just . . . you know like that part of new in town where you're like ugh, I have to meet all these new people all the time? [Laughs] And so the feeling of like -- I felt like I was stepping into someone's situation. But I'd had so much fun at our dinner.
Dayo: So what's interesting is it did seem calculated to lower the temperature on any particular awkwardness. Like for us to go out or for me to have been like you guys go hang out would've been a little weird for how early it was in the relationship I was building with Amina. And so it was like there are all these other buffer Gossip Girl people who are like the extras in the situation. [Laughter] All of whom are wonderful and we're still friends with but it was definitely like they were kind of like room meat to kind of pad out the situation and also I think we all remained friends for some time while we were in D.C.
Aminatou: We did. Also it happened so fast too because the time that I went to see -- like when I went to your house to watch Gossip Girl -- that was only the second time ever that we had hung out.
Dayo: Mm-hmm.
Aminatou: But we like, you know, you were like my African sister from the minute I met you.
Dayo: Oh my gosh.
(17:48)
Aminatou: I was like this is absolutely going to work out. You know, the white people in the equation I was not sure about but you I was like yes. [Laughter]
Dayo: Can I be honest? This happens to me a lot. I feel like 1) I'm generally pretty opinionated but also form opinions quickly. And so I feel like for a lot of my adult life when I find a . . . it's kind of a love at first sight kind of thing where I'm just like oh yeah, this person's energy is great. I want more of it. And I think I'm pretty deliberate about then being like let's be friends. Part of it is because I moved to town, I had to make a bunch of new friends often, but it's something that I was like oh yeah this is going to be good.
Aminatou: Right. And then I mean the thing that happened with us too is obviously we're all people who follow-up, we want to hang out, but then I think it was literally that same week where we all ended up at the same place and I was like this is the kind of kismet that you can't -- I'm like you can't buy this stuff.
Dayo: So I want to say there is an element of it where it's kind of like oh, how nice that everything worked out. But I think intentionality is really important and I think even re -- like thinking through this now there was a lot more attention to it. I think being passive about constructing the life you want to lead, right? To have like a bigger message here. It might not always lead to the outcome, right? I think being very careful and intentional about things is where I've landed.
Ann: Yeah. And I don't think it's a coincidence that you are still in both of our lives and we are in each other's lives, like the three of us are very intentional convener types when it comes to friendship.
Dayo: Yes.
Ann: If there's a spectrum from like I don't do anything, I don't lift a finger, to I am fully engineering my social reality [Laughter] like we fall . . . we definitely fall on the . . .
Dayo: Fun will be had from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Be there. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh yeah, we're definitely like on the Mount Olympus of engineering friend hangouts for sure. [Laughter]
Dayo: Yeah. I mean I think it's a lesson that it goes beyond this kind of thing where it kind of seems cool to not try but there is ROI. This is the insight I feel like.
Ann: Wow, did you just make a rhyme about trying and ROI? Try, ROI? [Laughs]
(20:00)
Dayo: Oh man. But I think that's right. I think that's right and I think it's like the duck is gliding on the water but the legs are paddling and that's definitely how I feel in a lot of situations and certainly making new friends and such.
Ann: One thing that's come up in our book is our different ideas about what it means to be a connecting friend, like what kind of level of responsibility you bear or what kind of steward responsibility you bear when you introduce two friends to each other. And I'm just wondering your thoughts on that question and how involved you try to stay or responsibility, that kind of thing.
Dayo: That's a great one. So I love you guys. You are definitely my most successful matchmaking friendship. But I've also introduced people who are getting married who I was also very close to on each side and one of the rules of engagement for their courtship was that I would have kind of like a Chinese firewall, like I wasn't going to speak to either one of them about the other because I just thought it would make things too complicated for the individual relationships. That's not a norm, right? I actually think there is some responsibility in terms of 1) maintaining the strong ties you have between the friends individually and naturally if you're all friends you're just going to want to hang out with each other all the time.
So I don't think of it as a duty. If anything I just didn't want to interfere with the existing relationship I had with those two friends who were getting married nor did I want to interfere with my own relationship about each of them so I was very careful about that one. But generally-speaking I just think it's more convenient when your friends are friends with each other. Like call it a kind of laziness principle, like it's just way easier if all my friends marry each other and all my friends are friends with my other friends so it's worth the effort to kind of curate and make sure people stay in touch. [Laughs]
Ann: Have you had an experience where things don't go well or there is conflict? And how do you navigate -- I'm not asking you out some other set of friends or whatever but how do you navigate the responsibility to kind of intervene or step up? Or don't you feel it or is it situational?
(22:05)
Dayo: I actually feel like I'm pretty agnostic about making sure friends who know each other through me remain friends because if the energy's good and the energy's there the energy can sustain itself and everyone's a grownup. And if it's not then more's the pity. But I don't feel like I need to be like "How are you guys doing? Is everything okay? Have you been hanging out recently?"
Aminatou: Well less a how are you? How's everyone doing? But both of them or one of them coming to you and saying hey, this is actually not going well. Not as a like hey, will you please hold our hand but mostly like you are somebody who knows both of us. Like how are you handling this?
Dayo: Oh yeah, no, I think that's a really important kind of part of the triangle or whatever geometry you want to lay over it because a lot of what friendship it is being vulnerable and giving and getting advice right? Because it's really hard to get perspective and friends give you the psychological safety to kind of seek those perspectives and it makes perfect sense that you would want to do that about another relationship where someone would have that insight.
So I think that that's super important but I definitely have been like uh, you're crazy, like that's typical for that person. Or let that roll off your shoulder, like they're always late or whatever the thing is because I have the context. [Laughter] Which might be a unifying feature of many of our friendships.
Aminatou: Are we thinking about somebody specific now? [Laughter]
Dayo: No. But it's like giving them a sense of a yardstick where they can calibrate the behavior. It's like oh that's actually just how that person is or that happened to me and here's how I swam through that or yeah, actually that does sound kind of weird. Let me also then poke that and check in if it's something maybe more serious or microscopic. But yeah, it's just context.
(23:55)
Aminatou: I'm like I'm going to assume that you listen to our show every once in a while but no pressure and I am just really curious if you sense a difference between who we are on the show or who we are generally publicly versus who you know us to be.
Dayo: So I think that listeners of the podcast might be surprised to find out that in real life you guys speak in full, complete sentences with multiple clauses and highly intelligent subclauses and brilliant references.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Dayo: Like seriously I think there is in terms of -- actually the way a lot of our friends speak it's actually not that different right? And I hesitate to bring up the example of . . . remember when Dawson's Creek came out and everyone was like how are these teenagers speaking in full sentences with complicated references? I actually think that a lot of the way you guys express yourselves is exactly how you express yourselves. And you also care about the issues you talk about for real and there's nothing affected about it. I think that there's probably a difference in the amount of disclosure, about details. I'm having a hard time even now trying to keep a little bit of a cling film between the things we would talk about kind of on the real in real-life and something being recorded but I would say that's the only real wrinkle. But otherwise I think you are who you are and I think when I'm listening to the podcast sometimes I'll be like oh, I feel like I've caught up with Ann. Then I'm like no, I have to call Ann in actual life. [Laughs] And I'm sure you guys get that all the time.
Ann: Yes always call Ann.
Dayo: Mm-hmm.
Aminatou: Yes call Amina please also. She will appreciate it. [Laughs]
Dayo: I would also say so much of friendship is just sitting alone in a room together right? And so that's not captured because it's a verbal podcast but like how much time do you guys spend as friends or do we spend with our various friends literally sitting quietly while someone's reading a magazine and someone's watching TV or you're walking and just experiencing things or you're sitting in a park? And as someone whose primary love language is quality time and somebody who's incredibly verbal I actually would say my friendships or the relationships I hold closest are probably 50/50 silence and noise and that can't be captured on the podcast.
(26:10)
Aminatou: Yeah, no, seriously. If I could just have a podcast where Ann and I just read the paper side-by-side and do nothing.
Dayo: Pages turning.
Aminatou: And people just get the ASMR version of that? [Laughter]
Dayo: Oh yeah.
Ann: That's our performance audio piece, performance art audio.
Dayo: Listen, it's a whole subcommunity. You guys could be famous for that.
Ann: We're going to take a quick break but before we do we have a little favor to ask you as we setup our episodes for later this summer. We are looking for your questions and stories about being in long-term friendships. Specifically stories about times when things were really difficult between you or moments when your friendship was challenged. You can call in, leave us a little voicemail about your rough patch, or maybe ask us a question about it and we want to listen. That's 714-681-2943. 714-681-CYGF.
Aminatou: So one of the other things we've been writing about that I have found myself a little surprised about is writing about interracial friendship which sounds nuts that I'm surprised about because one glaring difference between Ann and I is, you know, we're different races.
Dayo: Mm-hmm.
Aminatou: But that is something that, you know, in this friendship at least it's not a difference that has ever -- that I've ever had to clock, you know what I mean? Both with like time and the times we live in it feels that it's something . . . you know, it's something that is always at the surface whether you want to acknowledge it or not. So I am having all of these very intense revelations about a lot of my friendships with white women specifically recently and I'm wondering if you have any kind of big idea-level things to say about that.
(27:55)
Dayo: Whew. Well so I think inevitable you're -- you meaning a person who is not from the sort of majority background in whatever context you find yourself in because keep in mind Amina and I are like first-generation Americans from African countries and so there's definitely an experience where I've lived in Africa and where, you know, there's somebody who isn't part of the majority culture. So I want to be more general when Is ay that when you're in that experience of being the minority I think there is this kind of visibility that is just -- that you live with and if your friends don't understand that that's something you're living with then they don't understand something about you.
And the second thing there is I feel like you can't really hold people fully accountable for things -- at least in an intimate partner relationship setting -- that you haven't actually communicated to them. So I spent a lot of time communicating my feelings about race, right? Which I think hopefully in a lot of settings de-risks having the conversation and that means it's not like a now we're going to sit and have the long national conversation on race that the country's supposed to be having at a Starbucks but that I just bring it up a lot because it's on my mind and I don't like censor that because of who I'm around. Whether it's like my pod of people of color or people who are in more mixed settings.
So I actually think while I hate the idea of being like an educator I think it can be extremely casual and extremely helpful for people to experience through just being around someone their experience of race, specific aspects of it that are on their mind, or even just like stupid shit that happen to them right? I mean it's not like I only talk about microaggressions with my friends who are people of color. I've told a story about a boss of mine who commented on my hair every day for six weeks right? To lots of different friends just because it's a funny story.
(29:48)
But I think for those who would've been like oh, no, I don't actually know how Dayo feels about her hair that offered them an opportunity to get that. So I just think being super open and chill about it and being unafraid to talk openly is meaningful because if the person who is paying attention to you is a friend they're paying attention to all of you.
Ann: Yeah. I think it's interesting because one way that this has kind of come up for us is that things that like we were both aware had happened in the course of our friendship, it was in a couple of cases like really being pushed to talk about them and examine them sometimes specifically through the lens of this chapter on interracial friendship where we were like oh, wow, that actually was about race for both of us or it was about race for Amina in a way that Ann didn't clock at the time. You know what I mean? It was -- wow, and I just third personed myself on the podcast.
Aminatou: I know. I am like chills right now.
Ann: I know, Amina the book is coming into other -- it's bleeding. They're bleeding together. I do think there's this aspect of trying to talk about all present aspects of your life then there's also, particularly in the context of our friendship, this big gap in our racialized experience of the world that is so big and so deep that in some cases one of us didn't have words for it or one of us couldn't even notice that that was a facet of what might've been read between two friends of the same race as just a misunderstanding. I don't know, that's a fumbly way to say it.
Dayo: I think I understand what you're saying which is that it's not always . . . you don't always have words for a thing that's happening and I think I've realized the longer I spend time with -- the more someone knows me the more they can tell when I'm having . . . when I'm responding to something or what is going to make me feel vulnerable or irritated or when I'm going to be like ugh, white people. Like it's predictable. And sometimes it's not verbal right? And so I think in those situations it's just about putting in the hours to kind of sense things. And I also don't want to put the onus on the person who's experiencing it to feel like they have to talk about it all the time because that is also a pain in the ass and sometimes you just want to watch Netflix. But I think there is a kind of intuition that develops and hopefully like, you know, opportunities to debrief in a way that's really honest about encounters or interactions that are going to be experienced differently.
(32:10)
And I've had -- so in my personal relationship like my partner is, you know, he's half-Latino so I've just had to completely open my mind to the experiences of his community and his geography and all the ways he's different from me in the world. And that has made me a better listener and more intuitive and sort of more open-minded about things and more perceptive in mixed group settings. I think that's a real benefit of having friendships across identities. So, you know, everyone go out and get you some. [Laughs]
Aminatou: You know, I think that that's fair right? But I think a thing I am particularly stuck on right now is the fact that, you know, it's one thing to be having an a-ha moment when you're both having the realization and it's another thing to feel like you are the one -- your lived experience is the one that is always the lesson for someone.
Dayo: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that sucks.
Aminatou: Which that particularly really sucks and it's also like a gap that becomes then harder and harder to bridge.
Dayo: Yeah. And look, I think there's a big difference between friends for whom I know I'm their only black friend and friends -- Ann would be a good example, we know you have at least two. [Laughter]
Aminatou: But I mean this is a friend . . . but Dayo, this is a huge -- like a thing I only realized later when we started writing the book is that part of the reason that I was like oh, you know, Ann at least knows what is going on is because she was introduced to me by a black woman. That would've been a very kind of -- you know what I mean?
Dayo: Right.
Aminatou: It was a kind of endorsement.
Dayo: Yeah.
(33:45)
Aminatou: It was a kind of endorsement early on. And I remember also a conversation with you about it early on that was very . . . you know the conversations black people have where you're only using half of your words where you're like "Is she? Is she? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm."
Dayo: Sure. Yeah, yeah.
Aminatou: Yeah, like is she down? Sure. There really is something about knowing that you are not someone's only black friend for example.
Dayo: Absolutely.
Aminatou: I have zero interest in collecting a new friend. I can't be your first anything. This is an advanced course. This is an advanced course so you need to come with your homework done. But it's a thing that probably when I was 22 it didn't matter as much.
Dayo: Yeah.
(34:20)
Aminatou: Or I didn't have enough insight into that. But I do find it particularly weird when that is a situation that I'm confronted with now.
Dayo: So this is -- okay, this is why we are magic right? Sorry Ann. I think it's like if you've spent 20 years hanging out around me you're going to know some black people. You're going to know a bunch of different kinds of people of color, right?
Aminatou: 100 percent. 100 percent. [Laughter]
Dayo: The cumulative effect. Not just because these are people that are my immediate family, right? Which may be the experience for when I was in grade school, elementary school, like if you got to know me you got to know my sister and my cousins and my parents but also because that's the life that I'm leading and so if you're in it it's going to be about that at some point. And I would say even like -- so I live in the UK now and I think it's a very different environment and we don't have to go too off-piece on that discussion but I actually find it a very distinct experience in terms of the density of communities of color and the way they interact with overall British culture. So yeah, I just think if you're spending the time with someone who's from a background of a certain kind you're going to get more and more people from that perspective, right? Birds of a feather kind of thing.
Aminatou: Inshallah. [Laughter]
Dayo: Yeah. And also layer onto that the fact that I only want my friends to be friends with my other friends and, you know, you just get enormous WhatsApp groups full of really interesting women of color or whatever.
Aminatou: Well you live in the UK now which is very far away from both of us.
Dayo: Mm-hmm.
(35:50)
Aminatou: And you're the friend that you always get on the plane so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about your feelings about long-distance friendship, like how it's hard, how you keep the flame alive?
Dayo: Yeah. So I travel a lot. That's been true for a long time which means two things. One, it means that I do have a lot of friendships that operate over vast distances but I'm also just as likely to kind of be in your town next week. [Laughs] And I think that's been because I wrote a book and I did a book tour. That year was the year I saw so many people because I was like I'm in Austin, pop-up, one night only. And by the way friends that were in each of these cities met each other and they're like oh, we are Dayo's friends in LA or we're Dayo's friends in Dallas. So that was great.
So there's two things. One, I've moved four times in the last ten years. We all left -- Ann and I left D.C. almost the same week but then I moved to Nairobi, I moved to New Haven, I moved to New York, then I moved to London. So I spent all this time kind of like needing to reestablish ties in a local place while also connecting to places I had been and connecting those groups of people to the places that I wasn't living in at the time. So my big strategy is just like everybody download WhatsApp. Sorry to plug a Facebook product (TM) but it just feels like . . . [Laughter] When I started this journey.
Aminatou: We're going to get them to sponsor this episode. It's fine.
Dayo: Yeah. When I left D.C. I was on team Blackberry right? I remember everybody had BBM.
Ann: Oh my god Dayo, throwback.
Dayo: Yes. So it really is like technology has improved significantly.
Aminatou: You were my friend that clung on to BBM longer than anybody else but that's because you were traveling to Africa all the time.
Dayo: Exactly. So I was in Nairobi and everyone used BBM. But really what I have found is it's just as easy now -- I mean I think of my parents who were immigrants, like they left the U.S. when they were in their 20s and they were still doing air mail in those little blue paravian envelopes. Shout-out to anyone who's got immigrant parents who remember that.
Aminatou: Oh I still have them. Don't worry.
(37:50)
Dayo: I had a boyfriend in college who was French and so we didn't even have Skype. I think I had to use an international student phone card to call him on a landline. So tech has definitely made things a lot easier. I also think, you know, I'm realizing I'm kind of turning into my mom. She basically spends all Sunday like cooking food in huge quantities and calling everyone in her phone so there's definitely a lot of like ethnic auntie behaviors that are useful in this situation.
But I also think when I travel I do make a point to let people know I'm going to be there and sort of clear space in a busy business trip for personal time to reconnect with people. It's not perfect but those are the tactics right? Just letting people know you're thinking of them. I think that might even be advice from you Ann, like when someone comes to mind or when I see something random I can send it to them and say "Yo, I thought you would like this." And at some point the clock since we last saw each other will go back to zero and at that point, you know, you begin again.
Ann: Do you still use your spreadsheet Dayo? Do you remember telling me about this like a couple years ago? That you had like a spreadsheet of last contact. Do you still do that? Please talk about that.
Dayo: [Laughs]
Aminatou: So demented in the best way.
Dayo: So this was guidance from a second friend who does not believe that you can have more than like ten friends. I do not believe that; I believe that you can have like, you know, ten times that. But in her opinion it was that like the only way to make sure that you actually have those ten friends is to rigorously track your engagement with them. And I tried this and I think at the time I told Ann about it and I kind of stopped doing it because it's more something that it's intuitive and it's in my head.
But I do think that one of the things that's important when I haven't seen someone for a while, even if I've talked to them intermittently, is not to do the thing where you recap what's happened since you've seen each other last where you're like "Previously on Dayo" or "Previously on Amina here's what you missed." [Laughter] You should just hang out. Like you might only have a couple of hours and it might be another six months so just don't do the yada-yadas, just like take a walk, like get into the thing. Take the shot. Don't do all the yada-yada unpacking of things that have happened unless there's something that you're like looking for guidance on or is actually important.
(40:10)
Because so much of again super, super seriously expressing quality time is my love language, that's the primary way I feel loved. I just want to be around people and I'll go out of my way to do it. That's not as anal as keeping a spreadsheet but it is something that I will prioritize above almost everything else so in that sense it gets pretty fanatical. But I think it's because it makes me feel good and I love my friends.
Ann: What's your perception of how our friendship, like mine and Amina's, has changed or fluctuated over the time that you've known us both?
Dayo: Ooh, that's a great one. So I think that you both are very tender and respectful of each other's individual personalities. I think that's been really constant. Like first comes knowledge, then comes action, so getting to know each other initially was kind of like okay, you both have different needs in terms of like your levels of extroversion and the kinds of activities you like to do, the things you like to eat, whatever, right? The sort of basic physical comfort like what makes you tick.
And I think that you both have a really well-developed sense of respect for whatever someone's thing is, like that can be their thing. You guys are not evangelists and actually I love that about both of you. You're not like come into this thing, and I actually have evangelical tendencies as a person but you guys don't.
Aminatou: Oh you're definitely a cult leader 100 percent. [Laughter]
Dayo: I'm like "Hey everybody, want to come over and do this thing?" I think you guys are actually really respectful of each other's differences and I think that is a quality you share and that is really compatible and probably has endured for a long time. You're like you don't really feel like doing that? That's good with me, right?
(41:55)
At the same time I think you guys have a lot of the finish each other's sentences kind of shared attitudes about life which I think is really nice and I think that has to do with politics for lack of a more precise way of describing it. It's like there's no first principles arm wrestling over like are women people, right? Or is that funny? [Laughter] Like no, candidly I think it's not to be taken for granted. I'm definitely the kind of person who tries to be open-minded but isn't and I don't want to have any first principles arguments with my people about what we believe, so I think you guys have a lot of shared beliefs that are also mutually reinforced. I think you guys probably borrow a lot from each other.
I think working together, and obviously Gina is a part of it as well, is just a really unusual thing to introduce into a friendship and I think you've handled it pretty gracefully. And I think there are some people that you literally just like don't get tired of but I think inevitably there will be a moment where it's like okay, we just need our own space. I think that's been maybe mitigated by the fact that you guys don't live in the same place and it's like when I go on a business trip and I come back I'm super happy to see my husband. I'm super happy to see everybody. And so I think that probably affects how you're able to keep a kind of harmonious balance and not burn out the real energy and the real love you have for each other. Yeah. I think that's it.
I also think you guys are really welcoming of . . . like you're not realists in terms of other friendships. I think that's really important. It's not like this person is taking my person's time from me, like how could you, right? It's like getting a new sibling or a cat. [Laughs] Some people will be like who's this new person in my life? But I think probably all three of us and certainly you two have this attitude where it's like the more the merrier. If this person's energy is on the same wavelength like all the better. I also think you guys probably are pretty real with each other. There are some friendships that have not been sufficiently formed, like the gelatin has not fully formed up yet where it's a little bit delicate and you need to kind of protect it and maybe wait for it to emerge before you can offer the real talk. Like never wear those pants. [Laughter] But I feel like . . . but I feel like you guys are real with each other and weirdly a lot of people who spend a lot of time together aren't. Or it's like that's how you know it's a kind of acquaintanceship as opposed to something that you're in a repeat game where you're building for the long-term which is what I think you guys have done.
(44:20)
Aminatou: Wow. I'm like all of these compliments, what?
Ann: I know, Dayo!
Aminatou: I can't handle it. I cannot handle it. Never can handle praise.
Dayo: I think you never see the inside of a relationship. Like that's the whole point of them, right?
Aminatou: Right.
Dayo: But I do think there's a kind of sonar with friendship, like they make us who we are. You're bouncing your personality off of things and people so that it's reflected back to you, so good friendships produce true knowledge about yourself even just inexplicitly or subliminally as opposed to actually getting feedback on who you are. Like I do think you're like the sum of the people you spend your time with, so you guys have like . . . maybe you were a lot similar when you first met but I feel like there's a kind of convergence of style and tone which I think surprises people probably because you guys could not have come from more different backgrounds let's say or be phenotypically more different or whatever. But I think that that's good. I think it kind of complicates people's idea about who should be with each other.
Ann: Yeah. I mean for all the background differences it's true that we both come from places where the first question is like "Ah, are you related to this man who shares that surname?" [Laughter] You know? There are some cultural through lines that are surprising that I feel like especially in the early days we're like yes, that is the same. [Laughter]
Aminatou: It's the same. Also you know birth order is my real horoscope so I'm like . . .
Ann: Oh yeah, interesting.
Aminatou: I'm friends with a lot of first-borns. Dayo you're one of my few friends who is not the oldest.
Dayo: I mean it's complicated. [Laughs]
Aminatou: But you're a very independent younger sibling so I think that that counts for something.
Dayo: Yes, surely. That's a really interesting overlay.
Aminatou: Oh yeah, most of my friends are all oldest siblings. I do this census frequently and it's like you, Amanda. There's so few people in my life that I'm very close to that are not the oldest but every time they're either only children or they're like very, very independent younger siblings that you would never tell were younger siblings.
(46:20)
Dayo: Yeah, I like that. That's interesting. I'm going to start polling people. I was going to say more about love languages because I think they're important.
Ann: Oh please do.
Dayo: Well it doesn't really matter what you are but I feel like there's so much emphasis placed on romantic relationships and so many online quizzes about it and it's part of the zeitgeist, especially amongst people who are all about these lengthy self-improvement games. But I think that's been interesting about the offline conversations we've had about friendship and my own experiences with friendship and seeing yours and having my own is it's really like you've got to tell people what your style is or they'll get it over time. But you know what it is? You don't have to match someone's particular style; you just have to know what their style is and kind of complement it. And I think that's what's working well and that's why love languages are really interesting.
Aminatou: Right. Because the point of the love language is everybody thinks the way they receive love is the way that other people receive love.
Dayo: Yeah, exactly.
Aminatou: Or that's the way you should be giving love. And that's usually where the tension is, right? It doesn't matter that somebody's love language is physical touch and the other person's is words of affirmation; it just matters if that's the only way that you're interacting with each other or where the lack is.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: And so it's really funny, I think part of the reason that the three of us are able to be friends both as a group and individually is we're very verbal people.
Dayo: Yes, I think that's right.
Aminatou: And so inevitably whether you want to or not you do end up telling people how to treat you and what's bugging you or whatever. So that's a thing that I in writing this book and also examining a lot of my dynamic with the two of you that I think about is yeah, it's . . . everything the therapists say is right. It's like communication, communication, communication. That's the only way through any kind of relationship.
Dayo: Right.
(48:05)
Aminatou: We're all very opinionated ladies. We are . . . it's very hard to not know what we're thinking, but I think emotionally that's something that we've -- like even over the years that we've had to mine through.
Dayo: Yeah. I think we're all . . . each of us are really different from the other in key ways but I think there's a, yeah, it's interesting to find what are the things that are common? What are the things that are not? And also just like what's the right way to not just have an insight but then communicate it, right? Because I think those are two different projects and I think that's the work.
Aminatou: Right. And that's also a project that comes with time. We keep talking about out friendship in relation to how we met but the truth is that we're also people who have changed over the last couple years.
Dayo: Totally.
Aminatou: Nothing drastic but people be changing all the time. You have to keep up with that change in velocity in all of your relationships otherwise it also doesn't work.
Dayo: Mm-hmm.
Ann: Well also shout-out to Dayo for the metaphor of friendship sonar. It's like right, if you're changing you are in different relation to each other as time goes on and there has to be some mechanism whether it's like words or spending time together and acknowledging it or what of saying this is what's going on and this is how I'm going to find you in the muck.
Dayo: Totally, to calibrate the scale again or whatever. Yeah, I think that's totally right. And weirdly like . . . I don't want to be too personal about something that isn't my story to tell but I do think people's friendships just like dwindle in number through the years and then they find themselves kind of unhappy because they haven't done the work to maintain those friendships. And because friends make us who we are they're just kind of like "Then who am I?" and it's like super existentially stressful. So I do think it's about like how do you maintain . . . and by the way I think no friendship, no relationship can offer you everything you need right? That's the other thing that I think people don't fully understand, particularly in the context of romantic love and long-term partnership. Like you just have to get your like Gossip Girl or whatever or like . . . you know, I have friends who don't even listen to music with lyrics. I love them but once in a while mama's got to go out and listen to some music with lyrics right? [Laughter]
(50:10)
And it's like that is fine, and it even can be I need a stress where it's strictly women or I need a space where it's strictly PoCs and that is part of refreshing my sense of identity so I can be who I am for my friends.
Aminatou: You know, part of the growing older and finding that your friendships have dwindled, one hypothesis for it is you did not prioritize your friendships and you prioritized other kinds of relationships and now here we are. Or is it that like as you get older it is actually just harder to like keep and maintain friendships? And that's a thing that I, you know, I think that it's a little bit of both probably but it's something that I think about a lot.
Dayo: Ugh, I guess we're going to find out. I don't know. It's like this whole bowling alone thing, it's so stressful. I think people just haven't been habituated to care as much about friendship as they should and hopefully your book will change that. Because it's like no, guys, this is a very important aspect of your humanity. And maybe in previous generations when multigenerational households and slightly larger nuclear families were more prevalent in more parts of the world, I think you kind of just have a built-in squad and people are now . . .
Aminatou: Right, like cousins. [Laughs]
Dayo: Yeah, totally. I have 41 cousins. Come at us.
Aminatou: Same, same, same.
Dayo: We're going to win your tug-of-war.
Aminatou: I have 100-plus cousins, always friends.
Dayo: Yeah. Like I've got to have this built-in ride-or-die squad which is the what are we doing tonight crew which is kind of what I call my local relationships. But now people have to fight a little harder and they haven't been taught to do that and so . . . and there's all these distractions and lots of things that, you know, can isolate you. People aren't as open and it's harder to make friends than people expect, especially after you've left all the years if you're in school or something where you just meet new people all the time or whether you're meeting new people in a working environment.
(52:10)
And so they're just not like . . . the muscle memory hasn't been built and so people aren't prepared for what that will mean for them if they're not like doing the work and going to the friend gym now. [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, did you just write our jacket copy? I feel like we should just deputize you to sell this book and the necessity of it, yeah. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Leave your job. Tell them they don't need you. We've got you. We've got you. We'll offer you some stock options, got it.
Dayo: Yeah. But I mean I'm so happy you guys are doing it because I just don't think people talk about it enough. It's really weird.
Ann: Ugh.
Aminatou: Well hopefully it all works out. We'll find out soon enough. [Laughs]
Dayo: I mean it definitely for sure 100 percent will. I believe in you guys. It's going to be amazing.
Aminatou: Oh man, Dayo -- sorry, go ahead Ann.
Ann: I was just going to say thanks for being our friend, Dayo, and I'm really just feeling very grateful for proximity to your brain right now. Like not physically but in every other sense, yeah.
Aminatou: I know! I know. Thank you Dayo. You are the best.
Dayo: You are the very best. I miss you guys. I actually talk to you reasonably often but it is nice to talk to you in this setting. But I think about friendship with some intention and part of it is because of you guys so I'm grateful for that.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: Dayo Olopade ladies and gentlemen!
Ann: Doesn't listening to that just feel like a family reunion? [Laughs]
Aminatou: Ugh, I miss our friend very much so that actually is . . . before I get really emotional I'm going to log off and say that I love Dayo, I love you Ann. To the listeners please buy our book because we need the money and also because we would love for you to read the book. [Laughs]
Ann: And also on a practical note you can find the links to do that in many places at bigfriendship.com and we are also going to do several different types of virtual events around the book where you can see our faces on the Internet, like what? Weird. We never do that. And those links and dates and times are also all at bigfriendship.com.
Aminatou: Hey, good job Ann Friedman. I'll see you on the Internet my friend.
(54:15)
Ann: I will see you on the Internet all summer long.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favs. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back, leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf and you can buy our book Big Friendship anywhere you buy books. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We have editorial support from Laura Bertocci. Our producer is Jordan Bailey. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.