Are We All Too Busy For Friendships & Do You Lie To Your Partner?

Published Sep 16, 2024, 11:53 AM

Hey lifers,
Keeshia is in the hot seat filling in Britt while she's in Romania.
Have you ever accidentally done something illegal? Laura's renovation project has made Keeshia realise that she's been accidentally shoplifting for over a decade.

Do you ever lie or withhold information from your partner? Do you hide packages or lie about new items that you've bought and say that you've had them forever? There's a tiktok from Thewestcoastmama that has us questioning what's normal and who is in the wrong.

Today we take a deep dive on what friendship means to us and whether we're too quick to deprioritise friendship when other responsibilities rear their heads. 
We spoke about Simon Sinek and his conversation on the Prof G Podcast and his Youtube with Trevor Noah

What are you currently looking for in friendship?
Has that shifted over the years as your life has gone through different chapters?
Is there too much pressure to maintain friendships when there are all of these other things that we are trying to do well?

92% of you have experienced a friendship breakup.

Most of you think about the breakdown of a friendship more than the breakdown of a romantic relationship.

We speak about our own experiences of friendship breakdowns and whether we would ever be able to reestablish those friendships.

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Life on Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never seated.

We pay our respects to their elders past and present.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life on Cut. I'm Laura and I'm Keisha.

Feeling in for Bridge while she is away of visiting a fiance Ben in the Land of Dracula. I still have to resist every urge in my body to call you producer Keisha.

It is all because it stems.

From one review that we once received and it was like, how dare you keep calling Keisha producer Keisha?

Her name is Kissia, which was spelled incorrectly. I can't remember what the word was.

Did they say that we were PASSI pizing, okay, well, host Keisha she.

Or condescending.

I think we've had some reviews lately.

The people on YouTube, they're more brutal than what I'm used to.

They're more brutal.

We got a comment on one of our videos through the week that was something along the lines of, oh, the Australian accents are just disgusting, dreadful, cannot listen fair Fair.

If you mean watching American TV or you're American, this is probably gonna hit you somewhere. Whereas like a soccer punch to the years, I feel like a soccer punch, socker punch.

I got punch with a soccer ball mom.

I just feel like accents are not anything you can do anything about. We also got a review that said something about my essays, and it's been living rent free since I read it last week. And I am so hyper aware now of how I pronounce s's say snakes snakes?

Am I doing you from?

Say Sarah's got some snakes?

Sarah's got some snakes? Is it a bit too wispy? I did have a lip flip at one point this year. We've spoken about this on the podcast, and I really regretted it because it does change the way.

That you speak, and you couldn't suck dick too far.

Two things can be true at once.

But also the reason why Key says that it's living rent for ahead is because, like we're old dogs at this whole podcasting things, but we are very new to the YouTube and YouTube the way that YouTube works, and the people who watch YouTube are not always from within your community. So like it gets cast, the net is wide and bast and you'll have some random person who watches it goes way beyond your extended network, and that's where the reviews come from.

So don't worry. Your s is a perfect keys. You don't have anything to worry about. Tastic whistly. But to that person, I promise you I'm working on it. But Laura, I have a confession to make to you.

Something that I.

Also something that I also realized last week, is that I have.

Been doing things very wrong.

And I think it's actually to the point that I've been doing something illegal without realizing that I was doing something illegal.

How illegal are we talking? Are we talking like community service? Are we talking slap on the wrist? Are we talking to you in jail time?

Slap on the wrist?

To maybe because I'm such a repeat offender, I don't. I don't think I go to jail for I'll let you decide. So I love a bit of DIY. I love painting. What I can I only rent, so I'm limited in what I'm able to do. But I like painting furniture. I like painting all different kinds of things.

So in the.

Past thirteen years, whenever I've gone to do my Doway projects or paint to piece of furniture, I'll take myself to the hardware store. But I'll go there and I'll look at the paint swabs, and I'll go to the people behind the counter and say, hello, can I please have a sample pot of this particular color?

And they'll mix it up for me and I'll get my little sample pot and I will leave the store.

And last week you posted a video because you're renovating your house, and you and Matt had this thing go up about for this week loan you can get a sample pot of this specific.

Paint from my to ten for free.

And I was like, what, why are they advertising that you can get a sample pot of paint for free?

They're always free, They're always free. It's a sample. You got a donut king, you get a sample of donuts for free. If you go to the.

Grocery store, they have the peace there with the sources and they're like, Hi, would you like a sample of this?

How many pots of sample paint do you think you've stolen from?

Out of ten? How many if you're going to guess.

Like more than fifteen.

Oh, that's okay, that's only like what one hundred bucks, one hundred and fifty.

Don't know how.

Much they are lowone because I didn't know that you were supposed.

To pay for them.

I don't know why they call it a sample pot if it's actually just a very very very little pot that you do have to actually pay money for. So I've just been leaving the store.

I don't think that you would be the only person who have gotten this wrong. Maybe that was like a very clever marketing tactic to make people realize, actually, you're just supposed to pay for them, but for one week, you'll give you a grace period. I don't think that you would be alone in doing this, But I also think it's on them if they're not telling you to go to the counter to pay for it, so you just then walk straight out and no one's ever stopped you.

No, I mean, no one's coming for you.

Never in my entire life have I left a hardware store with just one item. Like it's like a paradise of diay things, right, you always pick up It's like Kmart. You can't just leave with one thing you get, you get like ten things, so I'll go through the self serve check out and I'll scan everything else, but I'll just put the sample pot in my belonging Keisha's Like, can I also get a sample of spakfiller, a sample of wood glue.

And some sample paint brushes? Thank you, Sad, I just like to try these ones out. I didn't realize this whole time I've been stealing. No, I still think it's on them if you've managed to make it to the front counter, didn't put the thing down walked out with it, like surely someone saw. And I feel like the eighteen year old that works there was just like, that's not the hill I'm gonna die on.

They can have that sample pot for free? Yeah maybe maybe.

Maybe they kind of thought that because I purchased everything else. But you know people, you know, like people who go through self serve, they so conveniently.

Oh, I just forgot to put that through. That would have been what I looked like.

But I didn't forget.

I genuinely thought that I was supposed to get it for free.

I thought it was a sample.

Look, I have a question for you, and this is as someone who is in a long term relationship in that case, and I kind of want to ask this to everyone listening as well. If you are in a long term relationship with your partner, do you ever lie in your relationship or withhold information that would pertain to lying. There's a TikTok that's going viral at the moment from a woman who says that she tells her husband absolutely everything.

This is at West Coast Mama.

She's posted this viral video and it really I think raised some very interesting questions.

Have a listen to this, hi A.

Quick question, are we lying to our spouses or Because I'm reading this book and this girl's talking about how she and her husband are so different than their friends because they don't lie to each other. She has a friend that will sneak clothes into the house and she will put the clothes in the closet and if the tags off so that he doesn't see the price. She has another friend who hides facials and haircuts and getting her nails done from her husband. So my question is, we're not lying to our spouses, right, Like, if you're not in danger, you're not lying, right. If you are in a safe, happy, healthy marriage, we're not lying to our spouses because the moment something happens, the first thing I do is I text my husband. If he doesn't answer, I call him. If he doesn't answer, I FaceTime. I mean, if he still doesn't answer, I'm sending a fuck and carry your pigeon.

Okay.

There is not one thing in this world that would happen that I would keep from my husband.

And if you are keeping things from your spouse, why I want.

To pose this question to you guys, because I think that there are two types of relationships. There are absolutely and I'm talking about healthy relationships as many.

Types of relationships. But there are.

Definitely people who share everything who don't feel the need. And I think it mostly is around like purchases, and it's around like spending. A lot of these types of like secrecy comes around when it centers around money. There's people who are super transparent, and then there are people who are quite happy too. It's easier to say I've had this for ages rather than saying it's a new shirt or a new dress or a new whatever. But my question is, is is this something that you do in your relationship? And when you do do it, why, Like what is the reason or what is the motivator to not tell your partner everything that you're doing.

I absolutely do keep some things to myself.

But why I feel like when I put this into words, it actually makes him sound like a worse person than he is, because my initial would be like, because I don't want the judgment, because I don't want to have to justify something that maybe I didn't need, but I chose to get anyway because I wanted it, and everything has to be a necessity of life, because they get a little bit a dopamine when I get the package arrived. But that makes it sound as though he is really critical or quite controlling of what I spend my money on.

But he's not.

It's like it's kind of a bit of like a laughing point in our relationship.

And I think that the answer to.

This question it does have two extremes. The extreme of if your partner feels the need to know everything that happens in your life and everything that you're spending a cent on, that to me is really toxic. But then the opposite of if you feel the need to lie about every single thing that you're purchasing for yourself, that's also really toxic. I sit in the middle not to say I wouldn't necessarily lie, but I definitely have told the little white lie of like, no, I've had this for ages with something that I've quite literally just cut the tag off and discarded over the rubbish in the back.

Really be and hit it underneath things so that he'll never know.

I mean, I listen to this, and I don't want to sound holier than that, because I do tell Matt pretty much everything, Like there's very few purchases that I make where I not that I tell him. I'm not like, hey, honey, I bought myself news sucks today. I don't need to tell him because he doesn't care, do you know what I mean? So if I come home and I've got a new thing and I show him, he's not going to have a go at me. But that's also because I always spend within the budgeting that we have mutually agreed on together. I mean, for me, like, buying things is not it's not something that brings me. I don't get the same dopamine rush. Put it that way. Now, I kind of like listen to this, and I'm like, on one side, I think you can go to the extreme and you could be like you shouldn't have to lie in your relationship. If your partner is criticizing you or is making you feel guilty for a certain thing, then that's controlling behavior. But I also think like not everything has to be dramatic, and not every white lie has to be a severe fault within your relationship. I think that sometimes people tell white lies just fit ease. They tell white lies because they can't be bothered to have the conversation that surrounds the behavior. And I guess it's the gray area as to where the white lie actually is no longer a white lie, and when does it actually impact the relationship, and if you have healthy boundaries around that, If it's not impacting the relationship, if you haven't kind of spent above and beyond the means of what you both mutually agreed upon within your budget, then I think it's okay.

I don't think we.

Need to be like judging people's relationships based on little white lies that they tell.

I completely agree with this, And I want to read you a real that boy friends sent me yesterday.

It's got a dog with really big eyes in it.

So the dog's kind of like it looks panicked, right, and it says this, when your hobby asks you why you're facial was five hundred and fifty dollars and you have a bruise on your lip and in two weeks you won't be able to raise an eyebra.

That's an example of something I've lied about.

Okay, that's an example of.

Like I just you know, went and had my eyebrows done and actually no, I had things shoved into my face that were really expensive for they don't want the judge.

But also on that, like, I know, that kind of makes me mad because it's like, of course you wet and spend that money on that, because there is still an expectation that as women, we get our head done, we get a facial, we wear nice clothes, we wear high heels, like there is still a social expectation that we look a certain way. And for women everything is more expensive. If you go clothes shopping, clothes shopping for women is more expensive than close shopping for men. Think, but like, female clothes are so much more expensive than what male clothes are for a similar like for lack of product, and I'm not saying for the same brands, but just in general, like women's clothing is priced so much higher. Women's jewelry is priced higher, women's hair care is priced higher.

It does come down to pink tax.

But there is this idea that like women, because we are the consumers, we are more inclined to spend money, we are more marketable to and therefore, because we're going to spend the money, they might as well price it whatever they want to. Anyway, it's frustrating because it's like, well, it costs me more to live, so I should have a high by than you.

Yeah, I don't think that's the reason that I kind of keep things I don't want to say secret, because again, it makes it seem too extreme. I just I don't open my mouth about things that I don't have to open my mouth about. If a package gets delivered while he's not there, he doesn't necessarily need to know about it. But it's because we don't have shared finances, so we have completely separate bank accounts. I have no transparency over what goes in or out of his account, same with mine for him, but we live together, so we have to split the costs of things, and he pays for more because he earns more than what I do. We've kind of had discussions about that, and sometimes I do find it a little bit like I maybe being a little hypocritical by being like, well, you can pay for more because you earn more if then I'm also spending all of this money on things.

That I don't necessarily need.

Maybe that's like a guilt attachment to it. There is a guilt.

Yeah, maybe it's more so it's not so much fearful of the criticism, but there is like a small feeling of guilt, like like a knowing I shouldn't be spending my money on this, but I'm gonna do it anyway because it makes me feel good.

So I'll fucking deal with the repercussions later.

Because I get a little dope me in here when I kit purchase, and then again when it gets you.

Know, when you the best.

There is no feeling in the world like when you've purchased something online but you've forgotten about it. I have never purchased something and forgotten that I've purchased it. That is that's amazing. That's your ADHD flairing feeling. When it gets delivered, it's like a surprise to yourself. It's also free because you've already paid for it and you've forgotten about the fact that you paid for it, and so now it's just a gift to yourself that is such a surprise.

And it's like, wow, this is so nice of me.

Is this when girl math meets adhd Unmedicated?

I don't think. No, I can't think.

There's nothing that I've purchased that I've completely forgotten about and then it just arrived and it was a joy.

I want to experience it, though.

Okay, well, just purchase quite a few things on the other one time when you're having like a bit of an impulsive moment, and then you probably will forget about one or two of them. But then when they turn up, it feels really good. I think you've actually just identified exactly what it is.

Though. I think it's the guilt. I think I feel a little bit guilty.

Of maybe some spending that I didn't necessarily need to do, especially when probably could have put that money towards saving for a house.

I would be so interested, maybe there's a poll that's brewing.

I'd be so interested to know how many of you feel that it's okay to keep white lives from your partners, and would you be okay knowing that your partner has kept a white life from you, not something that's going to impact your relationship, not something that's toxic or damaging. I know that we're like I should go without saying, but I feel like I need to say it and preface it. But do you keep white lies from your partner? And I would love to know why, because I genuinely think there would be more people who do. And I also don't think that it is a problem to keep things from your partner. You are your own person. You are allowed to have autonomy in your relationship. You do not have to cohabitate as one single unit in every single thing that you do. But to have a healthy relationship, you're.

Talking about white lies, but I'm also interested in there's lies of omission where you've just omitted.

That's still a if you're purposely not giving details about something, which means that that person doesn't have the full picture. It's not necessarily a white lie, but it's also not the truth.

So what is it?

Sometimes you can have things done like skincare treatments and whatever, or laser or you know, you can get away with omitting that, Like if they ask you how your day was you can just.

Not mention the fact that you went to an avoidance. But also you shouldn't have to admit every single thing that you're doing to your part.

You don't need to give them a running timetable of every single thing you've spent on yourself.

Like that take you.

That's how I feel.

Yeah, that to me is crazy because you don't need to ask for permission for every single thing that you spend your money on.

I don't need to lie to them out.

I don't lie about the purchases, but I certainly don't tell him everything because that's fucking boring information.

Like he doesn't need to know. He doesn't care if I bought a pack of six raisors. Why would he? And if he does, like that's a bigger problem. But I think that that's for a purchase that is a necessity.

I'm specifically talking about things that you didn't necessarily need.

Guys, I did not need botox, nor did I need profile.

But I certainly didn't sit him down and be like, hello, this is what the bill was for my most recent PROFILEO. Also, guys, yeah, I know six months ago I said I hadn't had botox. Well I got some recently, and I didn't tell that about it.

You figured it out me. Yeah, they figured it out because you get bruises. Nah, he figured it out because he was like, brown, be angry.

You're like, I'm just really happy with you.

I just haven't been upset with you for quite Why your skin looks so good.

I was like, damn it, it's so effective, fucky, so expensive.

Anyway, I didn't tell him about it worth.

Every cent.

Was.

I've been spending a lot of my past week thinking about friendship, and it's something that we talk about, I would say quite a bit on this podcast. It was actually something that you and I spoke about one of the last times that we did in episode together, just the two of us, and the response that we got from it was really massive. And the reason I've been thinking about it so much is because I've been consuming quite a lot of Simon Sinik's content in the past week, just coincidentally.

He is a speaker, he's a writer, he's a podcaster.

You may be familiar with what he initially went viral for, like a really long time ago, it'd have to be more than ten years ago, now, was the Find Your Why. So he was all about finding purpose in your job, your relationship, your reason for existing basically is what his initial body of work was. And he has been on quite a few podcasts and youtubes lately because he's currently writing a book on friendship.

Now.

He's fifty, he doesn't have kids, and he's never been married. So his views on friendship are that they're incredibly important and that they're probably more important than what we have been led to.

Believe that they are.

He also goes on a lot about how we have so many resources for things like success success in business, we have so many resources for romantic relationships. We have resources for almost everything, leadership included, but we don't have a great deal of resources about friendship, of how to be a good friend and how to cultivate good friendships. And through a couple of things that I was listening to last week, one was the prof g podcast it's called Be a Better Leader, The Human Paradox and the Folly of a Plan with Simon Sinek.

And there was another.

YouTube that I watched as well, which was with Trevor Noah, and that was on friendship, loneliness, vulnerability, and more. I'll link both of those in the show notes for you, but it really left me with a question of what I am currently looking for in friendship and how that has seemingly evolved quite rapidly for me in the past maybe like a year and a half, and so I wanted to have a conversation with you today about what friendship means to you and whether that has shifted throughout different life stages, whether it shifted throughout different priority stages. And the priority thing is something that I found really really interesting because one of the main points that Simon made in various podcasts that I've now listened to was that we seem to prioritize everything other than friendship. You know, if you have a work commitment come up, we're really quick to say, hey, I'm so sorry, I need to cancel our plans because I need to be in a meeting for this or that, or like we're really quick to cancel plans with friends. We're really quick to deprioritize time spent within our friendships because other things are deemed to be more important.

So Keish you wrote this, I mean, we have like a group chat which we're all in in terms of like what content we're going to talk about, how we're going to, you know, navigate the podcast for the week, and Keish threw this into the mix of things that she wanted to speak about. And I will be perfectly honest because when you sent this through and I watched all Simon Sinek's podcast and I listened to some of the talks that he's done, and he's speaking about how this is a body of focus for him now, this unpacking the tools to be a better friend, the why around friendship and this underresourced part of our life. And my first reaction was, I don't really want to speak about this because I feel ill equipped at the moment. And the reason for that is is because I feel like I'm in a phase of my life, this period of having two young kids, of trying to run multiple businesses, of trying to be a good wife, of trying to be there for my family. I feel as though I am not a great friend at the moment. And so I was like, I don't really want to be on a podcast talking about friendship and how to be It's gonna make me upset. How to be a good friend when I don't necessarily think I am one at the moment.

Oh wow, did not expect to get sad.

But I also think that there's a little bit of and I don't want to say bs on it, because I definitely I don't think it's healthy to deprioritize friendships. I'll be the first to say that, but I do think that there is so much pressure to be able to be good at everything, to prioritize your family, your work, your friends.

Like the fucking bucket isn't big enough. It really isn't.

And depending on how many friends you have or what those relationships are to you, they are often the first ones that are sacrificed in some ways. I'm not saying that you just discard people, but they are often the people that you have less time for. And it's because it's seen as indulgent, and it's indulgent to go and have a girl's lunch, or it's indulgent to get a babysitter and go and spend time with your friends, or do things that are taking away from the pillars that are deemed as core and necessity. And for me at the moment in this phase of life, the core and the necessity is being with my kids. And when it's not being with my kids, it's making sure that Matt's had enough time to feel like he's taken care of our relationships tended to, or it's making sure that my businesses aren't going down the fucking gurglar. Everything is always screaming as a priority, and I think friends are often so understanding that you're quote unquote busy, because we're all so busy that it's having the allowance on yourself to be able to navigate this period of.

Life is really important as well. Yeah, that is what I think.

I'm quite interested in how much this idea of responsibility seems to trump our importance of friendship. But I also think it's really interesting to unpack how much what you want out of friendship evolves over whatever period of life that you're in. You know, for Simon, he's fifty, he's not married, and he hasn't ever been married, and he doesn't have children.

Which is also why when I watch this, there was a part of me that kind of felt a little bit resentful towards him because I felt like, well, it's so easy for you, in the place of life that you're in, to give advice around how important friendship is.

Everyone's aware that friendships are important.

I mean, there's so much data out there around how it is connected to longevity, it's connected to community, it's connected to like reaching a ripe old age having a great friendship circle. But I think that's easier to do when you don't have all of the other pressures because I'm like cool. I don't want to oversimplify it, because I'm not just saying people who have kids have it harder, not by any means, but having children does mean that there is a whole additional pillar that you have to make time for that you don't have to do if you don't have them. So his experience and his ability to make time for his friends is very, very different to what other people would be experienced and the life that they're at.

Yeah, and I think that for someone who is in Simon's position, like I understand why friendships are so so deeply important to him because in terms of the relationships in his life, friendships take up a huge portion of the pie. But from what he was saying, something that I really sat and I thought about a lot is is this question of like what I actually want out of friendship Because for me, I don't have children, I'm in a situation that's pretty similar to Simon. So I have really sat and thought about what I actually want out of friendship and how much that has changed over the course of time. Because I'm someone who has always had a lot of friends around me, and I've moved to a lot of different cities I've lived in. I think I counted at one point and it was like eleven different cities. I moved around a lot for work and also just because I like to travel and live in different places.

I've also never met anyone quite like Yukisha in terms of you are the type of person who can make friends wherever you go. We might meet someone who is you know, we meet them in passing, and then three weeks later Kei, She's.

Like, oh yeah, I caught up that person. We had coffee, we went from did the bond.

I woke like, you make instant friends, And I think that that's like a really admirable and beautiful quality of you.

I appreciate that.

And I mean, I'm very privileged in the sense where I say like, I've never struggled to make friends, and I don't necessarily know why that's the case. I just haven't interestingly a symptom that a lot of people with ADHD experience, which was something that could not have been less true for me, is that they really struggled to maintain friendships, and I was like, oh, I don't align with that at all. I put that as a zero on the scale. And over the past year, I've kind of tried to unpack the reasons for why I felt so much responsibility to maintain friendships and actually quite a lot of pressure, and I felt a huge amount of guilt, Like it was it would be a really really common occurrence for me to be like, you know, I haven't spoken to that person for a week. I need to message them. They're gonna think I'm a really bad person for not checking in on them. And I felt as though I always had to be making so much effort with the friends in my life, and I don't. I think it's a coincidence that I've seemed to not require the amount of intensity of friendship because I'm in a committed, stable relationship now. When I was single, I obviously lent a lot more on my friends because I had more time. That was kind of the phase that we were in. We were all single together, and we were all having these friendships where it was almost like reciprocity, right.

It's like you're trading war stories.

Yeah yeah.

Or also they're the people that you go and spend time with to go out and to meet new people and to be able to go to the pub and the bar or like, you know, there's a real social aspect to that. I just want to go back a second, because I'm very interested in it. Why is it that people who have ADHD find it harder to maintain friendships.

There are a.

Couple of reasons, and I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist who is equiped to talk about this, but from what I've read, it can be based off of a few things. It can be based off of kind of feeling like you just never have fit in because you think in a different way. You can be hyper aware of like your social interactions and you can mask a lot where you look for the social cues that you're going to be accepted into the group, and so you kind of try and yourself and mask in a way that you're going to be accepted, and it can lead to not being a very genuine person, like you know, that's the bad side of it. The other is that you can be a bit of a chameleon and you can fit in anywhere. Apparently it's a sign that a lot of people they just struggle to maintain stable relationships because we can be quite impulsive. We can say things that you might not necessarily want. Other behavioral traits like interrupting people can find very rude and very annoying. You can be quite self focused at times.

Is it also around the like the organization, because obviously to maintain close friendships you need to have a level of organization where you prioritize allowing them to fit into your life like and I think that that's what I mean, moving away from speaking about ADHD, but just in general, like we said, it's often friendships are the things that are deprioritized. One because it's if you have great friends in your life, they're often very understanding when you are really busy, and they get it. But also the more that you deprioritize something, the less connected to it you become. So as much as we all have those friends where we can say, oh, you know what, we don't even have to see each other that much, we're still just as good as friends when we do eventually see each other. I agree with that I have friends like that as well, but I would definitely challenge are we as close as when we used to see each other every day and talk every day? No, we're not as close because we now speak to each other once every couple of months, and we see each other once every couple of months. We're in very, very different life phases to where we were when we were in our twenties and we were so connected to each other. I would say that our friendships were almost akin to my romantic relationships, they were that intense. But I don't necessarily think that it is a terrible thing that friendships go through these different fluctuations of intensity. I think we have to expect that that's okay and give ourselves.

A little bit of an allowance.

And that's also not to say that a friendship won't go back into intensity as well once you're able to spend more time with each other and give it the focus that you might like to.

I've been trying to unpack a lot of why I felt the need to have these really intense connections in my friendships, and why I felt such a sense of guilt when I wasn't able to maintain them at the intensity that they once existed. At and I feel glad that I have somewhat let go of the guilt, but not entirely, Like a really big part of me feels like a pretty shitty person for not checking in on some of the people who at one point.

Were like really really really close.

Friends of mine.

And I do wonder whether they would think, oh, well, since you've been in a long term relationship, like you've changed and you don't have as much time for me, And they probably do think that to some extent, And I grapple with whether that is just me moving into a different phase or whether I actually should be spending more time on those friendships, whether I actually should feel bad about the fact that I've let some of them go by the wayside because I've seemingly had other things pop up as priorities.

What do you think makes a good friend?

We actually put a pole about this on Life on Cut last night. There were three trains of thought of what people wanted out of friendship, and the main one was that people wanted reciprocity, so they wanted equal effort between the friends.

Yeah.

I think that's a really big one, and I think that that's usually where relationships fall down because it's like one person may have moved into a different phase of life, one person's priorities may have shifted purely because of the pressures of fucking life, and the other persons haven't shifted as rapidly, and so there's a mismatch between where the friendship was and where it's heading. And it's not that the love has changed, it's not that the affection or the care for each other has changed, but it's simply the amount of time that one person can put into the friendship versus the other.

Yeah, I absolutely agree.

So the second category was people who wanted loyalty, trust and respect. So these quite intense. We are right or die, I am there for you, no judgment. We can be completely vulnerable with each other, we can be completely honest with each other, and we will be there for each other no matter what you say, no matter what you do, are friendship will exist. So that was kind of like the second category. And the third train of thought was that people wanted care free, easy and fun. And I wrote down last night what I really look for in friendship now, and these are the things that I wrote down. I wrote down picking up where we left off, Consistency, similar values and wanting to do similar things. So I feel as though what I look for in friendship now is slightly less intense. And it's not lost on me that it's probably because I get things like loyalty, trust, respect from my partner.

I'm sure you still have friends in your life who you have that intensity with the loyalty, trust, the respect, the really deep connection of conversation, but you probably don't have the volume. I think that's the other thing that happens is and I mean statistically, there's many studies and proof that's been done on it, this idea.

That as we age, our really.

Close network of friends get smaller. And on one hand, that can be bad, especially if it's getting smaller because you're discarding friends or you're not putting f or time into it. But other times it gets smaller just because it becomes more focused, because you simply cannot give that much of yourself to that many people. So you start to realize, Okay, who are the people that have similar values to me? Who are the people that are in a similar life stage to me, and they're the people that you focus your energies on.

Do you feel bad about that shift, though, Like, is there a part of you deep down that is kind of judgmental of yourself for accepting that some friendships are just going to fall by the wayside.

I think every friendship is different, right, And the other thing that you have in romantic relationship is that you often have boundaries and conversations around what is the relationship If you're dating someone and you're romantically invested in them at some point, normally, and what we would preach is that you would ask, well, what are we right? What is this set the guideline. You don't do that with friends because that's fucking weird. You're like, so are you my best friend? Or you're my sometimes friend? Are you my occasion friend? Like are you an acquaintance friend? You just have to have self awareness around what is the intensity of that friendship. I still have my very very close friends who I absolutely love an a door and my network, I would say is slightly smaller than what it used to be. But I also have friends that I've realized what was the necessity of the friendship? Was it because we were both going through something and we had this shared trauma and every time we'd talk, we'd always like vent about the thing that was the thing that made us upset? You know, do I still need that? Are they still needing that venting? And I wonder if most people have experienced this. I think we've all had that one friend or multiple friends who the relationship was based around helping solve their problems.

Like playing therapists.

Yeah, yeah, being like the free therapist. And that's okay for a period, but you can't play that role for an entire friendship for forever. There has to be other things there that you also mutually get out of it. And so I think that there's definitely been some of those friendships that I've identified, and like I said at the beginning, you know, it does make me feel like I'm not a great friend. I hope to maintain friendships well enough and strong enough and put effort in to do the girl's weekends away and had the dinners and everything, so that when I do have more time in my life to dedicate to friendships, they still exist.

They're still there.

I don't want to wake up in my fifties and be like, well, fuck, where are all my friends gone? Because I spend all my time working and being a mum and now my kids have moved out and like, here we are.

I think that that was something interesting.

So when Simon was talking about how, you know, we are so quick to deprioritize a friend catch up because something that we deem more important or that has more responsibility pops up, I felt a little bit similar where I was like, oh, well, I mean he also spoke about the fact that, you know, he would choose spending time with friends over work opportunities and paid work opportunities, and my initial response was like, oh, well, that's a really privileged position to be sitting from, Like you can turn down work opportunities when you've got enough money to turn down work opportunities to catch up with your friends, Like that must be nice. But then when I sat with it a little bit, I actually realized that that was just me trying to kind of justify away why I've made those decisions and why I've prioritized work so much more. And maybe I needed to hear that from him. Maybe I needed the little reminder that friendship is more important than I've been focusing on. Maybe I've almost given myself a bit of a get out of jail free card to not put as much effort into the friendships as what I should have. Have you experienced what I would deem to be like a friendship breakup, like a breakup of a friendship that was as intense as the breakup of a romantic relationship.

Well, I think there's two kinds of friendship breakups. I think there's the breakup, which is like an actual breakup, like something happens and you have to actively not speak to that person anymore or you know, and it's quite dramatic. There's that version of a friendship breakup. But then there's the more subtle version of a friendship breakup. It's more hard to define because it's usually like a soft fade and it kind of just goes from being really intense to not speaking to each other as much to hardly ever speaking to each other. And I think both of them can be equally as challenging. Sometimes the soft faid is really because you don't have an understanding as to what changed in the relationship and you really miss the closeness that you had and it's awkward. On their birthday or when some big life thing happens and you find out through Instagram that you're not invited, Yeah, that's when you really realize that the sort of cavity of what's being created in that friendship. But then I think, on the other hand, the like severe friendship breakup is way more dramatic, it's way more brutal, and it can be as painful as a romantic relationship breakup. I've spoken about it before. My best friend through school and also through university. You know, we were friends for like fifteen years. We had a really dramatic friendship breakup and it was surrounding my ex, so my ex at the time, who was a flog and I needed to learn those lessons, right, Like, I really need to learn those lessons for myself.

Know why she didn't want to be there for it.

She was like, I can't be friends with you whilst you're dating someone who's like this fucking this is so toxic. It's unhealthy for you, it's unhealthy for our friendship. It's just not good. And I understand why she did what she did, but I think I also had a lot of resentment for it. So it was very, very, very dramatic, and I think it came at a time where maybe our friendship needed to shift anyway. But it was really hard than saying to people because we were always it was always the two of us. We were always together. It was really hard explaining to people that we no longer were friends, that we were no longer speaking. It was almost like explaining to people that we'd had a breakup.

I experienced something so similar like my friend who I would call us soulmate friends. People used to think we were sisters because we looked so alike and we would quite literally spend every second of the day either talking or we were physically together. I felt as though no one has actually ever known me in the way that she knew me, and we had an eruption of the friendship, and it was my choice to end the friendship. And still that would have been would have been eight or nine years ago now, and still to this day, I don't know whether that was the right decision to make. It obviously was at a very emotionally charged decision because of what happened at the time. But I still we all think about it all the time, and I think about, you know, so weird to me, this person who I just knew so to their core. I've gone on to see that she got married to a guy that I was with her when she met him. And they've had a kid and she has this whole life. Every single time I see something come up from her, I'm like, this is just so.

Weird, isn't it funny?

Because it's kind of the same as like when you go through a relationship breakup, how you can like check on the Instagram and you're like, wow, I'm just no longer a part of that.

I only found out it wasn't actually that long ago.

We stopped being friends of years and years ago, and we are very pleasant with each other now, like we've exchanged messages here and there. We will never have the friendship that we had, but we are absolutely like civil with each other. But we only started following each other recently again on social media. She had deleted every single photo of our fifteen near friendship, Any photo that I'd been in she had deleted, And I was like, it must have been as hard for her as what it was for me. You know, It's interesting. I think every single person has been through some type of friendship breakup. And as much as we talk about what we said at the very beginning, this idea that in everything else in life, there is resources, there is toolbooks, there is like how to manage this. Friendships is that one thing that's kind of gone by the wayside and kind of slips through the cracks, And so I don't think it gets the validity that it deserves when it comes to like what a friendship breakup feels like and how to navigate that.

It's funny that you say, like, oh, the relationship is not what it and it never will be what itever used to be, because there have been times in the past, like eight nine years, however long it's been, that I've genuinely been like, should I reach out, should I actually put an olive branch out and see if we can repair this friendship because of how close we were and how much I feel.

Like I'm missing her in my life.

But then I think the reality sets in that even if you were to do that, like the fracture is there, you're never going to go back to what you were. And I probably do see it with a bit of rose colored glasses.

Think in the same way that we would give advice around a romantic breakup and reach out to someone who you were once in a relationship with, You're never going to have that same relationship again. You're never going to reach out to someone who you dated five years ago and be like, oh, I still think about you, which you might still think about them. But I do think it's very different when it comes to friends in that if you were to reach out and you were to try and reignite a friendship, I don't know whether that friendship would ever meet up to the expectations of what it once was, or whether it would be tarnished by the massive fracture of that friendship breakup.

Yeah, and I just imagine what that initial Like let's say, let's say hypothetically right now, I have inspiration from having this conversation, and I messaged the person that I'm talking about, this person that I had this massive breakdown of a best friendship with What the fuck am I supposed to do when we like do we agree with, like, oh, let's go and grab a coffee. Hey, how's the last eight years of your life being so you've got a kid now, Like, how are you supposed to start that interaction? I don't have the answers to that.

And I also think it's not so much about the one coffee catch up. It's about how how do they fit into your life now? Like do you have enough room to fit that type of relationship into your life. And I think about my really good friend who I had the friendship breakup with, who now has two little girls. We literally are in the same phase of life, like it would make sense. I'm also so hesitant because I'm like it ended so badly, even though I have so much love and respect for her and I think she is just an incredible person and we get along so well. I think that the friendship got so damaged that I don't know if you could restore it back to a place where it would be what it was. And then are you just comparing, well, this is where we are now to what we were then, or do you have to just start as a new, completely fresh relationship. I often also think about reaching out, but I would not even know how to navigate that.

I wouldn't know how to navigate it.

And I also think that deep down there's a bit of a fear that we would never be able to get back to what we were and maybe I'd get hurt again. Like I know that this sounds so ridiculous and a little bit intense because it sounds as though I'm talking about a romantic breakup, but I genuinely would worry that I could experience the pain of losing that friendship again.

I don't think that that sounds ridiculous. I think there's so many people who would resonate with this and who have been through something similar. We did actually do a poll on life on cut. We got back to our good old pole roots. Now eighteen thousand of you have responded to these poles. So it is not a small study. But the poll was the statistically significant. It is what's it called a P value?

What oh in statistics? The P value of zero point serious? The P value.

People who are in stats or insides will get what I'm talking about.

We've done a comprehensive study.

Okay, so the very first question was have you ever experienced a friendship breakup? Ninety two percent of you said that you have experienced a friendship Great, that's a breakup, Well, it's pretty much everyone. If you haven't, then that's an incredible place to be. And how did your friendship breakup compare to a romantic relationship breakup? So thirty five percent of you said that romantic breakups were harder emotionally than a friendship breakup. Thirty two percent of you said friendship breakup was harder, and then and thirty three percent said, well, they're about the same for you, So it was equal to or more than with sixty percent of people. And then the last one was do you think about your friendship breakup more than you think about your romantic breakups? And forty six percent of you said that you think about your friendship breakup more. That was the highest percentage. Only sixteen percent of you still think about your romantic breakups, but those of you who have been through a friendship breakup, it still is something you think about in forty six percent of cases. It's so interesting to me because, like we said, there's so much out there for people who go through those romantic breakups, there's so little out there for people who go through friendship breakups. But I think we ruminate on them exactly the same way we think about, well, what would our life be now if we were to reach out to them? Is there space in our life to make space for a new friend if you were to do the work to make up, And also would it even be something that you could like, can you extend an olive branch when you've had such a significant breakdown?

Want to add one more question of what would that friendship mean to you now? Are you lacking in your other friendship right now that makes you feel like you want that really deep connection with someone that you once had it with, or do you just feel bad about the fact that it ended.

No.

I think I think it's really hard to find people as an adult that you absolutely radiate with and resonate with on like a deeper level. I think a lot of us have more superficial friendships, and I think a lot of people have no, I don't want to say acquaintance friendships, but it's very easy to meet people who you have a pleasant and lovely time with. It's really hard to meet people who you have a really deep connection with. And that goes for romantic relationships, it goes for friendships. And so I think when you have found that person who, as you describe Keisha like, it feels like a soul sister to you, and then you lose that, there is a hole that's missing because you're like, well, fuck, when's the next person like that going to come along? And sometimes they don't come along, and so then you're left feeling as though, well, maybe I'm never going to have a friendship with someone who understood me as well as that person once did, and that's I think that that's like a really sad thing to try and overcome.

I know that we've kind of bounced around a lot about these different parts of friendship, and I also I feel similar to you, Laura, where I'm like, I'm not an authority to talk about this. This is more me actually having a conversation about something that I have genuinely been considering to do with. Like I've been sitting and wondering whether I actually am a good friend and wondering what friendship means to me now and what I seek in my friendships and perhaps why that has changed. That's something that I will continue to spend a bit of time on because I'm not at a point of resolution now where I'm like, oh no, I'm okay with the fact that some of these friendships have fallen by the wayside because my priorities have changed. I think that's what I needed to hear from Simon's work. I needed to hear that friendship is a very important priority and perhaps I haven't been paying as much attention to it as what I maybe should have. I think it's such a great question, like am I a good friend? Am I being a good friend?

And it's okay if that answer isn't always yes, But I think what can you do to get back to being a place where you go, Yeah, I am a great friend and I am there for the people who I love in my life and in reciprocating that, they're also there for me. I don't want anyone to feel like that. This is because, like I said, the way that I felt about this when I first read it, and I was like, fuck, another thing to not be great at great, you know, another thing to add pressure into life. It's okay to give yourself the allowances of sometimes not having the ability to prioritize everything, but I do think it is important to have that introspection and go, okay, well, am I making time for the things that I really care about in life? And am I making time for the things that I value? And if the answer is no, then what can you do to get back to a place where you feel as though you're able to do that?

All right?

It is time for accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing stories and this one, Holy fucking dick, This got sent in the grial chat and I read it out to mad I mean he triveled up into a tiny ball in the corner as I said it to him. So, if that gives you any sort of visual reference for what went on, this is it. I was a Brazilian waxer for a while, or should I say a vagina, and my colleague had just recently started at the Salini was working at. Now she whacked someone who had a tampon in and you guessed it. The tampon string was hanging out slightly and it was ripped out with the wax and splat across the room, straight into the wall. Needless to say, there was mortification felt on both sides.

How do you explain to someone so I just ripped your tip.

I think she felt it. I don't think you need to explain it.

I don't know if I.

Would go and get a wax if I had my period, if I was going a tampon.

Sometimes you can't plan these things. Sometimes you got to book your wax. When you've got the time and it comes, tuck, tuck it up, push it up. You would tuck it inside of you. I would absolutely tuck the string up.

But I feel like they really get into the crevices of the beer.

Just shove it two centimeters up and fish around. Yes, if I'm going to go and get laser, I'm not going to do it.

I don't get laser, let's be real. But if I was going to go lay their spread eagle, yes, I would tuck it up.

Is that crazy? Am I crazy?

I don't know.

I just have never thought about that.

No.

I would just expect that they would be able to navigate their way around the very clear white cotton string.

That maybe it was only just hanging out, but like a tiny tough Also, they're like a little bit more confronting.

Though.

If you're like ready for a wax and you've got a full tampon string hanging out like that's great.

That's a bold woman. I'm here for it. What do you do afterwards? Did they give you a tampon to go on? I think you have to wipe the wall down. I don't think you can leave that to someone else who wipes it though, the patient. The patient, Absolutely, you're white. Sorry, if someone's flung my tampon out of me, I'm not gonna go on clean up after their miss they created it.

It's no would you really make someone else clean it up.

I wouldn't feel responsible for it.

Yeah, but would you not, like, out of just the decency, get up with like a little bit of a dead or wipe and go and wipe it up? Yeah, because I'm awkward and I know people please up, but not because I feel like it would be my response. I would just do it because this situation was so awkward. Imagine if she still had hair to go, he had to lay back.

Down, so fucking wild. Oh my god, all right, suck in this week, Keisha, What is your suck for the week?

My suck for this week is that, for quite a long time on the podcast, my boyfriend asked for me to not really speak about him at all, And now I am hyper aware of the wise but he also asked me andone, yes, we don't name him. He goes by Toddleron. That's the nickname that Britt gave him when she first met him. He initially asked me not to talk about his profession and that has changed. So he's a doctor and at the moment, in the particular field of his training, he is in the kind of like specialty training and as a part of his specialty area. They have to sit this exam and it's nicknamed the thousand hour Exam, and it is going to be the most challenging and difficult exam of his life. It was six thousand dollars just to sit the exam, so he has been studying, Like I genuinely feel as though if we didn't live together, we would never see each other. Like he's been the most dedicated and determined person to the point where I actually admire it now, but you're also annoyed by it. I'm so sick. I just want my boyfriend back. Yeah, So today we are finding out whether he passed the exam or not. So today I'm going to find out whether we're going to be living the way that we have lived for the past year for the next six months, because that's when they sit the next exam, right, And it's just brought about like a huge.

Amount of anxiety, And I'm really.

Really, really hopeful that firstly he has passed. I mean, by the time this episode comes out, I will actually know. But I'm just so hopeful that our life can go back to actually spending time together and getting to do the things that normal people in relationships do.

And It's such a unique experience because I think unless you like I mean, I have very very little connection to anyone who's in like the medical world or the medical industry. But I do have friends who have sat this exam, and I know.

Like I lost them for a year.

They just kind of I never saw them for an entire year, because that is how all consuming this exam is. The amount of hours that you have to put into studying is like unparalleled from any other industry.

So unbelievably crazy.

Yeah.

So anyway, my suck is that for the past week, because this date of like that we're gonna find out has kind of been looming, and I just feel as though the anxiety rising in my body has gotten so bad that we're like neither of us are sleeping and we're kind of a bit like what is going to happen in our future based off for this exam. But my sweet for the week is I really feel as though I have got my mojo back. So for the past couple of months, I've just been feeling this real like meh attitude, this lack of motivation. I haven't been eating particularly well, I definitely have meen exercising, I've been sleeping pretty well. So in the past week, I have signed up to this new gym and some of my friends are coming along with me, and I just feel as though I've got a little bit of my umph back.

You're back into your ice path era.

Not yet, it's still old still, but I will icepath again. But yeah, I just I feel as though in the past week, I've just felt this like this bit of a shift, and I like mojo is exactly what I would describe it as. I just feel as though I'm kind of getting that back, and I've really missed it.

It's just been absent for a couple of.

Months, and I don't know if it's a winter thing. I don't know if people just experience periodic times like this where I've just been feeling very like kind of dragging my feet.

It's almost as though when you're in those periods, you don't always recognize that they're happening until you all of a sudden start to feel a bit better and you're like, oh, that's what was wrong.

I wasn't sad.

I just needed a holiday. I don't have a stuck for this week. I've genuinely had a really wonderful week we've had. We were on radio break at the moment.

So because we haven't been at work, but it also just meant that I've got to spend time with the kids with Matt, like I really genuinely feel like it was a great week. My sweet for the week though is on the weekends, So I mean we've been spending lots of family time. Ever since Neil passed away earlier this year, we've really been spending a lot of time with Mum and had been to that too, but just to make sure that she's like good and she's you know, surrounded by people who love her. But on Saturday, one of Neil my stepdad who passed away, has really good friend owned Sydney brewery and he created a beer it's called Lenny's Lager, and so we had an event on Saturday for him, which was like a bit of a fundraiser for cancer research as well.

But it was really cool going into this brewery and like seeing all the beers lined up and they've got like your pale ale, your you know, your two is new and then Lenny's Lager is one of the bees that you can actually get from the brewery there and it's just a picture of Neil plaining his trumpet. He was a fucking keen beer drinker, like he loved his boutique bees, which means it's no surprise as to why he was like very good friends with the guy who owned a brewery. But it's also really sad because you have these days and you're like, this is so great and the person who would have loved this the most can't be here to enjoy it.

But it was really really beautiful. It was a really awesome day. That's really special. Yeah, it was really sweet. I hope that the beer is kind of fruity, because that's that's.

Kind of like, you know, like an hoppy It's Hawaiian wine shirt.

But I think of what I think of Neil.

I think of him as being this like larger than life personality.

And it's really lovely that you can go that was about so you can go and sip on him.

Let's get out here. That's so weird.

That is it from us, guys. If you've enjoyed the episode, to please go and leave a review. You can jump onto YouTube and watch it all happen in the flesh and you know the drill

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Life Uncut

Talking all things love, life, lust, and a bunch of other stuff. Nothing is off limits in this podca 
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