Pod Insights Life Kit Plus Dear Life Kit: My boyfriend’s female friendships stress me out About this episode Relationship expert Amy Chan and sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski dig into listener questions about jealousy, desire, and modern relationships ahead of Valentine's Day.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:16 Marielle Segarra? You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
0:22 Marielle Segarra? Hey, it's Marielle. Happy almost Valentine's Day, you friggin' cuties. Question: What do you think about dating people you're friends with? Terrible idea? Best idea you ever had?
0:34 Speaker 02 I mean, I think it's a really great formula to have a best friend that you want to make out with.
0:40 Marielle Segarra? Amy Chan is a relationship expert and a previous guest of Life Kit. She helped us with getting over breakups a while back. Her upcoming book is called Unsingle: How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts. Speaking of...
0:54 Speaker 03 The couples who sustain strong sexual connections over the long term, the first characteristic they all share, regardless of gender, or sexual orientation, or anything else, they like each other.
1:06 Marielle Segarra? This is fellow Life Kit alum Emily Nagoski. Emily is a sex educator, a researcher, and the author of the wildly popular books Come As You Are and Come Together. So yes, Emily and Amy agree that relationships can and should be built on a foundation of friendship, but they also acknowledge that when you mix friendship and romance, things can get sticky. For example, being friends with your ex. Highly polarizing topic. I'm betting just the mention of it brings up feelings for you. Our experts say it is possible, but you got to give yourself a transition period because maybe your brain has decided to not be in a relationship with this person.
1:47 Speaker 02 But your body doesn't get the memo. And so if you keep seeing each other and like sharing good news with each other and having sex, your body doesn't understand that there's been a breakup.
1:57 Speaker 03 One of the barometers I suggest to people is if this is the first person you want to tell really big news to, especially bad news, like if they're your person you go to, you're not ready to be friends yet.
2:11 Marielle Segarra? On this edition of Dear Life Kit, the advice series from Life Kit reporter Andy Tagle, Emily and Amy are here to offer advice for lovers and friends on all the messiness that can happen when two become one. They'll talk about what to do when friends become lovers, become just roommates, what to do when you're jealous of your partner's friends, what to do when you're thinking about meddling in a friend's relationship, and more. That's after the break.
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4:00 Speaker 05 All right, question number one. Dear Life Kit. My girlfriend and I started dating a little over a year ago after crushing on each other for years from afar. At first, she was very loving and affectionate. She'd leave me little love notes and we had sex often. Then, a few months in, she had surgery to insert an IUD and we haven't had sex since. She tells me she's bled constantly since the IUD and it affects her hormones. So she simply has no sexual appetite. But she also abstains from nearly any affectionate gesture, romantic moment, or expression of shared feeling. Now it feels like we're roommates. I don't want to pressure her, but I want my girlfriend back. Is it wrong for me to ask her to consider my feelings about sex and affection? Signed, Starved for Affection.
4:45 Speaker 05 We only know one side of the story here, of course, but it sounds to me like there's a lot going on with the girlfriend, right? Is that what you were hearing too, Emily?
4:50 Speaker 03 Yeah. No change in hormones causes a person to stop writing little love notes. I think we might not know everything that happened with the IUD placement. One of my thoughts was, there's a significant proportion of people who have very intense, unpleasant, painful experiences with IUD placement. And especially if she's been bleeding constantly, like, there might have been a painful experience that she has not felt comfortable sharing. Of course, it's absolutely valid to want your needs met and to have a conversation about it. And have that conversation in a way that doesn't activate the dreaded chasing dynamic. If you go in and say, "Hey, I'm entitled to the sex and the love that you were giving
5:34 Speaker 03 me before," not gonna work out well. I think what I'm hearing him say is, "I miss my girlfriend." And if the conversation begins at the place of, "I really miss you. I miss the sense of feeling emotionally connected and loved and loving," and without going to the sexual conversation...
6:00 Speaker 03 Are there things we can do that feel loving?
6:05 Speaker 05 I mean, that was my, my next question is like, what is the absolute wrong way to go about this? What are some ways more broadly that people might be pushing their partners without knowing it in these types of situations?
6:14 Speaker 02 When we're about to have a high stakes conversation, and this would be one, we can go in with either boxing gloves or a handshake. And boxing gloves is like, you know, you're not doing this anymore. And I want this and my needs aren't getting met. There's a lot of, a lot of accusatory language. And then there's a handshake method, which is coming in with, with care and, and compassion and using I, I statements, right? And when you have the boxing gloves, the person has their defenses up. They're, they're already in their survival state. So you've already lost the conversation before it's begun. Part of communication isn't just, okay, what words am I going to use? And what's the goal of it? But how am I going to approach it?
6:56 Speaker 02 And, and having a handshake means even the timing of the conversations. Like I used to love having my deep conversations, high stakes conversations right before my partners are about to go to bed. Bad timing, right? Boxing gloves, I've now learned, okay, afternoons are better.
7:13 Speaker 05 Yeah. I think what's extra tricky in this specific situation is the freshness of this relationship, right? The relationship itself is about a year old. It sounds like their sexual relationship was just ramping up before it completely shut down. What if that conversation is opened up very lovingly? And the answer is, I'm not interested in the sexual relationship.
7:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, because this relationship is comparatively new, this is the kind of conversation that can really be like, break the relationship or build a deeper, more profound connection. So that they begin sort of tossing aside all the scripts we have in our minds about how sex is supposed to work in a relationship and begin co-creating a connection that's really customized to who they are in this season of their lives, which is different from what the first year of their life was like.
8:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think it's also important when these conversations happen is to see if both partners are willing to come to the table to grow. And are they invested in building the relationship? Because right now, this is a topic around physical intimacy. Guess what? In five years or three years, there will be another big topic where one partner will say, this need isn't being met, or I have this love language and you don't. And, and it's not really about what is the conflict of the moment. It is, are two people both willing to come together as a team to hear each other out, to grow together and figure out solutions so that it's working for the both of them and not just one of them?
8:47 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
8:48 Speaker 03 They're gonna be fine.
8:50 Speaker 05 Uh, we're, we're rooting for you. We're rooting for you, Star for Affection. Um, all right, moving on to question number two. Dear Life Kit, my boyfriend and I have been in a loving, long-distance relationship for just over two years. We like to joke that we'll never leave the honeymoon stage because we only get to see each other every few months, usually for a week at a time while traveling somewhere exciting. We're both looking forward to moving in together in the future. My issue is, he has a lot of close female friends. It makes me really uncomfortable. When I met his female friends from college, for example, one of the first things they brought up was how they'd all seen him naked because that's, quote, "just what he did at parties." He'd never mentioned that to me.
9:33 Speaker 05 Another time, he got too drunk at a party and slept on the couch at his female friend's house. Just him and her, no one else. Recently, he was invited to a music festival by another female friend and he was very short on details, like who was going, what the sleeping arrangements would be. I don't think he would cheat on me, but I can't stop feeling uneasy and even a little jealous. I've never had many guy friends, so it's hard for me to accept all these platonic female friendships. Do I have to?
10:01 Speaker 05 Signed, long distance.
10:03 Speaker 03 Sorry.
10:03 Speaker 05 And left out.
10:05 Speaker 05 Okay, Emily.
10:06 Speaker 03 Yes, you did.
10:06 Speaker 05 Hot off the gates. Okay.
10:08 Speaker 03 So, short answer, yes. Longer askers to be, oh, so how do I do that? This is a question about trust, right?
10:17 Speaker 05 Yeah.
10:17 Speaker 03 Uh, and either your partner is not worthy of your trust. And she says, I don't think he would cheat on me. So, partner is worthy of trust? Okay, so that means the lack of trust is happening on your end. You are slow to trust. There are so many reasons a person can be slow to trust. Maybe they have had their trust betrayed in the past. And so they're reluctant to trust again. Maybe they just grew up in a family where trust was betrayed often or slow to be given. Some people just temperamentally are slower to trust. A lot of the times, especially when it's a jealousy version of trust, it's about being worried that who you are is not enough
11:02 Speaker 03 to keep your partner with you when your partner's gonna look around and see all these other women that they're friends with and feel like, oh, I could really do so much better because of these other people. So ultimately, this sounds to me like, is this person sure that they deserve this partner?
11:23 Speaker 05 Hmm, okay, all right. Amy, are you, are you in agreement?
11:27 Speaker 02 Yes, it's totally okay for your partner to have friends of the opposite sex. So, in this case, it sounds like, um, there's kind of two issues going on. One is, um, can he have friends? Yes. The other part is, maybe when this guy was single, he was running around naked and having sleeping arrangements that were fine when he's a bachelor. But now that he's in a relationship, I think it's also important that they have a conversation of, okay, what are the boundaries around this? Like, totally going to support that you have these friends? And what is reasonable that now that you're in a relationship that we can both feel comfortable with it? And I think exactly what Emily said.
12:12 Speaker 02 When people are jealous, we can try to remove all the things that make us jealous. Like, you can't be friends with this person. You can't go out at past this time. But it's like whack a mole, right? If you don't address a core issue, you're constantly going to be just addressing the symptoms.
12:28 Speaker 03 I think it's reasonable to like, sit down with your partner before you move in together and be like, I have a request. How about you not be naked in front of your friends anymore?
12:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:39 Speaker 05 So it sounds like there are conversations that this couple need to have. There's some expectation setting that needs to be done. I want to talk a little bit more about jealousy, because it's, you know, it's a natural human response that we all deal with now and then. What's the healthy way for, for a long distance and left out to work through these emotions?
12:54 Speaker 03 Therapy.
12:57 Speaker 03 I don't want to oversimplify, but honestly, especially because it's so early in the relationship, like, let's nip this in the bud. You can have all the relationship skills in the world, and if you don't understand the source of your discomfort, you're not going to be able to cope with it.
13:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, I also, I also think that what happens a lot of times when people feel jealous is there could be an automatic reaction to blame that feeling on the partner. So I feel this, it's painful, it's your fault, so you do these things. And so before they even think of go to therapy, they're like, well, there's nothing wrong with me. Why would I go to therapy? You go to therapy. And a question that I find very helpful is to ask yourself, is the way that I'm feeling and the way that I'm reacting proportionate to the reality of the situation or the offense at hand? And then that's going to require you to do some digging, hopefully with a therapist, but if not, even on your own at first, so
14:02 Speaker 02 that you can start to piece together the dots and then come to your partner with a conversation where you're more vulnerable, being like, wow, this happened, it triggered me. And that can open up this deep conversation that can actually bring you closer together.
14:19 Speaker 05 More to Your Life Kit after this quick break.
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15:16 Speaker 05 Moving on to question three. Dear Life Kit, my partner and I are very close friends with another couple. We've known them for over a decade, and I even officiated their wedding. As the relationship has progressed, we've become increasingly concerned for them. One partner treats the other like a servant, and we feel that the division of labor within their marriage is unfair. These friends individually confide in both me and my spouse about their marital problems. We feel a sense of duty to help them resolve their problems, especially since I administer their vows. But I also wonder if divorce is a better option for them. What should I do? Signed, Bothered by Sander.
15:54 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I think that you're a very good friend, and you have compassion, and you care about your friends deeply. I would be careful to not triangulate. So, person A is coming to you and complaining, and then person B is coming to you complaining, and then they're not having those conversations themselves. So ultimately, this is a problem between them, and you can't go and fix it. I think if he is going to be supportive, what he can do is ask permission before giving advice. Like, I've been noticing some stuff. Do you want any feedback? Because someone's going to be a lot more open to receiving your advice and your feedback if you ask them permission first. But ultimately, you can't fix them, or, you know, tell them to get a divorce.
16:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, that is a wild to me. I was like, oh my gosh, that is a, that is a wild thing to even consider, you know, even as a very, very best friend.
16:45 Speaker 03 You suggest that they get divorced and then they don't?
16:48 Speaker 05 Right.
16:48 Speaker 03 And forever you're the friend who was like, you thought we should get divorced?
16:52 Speaker 05 Or they get divorced and then you're, you were the thing, you were the thing that, that pushed them down that line, you know, I just, yeah.
17:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that when someone is coming to you and they're constantly just venting or complaining, it might feel for that person who's doing the venting, like they're being productive, but, but they're not, right? And it can actually reinforce the negative feelings. So there's a point where it's just non-productive and it's actually not helpful for the person and it's not helpful for you as a listener. So I think as the friend, you also have to set some boundaries for yourself as well.
17:30 Speaker 05 Hmm, yeah.
17:31 Speaker 03 People worry that if they set a limit, hey, listen, I love you so much and I am on your side and I want to hear all about it and there's only so much that my emotions can tolerate. So I'm going to set the timer for 15 minutes, go. And then after that, we talk about anything else.
17:49 Speaker 05 Hmm, yeah.
17:50 Speaker 02 Love that.
17:51 Speaker 05 Okay. Bothered by a standard, we, we wish you well. All right. Question number four. Dear Life Kit, I've been dating my boyfriend for almost five years. He was the first person I felt safe with because I didn't have to earn his love and validation. He was always emotionally available for me. We've discussed marriage several times, but years went by with no proposal. Lately, I've realized that I don't think I was ever really attracted to him and I think I wanted to get married because he was the first partner I didn't feel the need to chase. We haven't had sex for a year. I'm also checked out emotionally, but I don't want to break things off because he's a great guy and I care for him. Should I settle for a safe relationship with no chemistry?
18:33 Speaker 05 Signed, Stay Safe or Fly Solo.
18:37 Speaker 05 Imagine you're both going to have strong feelings about this one. Anyone want to start us off?
18:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, I had a lot of feelings about this one because there's so many things that could be going on. Like, is it that you were never attracted to this person? Or is it that you have so much resentment, et cetera? Now, when you look at them, you're seeing them through the lens of all these difficult feelings. You are also emotionally checked out and it sounds like you're not interested in being emotionally checked in. He's a great guy. What do you want for him? If he were your best friend, would you be wishing that relationship would end so that he could find somebody who was emotionally checked in and wanted to be with him and was attracted to him? And would you want to be in a relationship with someone who, looking at you, is like, maybe I was never attracted to you?
19:26 Speaker 05 That's exactly what I, that was the first thing that I wrote. I was like, if I was with someone for five years, I really hope that's not what they were thinking about me.
19:33 Speaker 03 And it's such a hard conversation. It is to say to someone, hey, look, I don't feel connected to you anymore. Especially because we all want to be as kind and generous as we can. And though there could be all kinds of other circumstances we just don't know about. Part of me wants to talk about like responsive desire. And are you sure you're not attracted? Are you just not experiencing spontaneous desire? Because the relationship has lasted a while and your body and brain have changed and the relationship has changed. Maybe that's a thing. But from not having sex, emotionally checked out, I was never attracted. That all feels to me like I have already left this relationship in every way except for telling him so.
20:18 Speaker 02 I do wonder, like, is she in a lull? Or is this a constant? And I don't have enough data. Because if this is a case of resentment has built up and that has caused her to now be emotionally checked out as well.
20:36 Speaker 02 Could there be a very open and honest conversation with this person around the marriage not happening? And some of the issues that are causing her to feel like she wants to, you know, disassociate from this relationship? It sounds like there's a few issues going on. Like, one of them is she wanted to get married and was promised marriage, and it hasn't happened. And so I wonder if there's some resentment that's been building? And maybe that resentment is causing her to be in this current state right now. And when we look at like the signs of memory, our, our current state can actually change how we remember things. So maybe her past memory, because she's in this resentful state, is like,
21:20 Speaker 02 ah, I never was attracted to him in the first place. Uh, so I wonder if there's some of that going on.
21:26 Speaker 02 I do feel that in, in any relationship, there's going to be ebbs and flows, right? The, the physical attraction, the chemistry, sometimes it's high and sometimes it's low. And I do feel that it's part of our responsibility when we're in a long-term relationship to also learn the skills to cultivate that chemistry. And a lot of times we're like, well, the butterflies are gone. It's done and we, we move on. There's skill building and there's intentionally building novelty and excitement and adventure to create that chemistry again.
22:00 Speaker 05 Maybe it's not that they're not compatible. They just need to start putting the work back in.
22:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think it also, it has to be kicked off by asking each other, like, if we are to stay together, uh, like, do we want a passionless, sexless relationship? Or do we not want that? And if we don't want that, then what could we do? Is there anything we could do?
22:21 Speaker 05 So either way, it's time for an honest conversation. The broader question this raises for me is, um, what's the right amount of give? You know, every relationship requires some degree of compromise, some degree of trade-off. How do you find the right balance between over-icking, you know, dismissing someone too early and choosing an unhappy relationship over just being by yourself?
22:43 Speaker 03 The best relationship I ever got came from my grandmother. Who said that if each person gives 50/50, you've got half a relationship?
22:51 Speaker 05 Hmm.
22:52 Speaker 03 Each person has to give 100% of what they have. But you can't give more than you have. If you try to carry a bunch of their stuff also, you're gonna get burned out and resentful and exhausted. And it's not going to last in the long term. But both of you have to show up with fully open hearts, ready to have a conversation. And I think, as Amy was saying, having a realistic idea of what a long-term relationship looks like. We started the conversation by talking about friendship. It sounds like these two could be really good friends.
23:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, the safety part is something in her letter that struck out to me. As someone who has formerly been with a lot of people who didn't like me back and had spent my, you know, all my effort trying to chase them down, I had great chemistry with them because it was always outside of my reach. And I have found that now being in a very safe relationship where your nervous system isn't constantly being activated. And I think that there's some of that, too, is is this person associating an activated nervous system or anxiety with chemistry?
24:08 Speaker 05 Hmm.
24:11 Speaker 05 Okay, well, our friends, stay safe and we wish you well. Emily, Amy, before we let you go, at the end of every episode of Dear Life Kit, we ask our guests for their very best piece of advice, anything that comes to mind, anything that speaks to you.
24:24 Speaker 03 The couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term have three and only three things in common. They like each other, they're friends who trust and admire each other. Two, they believe that sex matters enough in their relationship that they prioritize it. And third, they do a bunch of emotional work to unlearn all the cultural lies that we're told about how sex is supposed to work in a long-term relationship and replace all those lies with what's true for them. And they keep renewing what's true for them as their bodies and their lives change over the long term.
25:02 Speaker 05 Lovely. Amy, what have you got for us?
25:05 Speaker 02 People should understand that being great at dating and being great at building a long-term, healthy relationship are two different sets of skills. And a lot of the times in dating, we get so distracted and we prioritize these shiny qualities, such as looks, or height, or color of their hair, whatever that is. And those aren't the things that actually will make a good, long-term partner. If someone is willing to communicate, if someone is willing to repair and to grow through all these different relationship conflicts, that's what is going to matter in the long term.
25:43 Speaker 05 Hmm, lovely. Amy, Emily, thank you so much for joining us. I've had so much fun.
25:49 Speaker 03 Thank you.
25:49 Speaker 02 Thank you. This was so fun.
25:53 Marielle Segarra? That was Life Kit reporter Andy Tagle, talking to Emily Nagoski and Amy Chan. Before we go, I have a favor to ask you. If you have a moment, would you leave Life Kit a five-star review? If we've ever helped you save a little money, or make a healthier choice, or if we've just made you feel a little more seen, a five-star review is a great way to show your support. And thank you. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino, and Mika Ellison. Engineering support comes from Peter Alina. I'm Marielle Segarra.
26:39 Marielle Segarra? Thanks for listening.
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