Do all my friends secretly hate me? | from Corner Piece

Why does making friends as an adult feel like mission impossible? Today, we’re sharing a special episode of a new TED podcast, Corner Piece. Friendship is hard, especially in adulthood, and this episode explores just that with personal stories from host Melissa Fernandes of her experience grappling with a friendship break up. Along the way, she interviews Anna Goldfarb, journalist and author of “Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valuable Connections,” and Dr. Marisa G. Franco, professor and author of “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—And Keep—Friends”. They explain why friendship can get so complicated as you get older and how to build closer bonds. Corner Piece is hosted by the trio behind the YouTube channel, Answer in Progress, who start small on life’s biggest questions and follow their curiosities about human connection down rabbit holes to help you, and themselves, understand the world around them a little bit better. Hear more episodes of Corner Piece on your favorite podcast app or here: https://link.mgln.ai/XDcPEc Vote for our show in the Signal Awards for Best Advice & How To https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/advice-how-to podcast! For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 2:31Speaker 00

  Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to How to Be a Better Human. Today, I am sharing something that is different than what you would normally hear on this show. I'm really excited about it. It's a special episode exploring the weirdness of friendship in adulthood, and this episode comes from a new TED podcast, which is called Cornerpiece. Taha, Melissa, and Sabrina are the creators of the popular YouTube channel Answer in Progress. They're so funny and smart and interesting, and now they are hosting a new podcast with TED where they bring their deep curiosity, funny banter, and their sense of adventure to exploring questions like, when do I split the bill? Why is there nowhere to hang out anymore? And is romance dead? I'm super excited to share this episode with you. I think Cornerpiece is going to be an incredible show, and I hope that you will learn something

• 3:16Speaker 00

  today about the friendships that you have in your life. So now, on to this episode of Cornerpiece.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  When I was a kid, I had all these dreams of what I thought friendship would be like when I was older. Big apartments, large living rooms, pizza nights, the kind of thing that you'd see in the show Friends. I guess that's because my parents had it on TV all the time when I was younger. And what I've always found really beautiful about the show was the genuine connection these people seemed to share with each other. They have this casualness with each other and show up as themselves, unannounced, happy, sad, and everything in between. They laugh together, cry together, and are present in each other's

• 4:03Speaker 01

  lives. And I know that this is television, but when I look at the picture of friendship in my life today, it's very different than what I had imagined. Recently, I went through a pretty tough friendship loss or breakup.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  I think I just like thought I told myself that it was fine and I was over it, but...

• 4:33Speaker 01

  We were friends for years, pretty much all through childhood and into adulthood. But long story short, we had a small fight that unraveled into this year-long process of slow distancing, and now we don't really talk to each other. I guess when you're just like friends with someone for so long, I guess you have these expectations, and when things change so suddenly without any communication, you're just kind of like, you're just, I don't know, like feeling left wondering what is going on. For over a year, you're just confused, and so I just don't understand what the, I don't know what the play space is, you know?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  She was one of my oldest and closest friends, and I miss her a lot. And I think I'm still making sense of what happened and processing the grief of it all. Like, I'm too scared to even text her. So, on this episode of Cornerpiece, we're talking about friendship. Am I a bad friend? And what does it even mean to be a good friend? And not just the kinds that you see on screen. I mean, real friends. So I called my friends, Taha and Sabrina, to ask them how they maintain their friendships.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Do you guys ever just call your friends spontaneously?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  So what do you think my answer is, Taha?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  You schedule in spontaneous phone call with friend, and then you roll a dice and you have a system.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  I, I don't anymore, but when I was a kid, I used to. When I was in elementary school, I used to just call my friends after school.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Elementary school? With a landline?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just grab the, grab the landline.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  You were allowed?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd be like, hello, is Amanda free for a call? And then they'll be like, okay, one second, and then you'll just talk. And then when you wanna, when you're, when you're sick of being on the phone, you have to like fake, be like, oh, my mom, my mom's calling me for dinner. Uh... I have to go now. Because you could just talk forever. You have nothing to do. What homework do you have when you're in grade four? Like, go to your times tables, and then you're done. Um, but anyways.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  She was really good at her times tables.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  You brag about it.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  But not any, not anymore. Not anymore. I don't, I don't call my friends.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  She can't do math anymore.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  This feels embarrassing to admit that I'm struggling to hold on to friendships as an adult. Like, it felt easier when I was younger, less complicated and more fun. I had people that I saw all the time, talked to, and felt really connected to. I don't know, but maybe life was just simpler then. We didn't have the complications of adult schedules and emotions to deal with. And so I couldn't help but wonder if there's something more to friendship that I just seem to be missing.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  So my friends and I realized we didn't hang out for like over a year, and we were like, why?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Like, your close friends?

• 7:50Speaker 03

  My close friends and I, like, we have a very active group chat, but we didn't hang out in person because there was just so many scheduling nightmares that were occurring. And so, we try and make plans to hang out in person once a month, which means that there are about four to five weekends that we have to negotiate. And something you learn in your twenties is that all of those weekends book almost a month in advance. And so it's just like, I just learned what they're doing on their weekends. It's fun.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Okay, well, how many times do they say, well, no?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  I, listen, my friends, we're all desperate for an opportunity to hang out. It's really like something has to be restraining us, or somebody doesn't want to hang out. And that's, I mean, like, it's not the right context for the hangout, so yeah, they'll, they'll say yes. There's a very little overlap in like, times where I want to hang out, and they're like, no, you're not allowed to come.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  I think I have most things scheduled, and then I, I leave the door open for spontaneity.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  That's true. Do you want to talk about your multi-calender lifestyle?

• 8:51Speaker 02

  We can get in the weeds, but the way I construct my calendar system...

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Is I have different calendars for different probability events. I have my high probability calendar, I have my low probability calendar. I have my unconfirmed calendar, okay? Now, this makes up the bulk of how I socially organize my life. Now, the reason I have these three different calendars is because I have friends of different levels of reliability.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  This sounds sweeter than I'm scheduling my friendships. You're like, you're like building out space for them.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Okay. Is there a difference between someone who is an acquaintance and a friendship? Do you distinguish those two things at all? To me, someone who is a friend is someone who I can be myself with. And then there's just people that I know.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I feel like this collapses the idea of a friendship into a binary, which I would like to wholeheartedly reject. The not friend to friend.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I actually agree with you. I think that I've just become very strict in my use of the word friends because I think that ambiguity really stressed me out when I was younger. And so I've decided that if there is not that reciprocity in the relationship, they can still be an acquaintance that I care about, but I would not consider them a friend in my book.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  I think I would, and this is just what I'm, what I do practically, which is if they call me their friend, I'll just call them my friend as well. Because I'm like.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  But do you call them your friend in your heart?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  I never in my heart think of the word friend because I think it's.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Taha doesn't have friends, actually.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Or a heart. I think I have, I have friends who I definitely talk to about my life and like what's going on in my life, what I'm struggling with, what I'm excited about, those, those type of friendships. And all of these aren't like neat categories, but there's a quality of friendship that includes that. And then there's another one, which is way more about enjoying each other's personality. That's like way more on the scale about banter and having fun and laughing and enjoying the shared interests that we have and has nothing to do with what people's lives are like. I knew that one of them was like an airline pilot for sure. And like, the only thing we would talk about is video games.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  And I didn't know how old he was. I, I, I knew that sometimes he would talk about airplanes and I was like, that's okay, whatever. And I have people in my life that their actual personal lives are complete black boxes. I found out someone that I knew, I think for four or five years, has a wife. That was crazy.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  That's great. That's, that, that is, that is crazy. Classic man friendship.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm like, damn, when did you get married? Oh, 10 years ago. I don't think I could order my friends in terms of closeness. And so I also feel like when I tell people, oh, this person is my friend, like I wonder if one is closer than the other, in terms of like, I don't know where on that line anyone goes. Because there are some parts of my life that I would share with some friends and there are other parts of my life that I would share with other friends. And neither of those parts of my life are more intimate than each other.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  I get that. I think, I think for me, I like, I contextualize my friends. And I know that might sound a little bit weird, but it's because like I get to be a slightly different version of me when I'm hanging out with those people. So I am the type of person who very rarely will mix friend groups. Um, I just, I, I don't like it. It makes me kind of uncomfortable. And all of my friends, the weirdest, the weird part of it is that when I do mix friend groups, my friends become different people because it's, it's a different environment. And I just, I, it's like a less enriching hangout because we aren't getting to be the selves that I really enjoy being when it's like a specific context.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  I'm really comfortable with acknowledging like the types of friendships that can exist, like the types of activities, the type of person enjoys doing, uh, what they enjoy talking about. And I'm happy to exist and build like this magic circle with them that is that friendship.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I think I'm similar to you in that sense, but I think of it more as like, sometimes you just don't want to be the full version of yourself with everybody.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  I, I think that I, listen, time to get into therapy mode. I don't know what the full version of myself is. And that's like the thing that I've been trying to unpack for the past like two years. Um, and that's just going to be an ongoing journey. Like, it's kind of weird that I don't know me because I am me, but like, I like sorting things into boxes and I'll be who I am in that box. And there's going to be through lines, like I'm, I'm a pretty consistent person. But what does it mean to be me entirely as a whole without all of these contexts stripped away? I don't know.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say I'm the same level of openness with all of my friends, but I don't think about whether or not they are my friend or how close I am with them. I just behave in the way that makes me feel good.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Honestly, it was strange to hear that when Sabrina and Taha are with their friends, there's this ease. At least they don't seem to overthink and second guess who they are when they show up around their friends. And I can't really relate to that. Friendship was supposed to be this space that was the safest to be yourself, to be loved and accepted for who you are. So when the friendship that I thought would last forever ended, it really threw me. All that safety that I used to feel in friendships started to disappear, which made me start to overthink how I show up in all my other relationships.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And so now I'm worried to be myself, I'm second guessing everything and I really don't want this to be my reality.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  So I started looking for some answers.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, this might be interesting. What makes a friendship last?

• 15:15Speaker 04

  Each time that I move to a new neighborhood, it seems to get harder and harder to sustain the friendships that I left behind. That same researcher made headlines with the finding that we lose half of our friendships every seven years.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  We have to listen to the last sentence again.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Finding that we lose half of our friendships every seven years.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Man, every seven years, that sounds, I don't know, I guess that, I guess that makes sense.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I mean, the friendship that I had lasted 20 years before falling apart. But when I look at other friendships in my life, that seven year pattern does hold. You know, I think we grow and move through different phases of life and not every friendship survives that change, whether it's moving to a different country or city or just getting a different job. Friendships can be fragile, but I want to know how I can hold this fragility without being so scared of it. I wasn't finding much luck searching for answers online, but I did find two experts who I thought could help me understand where this friendship anxiety I feel is coming from.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And it turns out they're actually friends in real life. We'll hear from them after the break.

• 16:39Speaker 00

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• 19:53Speaker 05

  Hi, this is Anna Goldfarb. I'm a journalist and author of Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections. One of the first things I learned about friendship is they can end at any time for any reason. It's a voluntary relationship between equals. It's one of the only ones where we have that equality in them. So they're really special relationships.

• 20:15Speaker 06

  My name is Dr. Marissa G. Franco, and I'm a professor, speaker, and New York Times bestselling author of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends. I think when I was younger, I just really focused on romantic partnerships, and I thought that made me worthy. But I'd been taught that friendship is trivial, or secondary, or menial to romantic partnerships, something to fill the space in the purgatory until you get married. But these friendships actually felt so powerful to me.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  I feel like an alien trying to understand friendship. And it's like, these are just the most human things that we do. Like, we're social people. We want to connect with people. And why does it sometimes feel so hard and weird to do that?

• 20:54Speaker 05

  It's a very different relationship, and it's very hard when we don't have cultural scripts on how to navigate it. It's really because we don't have a lot of models for these conversations. It creates this, like, deep loneliness of, there's no one who understands all parts of me. I know all these people, and they all know a little part of me, but not too many people that know all of me. So we have an opportunity here to create new models. We have to figure it out ourselves.

• 21:23Speaker 06

  So there's this model that I was presenting to my class on, like, why we're struggling with connection. And it's, it can be for structural reasons, which means we don't have enough friends, functional reasons, we're not reaching out to our friends to get our needs met, or quality reasons, we don't have enough quality connections. And so when I thought about that in my friendships, I said, it's not a structural issue. I have a great group of friends. It's not a quality issue. This is a restorative people who I feel like my most authentic self around. But I realized I had a functional issue. I don't always reach out to friends to get my needs met. And after realizing that, I tried to be more intentional about tackling this functional issue. So I want like more, I wanted more like last minute friends, where we could do a last minute hang, kind of. And so I reached out to friends last minute.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  I was like, hey, do you all want to, like, come over in a couple of hours and watch the show? And they said yes. And not only that, it freed them to also do the same for me. And so it kind of shifted the norm in the friendship. And I think even if I got rejected in that moment, they were busy at that time, that they would have felt more comfortable now reciprocating in that way, because I marked myself as someone who's open to doing a last minute hang. And so, you know, in my head, I call it like the friendship breakaway. My friend Jason says he's really clingy. He's FaceTimed me, and friends never FaceTime me. Now we have a FaceTime relationship. It took me a while to adjust to being on FaceTime with a friend, but like, you know, if you want to shake up friendships out of their stagnancy, like, what's your friendship breakaway?

• 22:52Speaker 06

  Like, what are you going to do to, to break up the dynamic and turn it into something that would be even more nourishing for you?

• 22:59Speaker 05

  One of the best things you can do is what's called social identity support. And that's seeing your friend for all the roles that they play. And the way to do that, Melissa, is, you know, if we met, I'm like, Melissa, I love that you're into podcasts, you're a great host, like, I'm really interested in that. I'd love to see where you grew up. I'd love to see, you know, what foods you ate growing up. I'd love to see your traditions. I want to be a part of it. That's how you deepen a friendship, to see, to see you for all the roles that you play in your life.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  That sounds scary, in some ways.

• 23:32Speaker 05

  I mean, you don't know how to do it. No one has to do this. It is totally optional. But if you hit it off with someone, I mean, that's how we did it in college. Like, you'd go home with a friend for Thanksgiving, and then you'd see their family dynamic. And then you know them a lot deeper, you know them a lot better, in a certain way. So that's one, one thing we can give to our friends, is to say, I want to be a part of it. I want to see where you grew up. I want to see what you like eating. I want to be a part of your traditions.

• 23:59Speaker 06

  I think, Melissa, probably a lot of your friends are hoping to get out of that rut, too. And so both of you are creating the norm. And I say that so that you, we could all recognize that, like, we have agency, too.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  I think that is like so beautiful in theory, but especially with new friends and people that you're like unsure how they're going to react when you're like, all right, what if I, like, show you more of myself? And like, what if you don't like that?

• 24:26Speaker 05

  You know, friendships are a risk. You know, this is part of the risk of showing people who you are. This is part of the risk of vulnerability.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Why do you think that sometimes those things feel hard to do, to, to be vulnerable?

• 24:40Speaker 06

  From a psychological perspective, I think we don't, we don't trust that people love us. Our felt experience of being loved is very different from the reality of how loved we are. It's called undersociality, that we kind of underestimate how much people like us. We underestimate how much they care about our acts of affection, how much they care about our acts of kindness, when people on the receiving end are like, this is so meaningful to me. And so I think when you think people don't love you, how are you going to be vulnerable with them? There's this way that pain leads us all to be very self-absorbed in a way that is hard to acknowledge as self-absorption, because we're always thinking about how we're coming off in our image, our, our sort of distorted image of ourselves in the other person's

• 25:22Speaker 06

  head, that's often much more negative than the truth, rather than thinking about this other person. I think in the culture of social media, we are being trained to filter everything we do through the perception of another, and how are we being perceived by another? And I think with the young folks, it's like cringe, like, what am I doing that's cringe? And so it's like you always have someone judging you and evaluating you in your head. And so I think the root of authenticity, of genuineness, is safety. And I think our modern culture of always being on, on display creates a, a lack of safety, and safety is necessary for authenticity. And why we act inauthentically is because we don't feel safe.

• 26:05Speaker 06

  And so I think in our modern culture, we have lost our connection to, to self. We are not going based off of like what we call intrinsic motivation in psychology, who do I connect to? Who do I feel close to? We're instead going off of, what are they going to think of me? How will this be perceived? How will this be evaluated? How will this be judged? And that becomes a cage for us. It doesn't allow us to authentically express ourselves in relationship. And without authenticity, there is maybe connection by label, but there's not a felt sense of connection.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  It felt like at one point I had this. And relearning how to do this, that is, being open, feels scary.

• 26:56Speaker 06

  One thing that I wanted to say, because I think you brought up some of your fears in friendship, and I wanted to say that they're absolutely normal. And what is vulnerable is universal, right? You know, this fears of vulnerability, fears of reaching out, fears of taking a risk in friendship. And I've realized, studying friendship, when you look at people that stay lonely, the reason that they stay lonely is because they think something's wrong with them, and they're fundamentally defective. And so how can I try and reach out and connect when everybody's going to smell this defectiveness on me? And so the issue that we have in friendship is not that something is wrong with us, but it's that we think something is wrong with us.

• 27:38Speaker 06

  And because we think something is wrong with us, we do not allow ourselves to take the risks that are inherent to connection. So I just hope that I can tell anyone, it wasn't because nobody chose me. It wasn't because they could smell that I was defective. It was just because I didn't practice the skill. I didn't make the effort, right? And I saw, I just want to say, like, the beauty of realizing that about friendship is that you realize that, like, you have been worthy all along. It was never about something being wrong with you. It was all about what actions can you take on behalf of connection?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  And I'll be honest, I feel like I've lost a lot of my confidence in making new friends and trying to deepen existing ones. They just all stay trapped in this state because I'm just terrified of breaking them. And it frustrates me because I want to feel held by my friends, but taking that step or reaching out that arm?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Okay, listen, I tried to hype myself up and reach out to my old friend. I just wrote a message on my page right now. I got scared.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Just little letters on the screen, you know? Letters on the screen, they don't hold any emotional weight.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  But apparently I wasn't ready to do that just yet. In the following weeks, I tried to practice what I learned from Ann and Marissa. That is, being more open, but with other people in my life.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  Pause. You've been texting me more.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  You've been initiating conversations with me more as of like the past few days. It was noticeable because I was like, why is she texting me? She never texts me. I'm the initiator in our relationship and that's fine. But it really threw me off. I looked at my phone one day because I got a notification and I was like, text from Melissa. Is she dying?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  What do you mean? I do.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  You don't text me out of the blue.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  I could scroll.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  What did I text you?

• 29:58Speaker 03

  You were texting me pictures of pudding. Really ugly pictures of pudding.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Help me understand what the heck is happening right now.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  I kind of had a little friendship therapy session with, with two friendship experts.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  In, in that someone said to you, hey, you can be more than just chill with your friends.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Well, it was a little bit deeper than that. Remember like months ago when I was trying to ask you guys like, all the things that you do to maintain your friendships and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We probably knew that I was asking because actually I don't know if you knew why I was asking, but I was kind of going, going through a, an interesting time in.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Is this the friendship breakup I have heard about? Like in, in the snippets between meetings, I'll join and they'll just be like a little, ooh, the friendship breakup. And I'll say, anyway.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Is this about your friendship breakup?

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Well, not anymore, I don't think.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Did you get dumped?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Oh, oh no, I said it as a joke.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  You said it as a joke.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Oh no. Oh no, but she's not laughing.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  That's a woman who has never gone through a friendship breakup.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  I've gone through a friendship breakup and which is why I did not make a joke. I was like, I know what this is like.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Oh God.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  What was it like?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  It was, it was complicated. It was emotionally heavy. For me, it came out of nowhere, to be honest. I had a French, an individual friendship breakup that did not break up the group friendship. But then we were just like, we just switched to being cool, but no more solo friendship.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And that was really hard because they continue to be tangentially in my life. And so I continue to emotionally feel it over and over again.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  This sounds like an emotional entanglement. This sounds fraught.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do? Just like burn your bridges with everyone else you know?

• 32:06Speaker 03

  I'm hoping to never experience a friendship breakup in my life. Boom, perfect.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Great plan. That's, that was my plan. You know, you dream of forever and then forever doesn't happen.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Sounds like a romantic story, both of you.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Well, I actually think it's actually more like when you get into a romantic relationship, the possibility of breaking up is a known quantity that also has like social scripts around it. But I feel like for friendships, no one expects to have a friendship breakup.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  It's a weird space to be in. And so I don't know how to talk about this with anybody else. So I was just kind of like sitting with it for a really long time, probably thinking that it was fine. And then I worked on this friendship episode and I'm like, oh, wait a second. I'm not fine. I'm really not fine. I think I was trying to figure out ways to like fix it for so long. If, I, I thought that if I just like said how I felt, things would be fixed.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Oh, so did you send, did you send like a crazy person text?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  No, I didn't send a.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I did not send a crazy person text.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  You showed up to their house.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Showed up to their house with cupcakes and said, why did you dump me?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  With the, with the Love Actually's poster boards.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. To me, you are perfect.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  No, I did the normal person thing. Okay, I'm just gonna text her.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Something chill.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  I can do this.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I didn't put my whole heart out there.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  But all I will say is that it didn't go anywhere. I did get a reply, but it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. I guess the sad reality is that some friendships don't get a second chance.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  It's okay. I think that I was just able to close that chapter of, of my life and be like, okay, guys, there are other friendships in my life that I can nurture.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  So you, have you started hanging out with other people?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  I, I can't believe it took me like a year and a half to do this.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  We'll be right back.

• 34:55Speaker 07

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• 35:14Speaker 07

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• 35:59Speaker 07

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• 36:10Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vale Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional. It's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Vale Smart Toilet is sleek with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceed expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals

• 36:55Speaker 00

  into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high performance function. That's a long time to get it right and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at kohler.com.

• 37:23Speaker 08

  This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed, that's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Hey. Um, are you free on Saturday morning? Um, there's this farmer's market. I reached out to an old friend that I hadn't seen in years. We kind of knew each other through mutuals, but we were never ones to hang out one-on-one. So I was a little nervous. But what's that thing about friendship and small acts of risk-taking?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Why is she awake? Well, looks like I have Saturday plans.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  I think something that I've learned a lot through the past year and a half, and also just through making this episode is just I've been second guessing so much of myself. I think I was just really self-conscious about the whole friendship breakup. I'm like, I think that if I just, if I just, if I just, you know, fade into the background, it'll be fine. But I realized that fading into the background-

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry. Melissa, are you saying that your solution for showing up in friendships was to not show up?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  But I said I'm on the other side of it now. We're reaching out. We're hanging out with people again.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  You're not fading out into the background.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  That's really wonderful.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  So later that week, my friend and I went to the farmer's market first thing Saturday morning in the pouring rain.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, you're soaked. Hello. I'm happy we're making this happen.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Me too. I didn't want to go inside. I didn't want to spoil anything.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Okay, okay. I think for me, the thing I love about friendships is that there is this seasonal constancy to it. My friends are people in my life at a time, and those could be really wonderful times. And then other times, they might move away or we might drift apart. But like, there's always this knowledge that one day, like two ships in the ocean, we might find each other once again. There were four metaphors in there.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  But like, I think the reason why I, when I imagine my friendships, they're like people who can come in and out of my life. And it's just like a little treat to be with them in the time that I have with them.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  I also think that like, you're still friends with someone even if you haven't seen them for years and years and years. I have a friend whose parents are from Syria and their parents think of their friends from when they were 14 in Syria before they became refugees as their friends. And they reunite 45 years later and be like, oh, that's my friend. And they're still your friend. And there's a constancy to it that, that like transcends whether or not you even had contact with them. So I just, I just don't think you ever think about friends-

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Ending.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Ending, yeah. And they're just over there and you're over here and the friendship is still between you. This is gonna sound so crazy.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  All right, bud.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  I don't think that friends are fungible, but I do think, and okay, I don't think that friends are interchangeable, but I do think-

• 41:19Speaker 03

  No, no, no. Say fungible, you freak.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Listen, I, I watched Succession once. You're fungible.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  But what does fungible actually mean?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Okay, I, I don't 100% know, but I will Google it. Fung- fun- that's fungal. Fungible, an easy to exchange or trade fungible for something else of the same type and value.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  So like replaceable?

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Replaceable, but fungible is fun to say. Anyway, but I think that the romantic partner as like a role in your life will have their own very specific, you know, shape. But also that role in your life can be replaced by someone else. And the details of how they would behave and your relationship to them will be different. But I think that friendship, because there are less preconceived notions of what they have to do in that role as a friend versus as a romantic partner, your friend can show up in really different ways and ways that like you've never even expected. And so each friendship can look so vastly different from each other.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  And I, I think they are like especially non-interchangeable.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with you. I feel like people don't console you in the same way as they would for an actual breakup. And I think it's because collectively, we don't see friendships having the potential of holding the same weight as a romantic relationship. And going through a friendship breakup, let me tell you, it feels the same, if not even more intense, because friendships see you in a way that is so different than any other relationship in your life. But there's also special friendships that you have in your life that have this quality to them that feels even more intimate and more loving than just like regular friendships.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  I think that when I lost that connection, it felt like I was losing a huge source of love in my life. I don't think I'm gonna have this community of close friends overnight, but I think that I just have to stop hiding so much from the people in my life and just show up because I think that I haven't been showing up in many different ways. And I think I was just really out of practice with friendship, which feels so silly to say, but I don't know.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  How does it feel for the people out there who are scared? Can you name that feeling and how you are getting over it?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  It's this feeling of, am I the only one who is looking out for me? And are all the other people in my life secretly hating me? Which is a weird place to be because if you are around people and if you believe that they don't love you or, or like you even, how are you ever gonna put yourself in a position to like open up and genuinely connect with people because you're just operating from this place of fear?

• 44:27Speaker 03

  You think you're surrounded by ops.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  But you're actually surrounded by friends.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  I, I felt like when I had my friendship breakup that I think that that sort of inner monologue around older people like me is really like, is really confirmed by the friendship breakup. And that trust and that safety is now in question. And I don't know. I definitely felt like I, I started to wonder if that was the case with any of my other friendships. And I think it took me a while. It sounds like it took you a while to get back in the game, bro.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  But I've made a new friend. Or at least I think that it's the beginning of a friendship. I think we're friends. I, I'm not sure.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Girl, you're overthinking it again.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Oh no, I'm starting all-

• 45:25Speaker 02

  This is what a healed woman sounds like.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  When I write about this in my journal and think about it in my head, I think that I'm coping with this totally fine. And I'm like, yeah, I'm totally healed. It's all good. I think it's still a little bit of a process, but-

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think you need to be totally healed from what sounds like a 20-year-long relationship.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  You, you don't need to be out the other side and fully happy and cheery and know the answer to all friendship now.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  So we're not speaking to a healed woman?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  We're speaking to a woman that's gonna be okay.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I can deal with that. I could get on board with that one.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Melissa, that's just, it's just the most, it's just, you know, this just describes you to a T.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Melissa's a girl who's gonna be okay and Taha's- A man getting back in the game.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  I need inspirational music to play in the background. I need you to be in a New York City taxi cab with your hair blowing in the wind. And the taxi goes-

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Where to? And she says, home.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  And then Melissa says her reflections in voiceover to end the episode.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Friendships can be messy. And while it can feel easier to retreat into yourself and the safety of the known, that's not where real friendships are built. It's not always about music festivals or international travel. Sometimes it's as small and silly as sending a random photo of pudding because it reminded you of them. I used to think that friendship was an all-in or nothing kind of deal. But I think the real secret isn't that we know everything about each other or even do everything together. It's that we know enough, enough to feel safe and enough to settle into our real selves around each other.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Tomatoes and like any, if they have any like honey, like local-

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Friends walk into our lives in different ways. Some stay, some go. But the friends who stay, the ones that make life feel all the more sweet, begin with someone sending a DM, answering a call, writing that text, taking a risk. That's friendship.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Corner Piece is a production from TED and Answer in Progress. This episode was produced by Mareleksa Kavanaugh and Mara Marsen and hosted by me, Melissa Fernandez. Fan Fan Chang is our story editor. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Steve Bone with support from our sound designer, Lucy Little. Fact checking by Lea Dagan. Music in this episode by Steve Bone and from Epitemic Sound. Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. TED's executive producer is Daniela Valareso. Special thanks to Roxanne Hylash, Valentina Bohanini, Laney Lot, James Ryerson, Cara Leboits, and Tonska Sangharnivong. Thanks also to Angela Ennis. This podcast is made possible through the support of Grant 63685 from the John Templeton

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. We're so grateful you're listening to Corner Piece. We would love to hear from you, so please leave us a rate and review on whatever podcast app you're listening on. And follow us if you're a fan. Your feedback really helps more people discover the show.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  That was the second episode of TED's new podcast, Corner Piece. You can find more episodes out now on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vale Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional, it's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Vale Smart Toilet is sleek with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceed expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary

• 50:15Speaker 00

  daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high-performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at kohler.com.

• 50:43Speaker 09

  With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N.A., Member FDIC.

• 51:14Speaker 10

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

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