Amena Brown:
Hey everybody. We are back in the living room, talking friendship stuff. I hope this series of these friendship episodes has been great. If you are just joining the podcast, know that there are a few other episodes that you may enjoy listening to. My friend, Celita and I talked about how to survive a friendship breakup. And this is third in a series of me answering questions from you, the listeners, and from folks on social media as well. So for part three, we've got some really great questions. You all ask some really good questions. There were a couple of them that I was like, man, I got to really have a moment to think about this.
Amena Brown:
So let's jump right in here. Question one of our episode today, how do you balance what you want a friendship to be with what the other person wants? I often feel like I want more than the other person and have a hard time with that tension. Great question. I hate to always answer a question with a question although I think I am that person often in my life, so, sorry to my family and friends for that, but I would throw back to you a question to consider, which is, are the things you want in a friendship healthy and reasonable? I have been on the side of a friendship where I felt that my friend had expectations of me that were not reasonable for me to meet. And I felt on the other side, as the friend who maybe wanted different things from the friendship than my friend did, I felt like, oh gosh, that request that they have of me is not reasonable, I don't know if I can do it.
Amena Brown:
And so that's the first thing that you have to consider is what you're asking of your friend reasonable and is what you're asking of your friend healthy? Let's talk about things that are healthy and reasonable that you want from a friend. These are foundational things, you want respect, you want clear communication, you want someone who is a caring and thoughtful friend, who shows you that they care about you. Those are healthy and reasonable requests. And there are other healthy and reasonable things that could be listed here, but I listed these as just some basics so you have an idea of what I mean. So it's healthy and reasonable to want a friend to be respectful of you, to be respectful of your time and of your space, to be respectful of the boundaries that you set for yourself and your health.
Amena Brown:
It's healthy and reasonable for you to want to have a friend in your life that can communicate with you and let you know, hey, this doesn't work for me or, hey, I can't be there, I can't go to that, I can't do this thing or I can do that and here's what time, and here's what I have available, those things. If what you want in your friendship is healthy and reasonable then if the other person looks at your healthy and reasonable request and they're like, no, I can't be respectful of you. No, I'm not going to clearly communicate and no, I'm not going to be a caring person or thoughtful of you, then at that point, it may be that the friendship will never get to a point of being balanced because the friendship is at that point unhealthy. So that's the first question I think you have to ask yourself.
Amena Brown:
And then if I can take the reverse of that, if you are in a friendship and your wants or needs of the friendship are not healthy or are not reasonable. And I'll give you a couple of examples of that. Expecting time from the friendship or from the friend that they may not be able to give, expecting to be their number one priority at all times, expecting them to accept disrespect or an unreasonable amount of a lack of communication from you. Those are things that are not healthy and not reasonable in a friendship. So I think you have to think about, is what you want in the friendship healthy and reasonable? And if so, then you can see if the friend that you've referenced here is willing to meet your healthy and reasonable requests. And if they aren't, then you may be discovering this isn't a great person to have in your life as a friend, that there will never be balanced in the friendship because the friendship is an unhealthy one that isn't good for you to have in your life.
Amena Brown:
And if you are thinking through this and you are discovering, I may have some unreasonable or unhealthy requests of my friend, I may be wanting to, I'm just using this as a random example, but I may be wanting to meet with my friend every week at this time for this activity. And their schedule may not be able to keep up with that, or they may not want to do that every week at this time and this way. And so it is not reasonable for me to want that from them or have that expectation of them. So if you have some wants or needs in the friendship that are not healthy and not reasonable, think about some ways that you can work on yourself and how you can get to a place where, what you do want from a friendship is healthy and is reasonable. And special shout out to therapy here, because there are many reasons why people go to therapy or what becomes the catalyst for sending someone to therapy or counseling, whatever type of professional support that you may have access to.
Amena Brown:
And sometimes we think, well, obviously it would be our parents that would send us to therapy or our family of origin, those are the people that will send us to therapy and of course, maybe sometimes they do. And then we might think it's our romantic relationships that will send us to therapy, and sometimes they do, but sometimes we can go into therapy and talk about our friendships and how we are interacting there. And there are times in our lives that how we interact with our friends can show us a lot about where we might find ourselves in a healthy place or in an unhealthy place. So that would be my answer there. Ask yourself some good questions and if you find that you have unhealthy and unreasonable requests of your friends, or if you find that you have a lot of friends around you that continually have unhealthy and unreasonable expectations of you, you may need additional support and therapy, and counseling can be a great place to get that support. So shout out to therapy.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Question six. I have a friend and I'm not sure if they hold my honest perspectives and experiences as a Black person, what should I do? Oh my. So this makes me think of a funny story first that is relevant to this question. So my grandma, some of you that have been listening to the podcast for awhile or have followed my work for awhile, know that my grandma is such a big inspiration to me. And she's also just everything that a Black woman in her eighties should be. She's just very honest and going to tell you how it is, is. And so my grandma also grew up in the South, grew up in North Carolina, spent most of her life in the South in general. And so almost all my life whenever we're telling my grandma a story, and it could be like, we were somewhere and we got bad customer service, or it could be we were telling her some story and something good happened with some stranger we met, but my grandma always has the same question.
Amena Brown:
So if I go to her and I'm like, yeah, I went, bought this dress and the person in this store, they were really helpful. And she'd be like, okay, well, the person in the store, were they Black or were they white? And I want you to know that when my grandma says this white never has a T on it. I don't know where the T went, I don't know where the T disappeared to, but she's saying, "Are they Black or are they white?" Okay. And it's just like some breath at the end, I don't know what happened to the T. So dear listener that is asking me this question, I want to ask you, when you are referring to your friends, are they Black or are they white? Is what I want to know. And I want to assume from this question that this is a friend that is white, but I'm going to try and answer for both possibilities that you may have a friend who is white. It may be a friend who's not white, but they may not be Black.
Amena Brown:
So I think the first thing I want to tell you of course, is a story. Anyone that's friends with me knows that when they ask me for advice, it typically it starts with a story and then I have to get to the practicalities. So I want to tell you about a white women lunch that I went to once and that taught me a lot about what it means for me to really be friends with white people, to have white people in my life that are my friends that I trust. Okay. And some of you are listening and you're like, you're married to a white man, I am. And in this situation, I am referring to white friendships and there may be another episode where my husband and I will come on here and we can talk about all the things. But in this moment, when I talk about having trusted white people in your life, I'm really very specifically here talking, not just about family members, which my husband is my family member, but I'm talking about what it means when you're interacting with white people in friendships.
Amena Brown:
And especially in this case, this listener as a Black person, how you navigate that and make sure that you're not in a friendship that is going to be unhealthy for you, that's going to be a situation where someone is expecting you to make yourself small. Okay. So here's my story about my white women lunch. So many of you know that in my previous part of my career, I worked in white conservative Christian evangelical spaces. Okay. Some of you are still hearing me say that and you're like, why? I hope you're able to discern some of these things from previous episodes. But anyways, so I was in Nashville and when I worked in white Christian space, Nashville is like the headquarters and Dallas as a second. But anyways, Nashville, big headquarters there. So I was at a lunch with some white women that I had met along the way, over the years, white women that I had done lots of events with and been in green rooms with.
Amena Brown:
I have to say of all of them sitting there, maybe I'm trying to think, had I ever actually been to any of their houses before? I don't think so. So they weren't necessarily friends that I would have considered super personal friends, but I did consider as friends at that time because we worked together in a way, it felt like we were colleagues. And sometimes we would have somewhat personal conversation in the green rooms, but the green rooms were the main place where we talked. So we were at this lunch and maybe it was a dinner, I really can't remember, it was a meal. And we were talking about something and I don't remember what made me say this, but I said out loud to them, based on whatever conversation we were having that, you know what, actually now I think that what brought us into this conversation was Beyonce.
Amena Brown:
And this should have been a clue to me right here, because one of the white women at the table, I'm not going to say any of their names because some of you may know them or know of their work. But one of the white women at the table was very upset about Formation, Beyonce's video for Formation had come out and she was very upset about it. And she was like, I don't understand what that was about. And it kind of seemed like she's trying to get people to worship her and she's trying to get them to get in formation to worship her. And I don't understand the different images that were in there, just really, it's troubling to me. And so first of all, I am a person that's very much like, oh, I'm sorry, did you speak against Beyonce because I think the conversation is over now? So this right here should have told me like, no, sis this ain't what you want.
Amena Brown:
And so I think I tried in a little bit of a sound bite to try to explain to her that Formation is not for her, that it's something Beyonce made for Black women. And so I think that led us into probably for the first time with most of those women that we'd ever talked about race together. And so I think I used that as an example, because I think an SNL sketch had come out after Formation got released. There were like all these white people running around like, no, not Beyonce, we thought she was one of us. And so I said to them at the table, I thought the sketch was funny, but I also had a moment where I was like, oh, I feel like there may be some white people that have seen me at events and see me in a lot of predominantly white spaces that feel similarly about me.
Amena Brown:
They think I am their safe Black person, they think that I think the same way as they think, I just happen to be Black. They think that it doesn't bother me when Black people are murdered at the hands of the police, they think it doesn't bother me when white supremacy or racism is what takes the life of a Black person away. And it does bother me and it does matter to me whether I say anything or not. Whether I felt comfortable to say anything or not, I'm still Black every day. And y'all, I said that at the white woman lunch, dinner meal, whatever it was, and it was stone silent at the table. Okay, nobody said anything, it was just silent for a long period and then somebody said something else that totally changed the subject.
Amena Brown:
And I'm talking about, I'm at this white woman dinner meal, whatever, and there are probably five or six white women sitting at the table, very influential in the arena where we were all in at that time, they said nothing to me. And in that moment I realized that we weren't really friends because if we were really friends, that silent moment would not have happened that way. Even if that moment comes up and you're like, oh, I feel horrible hearing this, I don't know what to say. I've got a lot to learn, those are also statements that you can say and I hope you do that work to actually learn. But the fact that they didn't say anything, let me know that I am not actually their friends, I am someone they enjoyed chatting with in the green room.
Amena Brown:
For some of them, I could have been a Black person or Black woman that they enjoyed being able to be associated with in some of those professional environments we were in, but at the end of the day, they were not able to welcome the fullness of what it means for me to be Black and for me to be a Black woman. So I'm telling you that story to tell you that you don't want to have people in your life that you can't be your full self with. And we are all of our identities simultaneously, we're not able to parcel different pieces of our identities, different places. I'm not able to go one place and be like today, I'll just be a woman and I won't be Black, but over here, I won't be a woman, I'll just be Black, I don't have a way to do that. I am at all points and at all times, Black and woman and whatever your identities are, you are at all times those things, and you don't want to have friends in your life that make you feel like they wanted to accept these different pieces of you.
Amena Brown:
Like in that moment, I felt like these women want me to be Christian because that's an identity we share. Maybe they want me to be woman, but they wanted me to pack up my Blackness in that moment and put it away somewhere because my Blackness was making things awkward, but it wasn't my Blackness making things awkward, it was racism and white supremacy, making things awkward. And that's really important to remember, you're not the one causing the fuss, you're not the one causing division by being who you are. And I'll speak to this, whether that is your racial identity as a Black person or as a Person of Color, whether that is your gender identity or your sexual identity, these are who you are, you don't want to be friends with somebody that's asking you to pack that away because it makes them uncomfortable.
Amena Brown:
So I want to follow this by answering an extra question when you said, what should I do? I would say, think about what it means to have people in your life who are trusted friends. Okay. And I want to give you a couple of things to think about as far as how I know that the white people that are in my life are trustworthy. And there's only a small number of white people in my life that I feel this way about to be very truthful. But here are a couple of things. One, I feel that they are trustworthy friends in my life when they are doing their own work regarding disentangling themselves from white supremacy, which is lifelong work, they're doing their own learnings around racism and racist systems in America. They are not expecting me to be their Black friend, to be their educator, to be their workshop facilitator, they're doing that stuff on their own time.
Amena Brown:
Sometimes they're doing that stuff and not even talking to me about it because they're doing that because they want to do some good in this world, because they want to be fighting against these systems of injustice, because they want to check their own privilege. They're doing that work, they're not just doing that work because me, they're doing it because they believe it's true and honest and just to do. And so that makes me feel like work, you're doing that work, you're learning, you're not expecting me to teach you. Also, when I have had moments like this, where I can say this moment I had right here, this experience, this is really hard on me as a Black woman specifically and this is why. And when I can say those things to the few of my friends I have, my few close friends that are white, when I say those things, then they are not like, well, I'm not really sure that actually happened the way you're describing here. I don't know, maybe, did you think about it this way? If you said it differently then maybe they wouldn't have responded.
Amena Brown:
They're not doing that kind of stuff, they're listening to me and holding space for my experience while also being able to admit they don't personally know my experience because they're not in the body that I'm in. They're not having this experience, but they're holding space for the fact that I am. Okay. So in this question, you have a friend who could be white or could just be someone that's not Black that cannot hold your honest perspectives and experiences. I think the hurtful part is realizing that they either may not be your friend at all, or they may not be a good friend for you. And I want to say to you, it is not your job to help them fix this, it's not your job to help them learn, it's not your job to become their teacher, their guru, their whatever, it's your job to be yourself and it's their job to do that work on their own.
Amena Brown:
And I find that for those relationships that are I guess, what we would call interracial friendships, if I can use that term, especially when one of those people in the friendship is Black, you need somebody that wants to hold that space and wants to do their own learning and their own education. So it may be a friendship that's going to end. It may be a friendship you may not be able to keep, but you want to have some of those things in your mind of what does it look like to have a friend that can actually hold space for your experiences? So I hope that helps. Come on. Okay. Next question is, how do you end a friendship that's no longer serving you? That seems like a good transition. I feel like sometimes you can have that conversation, like I know in these Q&A's, there are some places I've been saying to you all that, between dating and friendships, sometimes there's a little Venn diagram, there's a little middle part that's common between the two.
Amena Brown:
And when we think about having a breakup from someone that we dated, when we think about needing to end that relationship, we typically picture ourselves wanting to have a conversation with that person, so that they're clear on the fact that this is ending so that they're clear on why it's ending. And I want to say, if you can then have the conversation, I can only think of one time in my life that I went to someone to have a conversation to end a friendship. And you got a chance to hear my conversation with my friend Celita in our episodes. We did a two-part conversation about that because our friendship did survive a breakup. But even when I went to Celita and said, "Hey, I need some space there's things I'm figuring out." I really didn't intend to be like, this friendships over forever, I don't think I ever thought that. It might have come across that way and I don't think I really wanted that, I just do at that moment. I needed a break, a space, sometimes, something.
Amena Brown:
But I did have a friendship once, this was actually a guy friendship and this was a guy who I had gone to high school with, he was my best friend, one of my best friends from high school. And I was also secretly in love with him to be honest, and I'm like, I'm not sure, was it secret? Was it not so secret? But I was in love with him. And we stayed friends after high school, all through college, into our twenties and almost into our thirties as well. We reconnected we were in our late twenties again and had that moment as adults. Like, why didn't we ever do this? And he was like, I'm growing up, I'm getting serious about my life and me getting serious about my life makes me think about you and makes me think about maybe the possibilities of what this could be if we could make a relationship of this.
Amena Brown:
And I really wanted to do that because my high school self totally thought I was going to marry that man, to be honest. And then I met my now husband and I knew when we first started dating that, that was it for me. I knew that I wanted to marry him, I knew that even though my friend from high school had been just a crush that I'd had for a long time and all these different things that I thought were going to happen in our future, once I started dating Matt, I knew in dating Matt that there were other things that I wanted in a man that my friend from high school just didn't have and that I wanted that fullness that I was finding in this new relationship. And so I ended up having to have a face-to-face conversation with my friend from high school to let him know, this is it for us.
Amena Brown:
Because we had the kind of friendship that I feel like, some people you can have friendships with people that you may have been attracted to in the past, or you may have wanted to date in the past or something. And sometimes you can end up actually having a friendship of that, but I didn't see a way that he and I could remain friends. I felt like our friendship had really gone beyond a point of being platonic anymore. And so it was a moment of me having to look in the eyes of someone that had feelings for me, that I'd had feelings for him in the past and tell him that I'm in love with this other man, and I'm going to have a great life with him and him looking at me and being like, dang, I really didn't want to hear that, but I care about you and I want the best for you. So I bow out of that. And for us, that conversation meant the end of our friendship. And so am I glad that I had that closure? I'm absolutely glad.
Amena Brown:
And I also want to say to the listener that asked this question, you may not always get that closure in the way that I was able to get it. I mean, in my whole life, that's only happened to me once that I can say I had a conversation and the friendship was over and that was that. And we both walked away at peace about the conversation we'd had. So how do you end a friendship that's no longer serving you. You can get your courage up and if the other person's willing, you can have a conversation and walk away from it, both of you hopefully feeling a peace about it, or you may feel at peace about it and the person across from you may hate it, really bad, but you know this is what you need to do for yourself. The other thing I want to say is sometimes it may not require a conversation or sometimes as we talked about with ghosting, sometimes you may discover that person is not in a place where you can or need to have that conversation with them.
Amena Brown:
So a lot of my friendships that have actually ended, we didn't talk about it, it started with just some space. And I normally take that space when I feel like I'm in a friendship that's no longer serving me. I take some space to see how do I feel about this? What are the vibes? And sometimes when I take that space, we just never return to each other, and that's how the friendship ended. And I think it's okay to let space and time tell you what is going to happen. Because sometimes you're burdened thinking, oh man, I think this friendship is over now, all these things. And sometimes the other person's feeling like maybe it's over too and maybe you let space and time tell you and you let that be your closure, let that be your peace.
Amena Brown:
those would be my two things, try a conversation if you can. It takes a lot of courage and it can be tough, but try that if you can. And if not, give yourself and that friendship space and time away and see if it's something that you want to return to, or if the other person feels the same way as you. Last question, why is it so hard to make and keep friends as an adult? Let me tell you why. This is why. Okay. When we were in high school, we had school, you're seeing those people every day for all those hours for five days a week. And then some of us went to college, so then you're in a situation where some of those people, you're living in a dorm with them. That's your roommate, that's your suite, mate, these are people you went to class with, pull the all nighters with. Some people that joined the military or went into other sorts of trade school or job training, you had these early twenties moments where you were in almost a living situation with people.
Amena Brown:
Maybe you all lived in that same apartment complex or lived in that same neighborhood in your twenties. And there were just these ways that you could be really available for random friendships all the time, because we really were living so close to each other and in each other space so much. But as we get older, which for a lot of us may happen when we're in our mid to late twenties, going into our early thirties, we are branching out in our own work lives, we're moving to different areas of town that are more helpful for us or where we live. Some of us may be starting a business and that's going to change our dynamic of our availability. Some of us became parents, some of us got a partner and now that's a relationship that you're cultivating. So there's a lot of things there that play a role in why it's hard to make and keep friends as an adult. But here are my suggestions for what to do.
Amena Brown:
If you want to make friends as an adult, first of all, in general, think about your social life and ask yourself, do you really have one? Okay. You're going to work, you're coming home, maybe you got your pets or your plants or whatever, but what do you do outside of work and being in your house? Do you have other social things that you love to do? Do you like to play video games? Do you like to craft or crochet? Is there a sport that you like to play just leisurely or whatever? And whatever that is, try to find ways to reconnect to something that you're interested in, and it really, it could also in certain ways be connected to your job, I do think that can be a way to also make new friends, maybe not at your job, but if you think about your industry, there are all sorts of ways that you can. Of course, in the before times you could go to different conferences, you can connect with people online. So you can even use your job or your career as a way to try to connect with other people.
Amena Brown:
But think about your social life, think about something you enjoy doing outside of work, if possible, and try to find ways to connect with other people. When it's safe to, you can do a little Meetup situation or do a Facebook group if you're a Facebook person. Follow the hashtags of things that are important to you online, and that also connects you to some other people. Okay. And the second part of your question, how do you keep friends? I want you to think about how can you cultivate the current friendships that you have, and we talked a little bit about this in the episode about girlfriend's poem, are there friends that you can stay better connected to? And also, let me give you a little bit of advice, when it comes to keeping friends as an adult, I want to talk a little bit for a second about keeping new friends and I want to tell you to take your time. Maybe you've got a friend that you've known for 20 years, you call them up and just cry and snide and tell them all the stuff going on in your life.
Amena Brown:
But maybe your new friend isn't ready to hear about your parents' divorce, give yourself some time, pace yourself emotionally, when you make new friends. It's okay if those friendships remain on the surface at first, or if some of those friendships stay on the surface forever. It's okay to have friends that you just talk about the game with. It's okay to have some friends that you just hang out and go shopping with them, or you hang out with them and talk about this nerdy thing that you both love, that's okay. That doesn't mean it's a bad friendship because you're not going to the depths of your soul. But if you're just meeting the person, definitely don't go to the depths of your soul so quick, just give yourself a little space and time to get to know that person, let them get to know you, earn their trust, let them earn your trust. And that is a way that you can keep friends as an adult.
Amena Brown:
I really enjoyed answering your questions. You'll ask some great questions. I know I don't know it all, I don't know everything. I know y'all know that after listening to this podcast. But I hope I was able to provide some things for you think about, or maybe get in conversation with your friends about. Friends are important and when we find good friends, we want to keep them and also we want to be a good friend ourselves too. So thanks for all the good questions y'all. Talk to you next time.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.