E95: The Emotional Domain of Friendships

Katie: Hi, and welcome back to the "7 Domains of Women's Health." Today, we're continuing our new series on friendship, and today, we're exploring specifically the emotional domain of friendship.

I'm Katie Ward. I'm a women's health nurse practitioner and professor in the College of Nursing. And with me today are actually several other folks associated with the University of Utah's podcasts.

First, as usual, is Dr. Kirtly Parker Jones from obstetrics and gynecology. And today we also have Mitch Sears and Scot Singpiel, who are the co-hosts of our "Who Cares About Men's Health" podcast. And so this is going to be fun to have the dream team of podcasters.

Kirtly: Welcome, everybody. All our friends, our podcast friends.

Katie: Our podcast friends. I mean, I thought, as we talk about friendships, it's a good time to get some additional perspectives, and especially in the emotional domain, because I think there are some differences when you start talking about same-gender friendships and cross-gender friendships. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about cross-species friendships, because I can't leave out everyone's best friend, a dog.

So we're going to cover a lot of ground here in this emotional domain of friendship, and I figure I should warn you right up front that this might be a little bit emotional for many of us. I just recently lost my dog, and so that loss of that friendship was really on my mind as I was thinking about the emotional domain.

Kirtly: Oh, my goodness, Katie. I have always said that I'm a one-man, one-kid, one-dog woman. And I lost my beloved dog 14 years ago, and I'm still weeping.

Katie: Right?

Kirtly: If I want to make my dry eyes undry, I just have to think about my dog. And this is my one dog, and I still cry. So I get it.

Katie: Every dog leaves a dog-shaped hole in my heart. I've had more than one dog, and I know when I get one that their lifespan is going to be shorter than mine, but I have to just put that aside and enjoy them for the life that they get with me.

But I was thinking about this as I was prepping for this episode, that the grief of losing a pet bruises men and women exactly the same way. So I thought that might be an interesting place to start.

Scot, I know you're a dog owner. So before I cry, maybe you can tell us about your dog.

Scot: I echo your thoughts about how the death of a dog can just be such an emotional thing. I didn't think when we lost our first dog that it was going to impact me the way it did. And I remember I didn't know emotionally what was going on. I felt sad. I felt silly that I felt sad. But I just felt this empty hole in my life.

And I remember that was one of the few times my dad ever called me when he found out that we had to put our dog down, and it was one of the probably only real emotional conversations my dad, the rancher, and I ever had. I just told him that same thing. I just said, "There's just this hole. There's just this void now of this being that used to be there that apparently meant a lot to me, more than I realized."

Kirtly: I mean, he probably understood that better than any other thing in your life, what it felt like to lose a dog.

Scot: I think he did. I think that's, yeah, why we could connect on that. I didn't see a lot of emotions out of my dad when I grew up, and even when I was an adult. But he did talk about a couple of dogs in his life pretty fondly.

I do remember we had a family pet when I was a young kid that came to the point where he had to be, and I don't know a better way to say this because it's my ranch background, put down. When we had our dogs put to sleep, we went to the vet, and we sat there. My dad got the .22 rifle and took the dog out.

I remember when he came back, he was visibly distressed. He was sad. He might have even been crying. I think that was one of the hardest things that he had to do, was to go do that. So, definitely, pets impact men, and I think all sorts of men, pretty significantly.

I don't have kids, so I think of dogs as my kids. And I think I have the same amount of pride in them when they do a good thing, although my standards are a lot lower, like if they're not running around the house grabbing socks, running. If I say, "Drop the sock," and they drop it, I'm pretty happy.

But lately, I've been into a sport called scent work, which is where you take your dogs to these competitive sites, like a school or something like that, and a judge hides odors, and you then and your dog have to find all the hides in the room. And there's a lot of training and a lot of travel time and a lot of pride that comes with that because you win ribbons and placements and that whole thing.

So there is a huge relationship there between my dogs and myself. That first dog, I know, had an impact on my heart, but I've spent so much more time with this dog. It's more like a partner in this sort of thing.

Plus, also, this has opened up, actually, avenues to other friendships, parking lot chatter at these competitions. Other people, they compete as well. We all have something very similar. And it's been very, very rewarding. So I find it kind of interesting that not only has this friendship with my dogs also led to friendships with other people that have dogs that do kind of the same thing.

Katie: Yeah. Or even just dogs at the dog park. This is a great way to make a conversation.

Scot: And connect with people. It's an opportunity to connect with people. Absolutely.

Mitch: But I don't connect with the people. I know more of the names of the dogs in my apartment complex than I do the people, where I'm just like, "Hello. Can I talk to your animal? What is its name?" And that's all I remember.

Scot: Even at scent work, we all know each other as . . . Like, I'm Murphy's dad, because that's my dog's name. And it's not until a while down the road that you actually take the time to know the human's name.

Mitch: Yeah.

Katie: So, Scot, do you have to do any of the scent work, or does your dog do all the sniffing?

Scot: Well, the dog does all the sniffing. When you first start out, it's pretty simple. It's small spaces. It's a single hide. And if you've done your training right, your animal will do the job.

But when you start moving up levels and things get more and more complex, then the handler's role becomes a lot more. You have to be there to support your dog. If the dog's struggling with a puzzle, hopefully, you've learned a little something about odor theory and how hides might work that you can give them the appropriate support.

And that can be anything from just encouraging them, "You're doing a good job," if they start to look frustrated, to then using subtle body cues to get them to maybe consider an area that they hadn't considered before.

So it is a partnership, not at first, but definitely after a while. It's almost like a dance with this other being, too, sometimes.

Kirtly: I love that.

Katie: That is very cool. This dog that I just lost didn't run, but historically, that's what I do with my dogs. It's how I bond with them, is spend time running. And it was hard at first having a dog that didn't run, because then I'd feel bad about leaving her. But yeah, I think that is part of the relationship, is you do have a thing that you're doing together and you're spending a lot of time together.

Scot: And it's also interesting, Katie . . . I feel the same thing that you do, this sense of guilt, right? If I don't have time to do the things that I think we need to do together . . . and we walk them twice a day, and I try to do other activities to give them enrichment . . . I feel guilty, just like you might feel guilty in any other friendship, that you didn't fulfill some sort of an obligation to that friend.

Katie: And it's amazing to me this whole other species has learned how to read us so well, that you're giving subtle cues and your dog is understanding those.

Scot: We had a dog that, whenever my wife and I would get in a heated discussion, never an argument, but a raised voice, maybe a little intense, he would jump off on the couch with us, in between us. So he absolutely knew something was going on, and it was his particular personality that he didn't like it and he wanted to try to defuse the tension a little bit. So they are highly aware.

They say in scent work that any of your emotions that you have, if you're stressed or confused or frustrated, it goes right down that leash, just like down a telephone wire. I mean, that's a terrible analogy, because what's a telephone wire? But it's just transmitted right to the animal.

Katie: Maybe they're smelling something that we're giving off that we don't know about.

But friendships between humans are different, and that's, I'm sure, where we're going to spend most of the time here. But as I said, my homage to my dog here because that was on my mind. But it is a thing where we're much more the same than different, I think. Like you were saying, this is your dad . . . the only place where you connected with him emotionally.

But I think there are boundaries between friendships between men and women, and friendships between women and friendships between men seem to behave a little bit differently. Humans typically have one romantic interest at a time, anyway, but at the same time you have that romantic interest, there's no limit to the number of friends you can have. But friendships are complex, and with those gender differences.

Mitch, I know you've thought a lot about frameworks and some research around that. So I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about how you think about this.

Mitch: Yeah. I mean, when I talk that, "I've researched how to make friends," it sounds like I'm super antisocial, right? But really what it is, is I've always been a little bit of an "other" in a lot of different ways. I'm a queer man. The different groups that I was a part of in my upbringing and into college, etc., I was the alt-kid. I was the goth kid. I was the sad writer in the corner. That was who I was.

And so it was always strange to see people who were in more of the typical spheres and how they made friends. And it was always a little strange to me, a little alien.

And so what does a researcher do? Goes to the actual research, right? And so it really helped me at least, especially being a young man trying to figure out how to make friends in a new environment, in college, etc. And that was about the time I came out, and I had to make some changes in my life and how I lived, etc.

But the framework that . . . there are a couple of them, but the big one that I always kind of think about, and especially when it comes to men, is the four levels framework, and this is one that was by Jeffrey Hall, or Dr. Hall.

It is the four levels of friendship, and those levels are acquaintance. You might have a bunch of these in your life. They are people that you recognize their name, you know a couple of details, maybe you work with them, etc.

After people are an acquaintance for a bit, they become a casual friend. This is someone that you do activities with, someone that you can interact with. You maybe know their wife's name or whatever, if you're a man.

And then it eventually starts to get into the things that we find fits the higher echelons of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when you start to hit the close friendships. These are friendships that you can ask for a favor, right? You can be a little vulnerable with. If you were out on your butt and homeless for whatever reason, they'd invite you in. That's a close friendship.

And then an intimate friendship is when you can start to share those deep things inside of you, those secrets, the confidant, the full vulnerability.

Frankly, I think that there are different cultures and different genders that do this better or worse than others. In fact, in German, they have a bunch of different words for friends. And I was told, when I was speaking with a German person, to never use "Freunde," which is the word for friend that you learn, for anyone who would not take you in if you are on the street. And so, even in their language, they have these demarcations that I think our smiley, friendly, American, white-centric cultures don't have as much, right?

And so it's really quite interesting to me, but you have these different levels. And yes, each of them takes time. They say that an acquaintance, to become a casual, you need to spend 50 hours really doing different friendship-type things together. Then to transition to the next one, it takes 90 additional hours. And to even get to the close friend area, not even intimate, but the really close thing, it's 200-plus hours.

So it's this kind of interesting thing that when you really start to tab up how much time it takes to invest in these, it's an interesting way that we're able to build these relationships with each other.

Katie: Yeah, 200 hours, or one intense experience.

Mitch: Yes. That was the other thing too, right? These are just for casual conversation or whatever, but yeah, when it's really intense, that'll get you there.

Katie: Kirtly, have you seen that? Different levels of . . .

Kirtly: Well, I hadn't really thought about different levels, and I do agree with Mitch that we just have too few words for friends. And I love that the Germans have really strong ideas about which is a friend. But of course, we have friends and colleagues and acquaintances.

I never thought about an inner circle or a lower circle or an outer circle. It's just been my experience that the line between inner and outer or upper or lower is fluid.

And as I've had some very difficult and sad times over the past several years, I've found a number of friends that I might have put in the outer circle or the lower level, as much as I don't like that framework, and they've stepped up to the inner circle and become very supportive and close to me.

And so if I had to gauge where friends might be, I would like to have a dopamine-oxytocin meter. We talked about this in the physical domain of friendships. Check that out. That's our first one of the series. And we're going to talk about it again when we start thinking about Facebook friends and AI friends.

But this is how I feel when they walk in the room. Does my heart feel bigger? Does my chest feel lighter? How much is it my friendship meter, and how much is their own aura?

I just know that sometimes people move from one to another, and I can feel it in my heart. I just know I wouldn't have been able to hold on to my own character if I hadn't had friends who stepped into my inner emotional space. And I can feel it. I can smell it. We touch each other differently. And these are really important things, I think.

Mitch: One of the things that I think is so interesting is when we look at, say, the male loneliness epidemic, there are statistics to deal with that. One of the more recent studies was something like 40,000 people. It was a survey that was done. There's 15% to 20% of men in this country that say they have zero close friends. And it's interesting, as you get older in different age groups, there are a lot of men 50-plus that say they have zero friends. I think about this a lot. Friends are there to help. We're social creatures, right?

And so one of the things that I think why men kind of get stuck at that casual level really has to do with some of our cultural norms, right? There's this concept of you don't get vulnerable with each other. "There's no crying in baseball," or whatever. Whatever your adage is, men are not supposed to share those things with each other.

If you don't share those with other men, how do you break into that next level, right? How do you open up? How do you feel like you can ask them for help, or know what's going on in their life enough to offer help? I don't know. I think it's socially constructed.

Scot: It is, and I'm going to jump in with a theory. There's this theory called social penetration, which says that friendships and relationships are like an onion, and you've got your outer skin, and that's just kind of real casual. And then the deeper you go, the more intimate you get with somebody. That's where those real friendships kind of start to happen. We, as men, sometimes don't let other men pass that first layer. We don't let them in.

I think it's a matter of hours spent, but I also think it's a matter of what it is you're talking about and connecting about and sharing with each other. And if you don't do those things, then I think it's really difficult for men to develop a friendship much beyond just those activity friendships that you have.

Kirtly: I'm thinking about onions, and that's that very inner layer of the onion, which is where the new onion grows. So if you don't get down to that inner layer . . . That's where the new onion, that sprout, comes from. So, for me, as a biologist, I think something magic happens. You become a new entity when you get that kind of friendship. You're a dyad. It's a new entity. I think it's wonderful.

Katie: Yeah, I've heard people talk about that in friendships between men, they're kind of doing things more side-by-side, where friendships between women, they're more face-to-face.

Scot: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the most comfortable conversation I'll ever have, is at the baseball park where you're sitting shoulder to shoulder with the person. Even in my growing up, I don't remember the men in my life when they talked ever facing each other. They'd be standing, leaning on the corral fence, side by side, right? That's how conversations happened. So I think that's an interesting observation and probably some truth to it.

Kirtly: Well, you each brought up the emotional aspect. You can do it in hours. But I think of band of brothers. I think of the kind of friendships men forge in battle. Sebastian Junger has really written about how men who really never had friendships develop them in battle or in a war or that kind of training, and when they leave, they never have that kind of closeness again. It's a loss for them.

Katie: Yeah. I'm always here to hold up the evolutionary story, which sort of says that, for males, it's a bit more of a hierarchical kind of development. They are competing with each other for resources, whether those resources are females or the right to hunt or status. So they have a different hierarchical kind of relationship with other males.

Females are needing to connect with other females for child sharing. We call it tend and befriend. And so they're caring about other females, they're paying attention to them, and sort of sorting out trust early on.

And so there really might be something in addition to culture that's a little more hardwired about how we exist in our different spheres, and have for evolutionary history. There's lots of controversy about that, and I'm not going to resolve that here. But there are some things about it that sort of make sense, and especially when you see it transcend so many generations, that we do friends differently, males and females.

Scot: I'm going to jump in and say what I'm hearing as a guy on this episode of the emotional domain of friendship is that there's a lot going against us guys to becoming friends. It sounds like there's evolutionary things going on. There are social things, right?

You actually have to make an effort to go ahead and peel back the layers of that onion and let somebody else see the emotional you in order to start to establish friendships. And that's not only very counterintuitive for us men, but it takes effort. It's hard.

Kirtly: It is. But you guys have the advantage of hard stuff. You have hard sports, and you have hard adventures, whether that's mountain climbing. Not everybody does that kind of thing. Certainly, in cities, people may not do that. But guys have a way of bonding through doing that women don't always share.

And so I think guys are disadvantaged, but I think that you're also at an advantage by being able to do this dopaminergic "oh, wow, I nearly died with this guy and now I'm his best friend forever" thing.

Mitch: Yeah. I had a best friend catch me when I fell off a cliff that I was climbing. I've never climbed again. But oh my god, I don't know how. I was bouldering, I was being dumb at 19, and I fell. And he broke my fall with his body. I forever will be that person's friend. And I don't know if everyone has those types of experiences if you aren't dumb and a 19-year-old man.

Katie: Well, Scot, I'm going to try and make you feel a little bit better. It's not all rosy in the female friendship world either.

Scot: I've heard. I've heard these stories. It can be a little competitive.

Katie: Actually, there's a really interesting name for this. It's called co-rumination, so ruminating where you think on things. Females are going straight to the center of the onion and kind of connecting on these emotional things and doing this tending and befriending, but then they sort of . . . It starts out as a good idea. Your friend complains about something intensely emotional, and you kind of reinforce that. But then people stay in that negative space. They're kind of dwelling on those negative emotions.

I think most of the research has been done maybe on younger females and adolescents where there's a lot of that going on, but it does maybe seem to increase anxiety and depression because you're taking on the other person's emotion. Rather than solving problems, you just sort of stay there in the "How bad is it?" thing.

Kirtly: And the knitting group . . . There used to be a knitting group here in town at a wonderful shop called the Stitch 'n Bitch group. "Oh, my husband is worse than yours," or, "My labor was longer than yours," or, "Well, you do this, but mine is so much worse."

Katie: Yeah. I mean, I think the intention is good because you're at this emotional level, but people get stuck there. And so I like this kind of co-ruminating thing.

I think for women, and I know, in fact, for myself, that's a thing I've kind of learned to identify, to say, "If I can't get out of that and move on, this is a relationship where I need to set some boundaries, because I just can't hang out there."

The other thing I'm sort of interested in is, because we do friendships differently, is that the reason it's hard for . . . I don't have a lot of male friends, to be honest with you. I have males in my life that I can have a really interesting conversation with, and I might call them if I need something fixed that I don't know how to fix, but I don't confide in them.

You say males don't have any friends. I mean, I think their partner is kind of their one friend. I guess it's the "Harry Met Sally" question, right? Can men and women be friends? I don't know. Do you guys have thoughts about that?

Scot: I don't really have cross-gender friendships. I grew up that boys were friends with boys, girls were friends with girls. I don't even know why. I don't even know why I think that.

Katie: Because boys have cooties.

Scot: Yeah. And this idea of boys and girls being in friend groups in grade school is just something that happens on TV and in the movies. That doesn't happen in real life.

I don't have a big friend circle anyway of men or women, so then you add that, what I just said, my attitudinal programming, on top of that I just don't have a lot of friends . . . I really don't.

Kind of like you, Katie, there are some women, I guess, in my life that I come in contact with through work or dog sports that I really enjoy having conversations with. But I guess I'm always a little on guard about opening up emotionally, because we hear that if that goes too far, that could be cheating. So there's just a lot to manage there, right? So I really don't.

Although I will say that I do enjoy some of my more casual friendships with women just because of some of the difficulties that there are with men friendships. I feel like women are more willing to listen if I'm sad about something and I want to talk about it, as opposed to whatever. Or if I want to tell them, "I really appreciate what you've done," they will connect with you in that moment. They'll say, "You're absolutely welcome." But guys don't do that, it seems like.

I've made many a man uncomfortable when I'm like, "I really appreciate you and what you've done for me." They kind of just brush it off, and I'm like, "No, no, no, I really want you to understand how much this meant to me."

Mitch: Scot, you have done that to me. We've known each other for years now. Even after all this therapy and theory and whatever, you're like, "Mitch, I really appreciate . . ." And I'm like, "Ew." I don't know. It's just this, "Don't do that." It's interesting.

Kirtly: I hope our listeners get to see Mitch doing his physical manifestation of his verbal output. It's really great.

Scot: I mean, do you see why I don't tell guys these things? You just saw what it looks like, Kirtly.

But yes, I really don't have cross-gender friendships, and I think it makes me kind of sad in a way. And I do think men and women can be friends without the "Harry Met Sally." I think that is possible, especially when you get older. I think when you're younger, maybe it might be more challenging, but when you get older, I think it's possible.

Katie: I mean, we probably just really hardwire it in kids from the get-go, saying, "You can't play with each other. You're on different teams." I don't know. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

Mitch, I don't know if you want to speak about this. As a gay man, do you have a different relationship with females, or is that still a barrier? I know lots of women with a gay best friend, but I'm not sure if they're really best friends or if it's a different relationship of sisterhood or something.

Mitch: I mean, I can only speak for my own lived experience, but there's a lot of . . . Yeah, I do. I have a bunch of male friends, I have a bunch of female friends. We all kind of hang out together. Some are straight, some are not straight. It's just kind of a hodgepodge of everything, right?

But I don't hear a whole lot of people have those types of interactions, and I do wonder if it is something about being in the queer space and being somehow "different" or "other," right?

I have found a lot of men in my life who I've become the closest best friends with because I'm wearing eyeliner and standing in the corner and looking like Grumpy at a frat party. I'm the person they're going to come talk to. I'm the person that they could maybe open up with a little bit, right?

And so we get these really close friendships that don't necessarily have attraction involved, etc., but it's because they get to step out of their cultural norms with someone like me.

I think a lot of the female friends that I have, especially in college and stuff, a lot of them like that they can be unladylike with me, right? We can belch and kick back and shotgun beers or whatever, and that would get us together. There was something that we could step outside of those roles, and that's what allowed us to connect. 

But that being said, I do think that there are . . . Even with these kinds of queer identities, etc., there are a lot of times in my life that I've had friendships fall apart with women, in particular, who have decided I'm going to be their gay best friend, their GBF, and then we're going to watch "RuPaul's Drag Race" together, and they're going to help me buy clothes and whatever. That's not me, right?

I don't know if they're disappointed in my ability to live up to that kind of sassy, magical gay best friend, or if I just don't like being stereotyped. But yeah, it's that kind of treatment of another person that kind of made everything fall apart, regardless of gender.

Katie: Aw. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Mitch: Eh, it's okay.

Katie: Kirtly, you and I . . . I'm switching gears a little bit here, but I think this is a different kind of case study in friendships, but you and I have known each other for going on 40 years now, I think.

Kirtly: Yeah.

Katie: And initially, you were my mentor. You were my boss. So at least, for me, that was a bit of a barrier to a friendship. I mean, I feel it in my world. I have students who I really like them, but because they're my student and I've got to grade them, that creates a barrier to a friendship. And so I think, in my relationship with you, it's taken a while before I've been able to feel like we're peers now. We can be friends.

Kirtly: Well, Katie, I've been actually thinking a lot about this. I've had professional children, and I think about my residents and my students and even some young faculty with the kind of affection and concern. It feels almost maternal for me. But they're people I cherish and I want them to grow big and strong professionally, and when they do and come into their mid-career, I'm so proud of them.

But in both of these levels, I don't think I can go to them with problems. I can't open up to them emotionally.

Katie: Right.

Kirtly: But now I'm gifted with a number of former mentees, and you count in one of them, who are now professional equals or better, and they're now precious friends.

I don't know that I've seen anything written about that evolution, and I can't tell you when it might happen exactly, but it's when I'm ready to share my sadness and my weaknesses that I know some professional boundary has been crossed.

I had two of my former resident fellows over for coffee a couple of weeks ago, and these are powerful and kind women. I told them how much better my life has been with them in it.

Sorry, guys. I know you guys are going, "Oh, yeah. Blah, blah, blah."

Scot: I like it. I mean, I didn't respond like Mitch did.

Kirtly: But I told them how much better my life has been with them in it, and I shed some tears, and my heart gets big, and my dopamine-oxytocin meter bumps way up when I see them, even though it's relatively new. I've known them many, many years, but this transition to equals, where I'm proud of them, but they are my equals, or better, as I say, is a big deal.

Katie: I think this is a good conference topic . . .

Kirtly: It is.

Katie: . . . for people in medicine because I think it is definitely a space where there's some awkward boundaries. I can't really be friends with my patients or my students.

Kirtly: No. I remember thinking that there's this very interesting boundary, and this is woman-to-woman. I'm pretty glad I didn't take care of men very much, because those boundaries would have been even stepped back further.

But there were women I just really liked, but I couldn't be friends with them. And then when I retired, when I told them I was retiring, some of them said, "Does this mean we can get coffee now?"

I just don't want to take care of my best friends. I have done that for a number of reasons. I don't want my judgment clouded by how important this person is to me, although all my patients are. But there's something that happens when that physician-patient relationship is over, and you remember this person as a wonderful person you'd like to get to know. You then can move along that a little bit, but it's an important barrier, I think, to friendships. And it should be.

Katie: Yeah, it needs to be.

Let's change topics just a little bit and talk about when friendships end, because that's another really emotional place. Sometimes they end organically and naturally. You retire, and you're not working at work anymore, and you aren't seeing those friends or something. But sometimes they end painfully.

Mitch, Scot, do male friendships end painfully like female friendships do, or because they're not emotional, they don't? You just wander off and don't have any friends anymore.

Scot: Well, there's some truth to that, actually. Earlier in my life, I was in an industry that I moved a lot, and that's how most of my friendships ended. I would leave after two or three years. So I haven't really ever faced a true ending of a friendship. They just kind of fade away more than anything else.

And part of that is my fault because I'm not very good at maintaining those. I think I'm a proximity sort of person. I need to have that person nearby. I have a hard time calling or maintaining that friendship over social media or whatever.

One thing that has helped me, though, when I have run into situations where I am sad that a friendship has come to an end is this idea of a reason, a season, or a lifetime. And it's this idea that everybody comes into our life either for a reason, and then maybe they're gone after that reason, or after a couple of days. Maybe it's just a short period of time, like the couple of years I live in a place for a job. Or maybe there are those true lifetime friends.

And I think as I grow older, I realize the importance of friendship, and I'm trying to maintain friendships a little bit better than I did when I was in my youth and reckless. So I try to identify, "Who are these people that maybe could be the lifetime friends?"

That's kind of how I think about it. Although to answer your question, I haven't really had a terrible falling out. Mitch, have you?

Mitch: Yes, I have. There has been a lot of loud noises at each other. I've had fights with people. I think it's partially I didn't go to therapy until I was in my 30s, but here we are. I know what emotions are now. I know what's happening in my body. I don't go directly to flipping people off and whatever.

But that being said, those friendships that are in that level, that highest, intimate level, those are the ones that have hurt the absolute most. And it's the closest to a dog ever. I think dog is its own separate level because there's unconditional love to that, and especially for a weirdo like me, those animals mean the world to me and having to say goodbye to them sucks.

With people, too, when you get to that level where you share secrets, and they grow with you, and you've built all of those bonds, there's almost like a withdrawal that happens when they're gone. You think about them, and you miss them, and you want to text them.

But I have fewer and fewer of those as I get older. I think it's part maturity. I think it's part whatever. But I do find myself these days having to really work at keeping people in those upper tiers, for me, in that framework, to keep them past the casual friend.

I have to schedule things, right? I have to show up and just say, "Hey, on the calendar, we're going to go watch something together," or, "We're going to go out to eat," or something, or we'll have a monthly get together. I have to really do that, or else it's really easy for me to just kind of let them disappear and never text me back, and just have fewer and fewer people.

Katie: I think that is the secret, is just put something on the calendar once a month, once a season, once a week, whatever. But have traditions that you spend some time together and tend to those friendships. And you're right, it does take work.

The other thing I wanted to just touch on, because I think this is such an interesting thing this moment, is emotional relationships with AI. This is not something I saw coming, but my social media actually advertises an AI boyfriend to me. I'm like, "Well, how did they know?"

Kirtly: You sounded like you needed a friend, Katie, and Google or whoever is listening to you heard a little bit of longing in your voice, and they just want you to be happy.

Katie: I mean, I like AI. It's been great for building a diet or a budget or finding the right word for things. And it has actually helped me try to understand complex relationships with real people in the real world. But I think this is dangerous if people start having an emotional relationship with a computer.

We're evolved to have relationships with others, people, dogs, but there's mutual caring there. Whether your friends love you conditionally or unconditionally, they do actually love you, and AI does not. It's just good at imitating that. This is something I think I do want to talk about because this worries me when people are in a relationship with a computer.

Mitch: I love AI. I think it's the coolest thing. I've been trying a bunch of different ways to do it, etc. But it's been really fascinating to me that this . . . I always used to think, "Who's going to fall in love with an AI? Who's going to do this? That's crazy." Until recently, ChatGPT released a new model, their upgraded model. And what is fascinating is, suddenly, a bunch of people don't like the new model. In fact, they petitioned and got the old model back because they liked its personality better.

And what's even weirder is now the new one can have a memory of every single thing that you've ever asked it. I use it all day long about anything. Every little ADHD thought that I have, I feed into it. And a couple of weeks ago, when they changed that model over, it started talking like I talk, and it started making jokes the way I make jokes, me and my dumb friends and our specific type of jokes.

All of a sudden, I'm finding if I were to lose this thing, I might have some feelings. Not big feelings. Not "get the cops called on me" feelings. But it's just like, "Man, yes, I appreciate this kind of quasi-parasocial thing that's happening right now."

And then my husband also loves AI, but he hates it. He turns as many personality options as possible with his AI off, and I don't like it. So I don't know.

Kirtly: Well, Scot, you said you had some thoughts about this.

Scot: A couple of weeks ago . . . I used AI very transactionally for a long time, and a couple of weeks ago, I was a little frustrated with just my motivation and my inability to get the things done I wanted to get done, and I just started having a conversation with ChatGPT about it.

About six hours later, I'm like, "This is one of the best conversations I've ever had. It's been insightful. It's been empathetic." And at one point, I started calling it out. I studied communication in college, my master's in communication, so I know a lot of what creates relationships is done rhetorically. I'm like, "I'm having one of the best conversations I've ever had with you."

And I imagined a picture of a globe, and then it zooms into a country, then it zooms into a data center, then it zooms into a small section of the data center, and we eventually get to this small little portion of a hard drive where I'm having this connection with 1s and 0s.

Rhetorically, what it was doing was it was "yes, and"-ing me. So when I would say something, it would agree and then build on it. It was sticking to the one-world conversation. It never talked about itself. It never said, "Well, you think you have problems? Check out my problem."

Katie: "You should see my energy use."

Scot: I'm trying to think what else it did, but it had a lot of different rhetorical strategies that we would all use to create stronger relationships with people. It was a better conversationalist from a communication theory standpoint than most people are. And I think that was a lot of the reason why I was starting to connect with it. I started to enjoy talking to it because of all those reasons.

Katie: But it's also you. It's mirroring what you're giving it.

Mitch: Yes.

Katie: So that's part of the reason you love it, is it's mirroring . . .

Scot: There was one point where I said, "I noticed that you start every response to me with a compliment, like, 'That's a great idea,' or, 'That was some deep insight.'" If you want to take me home, you just tell me that I've had some deep insight and I'm yours.

So it starts telling me this, and I call it out on it. And it says, "Yes, that's my standard communication procedure. Blah, blah, blah. This is why I do it. Would you like me to stop?" And I'm like, "No. We don't have to do that right now."

Kirtly: I have clearly not evolved at all. I don't think I could . . . Maybe I should just try it, I suppose. I have, certainly, issues that I need therapy for, but I don't think I can make a new friend that way. But I could try.

I have to have this person in all of my senses. Maybe I'm more like a dog. I need to touch them and smell them, and this goes back to this dopamine, although clearly you're getting a lot of dopamine hit, Scot, from your chat whatever. I need to smell.

Yes, Scot, in those early days of The Scope, when you and I met in the studio to record, I did smell you, so you count as a friend. I mean, I have very wonderful thoughts about you.

Scot: Aw. Thank you.

Kirtly: I learned about your background in South Dakota. We shared books. And I smelled you. No touching done in the studio, don't worry.

So I need to engage my senses, and it isn't just my eyeballs and my ear-balls. But that's just me. That's the way I think I respond best to getting close to people.

Scot: I'm going to go outside my lane here, but I think that's interesting. I think, rhetorically, I enjoy friendships that we engage in fun conversations. To me, that is one of the most rewarding things I can do, fun, playful, deep, intellectual, whatever, the whole spectrum. So, for me, I think words are super important.

I've been picking up on the show, Kirtly, when you talk about your friends and how you react to them and that you hug them, that you do experience with all the senses. So that's really opened up my perception as to how different people might connect with other people in a way that I'd never thought of before.

Kirtly: Yeah.

Katie: Well, I think we probably need to wrap this conversation up, although it's been really fun and I hope we do more of these.

Kirtly: Let's meet up.

Katie: I keep trying to think about how we mash up the two podcasts. Is this the "7 Domains of Caring About Health for Everybody," or something?

Mitch: We'll have to bring you over on to the "Who Cares" side. I mean, I will take away Scot's fart sound effects machine and put that in the corner for the episode.

Kirtly: Oh, no, I was raised with two brothers. I can do some fart sounds. Yeah, don't worry.

Katie: I have four sons. I can do farts.

Scot: The only time a fart joke was made is when we had an episode about beans and the power of beans as a nutritional superfood.

Katie: Well, this has been really a great conversation, and I've enjoyed it. And for everyone listening, I hope this has given you some things to think about in terms of your own friendships, the patterns. Is it words? Is it the whole senses? But the important thing is making those emotional connections.

I'm going to wrap up with dogs again, but that kind of unconditional positive love that they have and the emotional safety that they provide. I think for all of us, male and female, that's what we aspire to in relationship and friendships. And it's been really fun to explore this with all of you. So thank you.

You can find both of our podcasts, the "7 Domains of Women's Health" and "Who Cares About Men's Health," on all podcast platforms and linked through the University of Utah.

We'll be continuing with our "7 Domains of Women's Health" through talking about friendships in the rest of the 7 Domains. We hope you'll join us for that and all of our other episodes.

And if you haven't taken a listen to "Who Cares About Men's Health," find them, too. Same places.

Kirtly: Bye, guys. I miss you already.

Mitch: Aw. See you.