E97: The Intellectual Domain of Friendships

Katie: Hi, and welcome back to the "7 Domains of Women's Health." Today, we're continuing our friendship series and we're diving into the intellectual domain of friendship.

I'm Katie Ward. I'm a woman's health nurse practitioner and professor in the College of Nursing. And with me today is my co-host, Dr. Kirtly Jones from Obstetrics and Gynecology.

So when we think about friendship . . . and in this series, when we've talked about friendship, we've been focusing on the physical benefits of having a friend and the emotional support and the shared activities. But today we're going to talk about this other dimension, the way friends make us think differently, the friends who challenge our assumptions, introduce us to new ideas, push us to see the world from angles we'd never considered. So these are relationships that don't just comfort us, they challenge us intellectually.

So a little insight into my process in preparing for this episode, I went to Google Scholar, which is one of my favorite wells of information.

Kirtly: Me too. Pub crawl.

Katie: Pub crawl.

Kirtly: When you go to PubMed and crawl through PubMed.

Katie: Yes. And I searched for . . . well, I looked for studies on friendship, but I looked for studies about Facebook, that had Facebook in the title, because I think that's where a lot of researchers who think about figuring out research on friendship are doing their work.

And I was amazed to find that in just the last five years, there are 2.37 million academic studies with Facebook in the title. And that was the first time I looked. I went back a day later and there were more because there are roughly 1,300 studies per day.

Now, whether this really tells us something about friendship or not, we can talk about. But it's a lot of intellectual energy and research time being devoted to studying something that might actually be preventing the kinds of deep transformative friendships we're talking about today.

So it's almost like a weird circle where people who are studying friendships are studying Facebook friendships. And meanwhile, that very platform is not the real friendship and it's substituting for those in-real-life friendships and being manipulated by the platform itself.

Honestly, it kind of concerned me a little bit that that's where the study is going on. I don't know, Kirtly. What do you think?

Kirtly: Well, I agree. I think it's a problem, because I think Facebook friends are often not friends-friends the way I would define friends. I do look at Facebook to keep in touch with what's going on in my friends' lives, but what I really should do is pick up the phone and give them a call, or if they live in town, go visit them.

I think that friendships that actually have a dynamic or even attention in the conversation is a good thing. I'm a difficult friend to have sometimes, not so much anymore because I'm changing my personality. I'm trying to change my personality.

We go on a trip with some friends, and I think of a couple that we've been off on adventures with. I usually read two or three books before we go and then I spend the vacation saying, "Oh, did you know this about the geology of the Everglades?" or, 'did you know about that? Did you know how Everglades National Park actually came into being?" I'm always in teaching mode and I hope they don't hate it.

Anyway, I've had the great privilege to teach with a woman who is a philosopher and a bioethicist and a contributor to the podcast. You might want to check out the 7 Domains of Retirement with Dr. Peggy Battin. And I have to explain to the students in the class when we teach that I am, by training and perhaps by temperament, a surgeon.

So imagine a circle, which is the problem, and draw an arrow right through the circle, and that's how I approach the problem. I just stab it and go through it.

But a philosopher is different. Imagine the circle is a problem. Now draw tangents, dozens of lines that just touch the circle on the outside, tangents to that circle. And that's how a philosopher thinks.

Sometimes it's tiresome, but on the other hand, I never think more deeply about something than when I'm doing things with this woman, of the many parts of ideas that might contribute to solving the problem. Dr. Battin's taught me a new way of thinking and every conversation has me richer in my thinking and contributes to our friendship.

And maybe friends who think just like you are more comfortable, and maybe your Facebook friends are just like you and you have a common foundation, but friends who don't think like you greatly expand your intellectual friendship.

Katie: Yeah, for sure. And I think there is something magical that happens when curious minds come together. And I love that circle analogy. You're really approaching the circle from very different perspectives.

Like you, Kirtly, I'm a teacher, and I'm aware of that when I'm with my friends, that I tend to still want to provide a lecture.

Kirtly: Oh, I am so sorry.

Katie: But you're a surgeon, you're going to just stab the circle. I'm going to talk about it for hours like I'm the boss.

Kirtly: Oh, good.

Katie: But also, my favorite friendships center around this kind of shared intellectual curiosity, whether it's stabbing the circle or coming at it from the edges.

I have to admit something here. The number of teachers I've had crushes on throughout my life is embarrassingly high.

Kirtly: Well, I call them teaching crushes. They bury themselves a little bit in romance, because I can't . . . When I start feeling strongly about somebody, I can't help going in that direction. But I call them teacher crushes or athlete crushes or judge crush. I currently have a crush on a judge, but it's just a judge crush.

Katie: Yeah, there's something about seeing somebody as intellectually stimulating, I think, that creates a kind of attraction. And you're right, not necessarily romantic, but it's a pull and it's exciting. That mental engagement feels kind of electric. And yeah, since third grade, it's a trend I've noticed about myself, for sure.

Kirtly: Third grade?

Katie: That was my first teacher crush.

Kirtly: I have noticed that I have intellectual attraction phenomenon. I definitely have that. And it's a crush just in the way you describe it. It draws me to them, even from a distance. They don't know anything about me. I just watch this person's brain work in real time.

And in fact, in my friendship life, I have been attracted to the friendship by the other person's mind. In fact, as I become older, I'm deeply attracted to a person's aura of gentle calm. So I'm not so deeply attracted to their mind and now more to their calm because it feels like the world is a little chaotic, and sometimes a gentle calm isn't always present in a very active mind. But certainly in my past, it's been about how the person thinks.

Katie: Yeah. Well, I think one of the powerful ways that friendships develop is the shared learning experiences, or maybe it's just shared experiences. And for me, it's been learning so far. But book clubs and taking classes together and working on creative projects. And these can even be sort of just fun, whimsical projects. I've made parade floats and made great friends and there was nothing intellectual really about that.

But they are activities that are kind of brainy bonds. Maybe it's one of the reasons that it's easier to make friends in school when you're learning together and you're struggling with a new concept. And even a book group, you're challenging each other as you kind of have different experiences with the same material. So there's a bit of shared vulnerability of not knowing or being confused, and especially of having your mind changed.

Kirtly: Well, I'm going to just say here I belong to the WordsWorth Book Club and we did a 7 Domains of Book Clubs. And there are times that we have to go . . . we have strict rules in this book club. Everybody has to read the book, and then they have to present what they thought about it and give it a rating. Sometimes people have very different feelings about it.

And if you put the book out there as a recommendation and someone shoots your book down, I really like to hear why they thought it. It tells me something more about the book and it tells me something more about them. So I think that's the best part of book club, is when we don't all love the book.

Katie: Yeah, for sure. I actually left a book club once because they read so many novels and I don't have time for novels, which probably told them a lot about me. I want history and memoir. I should give novels another try, shouldn't I?

Kirtly:Yeah.

Katie:Back in the emotional domain, we talked about some research by Jeffrey Hall. And actually, it was that process of getting ready for that podcast that made me discover this researcher who does a bunch of really interesting research on friendship. He found that it takes like 11 interactions before someone starts to feel like a friend.

Kirtly: How about one interaction for 11 hours? You meet somebody and then you spend all afternoon talking. Does that count?

Katie: It might, although there's some other research that says it takes 200 hours. So I don't know how long these 11 interactions were. I'll have to dig into this a little bit more.

But I do think something like grappling with a difficult idea or just disagreeing maybe speeds that up and makes it more meaningful. So, yeah, maybe 11 hours.

But the point is, the first time you see somebody just for a minute, that doesn't a friendship make. And so I think it takes time and investment.

I think that there are those friends who expand how we see the world, and especially who come from a different cultural background or different political views or whose life experiences are vastly different. All that just feels so important to me right now, to make connections with people who challenge my own assumptions.

It's just so easy to stay in our own bubbles. And I think that's, again, one of the things that worries me about social media, is we're curating our news feeds and we're curating what we choose to see. Whether we're doing it or the machine is doing it, I get really reinforced in my own bubble, and I'm really aware now more than ever how important it is to step outside of that.

And like you were saying, kind of meet people with the calm and the aura and the feelings that they provide us. We choose our own neighborhoods. We even pick our own podcasts.

Kirtly: Of course.

Katie: But I've been feeling that, that I can spend a lot of time alone and I've got a podcast with me all the time. And so I sort of don't feel alone, but I'm really only continuing to listen to the things I already agree with.

So I think friendships that require intellectual humility and willingness to admit that our own perspectives are limited or that we might be wrong, that's really important to help us grow.

Kirtly: Well, I don't choose podcasts that are going to upset me because they provide a very different point of view, and sometimes they do it very stridently, because I'm not in the presence of that person so I can get to like that person and so I can listen with more humility.

Sometimes there are differences in what we "know," and I'm putting that in quotes, and what we believe to be true. And that can lead to a falling out among friends, real friends, not Facebook friends. Or maybe Facebook friends.

Katie: It's easier on Facebook.

Kirtly: Yeah, we hold on to what we believe to be true. And when our friends hold another truth very dearly, that can hurt and people get angry. So what do we do about that?

First, I think is some soul searching. I mean, when you're angry with a friend or you just don't want to see them anymore because they hold a truth that's different than your own, try to figure out why this makes you feel bad. Is it just a difference of what we hold true? But what we hold true is often a cord about our identity and we feel personally attacked, even though they aren't really attacking you, but maybe the way they think. And often, the other person can feel that their identity is attacked, too.

If you feel that this friendship is worth working on, and many times it is, is it time to get together in person? And it's not time to attack each other on social media or try to make up via text. Make time to meet the person. Tell the person how your disagreements are making you feel. And not, "You do this." It's, "I feel." Use the "I" words instead of the "you" words. Tell them why the difference in what we feel so certain about is hard to talk about, and ask them how they feel, and try to be collaborative on coming to some common ground.

If this is a friendship that predates these firmly held beliefs, or at least your knowledge about that, say, "I value this friendship. Tell me how you think we can work on these differences, because I want to keep you as a friend and I want to hear what you think." Ask them how they would recommend talking about these differences.

And it's often right to apologize if hard words have been spoken on both sides. You don't have to apologize for your point of view, but if you said words or actions that would have been hurtful, you have to take on the burden of blame for that.

You don't have to take on the burden for everything and you don't have to necessarily negate your own position, but hurtful words, hurtful actions are worth apologizing for.

And work together about how you can talk about your differences without feeling attacked. Or both of you talk about what you've learned from the other person and how you value these conversations because it's helped you think bigger. Or maybe agree to disagree and don't talk about these foundational issues in the future.

But if the friend is willing to help you think about common ground, you might find the friendship grows and you learn something new. And if it doesn't work and hostility still stays hot, it might be time to walk away.

Katie: Yeah, I keep thinking about, too, what you just said at the beginning of that, the importance of doing this in person. I think it's really easy to have . . . I mean, it used to just be in the car. You'd flip somebody off in a car, which I would never do that if I was face to face with them. But somehow, the privacy of the car, my bad side came out.

And I think that's a lot of what's happening on social media so much, is it's easy for the worst of you to come out and you feel a little bit anonymous. Being face to face with somebody that you love, I think that that's an important ground rule for working out those kinds of conflicts.

I do think that the best intellectual friendships create space for those difficult conversations. And being vulnerable is a part of what makes that relationship important to you. It's a place where you can be vulnerable. And so being respectful and listening and caring about where your friend is coming from is important.

But I think those kinds of mind-changing and forgiving conversations are becoming rarer. As we talked about before, we're spending so much time consuming information and not really engaging in those dialogues. And scrolling through articles and doom scrolling and watching TikToks, it just keeps you . . . the next one and the next one. It's taking up time out of my day. I still only have 24 hours, and somehow now I have time for what's on social media and getting down that rabbit hole.

Kirtly: Well, it zings a part of my brain I don't want to have zinged. So at some point, I have to say, "Why am I feeling anxious?" or I have good reasons to be concerned about stuff. Very concerned. But I don't need to be zinged many times a day. It's not good for me.

And this is where I think social media can pull people apart. It doesn't often help us find common grounds. And we need to be in each other's space in person.

I'm a firm believer in sharing food. And they've done some studies on whether there's a bowl of peanut M&M's, or several bowls, depending on how many people are at the table. But sharing food goes way back to who we are as Homo sapiens-sapiens. We share food with each other and with people who aren't just family, and it brings people together. So I think sharing food is a good idea. Of course, I'm an eater. So there you go.

Katie: Yeah. I agree. I think the food part is important.

Kirtly: I mean, everybody eats, right? Most everybody eats.

Katie: I think the thing about social media . . . I might do that with food. So maybe that's my problem, sitting there by myself with a bag of potato chips.

Kirtly: Potato chips are better than peanut M&M's, though.

Katie: Yeah. And I'm having the illusion that I'm having intellectual engagement and I can spend all day and do that by myself. I think maybe my brain thinks it's connected when it's really not. So I'm getting that little dopamine hit from whatever zing you were saying that gives you.

The thing is that it's mostly passive consumption and it's not the back and forth that builds real intellectual friendship. And worse, it's just confirming whatever biases I already had.

So I think, if nothing else, this is a shoutout for the importance of friends that challenge you. And that might mean that sometimes there's conflict, too. But the fact that you have a friend that challenges you is valuable.

And of course, all this is taking place where there's sort of a friendship recession going on. Maybe it's social media, maybe it's just the time in our lives, but we do know that making friends as adults is harder.

We've talked about this a little in previous episodes, but there are so many things. Your career is at its peak. Your caregiving responsibilities might also be at its peak at the same time your career is. You're moving in the same circles all the time. And it's exactly the time when you need intellectual stimulation, but maybe almost feel like you don't have time for it.

There's an author, Mel Robbins, who talks about it this way, and I kind of liked her framework. She talks about three pillars of friendship. So one being proximity, one being timing, and one being energy.

So are you in the same space with people? And there are challenges about friendships at work. You might have a lot in common with the people you work with around what you do, but you might all be at different stages in your life. So that's where the timing comes in.

If somebody is young and at the beginning of their career and somebody else is really busy with raising children and balancing family responsibilities, even though you spend time together, you're in proximity, your own timing in terms of spare time to make friends and energy is elsewhere.

So I think there are a lot of things that contribute to whether or not you can make a friend just because you're in the same context.

Kirtly: Some of my best conversations have been on car drives across country with friends. So there's something about being in the car. You're kind of in a confined space.

And a favorite story is my little brother drove across country with me and a friend of mine and my husband's. My husband's friend and I were sitting in the front seat and sharing the driving. And whenever my little brother sitting in the back got bored, he would just throw out a question and then listen to this friend of mine and I argue for the next 100 miles about what was the answer.

But there is something about the safety of a confined space. We fly, and I guess people do have long conversations on flights sometimes, but there's something about being in a car, as part of my life anyway.

Katie: I always recommend for parents, if they need to have "the talk" with their kids, they do that in the car, because then they can't jump out. At least you have that long.

Kirtly: Well, I've had wonderful growth in myself and in my own intellectual growth when I've reached out to someone who's been distanced by space, time, or political or religious beliefs, someone who's distanced from me.

This may be a person who was a great true friend when we were young and politics and religion weren't part of our friendship. We were just kids or we were just college kids.

And then when you want to connect, start with what they are doing, how is their family. Tell stories about your memories of when you were friends together. Find out what's important to them these days, and be a good listener. I think that's been a good way for me to renew friendships without the hot button of different political views, which we can get to later.

Katie: Maybe the one great thing about Facebook is I've managed to maintain a thin string to friends that I would assume had completely forgotten who I am, wouldn't remember me, minus that on my birthday, once a year, all kinds of people hop on to tell me happy birthday and I think, "I can't believe you remember me."

So I think it does provide an easy way to stay in touch with some of those old friends. That happens every year that somebody who I didn't expect to hear from says happy birthday, and I think, "Oh, I'm going to make an effort to reach out."

There is time, I think, not all friendships work out. Some friends challenge each other and they sort of cross the line into being argumentative or dismissive and the connection isn't balanced.

Maybe you're like me. I'm that one person always teaching. I can think about one friend I did a long car trip with and I think she probably got out of the car and thought, "Oh my god, if I never have to listen to you again, Katie, it will be too soon."

So yeah, I think that there is a real question about when to end a friendship. I think mostly they fade because of one of those pillars being missing. Our lives just change, and it's not that the friendship ended so much as we're in different places and go a long time without talking. And probably, if you were to reach out, you'd be really happy to reconnect and it hasn't ended, it's just drifted.

Sometimes, as you were talking about before, you do need to actively end a friendship. Somebody who makes you feel stupid or dismisses your ideas or turns conversations into an argument, or you just need to set boundaries when someone's making harmful choices, then yeah, it might actually be time to end a friendship.

And I think that's where, at least for me, some kind of therapy is helpful to make sure I'm doing the right thing and that I understand why I feel the way I do. But therapy can be helpful to figure out when a friendship has run its course and we're just not in the same space and energy anymore, and when it's truly toxic and better for my mental health to end that.

Kirtly: Yeah. I've been thinking about this and I cannot remember losing a friend over differences in beliefs or behaviors, because I'm not really attracted to people who are really confrontational by style, I think. I'm the first child of an alcoholic mother. They say I avoid conflict. But more drifting apart from time and space.

And as I've become older, I am more humble in how sure I am that I'm right. Yes, if there are any listeners who knew me 30 years ago, I was always sure I was right. And of course, I was, but I value connections over being right now most of the time. But don't get me started on public health. That's not a topic I'm really willing to bend over on.

Katie: It is interesting. I think that's a common thing that the more I know, the less I know, or the less sure I am about it.

Well, there's this phrase out there, and I see it actually see it printed on napkins, "Today I married my best friend." So I want to explore if a romantic partner can truly be your closest intellectual companion, or do you need other friendships to fulfill different aspects of our intellectual lives?

Esther Perel, who's somebody out there on social media who I like a lot, talks about this, that we ask our partner to fill now the role of what an entire village used to take.

I know some couples who are amazing intellectual partners and they can challenge each other and learn together, and they're growing intellectually and emotionally, and others who are emotionally close, but intellectually quite different. I'm not saying either one is right or wrong, but I'm always curious about how that is.

Kirtly, I know you had a marriage with somebody who was an intellectual equal and I'm jealous of that a little bit.

Kirtly: Well, yes and no. We just thought about different things. I guess I have always thought that erotic love brings people together and creates a fantasy that the other person is perfect for you. You share all this talking together, talk, talk, talk, and you think, "Oh, this is my best friend." But it is just a fantasy for a while.

And when you have enough time, it might be important that the other person is someone that you admire for who they are and how they behave in the world, and that their ways of interacting with you work for you.

It's good to make sure that you share common values. And then to keep going, you have to set the bar for what you have to have in your relationship and make sure they know where the bar is so they don't trip over it. And don't set the bar too high.

I think there are people who can get everything they want from their other, but most people need something else, meaning they need their book club, or they need their girlfriend, or they need to go adventuring with their guy friends. Making room for that is really important.

Katie: You're right. As a couple, giving each other space to have friendships and the security to do that. I mean, I think we've talked a lot about the pitfalls of social media being the space where that happens. And I don't know that we have time to go into the dangers of some other places, dark parts of the social media world. But yeah, I think we definitely need multiple ideas.

So I don't think the antidote is to abandon technology, but be really intentional about how you use it. Use social media to find book clubs or hiking groups, but not to replace them with social media.

I think AI can help you articulate a complex thought, but it doesn't replace the friend who actually helps you think it through and challenges you. I mean, I think it's one of the things we're really seeing about AI, is it flatters you, but it doesn't really challenge your thinking like a friend would.

So yeah, as we wrap up, I keep thinking about how friendships are really gifts we give each other. It's the gift of taking someone else's ideas seriously, and the gift of challenging them in a caring way, and the gift of introducing them to something that might change how they see the world and being open to seeing how they see the world. And so I'm going to try just a little harder not to lecture my friends.

Kirtly: Me too.

Katie: But friendships don't just make us smarter. They make us more thoughtful, more humble, more curious about the world, and it's a way to remind us that learning doesn't just stop after school. We can continue to grow at any age. And also, some of our most cherished assumptions might be worth questioning.

So in a world where we're drowning in information, but starving for intellectual connection, friendships are even more precious. They're the antidote to these echo chambers that we find ourselves in and the cure for loneliness and the path to continued growth.

Kirtly: Yeah. And I would go back to being a good listener. Genuinely care about this other person. I mean, if you're friends, hopefully you care about their personhood, about their lives, and hopefully you're as curious about them as the topic that you're thinking about. And listen to their stories. Just listen to their stories.

Katie: Thank you for listening to our story. As podcasters, we hope this gives you something to think about, maybe even something to discuss with a friend who makes you think differently.

You can find all our episodes of the "7 Domains of Women's Health" anywhere you get your podcasts, or at womens7. And maybe, if we've done our job right, this conversation itself becomes one of those intellectual exchanges that shifts how you think about friendship. That would make us happy indeed, because at the end of the day, the best conversations are the ones that leave you a little different than when you started.