I Dont Even Find Bane Posting Funny Anymore

Jenn Bane and Trin Garritano are the duo behind the cult favorite podcast Friendshipping, as well as a book of the same name that explores the art of finding friends. No strangers to the Meetup community, Jenn and Trin's Meetup Live event had the most RSVPs of 2021. They're back to discuss creating new friendships, deepening current friendships, and reconnecting with friends from your past. The conversation expands to the parallels between friending and dating, the do's and dont's of workplace friendships, and what you can learn from 42 seasons of Survivor.

Ranked as one of the top 25 CEO podcasts on Feedspot, Keep Connected with Meetup CEO David Siegel is a podcast about the power of community. For more details on other episodes, visit Keep Connected on the Meetup Community Matters blog.

We hope you'll keep connected with us. Drop us a line at podcast@meetup.com. If you like the podcast, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts.

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Awkward Isn't Awkward, It's Normal

Before we get into this episode, I have something important to share. Check out my new book Decide and Conquer to get to know my story at Meetup . The hardest thing about community leadership is making tough decisions when the stakes are high. They were never higher than when Meetup was owned and sold by WeWork.

In my new book, Decide and Conquer, I will walk you through a counterintuitive framework for decision-making and the epic journey of Meetup's surprising survival. Good leaders deliberate. Great leaders decide. Decide and conquer by pre-ordering my book and going to DecideandConquerBook.com or anywhere books are sold. Thank you.

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In this episode, we are talking to Jenn Bane and Trin Garritano, two amazing people, authors of Friendshipping , hosts of the Friendshipping! podcast, leaders of the Friendshipping Newsletter and very friendly people. Let's do it.

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Welcome, Jenn and Trin to the show.

Thank you for having us.

There are thumbs up all around. It's good to have you. I'm not sure if the two of you knew this but the number one most searched term on Meetup in 2021 was around finding adult friends. That's such a surprise. The number one Meetup Live event was the one with the two of you with over 12,000 RSVPs, which is insane.

That I did know and have committed to memory, I have pulled that out of my hat to brag many a time.

It is quite the bragging issue for that. Before we get started, I always like our readers to learn a little bit about the two of you. Rather than independently more about Jenn and Trin, let's hear about your friendship because you are the experts in Friendshipping, podcast and Friendshipping and book and Friendshipping. How did your friendship start? Were you friends the moment you met? Music was playing. Is that how it happened?

Yeah. Long ago, I was volunteering at a comic book convention back where Jenn lives in Chicago called C2E2 or the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo. I was wearing, because I'm a huge nerd for video games a piece of armor that my brother and I had made that was representative of a video game that Jenn and I both like, which is called Mass Effect 2. I was volunteering and standing guard by an escalator. Jenn and a mutual friend of ours came by to say hi. Jenn noticed my armor right away and knew exactly what it was. We had this moment. It was good.

Did you feel the same, Jenn that you had that moment?

Start associating how you think about friendship with better, more positive things.

Yeah. I did a triple take and skidded to a halt because I had just finished playing this extremely immersive, exciting and dorky video game. Here was this cool person wearing a costume from that video game. It felt like magic. Trin was having a conversation with other people so I made eye contact and gave a thumbs up for the armor. That led to a big group conversation. Trin and I had some mutual friends so we kept running into each other. Eventually, we ended up sharing a coworking space and a job and started working on personal projects together like our podcast.

How did that happen? You went from getting to know each other to work together. How did that get broached and transpire?

The coworking space where Jenn and I were working was filled with creative, interesting and fascinating people. I remember thinking to myself that I felt like the only Muggle at Hogwarts to make a Harry Potter reference. I was like, "Everybody is so creative. Everybody has ideas. Everybody is making things." Jenn, I know you have no memory of this because we have told this story before. Jenn said to me, "Trin, I would love to make something that has to do with gender equality and friendship." I was like, "That sounds great." We had access to a podcast studio. I'm a ham and Jenn is incredibly smart. We got in there and started recording. It was good.

It was like hanging out with Trin. I wanted to hang out with Trin anyway and we just happened to do it in front of a microphone. We have no ambitions to turn our little show into a long-running podcast and eventually write a book. Things started falling into place. At first, I admitted I would dread doing the podcast because I was so nervous to be in front of a microphone.

Trin has a theater background and knows how to use a microphone. Trin taught me microphone behavior. Our friendship has evolved. We share a city in Chicago. We have shared many inside jokes, a lot of internet humor, more video games and more hobbies. Our friendship has not revolved around work but it has involved a lot of personal projects. I feel lucky to be able to say that.

It's meant to be. It is an awesome thing. You have such content expertise. Let's get into Friendshipping. I oftentimes believe that one learns the most from failures, mistakes and things that you do wrong. There are so many aspects of friendship. Off the cuff, what are the 1, 2 or 3 most common mistakes that you find people make when it comes to adult friendships?

I'm going to give some general advice. I will let the audience decide to temperate a little understanding that we are still experiencing COVID, so not all of this will apply. A mistake that I made, especially in my mid to late twenties, was when I would get invited someplace, I would often talk myself out of going or even say that I wanted to go. I was convinced, "No one will notice if I'm there. It does not matter. I will stay home. It's fine."

Friendship: Your presence does matter, and people do want you there.

Over the years, I have learned through friends like Trin and my other group of friends that your presence does matter and people do want you there. Trin and I are big believers in canceling if you don't want to hang out with your friends or if you are feeling tired or introverted. We are also big believers in believing in yourself that your friends do love you and do you want to hang out with you. They notice when you are not there.

Showing up sometimes is the hardest thing but the most impactful thing because you don't know what's going to happen after you show up. Trin, there could be many different mistakes I'm sure. Let's hear about 1 or 2 of yours.

I love what you said about mistakes. Honestly, mistakes are a core part of my being. In my bio at the back of our book, I cowrote this book because I want other people to make better and cooler mistakes than I did. You don't have to make the dumb ones that I did. Let's go on to level 4.0 mistakes. I'm going to go back in time. Here's a friendship mistake that I have made. Back when I was in college, I was a Creative Writing major. I never thought that it was going to be a viable career path but it was a part of who I was. I loved to write.

I had a professor that I got advice from and I asked him, "Every time I open a Google Doc, I get overwhelmed and stressed out. I don't start writing. What should I do?" He said, "Don't write." At the time, I was like, "That's such a ridiculous piece of advice. That's glib nonsense," but I used that advice. I moved away from writing, did other things and stopped associating thinking about writing with my inability to write. Instead, I started thinking about writing as this process that I love doing.

If I can't get it out of me, it's okay. I feel that way about friendship as well. If you are feeling introverted and you need to conserve your energy, don't friendship because we don't want your friends to turn into your writing and associate the thought of pregrets as we call them. You might have regret or see something bad if you talk to your friend. Don't think about that because that's not what's important. What's important is your friends. Start to associate how you think about friendship with better and more positive things.

Associations are so huge. I was reading about yoga. I don't know if either of you does yoga or either. At the end of yoga is something called Shavasana, where you are lying down, breathing and chilling. It's relaxing. Many people, even though they can be exhausted during yoga, at the end, associate their experience with the thing that they did. It's that positive association with Shavasana. It's an incentive to want to go back.

Even though times are changing, our lives are evolving, and our friendships can evolve with them.

If you associate friendship as this negative and stressful experience, it's the same thing with writing, then you are not going to want to go back to it necessarily. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to pause, breathe, take a break and then go back to it when the spirit moves you. There are so many aspects to friendship. There's a whole life cycle to it from finding friends to maintaining friends, growing friends, deepening relationships and reconnecting. There are so many steps. Let's go for the first one and talk about finding friendships.

Finding new friends as a "grownup" is hard. Let's all acknowledge that. It's not impossible but there are a lot of barriers in your way. Everyone has different schedules and priorities. Not everyone has an income that allows them to run out and have fun. There are a lot of barriers in your way. Acknowledge that if you are having trouble doing it. Remember what you said, which was it's our most searched term. You are not alone in this issue. There are a lot of people in the world that are also having this problem. If only we could all get them together, maybe on Meetup.com.

A big part of it is allocating energy to friendship making. We don't feel pleasant, our best selves and like the person that we want to hang out with all of the time. Even mentally prioritizing it and saying, "This is something that I'm going to put some of my spoons into," is a great first step. Choose that this is something that you are going to put energy into.

I always think that if you are feeling a little stuck, pursue a hobby that brings people together because I personally find it daunting to be like, "I'm going to go make new friends." That seems like a tall order and a lot of pressure. What sounds easier and more exciting is going to a cooking class, doing a book club on Zoom like we have done before Trin or attending some online event that encourages people to meet. Something, where socializing and activity are built-in, is a way easier path forward than being like, "I'm going to go make friends." Why don't you try learning something new and deepening your hobbies? Along the way, if you are surrounded by people, you already have something in common. That's an easier way forward.

There are so many parallels to dating in many ways. People that are going out and stressed about finding that significant other and prioritizing are saying, "I can't meet that person that I want to be with and keep stressing out and thinking about it." Once you stop thinking about it and say, "I will go out, meet people and do fun things," suddenly you end up meeting that guy, girl or person that you always wanted to be with when you deprioritize meeting the person.

It's similar for friends. If you are like, "I don't have friends. I'm going to meet friends," let's instead, "How could I meet people that are into comic books or video games like me?" There are quite a few similarities. Trin, I saw you get excited about the parallel to dating. Is there anything else you want to share about that?

I moved from Chicago to Texas, which is quite a culture shift and a large space to move. It's so big and everything about it is huge. I swear to you, the first thing that happened when I pulled up to our new house was I said hi to a neighbor who was wearing a cowboy hat and also holding a cowboy hat. I was like, "This is happening." Completely off-topic, I have started the process of making friends.

I have not had to do that in a while because I have my tight friends and I'm still friends with my Chicago friends, but you want to branch out and widen. The first thing I did was I joined Climate Reality Dallas and met an awesome person who is super into plants. I would not say we are friends yet. We are on buddies level but I'm working my way in there.

Friendship: Don't assume that it's a rejection if you don't hear back.

I bet that person would say that you are friends. We hit on finding friends. I also want to mention the prioritizing piece that you had mentioned, which is interesting. We all go through different life cycles in life. When I first got married, I remember saying to my wife, "My priority is you, deepening our relationship and being willing to have my friendships take second fiddle." When we had kids, friendships took third fiddle because I proactively said, "I'm going to deprioritize these friendships."

Now that my kids are older and they don't even know that I exist anymore, I could be around the house and they did not even know that I was there. I have oodles of time on my hands. I'm reinvigorating and reprioritizing friendships. A lot of times, the priority for friendships will go in different life cycles depending on where you are and where you happen to be in life.

A close friend of mine and her partner had twin infants. That's two babies. That's two of them at the same time. That's a major life shift. Her ask to us was, "Keep inviting us to stuff and the group things. It might be a little bit until we come up for air but we still want to feel included." I loved that. I thought it was so great that she made that ask and made it clear what she needed in our friendship.

It felt good to get some direction. I don't have children and I don't know what it's like to have two infants in your home or how to be a good friend of that person. She was giving us some tools to help her. I loved that because it's hard to imagine her lifestyle. Even though times are changing and our lives are evolving, our friendships can evolve with them. We will see you someday if you have the energy.

For a while there, I was the friend who does not have a baby or a dog, which are the two things that keep you home. I learned to be the one who arranges things because I wanted my friends around. I still have that situation with my buddy, who's ten. She's a human and not a baby, which is the freakiest thing. If I ever want to hang out with her, I throw a Google Hangout on the calendar. If she can make it, she can. If she can't, she will move it. That is how we do things. It is on the person with fewer obligations to do the arranging. Maybe that's controversial but that was me. Now I have a dog and I can never leave my house.

Everyone needs to do the arranging for you. That's how it works. Jenn, take notes. If you want to get together with Trin, you must do the arranging.

Jenn has a dog too. Our dogs are going to have to play at some point.

Does not one of you also have two cats or something?

Small talk is not an evil thing.

I do. I have got a little three-legged cat and an idiot who's orange.

When I hear cat, I think of the Fox show with Mayim Bialik called Kat. It's quite funny. I recommend it sometimes. She's great. Let's talk about what you started to hit on a little bit more, which is maintaining and developing friendships. I will tell you something that I did first and then I would love to hear practices from you all. You will be proud of me on this one. When COVID first started, I created a WhatsApp group called Six Feet from Siegel because of the social distance while we were walking. It was a group of 8 to 10 people who live within half a mile of my home that I'm good friends with.

I would send a post out saying, "I'm free. Does anyone want to do an 8:00 AM walk and do this?" It was a proactive way of reaching out. I did not care who I walked with because I like them all. Some people would be like no or yes, or two people would say yes and all three of us would go bike riding together. It was a very easy way to do things locally with friends. It helped me. I am closer with most of my local friends because of COVID than if COVID had not happened.

Certainly, friendships have deepened. I have never felt more thankful for the people in my life, good job on that. We are proud of you. That's extremely impressive. I like how it's often like, "I'm going for a walk regardless. You are welcome to come if you are in the mood."

It's the lowest pressure possible, which is wonderful.

What other sagacious advice would you give around not finding but deepening friendships with people?

The first thing I would do is remember what connected you with that person, to begin with. I'm going to use an example from my life. My buddy Savannah and I would play the video game Animal Crossing together and visit each other's islands. It was a nice chill-out pandemic thing to do. There was an Animal Crossing update that came out and I took it as an opportunity to say, "Are you playing the new update? Let's talk." I seized on the opportunity. I encourage people to do that. Remember what you have in common and share a piece of information. It can be something as small as, "I saw this hilarious thing on the internet. Do you want to check it out? Here's a link." It's connecting.

It does not have to be a lot. It's little triggers.

I have a friend in my life. The only thing we text about is the TV show Survivor and the WNBA, specifically the Chicago Sky basketball team. Fortunately, Survivor has 42 seasons of it, so we have a lot of material to discuss. It's awesome. Before the pandemic, I would be like, "It's Survivor finale tonight. Do you want to live text or come over?" This was the basis of our friendship, and just because we don't share personal stuff over texts like Trin and I do, that friendship is no less important. If I did want to deepen it, I have an avenue to do that. I could pivot Survivor pretty easily into deep personal feelings if I wanted to do that.

Friendship: Try to listen to your anxiety and find out where it's coming from because it might not be from any bad or negative interaction.

Survivor does lend itself towards that based on projection and all the other intrigue that goes on. I watched the first two episodes. I have not watched seasons 3 through 42. If I ever want to go bingeing for a couple of months, it sounds like it might be worth it.

I will send you my Where to Watch Survivor Guide if you want it. I have sent it to many friends. I have not shared it publicly yet. I need to clean it up, and then I might put it on Twitter. I have hooked so many people in my little Survivor net by forwarding them the same email that's like, "Here's where to start to get into what we call in the fan club Modern Survivor." It has changed a lot. It has been on for years. There's a lot that happened in the last 40 seasons. I'm happy to email you. I will clean it up and share it online.

There could be things not to do in Friendshipping around Survivor as well because of some of the things that I saw going on there. I don't know if I want to recommend it.

I have watched Survivor and been like, "That person is not a good friend. That person is a great friend who's doing a good job of balancing being a friend and playing a tough game together." Like Trin, you are a board game person. You know if you are playing a pretty vicious and aggressive board game. You got to balance that you love the people you are playing with but also, you are going to be no holds barred and merciless.

During the game, my game head is on and I am your enemy. After the game, the game had is off and we are friends again.

I got to tell you the story that my daughter told me, which I was so proud of her about because we have a huge board game. We probably have 300 to 400 board games in the house. We play board games multiple times a week as a family. She was invited to a friend's birthday party. The birthday party was a big game party with a tournament and things like that. The girl who had her birthday went up against my daughter first for something. The friend who had a birthday said, "You are not going to beat me. It's my birthday. You are not going to knock me out of the tournament." She said, "Yes, I am."

It was my daughter and one of the twenty girls that made it to the finals. There was ping-pong and all these other different games they had to play. In the end, it came down to rock paper scissors shoot. That was the final and she lost. Such is life. Let's talk about reconnecting. One of the most enjoyable activities is reconnecting with someone from years ago. Let's start with Jenn. Tell us about some best practices around reconnecting. What advice do you give to people? We all have these people that were so important in our life that we lost. How do we get them back if we want to?

I had a hard time reconnecting with people or even being reconnected with. If someone reached out to me, I would sometimes have a hard time replying to that message on Facebook, email or whatever it was. I had some anxiety built up about all the years that had passed and who I was now versus who I was then. This sounds more dramatic than it is but it was mostly anxiety built up in my head.

After getting over this anxiety, what I learned over time is they are either 1) Feeling anxious about themselves. 2) They do not care. It's a fresh start and a clean slate, "I want to know who you are now." The first time reconnection starts to happen, try to listen to your anxiety and find out where it's coming from because it might not be from any bad or negative interaction. It might be something that you are inventing, which is certainly the case for me.

A therapist is not a friend. They should not share a title.

I feel so fraught in a way about reconnecting with friends. I am bisexual and nonbinary and that's something that I figured out fairly recently. When I think about reconnecting with people from prior eras of my life, it can be scary because I have to decide how much of myself am I going to share with this person and figure out, "Is this person still a safe person for me to talk to you about all of the components of myself?"

Accept all of the eras and the people that you were because you still have them inside of you. You have learned from those people. Don't let the person that you were in that era hold you back. As we get older and get into our 30s or 40s, we have a new context for our teenage and childhood memories. We don't think about them as that jerk who did that awful thing. We think about that fourteen-year-old who made that mistake. I was there.

Remembering that you were a child and you were younger and having that context makes things a lot easier when you reconnect. My number one piece of advice about reconnecting with friends is to make sure that you stick to the agreed-upon communication medium. If you reconnected on Facebook, stick to Facebook. Don't try and search them out on LinkedIn and message them. That's a little weird. If you had their email back in your email address list, email them. Stick to the communication that you are building.

Do not show up at the person's house, knock on their door and be like, "I saw your like on LinkedIn on something that I did. I thought I would drive 3,000 miles and say hi."

One thing that I know has happened to friends of friends is they are hosting a comedy show or some event. Don't show up and be like, "I have not seen you in eighteen years." Give them some heads up like, "I'm going to be in your city. I want to come to your event." Some heads up would be good. You don't want to shock people. By reaching out, you might startle them. People are easily startled. They are gentle and sensitive. Also, don't be so surprised if you don't hear back when you reach out or if you don't hear back right away. It's not necessarily a reflection on you at all.

It could be that they are not using Facebook for the year. It could be that they don't know how to use Facebook anymore, which is me. I don't know how to read messages on that thing anymore. It could be that they are deep and prioritizing their mental health or someone else's physical health or something. You have no insight into how busy or weird their life is. Don't assume if you don't hear back that it's a rejection. Still leave the ball in their court. If you reach out and don't hear back, send one more polite short message and then pull away. Focus on your friendships that are working and hearing from people you are hearing back from. Focus on them, not the person you are not hearing back from.

We all create stories and narratives around things. It's amazing how often we are dead wrong in our assumptions about why something happened or did not happen. What you are saying so much is a big part of friendship is permission to yourself, self-talk, and understanding who you are as part of that larger relationship and not just about that other person.

They could have lost their Facebook password. That might be why they are not reaching back to you.

I have no data for this but my hypothesis is that the main reason why people do not reach back out to somebody they have not seen in a long time is because they may associate that part of their life with some negativity. If you hated high school and your high school best friend who you loved reached out to you and you did not like who you were, then that can make things a little awkward. I genuinely think that's the number one reason why people don't reconnect.

I read something about your writings around friendship versus therapist, the importance of understanding the difference between the two and the importance of being dual-sided versus a one-sided type of relationship. I thought it was so thoughtful. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about that dynamic where sometimes it can turn into a less healthy relationship for both sides? Share a little bit more there. At the same time, people look for that deep bonding that can occur in baring one's soul that one can do with a therapist. How do you understand that dynamic and recognize if something is askew?

Friendship: Accept all of the eras, all of the people you were, because you still have them inside you. You've learned from those people.

I would like to start this with one of my favorite pieces of advice that I have ever received, which was, "Don't start your first date with a third date conversation." There's going to be a time in your life when you are drinking beer by a bonfire. Everybody is baring their souls and you just met them. It's a great night. That will happen sometimes but that's actual magic that does not happen all the time. Small talk is not an evil thing. Small talk is a way for us to say, "I'm not dangerous. I'm here to be a friend. I'm not going to pry."

Start with small talk. That's the first part of this. The second component of this is being mutual. Jenn and I will barf all of our emotions out on each other because that's what we do mutually and my other friends too. Occasionally, I will even ask for permission like, "I need to vent about this thing." I will say that. Once you notice it's not mutual, that is when the problem comes in. If you are the dumper or the dumpy, recognizing that and trying to even that out is important.

This is a tough situation because friends do help each other, bear one another's burdens, vent, listen and are there for each other, especially in times of difficulty and grief. However, a friend is not a therapist. A therapist is not a friend. There's a reason that those are separate titles. They should not share a title. A therapist is a trained mental health professional. That is someone with who you designate time to share the heavy stuff with.

When the line gets blurry between what you are sharing with a friend and what should be shared elsewhere, it's hard in either case. If you are the person that's oversharing in times of difficulty, it's hard to be cued into your own social signals. You might not even realize what you are saying is hurtful, too heavy or way too personal. This is a tricky one. Trin, I want to know what you think about this. What it comes down to is boundaries, as it always does.

Asserting your boundaries is not unkind. Saying, "I need a break from this. I love you. I'm going to step back," is not unkind, "This is out of scope for me or saying." If necessary, this does happen. You might need to say, "I need to close the door on this conversation. We can't. This is too personal for me. I can no longer talk about your divorce or whatever it is." That's hard to do. That takes a lot of practice. When you start asserting your boundaries, it does get easier.

The number one thing for me is recognizing when you are starting to ask your friends to fix things for you. My dearest and oldest friend, Andy and I talk about the big and scary things like existence and stuff. I remember realizing that I was waiting for him to say something that would make me feel better about the inevitability of death. I'm like, "I don't know if you know this but for hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have been freaked out about death and have not quite solved how to stop freaking out."

Asserting your boundaries is not unkind.

I realized at that moment, "I can't do this. I am asking my buddy, Andy from across the street to fix my pipes and reassess the electricity in my house. That's not his training." A good cue is when you are asking somebody to fix things for you. The vice versa is also true. If you are starting to buddy up with your therapist who should be fixing your pipes, that's also not great.

That's the rule. There's no friendapist. Normally, we do these rapid-fire questions and ask about a bunch of different things around when you first saw yourself as a leader and what's your bucket list but I can't help it. I'm going to do rapid-fire instead. It's the first time we have ever done this in the context of questions for each of you. You can do rapid-fire answers. Here we go. Jenn, what's one learning for building online friendships? Trin, it's the same question.

Try to buddy up with people that you have mutual friends with. They are called mutuals on Twitter. It's how people refer to them, those people you have already in common. You follow the same people. Don't butt into their conversations online. If it's an open discussion and you already know the people involved, that's a good way to kindly and gently insert yourself into their friendship and make some friends yourself.

For people who are above Millennial age, making friends online is more difficult. In those cases, stick to the bigger websites like Twitter and Reddit. Don't go off on random social media, and also, don't trust everybody. I know that it is hard but remember that they are strangers. Don't believe them when they say that they will invest your money in something.

You mentioned small talk before. What's the number one piece of advice around small talk in helping to break down that barrier and start that finding friend process?

When you are a few questions in and you are to the point where you are asking personal questions, try not to ask, "What do you do for a living?" It should not be the core of a person's being. Ask people what they like to do and what's important to them.

Before we have Jenn's answer to that, I will tell you this. I once came home after getting together with someone and we had an hour of dialogue. I came into my wife and said, "It was so good. I have no idea what this person even does. That's how good it was." We had so many other real things to talk about that we did not even get into mutual.

The first thing that comes to mind is to be okay with a little bit of awkwardness and silence because that's normal and natural even though it feels excruciating. My second piece of advice if you are stuck and you find it paralyzing to do small talk is to pretend you are on a podcast and you are interviewing. Pull back a little because you are not interviewing. You are not Terry Gross. Do pretend that you want to get to know this person for the sake of an audience. I don't know why that trick has always helped me.

The last rapid-fire question is about workplace friendships. You have also written and talked about that quite a bit. It's a complicated thing. Let's start with you, Jenn, and then we will go to Trin. What's one piece of advice around workplace friendships that you have seen? It's either the mistakes someone made or advice for someone around workplace friendships.

You don't have to be friends with your colleagues or coworkers, but you do have to be kind and good to them, which is hard to ask if you hate your job or if you are in a bad environment. Workplace friendships, like the one I had started with Trin, can be magical. My piece of advice is don't forget capitalism is there. Capitalism can get in the way. Trin, you are good at explaining this.

When I was a youth who was sent to Christian Youth Camp, they used to say, "Leave room for Jesus." When we are talking about workplace friendships, leave room for capitalism. My piece of advice is you cannot be friends with your employees. When you are a boss, you are the boss. You are in charge of their livelihood. They can't say no to you.

Friendship: When you are in a position of authority and somebody can't say no to you, as friendly and as kind and as wonderful as your relationship might be, it's not quite a friendship.

I'm somebody who has made this mistake. I have had employees who are awesome people my age and people that I wanted to keep in touch with. Now that I'm not their boss anymore, we can be friends. When you are in a position of authority, and somebody can't say no to you, as friendly, kind and wonderful as your relationship might be, it's not quite a friendship.

I will add to that. If you have a great friendship and you are considering hiring that person or working for that person, recognize that there is a chance that it could end your friendship as well. It has happened to me on both sides. You have to take that as a risk. The person I was thinking of hiring said, "I'm not going to work for you because I value our friendship too much." That's good self-awareness, especially since maybe he heard stories about working for me. Who knows?

Jenn and I talk about crushes a lot in our friendship, newsletters and stuff because crushes are silly and meaningless. There's that old story of how we would date, but we don't want to ruin the friendship. It's the same thing with working. You are adding a new dynamic into something that already works and trying to see if it still works. Sometimes it's worth it and sometimes it's not.

Here's the last question for each of you. Friendshipping and friendships are your jams. There's no question about that. Whether it's in 10, 20 or 30 years, you are going to be doing friendships. Is there anything else outside of friendships or it could be related to friendships that you want to most be remembered by? Hopefully, death is 100 years away for each of you or more. What do you want to most be remembered by? Let's start with you, Jenn. What do you most want to be remembered by?

I would like to be remembered as a good listener.

For me, I want to be remembered as somebody who tried hard, made mistakes, took that information, adjusted, kept going and did another thing.

Be okay with a little bit of awkwardness. Be okay with a little bit of silence because that's normal.

Number one, you two are so awesome. I want to become friendlier with you and find a way to go to Texas or Chicago, which are not that hard to get to. At some point, we are going to get there.

If you do find your way to Chicago, I would be happy to get a coffee, beer, tea or walk. You seem to like walking. I also enjoy a good walk.

There's nothing like a good Chicago wind for a walk. The two of you are hilarious. I was trying hard not to crack out during this. You are so wonderful.

Thank you. We amuse ourselves, so it's nice to hear we amuse other people as well.

That's the way to do it. Thank you so much. Your advice and the myriad of things that you said are going to be helpful to so many different people, as has your book, podcast, newsletter and all the other things that you do. Keep making the world a better place. It's awesome.

We will do that. Thank you very much for having us. This was truly delightful.

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Thank you so much for reading. There are a lot of do's and don'ts. I'm going to focus this time on the don'ts. Don't necessarily think that your therapist is your friend and your friend is your therapist. Don't self-talk not to go to something. If you feel you are okay to go, go. Get rid of the self-talk. Don't make friending a task. It's too much of a negative and a task. You are not going to want to do it. Don't be reluctant to reconnect. You are a different person, perhaps than you were back then. It's okay to recognize that.

Last but not least, my favorite don't is don't necessarily hit on the most deep-seated topics of a third date conversation in that first date. If you enjoy this, then let's be friends. We could be great friends. If you don't do this, we will still be friends. If you subscribe, leave a review and check out my book, there are three ways for friendships. We can also be friends even if we don't do those things. Remember, let's keep connected because life is better together.

Important Links:

• Meetup
• DecideandConquerBook.com
• Friendshipping
• Friendshipping!
• Jenn Bane and Trin Garritano
• Climate Reality Dallas

About Jenn Bane and Trin Garritano

Jenn Bane (she/her, on your left) is a writer, editor, producer, and half of Friendshipping, a feel-good advice newsletter about making friends. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and lives in Chicago with her husband and dog.

Trin Garritano (she/they, on your right) is a writer, game developer, and the other half of Friendshipping. Most recently, she has contributed to games like 1001 Odysseys (Asmadi Games, upcoming), Max Gentlemen: Sexy Business (The Men Who Wear Many Hats, upcoming DLC), and Cut.com's party games Truth or Drink and TBH. She lives outside of Dallas with her partner, cats, dog, and too many plants.

Last modified on February 16, 2022

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Source: https://www.meetup.com/blog/episode-30-awkward-isnt-awkward-its-normal/

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