[00:00:00] Marie Vakakis: There is no relationship that comes without conflict. Like it is the price of connection. The price of community comes with conflict or comes with challenge or difficulty. Like it doesn’t mean it’s bad ’cause you’ve had a fight. Recovering from that makes your friendship stronger, and I think we’ve lost some of that, that you cannot have that kind of vulnerability with that and that intimacy without sitting in the discomfort that you might get it wrong.

[00:00:31] Marie Vakakis: You can’t put yourself out there and never get rejected. So sitting with the good stuff comes with not such great stuff, and it’s not in equal parts. You want the good stuff to outweigh, but that’s just the price of the ticket. That’s what it costs. I’ve had a young dad recently say, you know, he’s taken less work to have more days actively parenting, and he’s like, I pictured this utopia kind of thing of, there’d be a whole bunch of other dads, we’d go to the pay ground and he’s like, it’s really lonely, [00:01:00] and doesn’t know then what to do with that.

[00:01:03] Marie Vakakis: And so I guess what I’m trying to encourage people to do is sit in the discomfort and reach out and say. You know, send the voice member saying, look, this is all I can manage right now. Or, you know, have the group chat and say, who’s free for a talk right now? Or it’s five o’clock in the morning, is anyone out?

[00:01:20] Marie Vakakis: And about the, and see kind of what happens. 

[00:01:23] Steph Clarke: I think this aversion to cringe or doing anything too, too sincere is stopping a lot of people from asking for what they need or for initiating something on the basis that it might seem to. Earnest or too cringe or whatever. And now are we gonna get now performative post cringe?

[00:01:39] Steph Clarke: I mean, yeah, probably. That’s gonna be probably really cringe though. The irony is high on this. 

[00:01:45] Marie Vakakis: Hello and welcome to this complex life today I have a different topic to the last few around friendships. Now we know relationships are important. I’ve talked a lot about couples relationships and parents with their teenagers and children.

[00:01:58] Marie Vakakis: But less so about [00:02:00] friendships. So I am joined by Steph Clarke to talk about friends. Welcome, Steph. 

[00:02:04] Steph Clarke: Hi Marie. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:06] Marie Vakakis: I thought I’d go with this sort of topic around what’s the future of friendships and maybe the subtext or subheading is, are we getting lonelier? Wow. 

[00:02:18] Steph Clarke: Where to start on those two big topics, future friendship.

[00:02:21] Steph Clarke: And so in the work I do as a futurist, it’s very important to say that, you know, this is about possibility and probability rather than prediction because no one knows the future. And anyone who does say that they do is probably trying to take your money in some way, shape or form, so, or sell you something.

[00:02:38] Steph Clarke: So yeah, with all of those nice caveats in place. Yeah, so the future of friendship is really interesting. I think particularly as it, the moment we’re in this kind of horrible soup of this apparent loneliness epidemic. And I don’t know, I’ve, you, I’ve seen, you know, there’s a lot of headlines about a loneliness epidemic and the outcomes of that, or the kind of outputs I [00:03:00] suppose, of that.

[00:03:01] Steph Clarke: And also some things suggesting that actually, maybe that’s not the case, but I don’t know, like, I dunno, the, the feeling is that that is a real feeling now that, that the ways of measuring that I guess, are. Maybe messy and, and imperfect. There’s a lot of social science kind of is. So, um, so there’s, there’s that, there’s kinda this loneliness epidemic and at a time where kind of inequality is rising.

[00:03:21] Steph Clarke: And also we’ve got, you know, things around the world. We’ve got wars and genocides and land grabs and authoritarian governments and all sorts of other things happening as well. So that’s kind of making, you know, there’s a lot more tension in, in the world in terms of, uh, you know, the, the relationships and conversations and things we can or can’t have with our friends.

[00:03:38] Steph Clarke: There’s that, and then we’ve got the robots as well. So, you know, and so with the robots, you know, when everything else feels hard, you know, whether that’s trying to keep a job feels hard, whether, you know, being able to afford eggs, you know, feels hard still as well. We’ve got all of that, and of course we’re looking for maybe some more.

[00:03:57] Steph Clarke: More frictionless experiences of the [00:04:00] relationships and the conversations and the connections we’re having, which robots are pretty good at doing because we can tune them to be exactly as we want ’em to be. And you know, even more so with some of the more advanced models and apps and tools and things that are coming out.

[00:04:14] Steph Clarke: And I think that that sends us towards quite a danger or potentially could send us in quite a dangerous slide away from each other. It’s just too much hard work. You know, you’ve got a whole podcast based on all the problems between other people. So, so, I mean, why would we bother, you know, in that, in that particular world, 

[00:04:30] Marie Vakakis: the, the childish part of me wants to ask, are there any robots throughout history that you would want to be friends with 

[00:04:36] Steph Clarke: robots throughout history or through, I mean, 

[00:04:39] Marie Vakakis: I said Hollywood.

[00:04:42] Steph Clarke: Oh, I don’t know. Like maybe, um, no, I’m thinking more, maybe more. Some of like the monsters from Monsters Inc. Seems a bit nicer than some of the robots that are from various TV shows and things. 

[00:04:53] Marie Vakakis: See, I love the show. Big Hero Six, and so I won. Yeah. If I’m like, I, I would quite like that [00:05:00] because it’s talking about we, it’s less frictionless.

[00:05:01] Marie Vakakis: It is there as a companion just for you a hundred percent of the time. Right, so that’s interesting. You’ve mentioned, and I’ve read some of the stuff you’ve posted, which was really interesting around this, this idea of friction, but around initiating, and there are some people that I see in my therapy room who are terrified to ask a friend.

[00:05:26] Marie Vakakis: To do something, and they’ll say it in the most roundabout way that the other person has no idea that that’s the request. So they might say something like, Hey, on the weekend I might be in the area. Let me know if you’re free. Right. That is so general and so vague, and the other person’s like, oh yeah, maybe let me know when you’re.

[00:05:48] Marie Vakakis: Nearby and then nothing happens. Yeah. What have you been observing or what conversations have you been having with people around this idea of initiating plans of [00:06:00] putting yourself out there? 

[00:06:02] Steph Clarke: It’s really interesting and I think there’s a couple of different things, and if I think about the kind of slightly younger generation, so I guess the Gen Z for want of a better kind of generic, meaningless demographic description.

[00:06:13] Steph Clarke: There is this, there’s this other thing happening as well, and I think. Yes, there’s this kind of initiation gap of everyone’s sort of wanting better, closer, more fun connected relationships and friendships, but no one’s kind of initiating those, or everyone’s waiting for someone else to initiate them. So there’s that.

[00:06:31] Steph Clarke: And there’s also then this other sort of sub topic around cringe culture and this aversion that younger people have in particular, it seems, again, you know, very generic around being seen as too sincere. Or being seen as to maybe, maybe within that needy, but certainly this kind of this, this sincerity or this, this element of cringe.

[00:06:52] Steph Clarke: And we’re starting to see that kind of bubble up in some of the conversations online and things like that now around, you know, post cringe. [00:07:00] And which again, I mean there’s a whole other, anyway, there’s, yeah, that’s a whole other topic, but I think this, this aversion to cringe or doing anything too, too sincere is stopping a lot of people from asking for what they need or for initiating something on the basis that it might seem to.

[00:07:17] Steph Clarke: Earnest or too cringe or whatever. And now are we gonna get now performative post cringe? I mean, yeah, probably. That’s gonna be probably really cringe though. The irony is, the irony is high on this. We’ve also got, then alongside that, this kind of surveillance culture. And I’ve been talking, I’ve quite a few conversations with the younger people around their friendships and how they connect and you know, some of the conversations and there’s some really interesting kind of.

[00:07:40] Steph Clarke: I suppose dynamics there around different, you know, things like different platforms. You’d only have this type of conversation on Snapchat and you only have that conversation on like iMessages for the most serious conversations because you wanna keep the receipts and you wanna kinda have evidence of it, whereas other things maybe disappear or it’s a bit more casual.

[00:07:58] Steph Clarke: But there’s also this piece around [00:08:00] this sort of surveillance culture where people, younger people struggle to, or seem to struggle to communicate in the moment a bit more. So that everything has to be planned and text and messaged, you know, in a kind of slightly more edited way. Rather than being able to be, be responded to, you know, in a one-on-one kind of interaction.

[00:08:20] Steph Clarke: So I think when you put all of that together, you end up with this quite, like you said that that kind of perfect example, that kinda, this kind of very vague, non-committal, loose, you know, kind of existence or communication that then no one’s really getting what they need or what they want from. And no one ends up any further ahead of where they were or what, or closer to what they wanted.

[00:08:45] Steph Clarke: So what could people do instead? I mean, 

[00:08:47] Marie Vakakis: initiate would be my, but they, they think that’s, they think that’s initiating. So when you say initiate, what does that look like? You’re coming towards the end of the week. You realise you have maybe not so many [00:09:00] plans on the weekend. You’re feeling a bit lonely and you have.

[00:09:03] Marie Vakakis: A list of acquaintances or friend ish people in your phone on your socials. What does that look like? Mm. 

[00:09:12] Steph Clarke: Someone recently was telling me, and I’ve actually, I had this one conversation that I’ve heard a couple other similar variations of this, which I thought was quite good, is people could be actually just being really sick of the scheduling that comes with friendship and adult relationships and things as well, which I think is, you know, that’s somewhat separate thing, but related.

[00:09:29] Steph Clarke: And so what they’ve started doing is being like, I’m gonna be here. This time on this day, if anyone’s in, let me know. Oh, if anyone’s in, I’ll see you there. If you’re not, cool, I’ll see you next time. And in the group chat that this, you know, particular friend was telling me about in this particular, actually two different, I think it’s two different group chats that she’s got where people have started doing that.

[00:09:46] Steph Clarke: It’s just made it so much more casual. And particularly if there is more of a group chat, maybe two people have decided to go to a yoga class at 9:00 AM on a Saturday morning and then go for coffee afterwards. But then, you know, it’s not like trying to organise the whole group to do it, but two people are [00:10:00] committed to it.

[00:10:00] Steph Clarke: Great. And then everyone else can join if they want. And it just kind of, again, it just takes that, that load away, that kind of logistical mental load away from organising or the overwhelm of being like, oh, I’ve got these eight people. How are we gonna get? Kind of thing. But then also means that you are still doing something and putting it out there and then people can kind of opt in around as necessary, but also role models that that is the way we can actually make it easier to hang out with each other.

[00:10:24] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. I’ve started doing that with camping trips. I’m an avid Oh, nice. Yeah. Tampa. Yeah, same caravan. So a little bit. Little bit luxe. Mm-hmm. And I’ve just started going through the public holidays, booking them in and saying, going through a few friends, this is where we’ll be. We’ve got two spots. Whoever wants it, this is how many we can fit on the site.

[00:10:42] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. And starting to do a bit more of that because I find the back and forth. Like I, I loathe the responsibility I want to throw my phone at in the nearest ocean. Oh, I can’t. Oh, I can’t. It’s just now it’s like, I prefer that containment. And so I’ve started, I’ve even done it recently with the movies. I, [00:11:00] me book the movie.

[00:11:01] Marie Vakakis: I wanted to see with my partner, messaged a friend who I thought would be like, we’re going to the movies this time, this day. If you wanna come, we’ll have dinner beforehand. And then, yeah. Where you’re sitting these seats, great. We’ve booked right behind you. Excellent. 

[00:11:13] Steph Clarke: Yeah. Easy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:11:14] Marie Vakakis: But that takes vulnerability for some people.

[00:11:18] Marie Vakakis: I don’t find it particularly difficult. Mm. So I don’t see it as something I need to think that hard about. But when you were talking about this roundabout way of communicating, it feels very. Scripted as a way to protect from something, the fear of maybe rejection or getting it wrong or there’s, there’s something there.

[00:11:42] Marie Vakakis: How do you see that coming through the conversations you are having? 

[00:11:45] Steph Clarke: It is that, and I think it is, yeah, it is a fear of rejection. I dunno how, and yeah, I’m not a, you know, psychologist or you know, social scientist to, to be able to kind of, you know, pinpoint the thing or whatever. But I wonder how much of it just again, from.

[00:11:58] Steph Clarke: Sort of other around [00:12:00] conversations I’ve had around this that is this sense that. Anyone can be caught out by being awkward or be doing it wrong or whatever. And there’s this kind of, you know, and that comes up in sort of cyber bullying and a kind of more extreme version, but through to just seeing constantly that, oh, look, look at that person being embarrassed because no one turned up at their thing and someone was there filming.

[00:12:21] Steph Clarke: You know, just stuff like that where they’ve, they’ve been fed, you know, people have been fed a diet of people being embarrassed. Not wanting that to happen to them, even if it is in a really small, quiet way that wouldn’t necessarily be caught on camera or anything like that. And I remember talking, I’ve spoken to a few kind of educators who have been, you know, teaching for a period of time and they’ve seen that shift as well of kids not wanting and, you know, kids, kids not wanting to try stuff anymore.

[00:12:48] Steph Clarke: Because they dunno who’s gonna be filming or they dunno who’s gonna be doing, you know, whatever. So, you know, particularly in some things like drama classes and, you know, other kind of maybe slightly more expressive classes or, or you know, sort of [00:13:00] vocations that, that is really limiting the, the edges that people are kind of willing to push.

[00:13:05] Steph Clarke: And I think then, you know, this, it, it doesn’t, it seems like that would be something that would extrapolate into other parts of life as well. 

[00:13:12] Marie Vakakis: Mm. I totally get that. I, I recently did a Christmas in July party and it is really, it’s like, what if I’m there with all the food and no one shows up? You’ve got loads of leftovers.

[00:13:22] Marie Vakakis: Well, it was that, but there’s also, can’t deny that it actually does hurt when everyone, you’ve sent out invitations and people. Have an RSVP. Now, RSVP means if you can’t come, you also say no. You don’t just ignore it. And then people got sick last minute, or someone’s child or something happened. But it is when you’ve put in a lot of work and effort and coordinated and planned and budgeted and prepared, how do we hold people accountable to also start showing up and not be so flaky?

[00:13:56] Marie Vakakis: Mm. 

[00:13:58] Steph Clarke: One of the things I’ve tried to do, ’cause I had that [00:14:00] experience a few years ago now, I think it. Maybe 2018 for my birthday, I invited, uh, sort of, you know, six people. Uh, or sorry, I had six spaces at my dinner table, or five excluding me. So I thought, right, I’m gonna invite five people who have really like, made an impact on my year.

[00:14:17] Steph Clarke: So about a month before my birthday, I sent them in all a nice message of like. Hey, you know, thanks for, you know, whatever it is that we’ve done together or you know, the time we’ve spent together this year. And yeah, I’d love to have, and I thought it’d be a nice way of bringing different people together who, you know, some from more work, some from more, you know, hobbies that I was doing.

[00:14:33] Steph Clarke: But also to recognise that actually every year there’s people kind of in and out at different times as well. Anyway, so a month before I put in people, you know, sort of sent message out and then didn’t really kind of follow up or anything. And you know, sort of a week before people are, oh, is that still happening?

[00:14:47] Steph Clarke: And I think that to me is like the worst. Like message is that, oh, is that still happening? I’m thinking, well, yeah. I mean, we put it in the diary like a few weeks ago, so why wouldn’t it be? And so then like someone was like, oh, actually something [00:15:00] else has come up, you know, kind of thing. And I was just so like sad and heartbroken about it that I then just didn’t do anything for my birthday that year.

[00:15:06] Steph Clarke: Yeah, Boohoo, poor me, tiny violin. But then a couple of years ago, in 2023, I was like, right, five years is fast. I can, I can try get COVID, kind of deleted some birthdays, so we’ll kind of ignore those. I decided, yeah, to do something different and so what I did was sort of similar again, I sort of sent a message out and again, say six people around the dinner table or five excluding me.

[00:15:30] Steph Clarke: Sent ’em a nice message and sort of got the people in who were in, put it in the diaries. Then basically every week for the next sort of three or four weeks, I sent like a little update, like, oh, this is who else is gonna be coming, and sort of sent them the thing of Ian’s coming and he’s a DJ and he does these cool things.

[00:15:45] Steph Clarke: And I sent this message which had a little like one sentence about each person, and it was kinda like a fun fact about them that was nothing to do with their work. And given that none of these people had met each other before, what was really cool is that number one, everyone turned up. There was no last minute like, oh, can I [00:16:00] come?

[00:16:00] Steph Clarke: Kind of things. And also by the end of the night, a couple of people are, oh, like none of us have talked about work at all. And how interesting is that, that as adults who’ve got together. That didn’t know each other, that we didn’t just end up defaulting to that. And a lot of it they said, you know, people said was because I kind of, again, set the tone of like, these are the types of conversations we are gonna be having.

[00:16:21] Steph Clarke: And it was super fun. And you know, and it was, you know, it felt kind of risky in a little bit as well because I was like, oh, people are gonna be like, oh, is this too much? Or, you know, those types of things. But I just think, well, you know, the feeling of, you know, having no one to talk to you about the fat was also quite sad.

[00:16:35] Steph Clarke: And to be clear, I’m the one that didn’t go ahead. I, I didn’t sit there with like. Yeah, sort of cheese and pineapple on a stick and you know, finger sandwiches and no one turned up. I just canceled it like a week before. Yeah. Anyway, so I think it’s just that piece of, actually, sometimes you’ve gotta put more, I think there’s, there’s kind of two things to me at the moment that sometimes we need to put less effort into stuff and make it easier, like the kind of examples we are sharing and actually having more low lift kind of [00:17:00] social connection experiences.

[00:17:02] Steph Clarke: And in some of the situations we actually need to put a bit more effort in and actually fully prea Parker, the gathering that we’re having. So that people do turn up in the right way and you kind of invite the right people for the right reasons and we have the right connection. 

[00:17:15] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. I get what you’re saying about the birthday, ’cause I’ve had a birthday, it would’ve probably maybe been a little bit earlier than 2018 where I think everyone assumed.

[00:17:25] Marie Vakakis: Someone else would’ve done something. Mm. And I was at home in my jammies and my birthday fell on a Saturday with not a single plan. Aw. And it’s like that stuff’s really painful. Mm. Especially if you don’t belong to one kind of really cohesive group where Yeah. It’s sort of a, it’s not a waiting for an invite.

[00:17:45] Marie Vakakis: They just sort of be like, so what are we doing for you? But like they initiated it. And that’s kind of your group culture. But now fast forward to I’m met an age where a lot of people have kids, and that creates a very different dynamic where they don’t get enough time on their [00:18:00] own, let alone want to nurture some friendships.

[00:18:03] Marie Vakakis: And so a Friday night could come around and they’re quite contented if the family’s around to just chill out at home because there’s always something there. It’s kind of like when you were younger and you had housemates, sometimes that was half the fun. It’s not like you’re having a party, but if you lived with housemates.

[00:18:19] Marie Vakakis: That can become a gathering. And so how do you start to navigate that change where some of those, and I’m just talking about my female friends because that’s the, the ones I’m closest to, some of those events might come round and they’re actually disappointed that they might just get a really boring gift, like fucking slippers or poorly sized pajamas, and they’re like, seriously, is this what I’ve become now?

[00:18:41] Marie Vakakis: And they start to struggle with that identity and really wish one of their girlfriends did something but also haven’t been able. To nurture that relationship or have forgotten that, you know, they’re celebrating their friend’s birthday, especially if you don’t have kids, they forget and they start celebrating the kids’ birthday.

[00:18:58] Marie Vakakis: So how do you adjust to [00:19:00] maintaining that friendship? When I think they’re, I’m noticing that my, my friends think what they’re doing is boring, so won’t invite me. And so then I get to miss out on. Being a part of the important moments for them. 

[00:19:14] Steph Clarke: Yeah. 

[00:19:14] Marie Vakakis: Even if it is 8:00 AM with the Takeaway coffee, watching the kids on the monkey bars, it doesn’t, it doesn’t bother me.

[00:19:20] Marie Vakakis: Mm. But there’s a whole different shift there and, and that feels a bit more relevant to the age I’m at. Mm. At the moment. Can you speak to how that’s been talked about in some of the, I guess, conversations you’ve been having? 

[00:19:32] Steph Clarke: Yeah, over the last couple of weeks I’ve run a couple of virtual sessions for small groups around the future of friendship, and one of the things we did at the beginning of the first session was talk about the kind of the present of friendships and it got people to kind of stick up on the, you know, virtual whiteboard things that they’re currently experiencing, noticing, and, and that that demographic of coming to those sessions definitely skewed a bit older, kind of forties, fifties, and.

[00:19:55] Steph Clarke: So there was a lot of conversation around the, the kids piece and friends with kids, [00:20:00] or some of them had kids, but you know, it’s probably a decent split of people who did or didn’t. And so it was interesting hearing kind of, you know, both sides for want of a better kind of phrase. And people who were like, oh yeah, I lost.

[00:20:11] Steph Clarke: Some friends, you know, particularly a couple of people I know who, um, who came to that session probably more in their fifties, who are like, oh yeah, some friends who I’ve not seen for basically 20 years, but we are really close who have now reemerged out of the, out of the, the fog of, of parenting. The kids are more independent and stuff now, and some of ’em are, you know, young adults obviously.

[00:20:30] Steph Clarke: And now like, okay, cool, let’s do something fun. And, you know, wanting to kind of reconnect, which is really cool. You know, that, that, that is, it’s nice to see someone who’s. You know, 15, 20 years later than, than me and being like, oh, okay. Some of those friends who have definitely kind of faded away at the moment.

[00:20:45] Steph Clarke: But then also the other phase of that around people who, you know, who’ve got friends who are just coming out of the first kind of three, you know, I suppose three to five years. And again, it’s, you know, that’s a different kind of phase as well from what I understand. So, so again, they’re sort of regaining a little bit more time [00:21:00] of their own, you know, not completely obviously.

[00:21:02] Steph Clarke: But again, a kind of reemerging like, oh, hey, can we hang out or can we do something? But like you say, that’s, you know, wanting or needing maybe to do that in a, in a bit of a different way. And it’s interesting as well talking to friends who have different kind of setups in terms of their kind of family structures and, and all the rest who.

[00:21:19] Steph Clarke: The ones who I kind of can connect with the most are the ones who in their family unit, in their partnerships have got a really clear, I suppose, definition for want of a better word, around roles and actually really healthy relationship around roles where it’s not just based on some kind of gender norm or something like that.

[00:21:36] Steph Clarke: Like they really have nutted out. This is what works. This is how we do it. You know, one, you know, and it’s all, and all of them are different. So one of them have got, one of the couples I know have, you know, basically nights they’ve got three kids and they have kind of different nights off. So I know that if I wanna hang out with my friend, that he’s free on these particular nights of the week and his wife has different nights of the week.

[00:21:54] Steph Clarke: And so they, they have a real sense of being able to connect. And I know for him. That when he wants to catch up [00:22:00] with some of his male friends who have kids, you know, it’s very much like, oh, well I dunno. I mean, I dunno if I’m allowed that night and that kind of thing. And ’cause there’s no real, uh, just regular conversation.

[00:22:09] Steph Clarke: This is more your kind of field, I’m sure, like there’s no real regular conversation around. Like your own time and space and relationships and, and all the rest outside of the family. So yeah, so there’s, there’s those things, but there’s also, and, and for, but for all of these conversations, the theme was around that, that organising piece as well, around how do we just make this easy?

[00:22:28] Steph Clarke: Can it just be that, you know, I’m gonna be at the playground from eight till nine or, you know, whatever, but I’m gonna walk from this cafe, so let’s meet there. And, and again, where we can kind of, you know, without kind of productivity hacking our friendships, because that feels pretty miserable. But where we can.

[00:22:42] Steph Clarke: Kind of multitask to an extent. And you know, people have shared before around how once a week them and their really close friend will go and do their grocery shopping together and they’ll have a chat as they walk around the supermarket and they might get a coffee before, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:22:56] Steph Clarke: They might do something around it as well. But again, just kind of making some of those things [00:23:00] fun or co-working from each other’s houses once a week or something along those lines. So again, just kind of finding ways to make that work in your life rather than it always having to be this, this add-on.

[00:23:09] Steph Clarke: Because otherwise yeah, that’s when these things. 

[00:23:12] Marie Vakakis: Feel hard. I think the, the, the word that keeps coming, but it’s frictionless that the friction seems to be the point and sometimes the friction’s emotional. And there’s one thing I’ve noticed with some friends and some clients as well who have newer, new babies and they’re up at all sorts of hours of the night.

[00:23:31] Marie Vakakis: And they’re actually, it’s interesting ’cause when I was doing my, my little r research for the episode I did on ai. MM. And affairs. And I think it’s gonna be another episode. ’cause it’s so interesting. Yeah. People were talking about how they can use the bo especially the voice function at any time of the day and it just responds.

[00:23:48] Marie Vakakis: And in one of the podcasts I heard where people were talking about this, the, the other podcast, I was like, but you can voice memo me anytime. And they’re like, well, I feel bad too. Mm. And so it just made me think of. I have had those [00:24:00] fluctuating work where sometimes I am up in the weird hours of the night really working on something or doing an international podcast.

[00:24:07] Marie Vakakis: So if I had, I used the app Marco Polo, but if it was a voice memo or I think WhatsApp has the inbuilt video feature video note, if someone, if one of my friends who was breastfeeding at three o’clock in the morning sent me a, just a stream of consciousness and I saw that I would reply and we could still keep contact.

[00:24:25] Marie Vakakis: So I think there’s also peace for people where. They don’t wanna be too much. Mm-hmm. Or they don’t wanna be annoying and they’re not giving a person the chance to say yes or no. They’re just removing that option. 

[00:24:38] Steph Clarke: Yeah. 

[00:24:38] Marie Vakakis: And so the, 

[00:24:39] Steph Clarke: yeah, I was, I was gonna say, just in your more professional opinion, how much of that do you think comes into this kind of idea of identity of motherhood?

[00:24:46] Steph Clarke: Therefore, I must be this, not that, and this kind of, I must remove myself from the world, or it won’t be, or it won’t be available to me. 

[00:24:52] Marie Vakakis: I, I haven’t had that conversation. I don’t think it’s necessarily that. I think it’s. You tend to maybe find things in [00:25:00] common with people you spend a lot of time with.

[00:25:01] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And so you might then start defaulting to the same people in the same routine. And I, I’ve had a, a young dad recently say, you know, he’s got a relationship where he’s taken less work to have more days actively parenting. And he’s like, I pictured this utopia kind of thing of, there’d be a whole bunch of other dads and we’d go to the playground and he’s like, it’s really lonely.

[00:25:20] Marie Vakakis: Mm. And doesn’t know then what to do with that. And so I guess what I’m trying to encourage people to do is sit in the discomfort and reach out and say, you know, send the voice memo saying, look, this is all I can manage right now. Or, you know, have the group chat and say, who’s free for a talk right now?

[00:25:38] Marie Vakakis: Or it’s five o’clock in the morning, is anyone out? And about the, and see kind of what happens and the, the boundaries on the other person to enforce. So if someone’s like, I don’t answer my phone after nine 

[00:25:49] Steph Clarke: mm, 

[00:25:49] Marie Vakakis: then just. Put your phone on silent. 

[00:25:51] Steph Clarke: Yeah, 

[00:25:52] Marie Vakakis: yeah. Or if the person can message, let’s say you have to leave your phone on because you are, I know from your work and those pings, you can mute a specific person [00:26:00] or you can only accept calls from specific numbers.

[00:26:02] Marie Vakakis: So the tech has allowed us to set those boundaries to protect our space. Mm-hmm. But I think people are really scared to reach out 

[00:26:11] Steph Clarke: and this, this piece that Brene Brown has talked about around that, if I have to ask for it, then it’s not real. 

[00:26:16] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. You should just know that that’s what I need. Right? 

[00:26:19] Steph Clarke: Yeah, exactly.

[00:26:20] Steph Clarke: Otherwise, yeah, what’s the point? Yeah. 

[00:26:22] Marie Vakakis: But I think there’s a big part of that, and then there’s another part that is, I think we can get a little bit lazy and self-absorbed, and so sometimes we might need to make an effort for the people that matter to us. And so if you’ve got a friend who’s like, like, do you wanna do something for your birth?

[00:26:38] Marie Vakakis: And like, oh no, not really. Don’t just be like, well, fine. Yeah, whatever. Mm-hmm. Then say, I would love to take you out for dinner. I’m free these nights. Mm-hmm. Like make the effort, help reach out. And so it’s a dialogue both ways. Some people, we don’t get taught how to do this. We get thrown in in schools with a whole bunch of kids.

[00:26:59] Marie Vakakis: You might do some group [00:27:00] projects. Some people have great role modeling and some don’t. 

[00:27:03] Steph Clarke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:03] Marie Vakakis: And I think the saddest thing is that that disconnection, that loneliness, I’m seeing it across the board and I think some people would be surprised that I’m quite. Chatty and I’ll, I’ll do podcasts. And I still have moments where I’m like, a whole week has gone by and I have not heard from a single friend.

[00:27:21] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And so I think some people also need to make a bit of effort and water those friendships, water that garden, because you can’t just rely on your kids for fulfillment or your partner or mm-hmm. It will look different. It still needs watery. Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:37] Steph Clarke: Yeah. Oh, there’s, yeah, there’s so much there isn’t there, and it’s just so, and again, like in that context of, with everything else, and it’s interesting as well, like even at the beginning of the episode where you talked about, you know, you talk a lot about relationships and people, you know, um, sort of parental and kids relationships and all the rest, and the friendship thing that hasn’t really kind of come up as much yet.

[00:27:59] Steph Clarke: And yet, you know, [00:28:00] some, you know, for a lot of people when you talk to ’em like, oh no, my friends are like the most important, blah, blah, blah. But then also they’re often the ones that we will let down, let go, let, or, you know, more time will pass kind of between seeing them or speaking to them or whatever.

[00:28:11] Steph Clarke: And, and, you know, we can’t be constantly in touch with everyone. Of course that’s, you know, there are phases and, and seasons and all the rest. But at the same time, like you say, you can suddenly get into a place where you are like, oh wait, a week’s gone past, or, you know, whatever a period of time has gone past and you haven’t kind of spoken to a friend or.

[00:28:28] Steph Clarke: You know, had some connection with them or something that’s, yeah. It’s easy to do. 

[00:28:32] Marie Vakakis: The skills are the same with parent and child. It’s different because you are, you are raising a human. Yeah. So developmentally it’s different. Mm-hmm. But a lot of the skills around noticing and attuning and learning to have tough conversations and honest conversations and circle back to something.

[00:28:50] Marie Vakakis: There is no relationship that comes without conflict. Like it is the price of connection. Mm. The price of community comes with conflict or comes with challenge or [00:29:00] difficulty. Like it doesn’t mean it’s bad ’cause you’ve had a fight recovering from that makes your friendship stronger and I think we’ve lost some of that.

[00:29:08] Marie Vakakis: Mm. That you cannot have that kind of vulnerability. Without, and that intimacy, without sitting in the discomfort that you might get it wrong. You can’t put yourself out there and never get rejected. So sitting with the good stuff comes with not such great stuff. Mm-hmm. And it’s. We don’t, it’s not an equal parts.

[00:29:30] Marie Vakakis: You want the good stuff to outweigh, but that’s just, that’s the price of the ticket. Hmm. That’s what it costs. Yeah. And I think people forget that, or they don’t know. They think we’ve had a fight that said it’s over and we’ve lost, or maybe we never had a. Really good ways to navigate difference and gather in different ways or be together with different hobbies or different political ideations or different religious, and some of those places of gathering might’ve been work [00:30:00] Now where, I mean, I’m in a very, not remote, I work with one-on-one clients, but I.

[00:30:05] Marie Vakakis: Don’t have a big team around me that we all have lunch here, some people work completely remote. If no, no longer going to a central place, where do you get that from? Mm-hmm. And so there’s kind of two pieces in that. One is how do you gather and the other is the skills that we need to maintain those friendships.

[00:30:22] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:23] Steph Clarke: So a, a thing on Instagram that is the annoyance, is the price for community. The price you pay for community. And I just think that’s so true. And, and also just something that like, you know, as you were just saying, feels like it’s sort of sliding away as we become, you know, more used to being, you know, frictionless existences or not really knowing that oh, actually I can be a bit annoyed with that person or whatever.

[00:30:44] Steph Clarke: And I think the other thing, certainly something that’s a bit of a bug bear of mine is, you know, every other, you know, you go onto your. Google kind of homepage or something with the recommended articles or just your algorithm on social media and it’s like five red flags that your friend’s a narcissist and like 10 red flags that this [00:31:00] person shouldn’t be in your life and all this kind of thing.

[00:31:01] Steph Clarke: So when you’re kind of bombarded with that as well, and most of those are pretty questionable it seems in terms of the actual content of those videos. But if you are all you’re being fed, is that actually quite normal Behaviors sometimes are some like pathology of some sociopath that you’ve got in your life.

[00:31:17] Steph Clarke: Then of course you’re gonna be like. Well, okay, well that person said that thing and maybe they actually meant that, and maybe they’re actually a narcissist. Maybe can, all of a sudden, all of a sudden no one around you is kind of safe. And therefore you can very easily be like, oh, well I need to like remove them from my life.

[00:31:32] Steph Clarke: Or I need to kind of, you know, exit that friendship relationship or whatever. And of course there are some definitely problematic people out there. Sure. Don’t be friends with them. But also there’s also a lot of like, just normal, weird behavior that is. You know, maybe suboptimal in certain situations or whatever.

[00:31:47] Steph Clarke: And I’m not saying we have to forgive really awful things, but I dunno. I think there’s a lot of stuff we’re just like, it’s just them. Awkward, 

[00:31:55] Marie Vakakis: messy humans. 

[00:31:56] Steph Clarke: Yeah, exactly. Which, 

[00:31:57] Marie Vakakis: funny enough, ’cause I would think a red flag is cutting off all [00:32:00] your friends. ’cause you think they’ve got red flags. 

[00:32:02] Steph Clarke: Yeah. Like you are the red flags suddenly.

[00:32:03] Steph Clarke: Yes. 

[00:32:04] Marie Vakakis: Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s, yeah. It’s a really easy way. It’s a bit of a cop out to not show up and have the tough conversation. It is sort of saying, you are the problem, and if you’ve got this in multiple relationships, there’s a good chance it’s you. There’s a good chance you’ve either subconsciously created a dynamic that has allowed that to happen.

[00:32:26] Marie Vakakis: Or you’re struggling to have a conversation. And so if it’s happening a lot, then it’s worth holding a mirror up and saying, what role am I playing in this? And that’s one of the most confronting bits in therapy is not, what’s wrong with the other, it’s what am I doing in this? Hmm. Because people are forgetful, they’re imperfect, they double book, and sometimes you.

[00:32:51] Marie Vakakis: Let people get away with that. Mm. So then that creates that sort of expectation. And so it’s interesting. Yeah. The red flags thing, I [00:33:00] mean, most people that I have met are not toxic. Mm. Most people, and I’ve worked in psychiatric hospitals, are not diagnosed narcissists. It is super, super, super rare to have that kind of malicious.

[00:33:14] Marie Vakakis: Intent to harm. Mm. Most other people, some people are assholes. Mm-hmm. Sure. Some are having a bad day, some are activated and provoked by something. And most people are messy, awkward humans. 

[00:33:26] Steph Clarke: Yeah. And some people just aren’t your people. Yeah. Like that’s also okay. Like, and some people, you know, as you know, as we go through life and we get older and all the rest become not your people or your person or Yeah.

[00:33:37] Steph Clarke: Whatever. And it’s like that’s also okay like that. It doesn’t need to be a whole kind of drama every time. But yeah, I think, like you say, most people are just fine and weird. And messy and human. 

[00:33:47] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. So if people are listening to this and you know, you wish you had one piece of advice or maybe a couple of pieces of advice.

[00:33:53] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. You’ve had a lot of conversations. You post a lot of content about this, it’s definitely, you’re thinking about it a lot. And I’ve looked at your [00:34:00] podcast book review, so you’ve done a lot of reading into this and we definitely will do that book review at some point. Oh yes. One, what are some things, some takeaways that you hope people might.

[00:34:10] Marie Vakakis: Listen to this and do something different after hearing it. 

[00:34:15] Steph Clarke: I’m give two contrasting pieces of advice and that is do less and do more. So I think coming back to that conversation from earlier, so where are the, where are the relationships where actually you are over-engineering trying to catch up? And you can send the message in the group chat like, Hey, me and Marie, or you know me and or just you are going on this walk at this time in this place, or, you know, whatever it is you want to do, who’s with me?

[00:34:38] Steph Clarke: Like, where can you make that easier? And or finding ways that that kind of fits into everyone’s lives or, you know, whatever, whatever that is. So where can you do less? And maybe it is even just getting back to someone just coming over and sitting on the sofa and having a chat. Buy some nice tea or something like that, or some nice biscuit, like, you know, it doesn’t have to be going out and doing a thing every time.

[00:34:56] Steph Clarke: I really miss those kind of bedroom [00:35:00] hangs that you would have as a teenager, where you would just go around your friend’s house, you knew where they were because they’re always at home. And obviously now you know where they are because everyone’s got their, uh, notification or their, um. Location, location shed on the phone.

[00:35:12] Steph Clarke: So yeah, you just nip round and you’re like, oh, hey. And then you just sort of sit around listening to music, chatting and maybe watching a film, maybe going out to get some snacks at some point. But yeah, just doing more of that. I just think long, continuous. Kind of time together is, is great. So there’s that.

[00:35:29] Steph Clarke: And then where can you make a bit more effort? So whether it is the friend’s birthday or whether it is your own birthday, and it doesn’t have to be birthdays. And actually the, the book that I’m working on, the original title was actually Beyond Birthdays on the Basis that we shouldn’t just be celebrating, you know, once a year being like, oh, let’s go for drinks again.

[00:35:42] Steph Clarke: Let’s go for brunch. You know, it doesn’t need to be just around birthday anyway. Find new things to celebrate maybe is the. Subpoint of this that, you know, where can you actually make a bit more effort and bring different people together and send an extra couple of messages to kind of make sure people are in and, and let them know that this is gonna be fun or different or whatever it is that you want from [00:36:00] that thing.

[00:36:00] Steph Clarke: Like design it. So that happens. And I think, well we, we do need a bit, we need a bit more initiation, we need a bit more maybe intent and design with some of the stuff as well. And you know, sometimes that feels kind of counterintuitive because you Oh yeah. But I want it to be relaxed. I want to be this.

[00:36:15] Steph Clarke: Like it won’t be unless you actually design it. So it is that, and you know, maybe when we talk about the art of gathering another time, we can talk about exactly that. You can’t be a chill host as Priya says. 

[00:36:25] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. It has to be that intentionality is really important. I do like what you said earlier about the example you use of someone doing their grocery shopping together, and I think.

[00:36:34] Marie Vakakis: That’s the kind of stuff that we used to do when we were younger. You kind of, like you were saying, you just, you’d hang out and you’d do your errands and I think that can be a really beautiful time for people to offer that connection for friends. But be really clear. ’cause I know I’m always scared of overstaying my welcome because I am quite a relaxed guest.

[00:36:51] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. So if someone is okay for me to just help myself to stuff, oh we’ll go, I’ll make a cup of tea. Especially the people I know Well and for some other [00:37:00] people that might be seen as rude. So I’m. I don’t mind sitting there drinking my tea while they prepare dinner. I’m happy to chop something up. Yeah.

[00:37:06] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. If they need to go do, you know, bath and and book for the kid, I can tidy up so I’m okay to do that, but I also don’t wanna stay overstay my welcome. So how can people put that out there a little bit more of like, look, you know, I’ve gotta go to Costco. Do you wanna come with me or, yeah, I’m really busy running groceries.

[00:37:26] Marie Vakakis: But yeah, you could come to the Vic market like some of those things. I think we forget, can be used as moments for connection. Even a phone call while you’re doing that. Yeah. I’ve got a, a habit. I’ve got a habit with my brother. We, we, whenever one of us calls the other, we’re usually walking and if the other’s free, then it’s like, oh, I’m gonna put book pull tools down and walk with you.

[00:37:45] Marie Vakakis: And we walk, we can hear all the noises and the birds and the funny things. But that’s become just sort of a while. We are walking, we are talking and I often call my poor mom every time I’m driving somewhere. She’s like, what do you need? I’m like, it’s a really long drive. She’s like, you already called me twice.

[00:37:57] Marie Vakakis: It’s still a really long drive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And [00:38:00] so linking up some of those commute parts or mandatory adult things between, between times, yeah, yeah, yeah. With intention. Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:09] Steph Clarke: Yeah. My friend of Simon, whenever he phones, the way I normally answer it is like, where are you off to? Because he almost phones me in the car and, and I often, I will do the same to him as well.

[00:38:18] Steph Clarke: So that’s become a bit of a kind of joint, kind of, you know, amusing kind of thing that we now just becomes a bit more of a default, which is fun. So, but I think using this, and I think where you, you know, if you’ve read something that you know in this or you know, you could taken something from this podcast, using that as your catalyst and being like, Hey, you know, messaging a friend, send them a link to this.

[00:38:35] Steph Clarke: And this isn’t just like a big sp spook, but send the link to this. Like, Hey, I was listening to this podcast, we’re talking about this. Do you wanna try that? Which is really what I’m trying to do with the book that I’m working on as well, which is giving people the opportunity to kind of snap a photo of one of the ideas and be like, oh, people are doing this.

[00:38:51] Steph Clarke: Do you wanna try that? Just again, like making it kind of as easy as possible for people to initiate and initiate something different. And something that maybe works for a [00:39:00] bit, maybe it works over winter, but not over the summer. But again, you kind of, you find your own rhythm with it as well, and you make it your own.

[00:39:05] Marie Vakakis: So if someone has sent you this episode, they’re saying they want you in your life. They love you. Yeah. Yeah. They love you. They wanna connect. They want you to be, you know, to do more together. So if you’ve shared this with someone, if you’re on the receiving end, it’s a signal. It’s a little flag. Yeah.

[00:39:20] Marie Vakakis: Little kind of, hello, I am here. Wanna hang out? I wanna do something. Yeah. Thanks so much for this conversation. I thank you. Think we could have so many, and maybe when your book is coming out or when, if you’ve come across a really interesting topic, we can rehash it, hash it out on this, it’d great. 

[00:39:35] Steph Clarke: Thanks Marie.

[00:39:36] Marie Vakakis: And if people wanna get in touch with you, what do you offer? What do you do? How can we get one of the five coveted dinner invites to Yeah, your 

[00:39:43] Steph Clarke: next birthday? I, no, you’re running. Well, I dunno. It’s gonna be, my birthday’s the end of November, so you’ve got a big push for the next three months. If you wanna get on the, uh, the dinner invites.

[00:39:52] Steph Clarke: So 

[00:39:53] Marie Vakakis: I’m a very reliable friend if it’s in the diary. Yeah, no, you sound like you would be, I was 

[00:39:56] Steph Clarke: like, you’d be on the list. Sorry. The um, yeah, no [00:40:00] flaking from you, which is good. Yes. The best way to find me is a couple of places. So LinkedIn, Steph Clark, Steph with a pH, and Clark with an E. And then also on Substack.

[00:40:08] Steph Clarke: The Substack is called How to Friend, which is gonna be the name of the book when that comes out as well. Those are the best places to find me. The, yeah. And I kind of write on Substack around friendship and LinkedIn’s a bit more about the. Other work I do as a futurist, which is helping organisations with their strategy and innovation work and thinking about what might happen next and whether their organisation is still gonna be relevant and sustainable in that future.

[00:40:30] Steph Clarke: Oh, how 

[00:40:30] Marie Vakakis: anxiety 

[00:40:31] Steph Clarke: provoking. 

[00:40:33] Marie Vakakis: Thanks so much. This was a really great conversation. Hopefully people, it’s gotten them thinking about how they can. Reach out to their friends and sit in some of the discomfort that you know evokes for them. I guess. 

[00:40:45] Steph Clarke: Hope so. Thanks for having the conversation.

[00:40:51] Marie Vakakis: Thank you for listening to keep the Conversation going. Head on over to Instagram or LinkedIn and follow me if you’d like to keep updated with episodes. Another interesting things [00:41:00] happening in mental health. Join my Weekly, this Complex Life newsletter. Where I’ll share tools, tips, and insights. There’s a link in the show notes, got a question you want answered, ship me an email or a dm.

[00:41:10] Marie Vakakis: I’d love to hear from you and if you enjoy the show, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and a review. It helps other people find the podcast.