Doug French: All right, what are you staring at?
Magda Pecsenye Zarin: Um, I'm knitting.
Doug: You're going to knit while we're talking?
Magda: Well, it helps me stay focused.
Doug: Well, I won't take that personally.
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Magda: So what's going through your head? Because I'll tell you what's been going through my head for like two or three days. “Boop-boop, boop-boop. Boop-boop, boop-boop. YEAH!” Usher is going through my head.
Doug: That was going through your head even before the Super Bowl?
Magda: Yeah, because I knew he was going to perform, right? Ever since we started talking about it. It's like,
Doug: Well, did it live up to everything you hoped?
Magda: Yeah, I mean, I'm not like, I think I'm a little too old to be a huge Usher fan. I think he's 46 and I think his core fan base is like between 40 and 45 maybe. I remember thinking of him as a kid. So I feel like I know a zillion Usher songs, but I'm not the biggest Usher fan, but it was nice to see him. His face still looks like a kid, he is moving like a 40-something-year-old person.
Doug: Like a very fit 40-year-old-something person.
Magda: Well, yeah. My point was, A, he's jacked, and B, the roller skating.
Doug: Exactly. He definitely held his own up there during the whole Starlight Express number.
Magda: I mean, when Ludacris and Lil Jon came out, I was like, holy shit, they've been sleeping in pickle brine. Like the two of them look so young.They look, like, younger than I even thought they looked 20 years ago. And so I looked it up and Ludacris is like 45, I think. But Lil Jon is 53 and he still looks like he did 20 years ago. So clean living, I guess. I don't know. A lot of roller skating.
Doug: Yeah, I have no idea. He doesn't come across as a clean liver, but he may be.
Magda: You may have a clean liver, we'll see. Maybe he's at that point now where he's like, turn UP for what?
Doug: Right, like going to bed early. Turn up at the colonoscopy for what. So did you watch the whole game?
Magda: “Watch” is doing a lot of work there. Mike wanted to watch it. We do not have TV reception. So we had to figure out how to watch the game.
Doug: I thought you got an antenna.
Magda: We did. But that was, you know, we were trying to figure out, did we have the right concoction of streaming services to watch them? We did not. I said, let's go to Home Depot. They have an antenna. We plug it in. We went. We bought it. He plugged it in. He fiddled around with it. And he was like, “whoa, the picture quality on this is so much better than I thought it was going to be.” So what I said to him was, A, I'm surprised I had no idea he was interested in NFL football. Like, he'll watch college football. I had no idea he was interested in NFL.
Doug: Wait a minute. How long have you been dating him? How long have you two been going out?
Magda: Well, yeah, but I mean, his local team is the Pats, and he doesn't like the Pats any more than I do. So it's never come up.
Doug: Really? Is he a fan of anything or just the game?
Magda: He's a fan of the game. I think, now because of being associated and affiliated with me, he's a fan of University of Michigan football. I don't know. I think if he lived in some other metropolitan area, he might be a fan of NFL football. It's just like, you know.
Doug: He's just like my sister. My sister's a U of M fan because her husband went to U of M.
Magda: Well, I mean, you know, Mike went to a school that didn't have a football team, so, you know.
Doug: Well, that doesn't mean anything. Yeah.
Magda: And I said, I'll sit on the couch with you while the game is on and just read a book. So that's kind of what I did. I looked up. I tried. I really really tried, but NFL just does not hold my attention the way college football does. I think it just doesn't feel very high stakes to me at all because they're all getting paid the same gazillions of dollars no matter what happens, so it just doesn't feel very high stakes and
Doug: I disagree with you. You should know that that's absolutely not true because there are people on the rookie contracts making, I mean, they're making six figures but it's still nothing compared to what like Mahomes is making. Right. And the other high stakes are the average NFL player's career is probably two and a half years because there's always a new crop of younger kids coming to take your place, so even now
Magda: Same as college football. There's always a new crop of younger kids coming to take your place.
Doug: Right, but at least in college football you know you have an externally imposed finiteness about your career because you eventually exhaust your eligibility. Whereas in the pros you have to think, a, how long can I last in this league and b, how long will my brain last in this league?
Magda: Which is another thing. Like, I don't, I'm just not into the whole TBI aspect of it.
Doug: It was an exciting game. I mean, we were a Niner crowd just because I think I was with a bunch of Lions fans who were like, well, if they're going to beat us, then we want them to win the whole thing. But yeah, it definitely had like that kind of that whatever vibe. Did you see that cake that the Free Press posted?
Magda: Yeah. And I, you know, like I didn't feel like the commercials were particularly outstanding this year.
Doug: I don't remember any of them. And I was trying to focus on talking to people.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: Which is what's going to lead into what we're talking about today because it's about making friendships and meeting people at our age. Luckily, a lot of people there were my age or older and didn't care much about Usher just because he is after our time. And people were just kind of hanging out and chatting and they all, many of them, knew each other from where the host works, and so I got to meet a lot of them through him. Very interesting people. The one thing that caught our attention was that whole fight that Travis Kelce had with his coach, or like the bump, which is now causing ripple effects. It's all over the internet now. It's a meme, of course now.
Magda: I didn't see the actual thing happen. All I saw was a photo of it, and my interpretation of the photo was not that there was aggression there. I thought it was too loud, and Kel–How do you? I don't know how you say his name.
Doug: You know, everyone says it's Kelsey. He says it's Kels, but no one calls me Kels.
Magda: So I mean I will call anybody what they tell me they want to be called. So Kels, I thought he was looking aggressive because he was just trying to shout so the guy could hear him! And so I asked about it on social media, and people were like, “oh no, he was really angry. He ran over to him and bumped him.” I mean, just wow.
Doug: Yeah, and you know Andy Reid is older than he looks, so that was a big issue. Yeah, the real issue was he looked like he was having a rage attack. He was really upset about something, and they are concerned that he was a team captain and needs to lead by example. Bad move. I mean, the hot takes are everywhere.
Magda: I mean, at the very least, it kind of makes him The Get-in-the-hole Guy to me.
Doug: Well, you can never underestimate how fired up people get during a game like that.
Magda: Oh my God, it's his job. He's getting paid to do it. You don't physically assault somebody at your job unless it's joking, or a part of your job. Unless you're, like, a boxer.
Doug: He would have been that way anyway but being in the crucible of the whole Swifty thing cannot help because he was doing press for two weeks and answering all these questions about something that by all normalcy should be more private than it is but it's not. Although I also enjoyed how people were freaked out that she got to the game a day early. People were worried that she was going to perform in Tokyo and then not be able to get back in time, forgetting of course that she was crossing the international date line on the way back from Tokyo and actually saved a day. It was a whole Around The World In 80 Days Syndrome all over again. People didn't know that if you cross the date line from west to east you actually arrive before you left.
Magda: It's all a lot.
Doug: The end.
Magda: I don't know what to say. I don't have any particular ideas or opinions about Taylor Swift. I know a lot of people really like her music. I don't really connect with it, but that's just my age and stuff like that. I don't have any feelings about NFL football. This is all a lot of people getting really, really, really, really, really, really, really interested in stuff that I'm like, oh, okay.
Doug: That exactly. It's so refreshing and at the party everybody was our age and so they were just like, oh, well, I'm sure that's gonna be hard, but you know.
Magda: Well, and I mean, I was thinking, like, wow, everybody's watching her watch this game. That's got to be a weird position to be in. But to me I was thinking, like, oh, you know who I bet would be a good person to talk to about this for Travis Kelce? Prince Harry. He should call Prince Harry and ask Prince Harry, like, how do you handle all this stuff? Right? Who else has comparable experiences? You know I'm thinking of it as a 50 year old trying to figure out How Would I Walk Through This Situation?
Doug: Plus, you've got to fight with your brother and your dad and at the time, your grandmother. I mean, it can't be easy.
Magda: Yeah, I don't think it's easy at all.
Doug: But I was thinking a lot about our discussion today because we have an episode in the can for next week with my friend, Helen Jane.
Magda: Well, she's my friend now, too.
Doug: And yes, she is because you two are Midwestern ladies of a certain age.
Magda: Yes, and we hit it off a lot while we were talking.
Doug: Yes. Each of us now, me because I'm a man, because that's just, you know, I've been here 12 years and I still feel like a fish out of water, but we're talking a lot about getting to new areas of the country because she moved from the Bay Area to the Green Bay Area.
Magda: Mm-hmm.
Doug: And you're still humping it in Massachusetts and I'm here and we're all just trying to find our people, especially since it's pretty clear that each of us really profits from having a face to talk to. I am so done with texting. I am so done with social media. Face-to-face is, it's gotta be the way to go for me. And that means re-upping my friend game a bit and recognizing that it's time to really lay into it.
Magda: So a couple things. Number one is every couple months, there's some new push about how lonely everyone is.
Doug: Oh, yeah.
Magda: People are just really lonely and lonely and lonely and lonely. And they’re not going out and hanging out in person like they were before. And I think part of it is because we're so busy. And my feeling is that the root cause of most of the unhappiness of people in the United States is the fact that the minimum wage has been artificially held down for 20 years. And that if we could get that straightened out, there would just be ease for more people. If we could get single payer health care and decriminalize cannabis, like all three of those things would probably solve like 95% of the problems in this country. Part of that is people just don't have time to go out and hang out with people like we used to, but it really is contributing to loneliness.
Doug: Well, I'll tell you, I was watching, as you know, keep catching up on my Northern Exposure reruns, and Chris Stevens called this 30 years ago.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: Because there's the episode when Maggie buys a washing machine.
Magda: Okay.
Doug: And then she can wash her clothes at home and she realizes how lonely she is and eventually sends it back.
Magda: Oh, so she can go to the laundromat.
Doug: And Chris Stevens is helping her install it initially and he's like, man, it's a matter of time now. Everything's going to come to your door. You're not going to have to leave the place. And we're all going to be just the ghost in the machine. And damn if it didn't come true.
Magda: Yeah, I had been realizing for the last couple of years that I always was happy when I did put on my shoes and leave my house and go someplace. Even if I didn't want to, even if I didn't feel like going out, if I just made the default decision, right? Like if I just had my policy be, I was just going to go whether I felt like it or not. Unless I had an actual reason: Positive COVID test, explosive diarrhea, right? Like an actual reason. And that made my life so much better because there was-
Doug: Explosive diarrhea?
Magda: Hey, that's a legit excuse for not going someplace.
Doug: I mean, yeah, but that's like number two on your list. That's an interesting recall that you-
Magda: Well, I mean, explosive diarrhea only harms me, because if I went someplace with a positive COVID test it could harm other people. But like just making that be the decision, that I was gonna go. I never had a horrible time. I sometimes had, you know, wastes of time. But I don't know, like, how much of a waste of time is it really if you learn something new from it? And then a lot of times I genuinely had fun even if I didn't meet someone new that I was really entranced with, or spend a lot of time with somebody else. But I was almost always glad that I had gone out. So that has been very useful to me as I have been in this new place. And I have been trying to figure out, how do I make local friends, as somebody who is no longer a parent in PTA-like groups. To be clear, I have a number of college friends in this area, so it's not like I moved out here and didn't know anyone but Mike. But these are people that I have to get in the car and drive 20 minutes, 30 minutes to see. And so I really wanted to make some local friends in this town also who could help me figure out sort of, you know, like when is such and such open? Like, how do I navigate this? Is it possible to do this in this town? That kind of stuff. I have been relying on the crutch of being a parent who was in the parent groups at school and just meeting other parents for, the last howevermany years. You know, two decades.
Doug: And even then, that was pretty superficial, I have to say. I mean, you and I, even when we met parents together, we went out to dinner with a few couples, but it never really stuck.
Magda: I don't know. I felt like some of those friendships, we're talking about a specific school. I think some of those friendships you and I were just never going to fit in because we weren't the demographic, really. But I mean, I made parent friends in a lot of places.
Doug: We each did better individually, because when we went out together as a former couple people who were current couples, they always freaked out at us. We made them very uncomfortable. I don't know about you but I got all kinds of texts: “Dude, you know, divorce is contagious,” or at least that's the perception. So a lot of couples who, for whatever reason, and you know, I'm talking about, I mean, I got texts from like half a dozen guys.
Magda: That's weird. What? Saying they didn't want to hang out with you because they were afraid that their wives were going to divorce them?
Doug: No, no, no, no, no. They were asking me, hey, man, you're friendly with your ex-wife. How did you make that happen?
Magda: Oh, oh, oh. Right. The problem with that is that it only works in retrospect, right, it doesn't work in foresight. Because the answer to how to be friends with your ex-wife is “don't be a douchebag.” I don’t know.
Doug: Well, I mean, that's that's overly simplistic. I think just because, yes, it's time, effort, and luck. But you know sometimes you have to be a douchebag. If you're fighting for something you want, I mean if there's something you disagree on, be that guy who fights for it or recede. And okay, if you cede something, that's fine. You're not a douchebag, but you also don't get what you want. And so it's hard to tell someone like, “hey, just go along with everything and you'll be fine,” because that doesn't work either.
Magda: We should do an episode about getting divorced, right? Because I think that's kind of the key. Do you want to be right or do you want to be married? And those kind of are the two choices.
Doug: I've got to research that. I don't remember anything anymore. That was a couple of lifetimes ago. I think one of my superhero talents is moving on. I have to say, you know, like John LaRoche in Adaptation, he just moves on. I think nostalgia is a luxury. It's fun.
Magda: Oh my God.There was a point at which I remember I was just so mad at you because I felt like you were like, you know, being a revisionist historian about everything. And I really wished we had had like a court stenographer just following us around.
Doug: Oh, of course.
Magda: You know, recording everything we say. And now I kind of wish we did because we could go back into the transcript.
Doug: Well, have you seen those ads? Two people arguing about something and they actually throw the challenge flag. They throw the red flag that you can throw in the NFL if you want to challenge a referee's call. And then they read back the transcript or read back the video and tell us who's right.
Magda: If you're at that point, just call it, man. Just get it done. Everything will get better.
Doug: I don't think so. No, no, no. I think a marriage, if there's love there, a marriage can withstand that. I think it's totally contextual. You're going to disagree. I mean, as I say, and one of the things that you and I never learned how to do is how to fight. And I mean that in the most benign way because you're going to get at loggerheads sometimes. And what I've learned since our marriage collapsed, and we're totally off topic here because we're talking about friendship, but I do think any grouping, anybody that you're friends with, you have to learn how to disagree and how to make up.
Magda: Right. And I mean, I'm three years and change in with Mike, and
have not at all felt in any of that time like I wished I could review the transcript. There's been no conflict in which we each needed to look at the details of what the other had said or what we had said.
Doug: Right, and I'm not going to be chicken little here. I'm just saying that, yes, you were long-distance partners for several years but you’ve been living together for four months.
Magda: Well, I'm not saying we don't fight. I'm not saying we haven't had our challenges. I'm just saying those challenges have not been based on fundamentally misremembering details of conversations.
Doug: Well, if we do attempt to get back on the main rail here...one of the things about moving to Massachusetts is you had a husband who was already part of the community. So how much has his having been there as long as he's been how much has that helped you assimilate?
Magda: Maybe a little bit. His friends are guys, and I am a person who very specifically needs female friends.
Doug: Do his friends have wives?
Magda: Yes, and I have become good friends with some of them, but I wanted to be in the community, right?
Doug: Independent of relying on him. Individual friends with people.
Magda: Yeah. My entire adult life, I have heard people saying, “oh, it's so difficult to make friends at this stage of life.” And I've been thinking, hmm, I don't find it difficult to make friends at this stage of life. And so at a certain point when it was like, you know, the sixth stage and I was hearing other people say it was difficult, I thought, “what is it about me that makes me not think it's difficult to make friends?” And I think the thing is, I do not feel nervous or hesitant about saying to somebody, “hey, do you want to get together and do blah, blah, blah? Give me your info. Let's make a plan.” And I know that there are people who definitely feel embarrassed. They feel like that makes them, I don't know, needy or whatever. But I guess I just think like somebody's got to step forward. If nobody steps forward, then nobody does anything together. So I'm not afraid to step forward. And I also am not afraid to use whatever the circumstances to say, “I am looking to make friends,” right? So I thought, where would I find the kind of people who are in my situation, you know, who are not immersed in the world of little kids so much that the only friends they have time for are people with kids the same age. ‘Cause that was my concern. I don’t care about being friends with people with little kids. I’m fine with that! It’s just, I don’t want to be in a situation in which I’m the only one who has time to do something because everyone else has to go home to put their kids to bed at 7:30.
Doug: Yeah, yeah.
Magda: You know, whatever. Like, they're gone all weekend because they have to go to travel soccer or something like that. You know what I mean? I thought about it. I was like, so what does the white middle-class, middle-aged lady do? And I joined a charity knitting group, and I joined the Friends of the Library and started baking for the bake sales. And it's been very interesting, because you know I show up and I'm like, “you know, I just moved here” and I've been telling people about this Making Friends project and people are very interested in it. And I think it has
disarmed people a little bit, because in some ways this is a place where people really want to know that you've been here for a while. And so when I've been overt about the fact that I just moved here and I'm trying to figure out how to make friends, that's not me saying “will you be my friend??” that's saying “will you help me make friends?” and that's a different thing.
Doug: “I don't want to be friends with you per se, but if you could help me out to find better people, that would be awesome.”
Magda: That’s not exactly it, but I mean you know I'm not putting people on the spot and saying “please be my friend,” I'm saying “I am open to being friends” and “I would like to be friends,” and the response has been pretty interesting.
Doug: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's one thing to be completely clueless or completely befuddled by the process of how to do it. Another is to understand the context in which you're working and know what needs to be done and still feel frustrated. Everyone that I've fallen in love with, I met as a friend first, including you. You know, we met at work. We saw each other all the time and we got to know each other. It's like it's a forced incarceration so you can ask each other the 36 questions that make you fall in love. That's how you find intimacy and I think as we age we're less likely to give of ourselves because we've been burned because the trust issues are easy to grow. And you really got to put those aside and recognize even though we know how weird people are now. See, that's another thing, too. Social media has told us all about how much weirdness there is. I think I told you I was, I went out with a woman that I'd finally, she came on the market, she broke up with her boyfriend and I'd kind of had her in the back of my mind for a while and I heard she was a free agent so I asked her out and we had dinner and it was going really well. Then she started talking about astral projections and cosplay during sex.
Magda: Oh, really?
Doug: Yeah.
Magda: Wait, just cosplay during sex or astral projection during sex?
Doug: Both, both. Using cosplay to enhance the astral projections of it, I think, just to enhance the otherworldly effect of being another thing while you're engaged in that level of congress.
Magda: I mean, speaking about things being a lot, that, to me, is a lot.
Doug: It just was something that I chose not to pursue further. It's just a weird little aspect that people can seem so normal, and wow, things can just go sideways. And you just have to be ready for that, I guess. That's, you gotta kiss a lot of frogs, or people dressed as frogs.
Magda: Well, okay, so I mean you and I talked about this book that I read a couple weeks ago, and–
Doug: Yes, I want to read that!
Magda: It was about finding a romantic partner. But I thought there was a lot in it that was really applicable to making friends, too. I also thought it was stuff about just sort of figuring out what was important to you, so if you had to hire somebody it would be useful for that, too. If you read Friday Flames you know that Mike and I were watching the Indian Matchmaker a couple weeks ago, and I thought the matchmaker herself was really horrible, and I thought a lot of the cultural constructs that they were trying to build up on the show to make them seem like a thing were kind of weird. But I thought the people on the show, the real people, were interesting, and this idea that you could have success in finding a life partner if you were upfront about that being your intention and gave the relationship time to develop. Because the whole thing with this situation was that you weren’t supposed to just go on one date and then say Yes or No to the person you're supposed to see if it could develop because this matchmaker had consulted all these things to see if you were going to be a good match, right? And I thought that there had to be something in there about intention. And part of it made me think about the fact that Mike and I were very serious very early on. Both of us knew that this wasn't just like a “hey let's date and see” kind of thing. I could tell he was very serious right away, and that I had to decide if I was going to be in or out. Because it was basically, we just decided we were going to be friends, or we ended up married. And there really wasn't going to be, like, a just-wait-and-see about it. It worked very well for us so when I walked past this book in the library–the library that I joined the Friends Of–and the title is How to Not Die Alone. I was like, oh, maybe this will validate my theories and make me feel better about myself. So the subtitle is The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love. And the author's name is Logan Ury. She has been working as a matchmaker and a dating consultant for years and years and years. She figured out a way to sort of break down the numbers and make things make sense and be actionable. And one of the things she confronts is that people have these sort of preconceived notions about what your ideal partner is going to look like, and you focus on the wrong things. Like you focus on appearance, or you focus on their job, or you focus on stuff like that instead of focusing on things that might be really big. Lifestyle issues or shared values or something like that. And I was thinking, you know, that's sort of the way people make friends in Middle School and High School is you look at like, who's the kid you think looks like you? Who dresses like you, right? Like all the goths are friends with all the goths and all the girls wearing pink sweaters are all the friends with girls wearing pink sweaters, and look at those people 30 years from now, are you still friends with those people?
Doug: Which is interesting because I don't think a lot of boys develop an appreciation for that. We're all just like, just wrestle everybody and see who comes out of the scrum. But I think that's something that every adult needs to make an appreciation for is that level of patience and that level of discernment, I guess.
Magda: Right.
Doug: And the patience of it too, you know, because the key is frequency.
Magda: Yeah, that's another thing that Logan Ury says is that we somehow have this idea that you can tell, and you can look at the person's photo or look at the person's three photos or look at, you know, like what are the three things you'd take into a space shuttle with you or whatever, right? And that you can tell from that. I think you can tell very quickly when you are NOT going to get along with someone, but you can't necessarily tell if somebody is going to become a good friend of yours without spending some actual time with them. There's that idea. Are we willing to see if this develops? Are we going to the same activities? Are we interested in the same things? I've had good friends that I've made online and those people tend to be people who have been friends with other friends, and we interact on that mutual friend’s page for weeks or months or years, and finally decide to become friends because we know how the other person is going to act in different situations, and we know we can trust them and that we’re still interested in them. And I think it’s the same in real life. Like you meet someone once and you know if you get along, but you can’t really be friends with them and really know them until you’ve spent time with them and get to know them.
Doug: If you can develop and set up a schedule. Like I have a couple of friends that I meet once a week for coffee in the morning and that has really helped. Or if you have a chance to see them under different circumstances over a longer period of time and you can kind of become accustomed to having that person occupy even a little bit, a little piece of your life. And this guy who invited me to his Super Bowl party last night, we were talking about taking a road trip back to Louisville to do some more bourbon hunting. You know, that's a big step. The first time you travel, with an important person. You know, we're going to get to know each other a lot, but it's a big step.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: Not as big as Keith Hernandez and having to help him move, but it's big. The good news is, at least for me, that now that the kids are grown and I'm finding people who are in the same situation who either don't have kids or have kids that are out and about, they have the same flexibility and the same patience to let that friendship evolve a bit. Right? It's just hard, because I'm as big a joiner as you are. I joined a lot of things, and many of them have since shut down. And with them everyone that you kind of got used to seeing week to week or month to month has fallen away again. And so it does feel a bit Sisyphean to kind of maintain that and make the effort without coming across as super thirsty.
Magda: Yeah. Although, you know what? I don't really care about coming across as super thirsty with friends. I never want to come across as super thirsty in romantic relationships because then that sets up a weird dynamic and I don't feel like you ever get your way out of it. But with friends, like, I would like my friends to know that I really want to see them. I'm 50 years old. At this point I don't need to be playing coy with friends.
Doug: No, neither, none of us does. But it's kind of striking how much we still do. It mellows a bit, but it's still there, but that also kind of self-edits, right? I mean you can find people who will respond to your energy and your friendship will grow, and you'll find people who will be put off by your energy and it'll fall away. You know, what are you gonna do?
Magda: Yeah, I just finished reading a book that I really loved. It was a memoir–I'm reading a lot of memoirs lately–this one was called Hijab Butch Blues and it's a memoir by Lamya H.
Doug: Are these all recommendations in that book club that I'm a part of?
Magda: Yeah, I think so. She was born in one country that she doesn't name, but I think was probably Pakistan. She talks about speaking Urdu. Then her parents moved to some Arabic country when she was four so that her parents could make more money, but she was always kind of an outsider there. And she figured out when she was around 14 that she was into girls. But she was going to the strict Muslim school and had no sort of model for that in the school at all. And so she identified with Maryam, the mother of the prophet Isa, who's Jesus. The whole book is structured around these stories from the Quran that she learned that were useful and helpful to her. So she comes to the United States. She got a full ride scholarship to some East Coast school and she gets her degree and then she goes to grad school. And it's all about her process of trying to find friends and dating, just trying to find herself. And she talks about pursuing people to be friends, and I thought that was really interesting that she specifically intentionally would see people that she wanted to be friends with and she would set out to sort of court them in a friendship way. And it was really refreshing to see somebody talk about that so directly. And she did put a lot into her friendships and it absolutely paid off for her because she created this very nurturing friendship group for herself in this country that she had never anticipated moving to.
Doug: What was her success rate?
Magda: It wasn't like she was creating records for them in Salesforce and being like, “closed that friend sale,” right?
Magda: Not even an Excel spreadsheet? With color-coded cells for a degree of intimacy?
Magda: She did talk about people that she had initially wanted to be friends with, but then made her feel bad about some part of her intersectionalities. Like there were people who were Muslim who were not okay with the fact that she's gay. There were people who were queer who were not okay with the fact that she's Muslim. She wears hijab. Her pronouns are she or they and she dresses like a butch lesbian but wears hijab. And there would just have always been people who would come on very friendly and then would indicate at some point that there was some part of her that they were absolutely not okay with. Even if they hadn't identified that that was part of her, and so it just feels like microaggression, macroaggression, direct rejection again and again and again for a certain part of her life. But by the end of the book, she's over 30 and she has accumulated this really good core group of friends. I don't think she really wants to be a lesson, but it was a good example of how you just keep going. You don't take any one or two or three or even four rejections personally because there are going to be people that you're not going to get along with. And there are going to be people that you are going to get along with. And the whole game is just figure out whether you get along with them or not as soon as possible, so that you can move on to the people.
Doug: That's so huge.
Magda: Yeah, exactly.
Doug: And not internalizing whatever you perceive as failure is enormous. Yeah. Same thing with that story. Like, I love stories like that because reading stories like that in general gets you out of your own existence and you can drive inspiration. Because when you are out in the world dressed a certain way, so you already have to put a big message out there that in many eyes is a filter of some kind, and you also have another aspect of your life that doesn't come up until you bring it up who you dig sexually. Whereas I have a rather pedestrian existence compared to that. And if a woman like that can move about the world, can find the peace and find the skill to find her people, I mean my main impediment is that I'm a man and men just don't bond the way women do unless you've known them for 40 years. There's something to be said for just that level of familiarity and frequency of seeing each other that imprints forever and ever, amen. And I've met like four or five really good friends since I've lived here and they've all moved away.
Magda: Right. I mean, but you know, I also had the advantage because my hometown is 45 minutes away from Ann Arbor. So I, when I lived in Ann Arbor, was going down to Toledo a lot to see my friends from high school.
Doug: I had to use a lot more electronic help. Like I found I went on a few meetups. Did you know there's a Bumble for Friends?
Magda: No, I didn't know that.
Doug: Yeah, there's a whole different app called Bumble for Friends. I'm wondering if that's even my demographic, but I might try it just to see what my options are.
Magda: Well, try it and report back in, right? It interests me because I'm interested in how people do make friends.
Doug: Yeah, and I think it's also you got to be content with the numbers game. The older you get, the more you realize that any level of human interaction, human bonding, any level of successful communication between two humans is an absolute miracle.
Magda: Right. Well, I think you have a level of cynicism that not everybody has.
Doug: I don't think so. No, I mean, it's a level of hope. I can still recognize when it happens. I just, it just feels more elusive than it did 20 years ago.
Magda: Yeah. I think you're just more cynical than a lot of people are.
Doug: And really?
Magda: Yeah, yeah, I really do. So I have a friend who, I don't know this is maybe five years ago, it was before the pandemic, he and his husband lived in Los Angeles and were just getting really sick of trying to survive in a city that big. And so he took a job in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And he was from the Midwest originally. His husband was not, but his husband wasn't from the LA area either. And they decided to move because they wanted an easier lifestyle, and they did not want to be isolated. So about six weeks before the move they announced to their friends list on Facebook, “We are moving to Milwaukee. We are actively asking you, do you know any friends in Milwaukee? Will you set us up with them as friends?” And so people said, yes, I know somebody, you know, I went to grad school with somebody who's in Milwaukee. Or, you know, one of my childhood friends is in Milwaukee, or somebody from my parenting group online is in Milwaukee or whatever, and set them up. And this friend and his husband made dates, like appointments, with all of these friends of their friends to meet and go do something with them! I mean, not all at the same time, individually. And within about six months of their moving to Milkwaukee they had amassed this wonderful group of friends that they knew they could trust because they were friends of their already-existing friends. And I remember thinking that was just absolute genius. I went to visit them and had dinner with them on my way through Milwaukee one time and they had some other friend who was coming into town and we met each other and it was a really fun evening, because they’re just open to that and really want to have other people to do stuff with all the time. And they set out to do that, even though it may have looked to other people like it was an awkward situation. They didn't treat it as if it was an awkward situation, so it wasn't.
Doug: Well, I think what I would like to do in the future, I think another big part of making friends is having people over. And I did have a dream back in the day of just having that house where people just popped in or
you, when the first thought was like, “oh, we're going to watch the game.
Where are we going to go?” You know, like just having a place that felt like a hub, like, you know, the friends, kids came in and out in a neighborhood like that. And there's been an impediment there just because, since I'm renting and I've never felt as though this house reflects who I am, you know, I haven't done a thing to it because I've always thought whatever I do to it, I have to undo it before I leave. And I'm too lazy to even consider that. And I'm thinking the next place I live in I'm gonna own, and I'm really gonna put some roots down, and make it reflect my personality. And I do think that wherever I move next it's gonna be a much more homey place that will reflect me as a person, and I wanna have more people over. I think that makes sense.
Magda: I think that there's nothing wrong with the house that you live in now. You can't have 25 people over, but you could have three or four people over and it wouldn't be a big deal.
Doug: Yeah, I'll tell you this too, and I am curious to take this a little further because you definitely, you've sized me up as a cynical person. So if I were to come to you as someone you have at least fleeting interest in, as someone whose well-being you have a modicum of interest in improving.
Magda: IFleeting interest in. 25 years.
Doug: Which is unnatural, because now that the kids are grown you should you know we should be breaking off from each other altogether. And maybe just showing up and shaking hands at the wedding or whatever. You know, weird, isn't it” What do you think the recipe is to overturn those? What do you think? I mean, apart from catching yourself, because I know I catch myself when I say, yeah, I'm not going. And I am a huge fan of stories where people, you know, how did you meet? “Well, I went to this party that I wasn't going to go to. And I just screwed my courage to the sticking place and said, I got to go. And I met the love of my life.” You know, it's a whole Sliding Doors mentality. I'm a huge fan of that. And so I always think of that when it's like, okay, who knows what can happen with this? This is an endeavor. This is embarking on a new thing. Let's go. And I have been more aware of that and inclined to say yes, again. Or as Liz Lemon says “saying yes to staying in more.”
Magda: Well, okay, so I mean, some of this stuff is making decisions ahead of time, which is a way that I have figured out to cope with what I've learned now is ADHD overload. So it turns out that people who have ADHD get exhausted by having to make decisions all the time. And so I just pre-make a bunch of decisions, which you could also say are my policies, right? And so unless I have a strong reason not to do something that I've made a policy about, I just follow my policy. And so one of those policies was: If I'm signed up to do something or have the opportunity to do something, I just go, even if I don't feel like it. The question is, do I really, really, really not feel like it, like explosive diarrhea level, not feeling like it? If I just kind of don't feel like it, I'm still going to go.
Doug: The fact you brought it up more than once, I'm full of interpretations of that, but I do think it's actually a good stress test. It's like, it's just like, if you have a young child and the two are fighting, it's like is anybody bleeding? No? Then don't bother me. Yes, in this case is anything painfully leaving my lower half? No? Okay, I'm going.
Magda: Well, okay, speaking of painfully leaving your lower half, the reason I joke around and I'm not joking at all about explosive diarrhea is that I am a woman who is in perimenopause and one of the things that can happen is that you can get these really intense menstrual periods in which more blood is leaving your body than you thought you had. And I have figured out that with the correct concoction of wrappings and tampons and whatnot, I can go out into public and not be worried that anything untoward is going to happen, and just pump myself up with a whole bunch of ibuprofen and still function in a social situation.
Doug: You can wear all the white pants you want.
Magda: Hey, let me tell you, once I finally go through menopause, I'm buying white sheets again. That is going to be the happy day. Anyway,
Doug: Where did my life go wrong?
Magda: You can't manage your way out of explosive diarrhea. There's no concoction of medicine and undergarments and stuff like that.
Doug: You can't use wrappings and tampons to save that off?
Magda: You can't function in public if you're having explosive diarrhea.
Doug: Even if you have a new blowout barrier like those diapers have?
Magda: I don't think they make diapers that big. I don't think adult diapers have blowout barriers.
Doug: Well, we should definitely ask about that. Yes. I'm asking for a friend.
Magda: Right. I mean, that's one thing, right? Like, policies. So make policies that are going to get you out there and also, say, make policies that are protective to yourself also, right? Like if you realize if you've gone to someplace three weeks in a row, and it's the same people there every time and no one will talk to you, don't go back. I really don't think it's worth trying with people who don't think you're funny. It doesn't, I mean, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. They're just not your people. If people consistently don't think you're funny, and I don't mean they don't think your one joke is funny, they consistently don't think the way you are is funny, you're not really going to be friends with them. Unless you're a person who humor isn't like one of your big make-or-breaks. For me it is.
Doug: Yeah, that’s a deal-breaker.
Magda: That was one of my three things I was looking for in a partner, was “thinks I’m funny.”
Doug: Doesn’t get repulsed when we talk about a blowout barrier in Depends.
Magda: Yeah. I didn’t need for him to be funny. I just needed him to know in his bones I’m funny. I think you are very protective of yourself because you have developed this cynicism about things, and I am protective at a different level of myself that allows me to be open to other experiences because I can go into a situation and be a little more open and a little bit more vulnerable knowing that I'm not actually able to be harmed by it, if that makes sense. I don't really know how to explain it. It just feels like the protective layer that I have is closer to my actual body.
Doug: Yeah, if there's anything protective of it, it's easy to convince me that it's a fool's errand, unfortunately. That's an unlearning that I've taken on in the last 18 months or so, basically since COVID left. Or at least since COVID was in relative retreat. And one of the great things about being with someone, even if it's a friend, if you have someone in your life to say, look, you're gonna put up some kind of barrier. You have someone who's close enough to you that can get you out of your head. That's a great thing to have in my life when it's there and I really miss it when it's not.
Magda: I think the other thing that helped me a whole lot is something that this relationship expert, romantic relationship expert said years ago, and I think she was kind of being casual. She said it on her Facebook page, but it really really struck me. Her name is Aesha Adams-Roberts, she is a relationship coach, and she said, “There is a difference between being worthy and being ready.” And there are people who think they’re not worthy of friendships or romantic relationships, when really they’re just not ready for them. You don’t have to be ready for something all the time. Maybe you’re legitimately too busy to do something. Maybe you’re in a stage with your kids or your job or you know you're taking care of your parents or you're about to move or something like that, you're genuinely not ready.
Doug: And, well, it's easy to conflate those two, though. Yeah, it's really easy, if you don't feel worthy, then you're not ready.
Magda: I don't know that that's, I mean the thing about being ready or not ready is, like, it's the same as being on a diet or not a diet. Like, you can be on a diet one minute and off at the next. You can be off a diet one minute and on it the next. And I think the same thing with being ready. I didn't think I was ready for a relationship and then Mike sent me that message, and boy, did I get ready within a matter of hours.
Doug: That's the best thing about what you wrote in Friday Flames last week, because you said “I used to think you had to find people to be in your life but the real key is to be ready to welcome them into your life when they show up,” and the corollary to that is they're not going to show up in your living room.
Magda: Here's the irony: Mike did show up in my living room in my Facebook messages.
Doug: Well, but he was in your heart since Haverford, for heaven's sake.
Magda: I know, it's true. It's true. You know, I was joking around. People were like, “how do you find your love of your life?” And I was like, “well, develop a crush on somebody, have them completely ignore you, and then wait for 27 years.”
Doug: Marry somebody else. Yeah. To make him jealous.
Magda: Well, he married somebody else, too, in the meantime.
Doug: Well, of course. He was too overcome with grief because you were off the market.
Magda: He had no actual idea who I was. I mean, he knew who I was. He just had no idea that I was interested in him. And you know, the thing is, if we had gotten together back in college, we would have just really not gotten along.
Doug: Well, and this is a good place to encourage people to go back to the episode that Mike was on, one of our most popular episodes. When he discovered he was falling head over heels. Right there, you know, we got to have him on again when he's ready, just to see what's new and different now that you're married.
Magda: Well, it's been what, like four and a half months? Something like that, four months.
Doug: He should be a regular guest anyway, to the extent he's willing to come on and deal with me and deal with us.
Magda: It’s funny that so many people are so weirded out that you and I hang out, and Mike’s like the only person who’s not weirded out by it.
Doug: Well, hopeful that episode did a lot to allay all that. I can be Chris Martin and you can be Gwyneth Paltrow.
Magda: Ugh, I don’t wanna be Gwyneth. I’ll be Chris Martin all day, just with a different musical taste. But I mean the other thing to remember here is that Mike's mom and Mike's stepmom are very very good friends. I think they may even be best friends. So Mike absolutely has a model of “there's no need to hate your ex-spouse, there's no need to hate your ex-spouse's partner” or you know anything like that, right? So you know
Doug: Right, so he and I should go fishing. We're gonna go to, we're gonna go into Cape Cod this summer.
Magda: I don't know that he's, I mean he'll go to Cape Cod. He's been to Cape Cod a lot. I don't know that he's into fishing.
Doug: I don't fish either.
Magda: Well, there's a lot of stuff to do in Cape Cod that doesn't involve fishing. I've been to Cape Cod now.
Doug: We're going to Provincetown is what we're doing. We're going to go and... We're not a couple. We're just brothers-in-law. And now that one of my earbuds has fallen out of my ear, I hate earbuds with the heat of a thousand suns.
Magda: Well...I’m sorry.
Doug: No, it’s fine. We got an hour out of this topic, so we did pretty well.
Magda: Yeah, I think so, too. So my question is, I want to ask people what you think. Are you as a 50-year-old, are you finding it’s easier to make friends? Are you finding it’s harder to make friends? Do you have to make friends? Maybe you live in the place you’ve lived for the last fifteen years and you have friends. Have those friendships changed? You know, some people become friends because their kids are on the same team, and then they're friends until their kids go away, and realize that they either do or don't have anything in common with these people that they've been hanging out with for years.
Doug: Or you're reevaluating your life because your kids are grown, your priorities have changed, the time you have to devote to friendships is much greater, and you also appreciate that Swedish death cleaning also applies to the people you keep company with.
Magda: Yeah, I thought you said “Swedish chef cleaning” and I was like, what? No.
Doug: Well, I think chefs should be clean too.
Magda: People underestimate the importance of friendships in daily life. Having friends is really the crux of it. And when you do, you don't realize how lonely it is when you don't. And that can all change.
Doug: All right, so to sum up, friends are good.
Magda: Exactly.
Doug: And thank you for listening to Episode 34 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been the crippling fear of the void of solitude. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter every Friday. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts please send us a review and we're actually seeing people review us on Apple so thank you for that. I'm actually very happy to know that people actually listen this far into the readout. We'll be back next week with episode 35 thanks again and we'll see you then. Bye bye.