#179 - Your Newest Friendship Questions, Answered (My Mom)
Dear Nina: Conversations About FriendshipShow Notes
This episode is a rapid-fire advice session built around your newest friendship questions—and my mom’s fifth time joining me on the show. Together, we talk through realistic expectations for milestone birthdays, uneven effort, group chat conflict, friend group tension, reaching out after long gaps, keeping secrets, and navigating uncomfortable moments with honesty and care.
My mom brings decades of lived experience and a refreshingly direct perspective, while I add context from years of writing and podcasting about adult friendship. It’s practical, candid, and grounded in the belief that friendship is worth working on—without turning yourself inside out to make it work.
Special thank you, as always, to my assistant producer, Rebekah Jacobs!
More from Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship
When Your Friendship Needs Don't Match Are you expecting too much from a friend, or are you accepting too little? It's a question that comes up again and again in the letters I receive from listeners of Dear Nina. Sometimes a friendship truly is one-sided. But sometimes two people care deeply about each other and simply have different needs from a friendship. I'm bringing back a conversation from episode 80 with Minneapolis-based writer Sally Vardaman, author of Shoot the Arrows. Sally originally reached out after hearing an episode with my mom (episode 72) in which we discussed a friendship that ended, in part, because my mom felt the other person was "too needy." Sally shared a remarkably honest story about being the friend who wanted more. For years, she felt disappointed that one of her closest friends couldn't meet certain emotional needs, even though they had a loving friendship. Eventually, they talked about the mismatch and found a way to move forward without expecting either person to change. Sally and I discussed: Why "needy" is such a loaded word in friendship How insecurity can influence our expectations of friends Why we sometimes look to one particular friend for proof that we're loved How to set boundaries without abandoning a friendship Why having unmet needs doesn't necessarily mean a friend is letting us down
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What does it mean when a friendship gets intense fast, one person always does the reaching out, or a friend treats you differently in a group? Dr. Miriam Kirmayer is back to unpack those gray areas, plus what to do when you’re caught between two friends and how to tell the difference between a friendship pattern and a real shift in the relationship.
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