How to know which friendships are worth it
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Beautiful people, this is The Moments Podcast and I'm your host, Lexi Hidalgo. I hope you're ready to learn a little bit something new about yourself or the world or feel a little bit more seen, heard, and understood because you are. And you are beautiful and valuable and I want to be your big sister and your best friend and I'm going to remind you of that hopefully in each and every episode that you listen to. So tune in and enjoy the moment. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up.

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Hello, my beautiful people, and welcome back to the Moments Podcast. I have done an episode similar to this before, but I haven't necessarily taken the questions that you've asked and answered them. I've just kind of done a few overall messages on friendship and what I think is good in friendships, important, what is bad in friendships, what friendships you should leave, and I think that my...

ideology, I guess you could say, around friendships is always changing as I experience new friendships and I go through new things and I surround myself with different kinds of people as I get older. I learn so much more about true friendship and what you deserve and all of that jazz. So I put on my Instagram story that

Ask me something about friendship, whatever it may be. And I screenshotted a bunch of them. We're just going to go through each one and we're going to talk about it like in a really casual conversation kind of way. Here's what I think about it. And here's how some advice, you know, friendships are hard and friendships are also really important. We don't recognize how much a friendship can benefit us or how much it can hurt us or how much, you

value it really brings for us and I'm recognizing how important friendship is now at this point in my relationship because Gabe and I have been together about a year my best friend moved away six months ago and I miss her more and more every single day like she is my soulmate my platonic soulmate and Gabe and I have so much fun together like I never want to be with anyone else I kind of like

didn't care about building any new female friendships not that i stopped hanging out with my friends i just really only hung out with my best friend who moved away that was like my girl so when she moved away it was just gabe and i all the time and it is and i randomly will get into these random conversations with girls that i know from high school we run into each other at a workout and i feel so much joy after the conversation and i'm like wow

I really miss female friendships. And if you're a dude listening to this, it goes vice versa. Like, same-gender friendships where you can bond over certain things that you can't necessarily bond with when you're with your significant other. It's just... It's different. A relationship friendship is different than a friendship friendship where there's no romantic interest involved, if that makes any sense. Gender doesn't really matter. Just... You get what I'm trying to say. So...

I've rediscovered the value in friendships, female friendships for me, and it's become a goal of mine now to reconnect with some people that I've lost touch with or that I haven't chatted with in a while, and I'm really, really excited to do so in the next few weeks because I want to. I have always wanted to be somebody who can just go out to coffee with somebody or grab dinner with somebody, but...

As a socially anxious girl, making new friends for me is not something that's ever been easy. It's actually something that gives me crazy amounts of anxiety and I don't do it and I avoid it because I'd rather be at home comfortable with the love of my life than have to go do something that scares me. Yet what I preach is to do the things that scare you because most of the time they're good for you. So I'm trying to work on practicing what I preach. That being said...

If you're in a similar boat, we can deep dive into that another time. I'm sure we'll get more into it in this episode, but let's just start answering some of these questions. And I really like the first one that I opened. It is, I feel like recently my friend group is replacing me. This never feels good. It is like a stab to the heart when you recognize that somebody doesn't really want you around and you can feel that they don't want you around. They stop inviting you to as many things. They stop telling you as many things. You stop feeling wanted.

And I think that as individuals, God has a mysterious way or the universe, whoever it is, whatever higher power is there for you, has a mysterious way of showing us who is meant to be a part of our life and who isn't. Now, this is not an easy pill to swallow. Like when I've gone through situations like this where I could tell my friends literally didn't want to be around me anymore, like

There's no part of me that would be like, you know, this is great. I know this is good for me. It hurts and it hurts bad and it makes you feel less worthy and less valued and like you start to doubt yourself and you doubt that you are deserving of friendship and you think that you're boring or something's wrong with you and I can promise you with every ounce of what I'm saying that

If there are people who are treating you that way, those are not your people. This goes and applies to everything in our life. If you are with somebody in a romantic relationship who makes you feel unworthy, unwanted, you are not going to stay with that person. And if you are, you shouldn't, okay? Know what you deserve. You deserve people who are magnetized by you, who feel joy around you, who laugh with you, who can comfort you, who...

believe in you, support you. And I think that if a friend group is replacing you, they are showing you so loud and clear that they don't deserve you. And there is somebody out there who is going to make you feel so loved and respect you like a true friend. So

When that's the situation, I think it's important to, one, recognize that. That's the first thing to notice is like, it's not me. It's them. It's something that they have going on. It could be jealousy. It could be projection. Or maybe it's neither of those things and you guys are just separating and you're going different ways, which is also very common, very normal, and very much okay. We're going to grow distant from people, naturally, because our lives go in different directions. But

I encourage you to find new things to do, to spend some more time alone, to work on learning to enjoy your own company before just doing your best to go find a new friend group to latch on to. I've said this in countless episodes. You will attract the greatest friends and the right people the more you are sure of yourself. And not just in a confidence way, like not just in a

I'm best. I deserve the world. Everybody's going to treat me good. Not in that way. You are going to bring the right people into your life when you know what your genuine interests are, what books you like to read, what you like to do in your free time, what foods you like to eat, what restaurants you like, where you like to travel, how you like to travel. When you know these things, it is much easier to gravitate towards the right people and to bring the right people towards you because you are not...

faking anything about who you are to be a friend for somebody, to be good enough for somebody. It's the same way I talk about it when it comes to romantic relationships.

The more you know yourself, the more likely you're going to find the people that are actually going to stick around for a long time, which all of this goes back to. Journaling, asking yourself the important questions, standing strong in your morals and values and not being affected by other people's opinions, other people's decisions. You have to be your own individual before you are going to bring the right friend group to you. And it's important to recognize that

Most of us that listen to this podcast and me recording it, I'm 23, ew, I feel so old. We're between the ages of like 13 and 30. Those years are so, so, so telling in our life. They're such impressionable years. We are going to go through

Within those years, four years of high school, think about how much changed from your freshman to your senior year if you've been through it. Then think about how much changed from your freshman to senior year of college. Then think about what is going to happen now in the next four years. We are going to grow. We are going to change. We are going to be, yes, we're going to have a lot of the same similarities we did when we were younger, but

but so much more than you recognize is going to change and it's not just you that's going to change. It's everybody and it is very much healthy for us to grow in different directions. We don't all want to grow the same way because why would we? Why would we all want to become the exact same human being? We want to have unique interests, unique hobbies, unique things and traits and qualities. You know what I'm saying? Moving on.

If you feel your friend group is replacing you, first step, like I said, awareness of the situation. It's not personal. It doesn't have to do with you. You don't need to be hard on yourself because of it. Two, learn about yourself. Enjoy yourself. Figure out who you are outside of this friend group. I know that especially in high school and even in college, like a friend group can...

For lack of better phrasing here, a friend group can become like your personality trait. Like you are your friends and your friends are you and you are all one. So if you're noticing this feeling, work on yourself as an individual. Who are you without them? And who do you want to be? Like, do you like who you are without them? Do you like yourself better when you're with them? You get me? You feel me? Sorry, I looked out the window and got distracted. It looks like that girl is, I don't know what she's doing.

And now the third thing is just maybe have a conversation. Maybe ask your friends, hey, I feel a little bit as though this, this, and that. Again, this depends on the friend group. It depends on how close you are with these people, how much you want to be close with them, how much you guys can be vulnerable with each other. If it's real friendship, you should be able to go to this person and be like, hey, I'm

Dude, I want to be honest. I'm feeling a little bit replaced, a little bit hurt. Can we have a conversation about this or can you give me some reassurance or some comfort or like be honest with me? Are we growing apart? Is that where we're at? Those are really hard conversations to have at different points in your life depending on your friendships and your situations and the person and the group. There are so many factors when it comes to friendship.

Who's gotten with who? Friendships are messy. But I encourage you to try to have a conversation with this group and see where they're at. And if you don't feel comfortable doing that because you feel like they're going to talk about you if you do, that says what you need to know about them. You get me?

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Quick little intermission, you guys. We all know how important it is to prioritize the right things in our life. And maybe for you, that's prioritizing doing leg day at the gym or making sure you go for your hot girl walk. But how often are you prioritizing your mental health and making sure that therapy is a part of your weekly routine? If it's something that you've been open to, if it's something that you've been considering, I highly recommend BetterHelp. And thank you so much to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. And I'll see you in the next one.

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broad here this can be a lot of different things yeah like boundaries are we talking what are you willing to do for your friends what are you willing to have them ask of you who's like are they paying you back like boundaries are important and I think that again when you go into new friendships when you are growing with old friendships it's important to

Figure out who you are individually because this will say a lot about what your boundaries are like for me There is no favor that is too much for if Lisette were to ask me To get hit by a train and then get up and drive her four hours to the airport There would be no questions asked I would do it for her the same thing goes for my boyfriend for my family Those are people that I would do anything in the world for there are other friendships that

other friends where I would do a lot of things for you. I would not get hit by a train. Does that make sense? And it has nothing to do with the fact that I don't love this person or I don't love people or I don't want to be helpful. My number one goal is to be there for everyone that I can. But there are certain people I'm not going to give up my life to satisfy yours because we don't, that's not something that you've served me with or, you

I think that a lot of these things need to be mutual. You have to be treated with respect and that helps you treat somebody else with respect. I obviously, I'm not trying to say be disrespectful to people. That's for some reason the first thing that came to my mind. Be kind to everyone. Respect everyone. But you have to take care of yourself. If you are...

focus so much on pleasing your friends and doing everything that you can for them that you are losing yourself and you're not taking care of yourself, that's when you need to take a step back and set a boundary and recognize I have to put me first. And putting me first does not make me a bad friend. It makes me a better friend, honestly. The more I feel good within my own skin and my own life, the more I'm going to want to give to the world and to the people that I love. And that is...

Don't have the science behind it, but I know that that is a fact the more full and happy you are think about yourself Think about the last time You were on top of the world like when life felt really light and happy you walked around with a big smile on your face waving to everybody Complimenting strangers like it was nothing because you had so much light beaming inside of you that it burst out when we are empty

To give that light out is hard and it doesn't make you a bad person to have to recognize that you have to fill your cup first. Next. That's all I got on boundaries. I don't really know how else to deep dive into it. We could talk like if it's financial. I know that this is a big thing. Maybe I only know this because it's been on my TikTok a couple months.

a couple times on my TikTok I've gotten a few videos talking about how like friends take advantage of other friends and like don't pay each other back. I'm never somebody to be a stickler for money. I see it as I'm just gonna have a little bit of an awareness like I don't mind paying for things. You get I'll get this coffee you grab lunch or I'll get this fancy dinner if you grab the next two coffees but it's never really like an open discussion that I have with people but I think that it definitely could be if I felt somebody was taking advantage of me

It's a conversation you should feel open to having. It's an honest conversation. And financials are different for everybody's situation. Like, if you need to be like, hey, I would love to go to dinner here, but I'm going to order something lighter and a little bit more affordable. Can we maybe not split this meal? Like, if you feel you can't have those conversations with people, again, something to evaluate, something to think about. Now, that's not to say...

You're going to be like, yeah, no, I only took one sip of that wine, so I'm only going to give you $1. Like, I don't ever think that's okay. If you said yes to getting the bottle of wine and you drink a little bit less than everybody, you shouldn't have had any. That's also, maybe it's a hot take. That's how I feel about it. Respect everybody's situation. And don't make things a million times more difficult than they have to be. That's kind of how I see it. But that wasn't even the question. That was just a little side quest. Okay.

Next one. How do you know when a friendship has run its course? How do you know when a friendship has given you what it needs to give you and it's time for it to close? I think there's a few ways you can know. One, if you stop reaching out to this person and then you don't hear from them.

You could be, one of two things could be happening. One, you could be recognizing, all right, maybe this friendship didn't bring me as much value as I thought it did. Or maybe you're both just really bad at your phone and you're so busy and you get distracted. And like I have a few friends from high school that I think that's exactly what happens to us. It's not because our friendship has died out or because we don't need each other. It's just because we are busy and we are overwhelmed. And we still have a very healthy friendship when we do finally chat.

Another way that that could happen or reason that could be happening is because like you're like, hey, turns out this person actually wasn't adding so much value to my life. I feel totally fine without them. And that's okay. It is okay for friendships to drift apart and for people to move to different chapters. I think that that's healthy. There's so many friendships I had in high school where

That I with people that I still would love if I ran into them at the grocery store But we're not going to go out of our way to text each other to call each other We live now maybe in different states. Maybe some of us live in the same city like we Grew out of our friendships and that's okay And if it's somebody that you think is really worth fighting for keeping that friendship then reach out And if they don't put in the effort to meet you back in the middle That's probably how you know, your friendship has run its course and also

The more important and the bigger one is if you have a friend that simply does not make you feel good. If you have a friend who makes you feel belittled,

Or small. Or stupid. Or makes you feel bad about what you look like. Or the boys or the girls that you talk to. Or judges all of your decisions. And makes you feel bad. And it's not in like a fun, cute, joking friend way where, you know, like me and my best friend will shit on each other all day long. And it's like genuinely coming from a good, funny place. You can tell.

in friendships when that's not the case. You can tell when somebody is making you feel bad. And if that's the case, you need to take the initiative to recognize that friend is doing nothing good for you. We have to recognize we become our friends. If you, I don't know how the quote goes or what book it's from, I have no idea, but it's something like if you were in a room of 10 smokers, you'll be the 11th.

Whether you want to or not, we become the people we surround ourselves with, which is why I think it is so important to surround yourself with friendships that lift you up, that encourage you, that tell you to chase your dreams, that tell you to go kiss that boy if you want to, that tell you to be yourself openly, to do the annoying laugh that your other friends made you insecure about, to go jump in the bush after a night out and embarrass yourself. Be with friends openly.

who truly want you to be yourself and make you feel good about that person too. Because there are a lot of people in this world who aren't going to give you that, but there's just as many who will. So recognize that. Just evaluate how do the people you're around make you feel? Do they roll your eyes at you when you want to take pictures? Do they make you feel dumb for making a TikTok? Do they say some comment under their breath about whatever it may be?

Take a step back from those people and take a step towards the people who want to hear about your deepest feelings. They want to know every detail about your trip to the grocery store. The friends who want to take all the pictures for you even if it takes a million tries. The friend who's behind the camera hyping you up from a genuine place, making you feel beautiful and loved and wonderful. Those are the people to keep around.

Period.

Somehow they won't go away no matter what I do, no matter how incredibly awful and mean I am to them. But I don't mind doing this work. In fact, if I'm being honest, I think it's God's work. So make sure y'all follow me on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every Wednesday. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Next, how do you deal with growing apart from friends because you can't relate to them anymore? We've touched on it within this, but...

The first step is just recognizing that that's going to happen. You know, in middle school and in high school, we're kind of forced to be around the same people, regardless of our interests. You know, we're all in the same classes together. We essentially start our friendships in those years. So our interests don't really come into account. We're forced to be together. And they're almost like these friendships are bound to happen regardless of what we, who we are.

And when we move into college or even as we end high school or we're post-grad, any of the ages, truly, it's our choice to now pay attention to if this is somebody I was just friends with because we were in close proximity or is this somebody that I genuinely have a strong friendship and connection with that is worth keeping in touch with when we're not in close proximities. And I think that once we make that change,

and we go into that next chapter of life, you're going to realize you're not as close with a lot of people that you maybe thought you were. You were just close because you were together and you related on the teachers that you had or the other friends that were in your school. Not necessarily that you were true friends, you know?

So I think just recognizing that and knowing that it's okay and it's good. And like I said before, you are going to grow apart from people. Like as an example, I was living in Hawaii and we were hanging out with like some of these guys. Some of them I still keep in touch with and they're great dudes. But there were some other people that I hung out with there that at the time I thought were just like funny jokester guys and they would make like

Jokes about girls and jokes about our looks and what we were wearing. And I never knew anything different growing up because that's just how, I don't know, society made me feel like men were supposed to joke about women. It wasn't until I reached a certain point and a certain security in myself and a certain awareness that, like, people do not need to say those things about females or about anyone for that matter. And they would just make comments about everyone and everything. Appearances, thoughts, ideas, like...

horrible, horrible things and I stayed friends with these people because I thought that that was normal. I didn't- I genuinely didn't know any better than the fact that these guys were cool and they surfed and like who cares that they're dicks. It didn't even- I didn't even view them as dicks. I just thought that's how they were, like that's how all men were. But I didn't recognize until I left that situation and I met other people who are actually good people and I really started to think about what I used to surround myself with and wondered

why I maybe felt so bad about myself, why I was so driven by what my body looked like or who I was getting with or how big my butt was or what my boobs looked like. I only cared about those things so much because of who I was around. So once I left that situation, that's when I realized I didn't relate to my friends anymore. I was like,

Who in the world are you and why did I spend any time around that? Now, a lot of friendships don't end because of these dramatic circumstances. Like, not everybody's a terrible person and you realize it a few years later, but...

you do start to realize that you might view the world a little bit differently. And sometimes that's not going to make or break a friendship, but sometimes it does. And that's okay. It doesn't have to burn a bridge. It doesn't have to create this fire. It doesn't have to blow up, but it can just be like a, hey, okay, we have a really different moral compass. I'm just going to take a tiny step back.

Or I'm going to take a tiny step forward because, hey, I would like to learn more about why you see this way or why you feel this way about whatever. You get me? Next. Okay. My friend only hangs out with me when she has no other friends. What do I do? This one sucks sometimes. I've been here. I've dealt with this. I've felt this kind of feeling. If this is a friend that you genuinely enjoy spending time with, maybe say something. Maybe ask her. Maybe evaluate it.

Maybe she's somebody who doesn't recognize that this is what she's doing. I know a lot of people who are just kind of... And this sounds like a dig, but it's not. There's people who are clueless about other people's feelings. Not in an obnoxious way. In a genuinely... Some people don't have a part of their brain that really clicks into recognizing...

or putting themselves in somebody else's shoes not in a selfish or narcissistic way either just in a way that you might need to spark a little bit of awareness in them and then they're like oh my gosh you're so right i'm so sorry that i did that and i think that if you can have that kind of conversation with this person that's a good idea and if you enjoy their company keep spending time with them and

Just know don't put that on yourself and make yourself feel like oh She must not like me because she hangs out with me the least out of all her friends That's not necessarily true, and you never really know why somebody does what things until you have a conversation about it and then sometimes Even after you have a conversation about it. You're like huh you still don't really understand somebody completely so just talk to her and

Trust yourself, believe in yourself and love that you, not love, know that you deserve all of the love. What do you do when your childhood best friend turns into a jerk? This is kind of like the vice versa of what, actually no, not the vice versa. I'm starting to lose my trains of thoughts. They're starting to go into all different stations.

this is going to happen to people and i think it's important to also know that some people become a jerk for a short period of time some people go through and i've done it i'm sure actually i know i've done it when i was in high school i used to be a little brat like i was a terrible person not on not intentionally and i was never like actually mean to people but i knew in my heart i was a lot more judgmental than i ever was at any other point in my life and will ever be

and it was when I was like 16, 17. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to fit in with the popular kids, and what the popular kids did was like talk shit about people and drink, and I was like, oh, I want to do that. So I was a jerk for a while. My best friend, Lissette, the only fight we've ever been in was because she made this new friend in high school, and...

This friend was kind of a bad influence. Like, she would drink and smoke and, like, do all this stuff. But, like, at the time when you're in high school, that was so cool. That's, like, what you wanted to do because that's what the popular kids did. And I hadn't touched any of that stuff yet. So, Lissette kind of just dropped me for a couple months and made this girl her best friend. Now, we haven't talked to this girl in years. And me and Lissette are still inseparable. But...

Sometimes we have to go through a phase and sometimes you got to recognize that your friends might be going through a phase. Now, if they're making you feel horrible about who you are during this phase, take a step back. Let them grow. Let them mature. Don't make it your responsibility to fix them or to make them kind again. People have to go through things to learn them.

And you never know how they're going to do it or what they're going to have to go through. But don't put all the pressure on you to be the one to fix it. Let them learn. Let them be a bitch, a jerk, a terrible person for however long they need to be. You can mention it. Be like, you know, depending on the situation, of course, like maybe you shouldn't say that about that person. Maybe we don't need to have this conversation. And distance yourself from them if you're noticing that the behaviors are really bad.

There's a couple things that could happen. One, you could say that you tried and that you did your best and this person just wanted to stay in this lifestyle and you have to like swallow it and let it go and move on. Or this person's going to recognize that you are a really big light in their life and they're going to come back and recognize that they treated you wrong. You're going to get the apology you've been craving. Like that happens too. But

Don't put too much pressure on it. Just let people learn and grow at their own pace. And if it's affecting you super negatively, take a step back and pour a little bit more into you instead of into them. You get me? I feel, sorry, yawning. Like all my friends have a hating me undertone, but I can't point out a specific thing. All I have to say about this one, when you know, you know.

If your friends are making you feel bad and you can't figure out why, it's probably because they're talking shit about you behind your back. I've been there, I've done it, and it sucks. So, trust your gut. Take a step back, pour into you, reach out to new people, focus on making new connections, and you'll be able to feel the difference. Especially if you're somebody who's been in the same friend group or run in the same friendship circle for a really long time, then...

you probably don't know that there's other people out there who can actually make you feel like a friend and treat you like a friend. You might not realize that you've been treated horribly for much longer than you even know. So always trust your gut and always trust your instinct when it comes to friendships. And I think that's something really important to note here too is that we can sit here and talk about all these bad friends and people not prioritizing us and making us feel bad about ourselves, but most importantly...

something to take away from this episode is to evaluate who you are as a friend. Because a lot of us, like I was mentioning, don't really, never intentionally, we don't take into account how certain things might make other people feel. And I'm not going to lie, it can be exhausting to try to manage your own feelings in situations on top of everybody else's. But it is important. To be a good friend, you have to be a good friend. You have to

Listen to your friends. Learn about your friends. Understand them more than just on the surface. The same way that you want to be understood and loved and like recognized if you are somebody who is always late and you kind of want your friends to pick up on that so maybe they tell you like 15 minutes earlier and you think it's like this, oh my god, so cute, so thoughtful or your favorite song is this and they make sure that that's the first thing they play in the car when they're dropping you off on a date. Like you want thoughtful people in your life.

You want people to treat you well. And I think a really good way to bring more of that to you is to be that person for other people. And yes, there's situations where we give and give and give and we receive nothing. That's when you take a step back and you're like, okay, I gave it what I could. But evaluate who you are as a friend.

Do your best to always be a good friend. Not give yourself up to be the world's greatest friend ever, but have an awareness of it. Treat people the way that you want to be treated. You get me? Okay, next.

A lot of these are very similar. How do you know if a friendship's worth fighting for? Kind of talked about that before. How do you know when people are fake? Kind of talked about that. Trust your gut. Also, pay attention to if you hang out with your friends and you're in a little fun group or even if you're just one-on-one and they want to talk shit about other people, like your other friends. Girl, any friend who talks shit about your other friends to you is talking shit about you to their other friends. So...

Enough said. I've ended honestly, not ended, I've distanced myself a lot from a lot of friendships strictly because of that. It's just not worth it. And then there's also other friendships where you are simply just going to grow apart. We've talked about that. I just, I say this because another one came up, like how...

Do you know if a friendship is worth fighting for? You just know. You just simply, you'll know in your heart. If you are thinking about this person, you're yearning for this person, you want to have a conversation and hang out with this person, that's a friend that was bringing something into your life. If you feel lighter and happier when you guys are apart, it says everything you need to know. After high school, how long do you reach out to your friends until you finally let them go? Well, you kind of see. Are you the only one reaching out? Are they not reaching out because they're super busy and you know that?

Or are they not reaching out because they've got this whole new friend group? It all goes back to trusting your gut and feeling it in your heart. If you feel that you're putting all the work in to grow a friendship and somebody else isn't, then just let it fizzle out. There's somebody and something out there that's better for you than that friendship. How do I get closer with friends? I feel like I have really good friends, but I don't know them on a deep level. This one's kind of a hard answer, hard one for me to answer because this is something I would like to do as well. Because like I said,

Lisette is my best friend. She's been my sister, my soulmate for 18 years, I think our friendship has been. And something crazy like that. I know everything about her. I know her like better than I know the back of my hand because I rarely look at the back of my hand. I know her like we're in the same body. I can read her so well. But I have a lot of other friendships that are very much more on the surface that I want to grow and I want to...

evolve them and I think that one great way to do it is to just have like some tougher conversations talk about dreams goals future insecurities like real shit that we go through and I think that that's a really quick way to get to know more about somebody ask them if they journal ask them if they listen to any podcast if they have anything that's going on with their mental health physical health and

These are important questions and you guys can like kind of be therapists for each other and it's a wonderful thing. And I think that once you start having those conversations, your friendship deepens quicker than you recognize quicker than you thought it could, you know? Okay.

How to not self-sabotage friendships. Be open and honest with your friends when you're going through something, when you need some space, when you're just going to be kind of off for a while. Let people know, hey, I'm having a shitty week. Please don't take this personal, but I need to just ghost for a day or two and like focus on myself and isolate and do my thing.

The right friends are going to understand that. And I think that that's the most important thing in your friendships is to be honest about everything that you have going on. And like, if you have to cancel plans last minute, don't make up some lie. Be honest. And sometimes, yeah, that's still going to cause issues and you're probably still going to have disagreements because...

I think your feelings are valid, but your actions are not always valid. Like you could be going through something, which totally valid, totally understand. But if you made a commitment to somebody for something, let's say something super serious, and you're bailing an hour before because you're too anxious, like I get it. I've been there. I've gone through that. That's still a reason to cause an argument, mental health related or not, if that makes any sense. Like you are still responsible for the fact that

regardless of what happened to you and what you're feeling, you still left somebody hanging an hour before a function that they've been planning on going to with you for three years, whatever it is. You still owe an apology and you owe an honest answer of what happened, but you have to own up to the things that you do, the things that you say, the person you become, regardless of what feelings are involved. You still owe that to people to be honest

the best possible friend that you can. And maybe that's a hot take, but not to me. I know the harm and damage that I can cause in my friendships, relationships, family relationships when I'm struggling mentally, but that doesn't excuse my actions. You get me? Okay.

I think I'm going to stop it there. Most of these are honestly really similar. They're all different variations of the same questions and I feel like that's a good stopping point. But I want you to know friendships are valuable. They're wonderful. They're beautiful. They're not always easy, but they're almost always worth it. So keep being a good friend. Keep attracting the right people. Keep being yourself. And yeah, go deepen and grow your relationships. I love you so much. Bye.