(CNN) - Even though their shared love for "Gossip Girl" sparked a friendship that changed their lives forever, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman are here to tell you that lifelong ties don't have to be about what you and the other person have in common. Often the opposite is true.
What started so magically after a mutual friend invited them to a party to watch the prom episode turned into a relationship that has helped define their adulthood and careers. It hasn't always been easy, but their friendship has endured in part because of his ability to disrupt what linguist Deborah Tannen has called "the story of equality," the way some friends, especially women, bond over their similarities. It turns out that these friends needed to forge a bond defined by their differences and the ability to communicate about them clearly and repeatedly.
The casual observer might think that something like this would be easy for two successful women who are already famous for being friends. Since 2014, Sow and Friedman have co-hosted “Call Your Girlfriend,” their popular podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners per episode, where they explore life, culture, politics, and more through the lens of their long-distance friendship. . (Although they were both living in Washington when a mutual friend first introduced them, Sow, a digital strategist born in Guinea and raised in Nigeria, Belgium and France, now lives in Brooklyn. Friedman, a journalist from Iowa, lives in Los Angeles) .
They are also well known as the architects of "Shine Theory," a trademarked term that entered common parlance through a column Friedman wrote for The Cut in 2013. Simply put, "I don't shine if you don't shine, "an" investment, long-term, to help someone be the best version of themselves and trust their help in return. It is a conscious decision to bring your whole being to your friends and not let insecurity or envy ravage them.
In their recent book "Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close," the two friends bring new emotional and intellectual concepts to the table, intertwined with research from thinkers like Tannen and others to do exactly what their podcast does: try to understand. the world outside her friendship looking at the world inside her. They define the concept of the title, "great friendship", as "a bond of great strength and meaning that transcends the phases of life, geography and emotional changes." As Sow told me, it's a term that describes "the person you want to be there in the last days of your life."
The key to maintaining great friendships, especially in a world that suggests that friendship should be effortless and that the value and effort of emotional relationships is more applicable to marriage, sibling, and parenting work, is "Stretching," the seeding, and Friedman's extended metaphor about the ways in which both members of a "great friendship" have to acknowledge that no friendship lasts on autopilot.
The fundamental truth that her book reveals is that none of this is easy, not for them or for anyone else. Growth, sometimes painful, is necessary to keep up with individual life changes and evolutions in the relationship. Sometimes it can send you to therapy, an experience that Sow and Friedman frankly and boldly invite their readers to share and learn as they describe seeking professional help to repair rifts in their relationship as best friends and business partners.
Sow and Friedman's book is a powerful effort to forge a stronger language for what friendship means in modern life. They told me "Big Friendship" because it was the kind of book they needed to read themselves; With me and in other interviews, they are somewhat resistant to the idea of their book having more or less resonance because it has fallen during an era in which maintaining friendship across wide geographic distances and across racial lines has a greater sense of self. urgency and opportunity for readers struggling to cope with the devastating isolation of the covid-19 pandemic or to find more honest and less toxic ways to cultivate their interracial friendships.
Sow, who is black, put it this way on a recent episode of “CYG,” asking, “How do you know how much you are supposed to give to a friend and when is too much? When is it not enough? And that's something that you have to constantly dialogue with yourself and with your friend. Actually, there is no clear answer. As Friedman, who is white, said on her podcast, “a lot of times when asked about this chapter of the book on interracial friendship, people frame it in terms of 'this moment', and I think it's very important for us not to frame it. as in or of a moment. It is more than that, in friendship and beyond. But as she later points out, "there isn't a lot of work on interracial friendship."
That body of work is a bit bigger now and we're better off for it. A great friendship is, as Friedman told me, "a choice that both people must make to make it work." The point is, it's work, and the longer we go about our days in a world defined by social distance, the more work helps us stay alive.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CNN : How did you decide to write this book?
Ann Friedman : I think this is a conversation we wanted to have publicly about the place of friendship in society and in all of our lives. It is also a book that we need to read at various times in our friendship. One that reflects the difficulties of this type of intimate platonic relationship, as well as its joys.
CNN : To take the concept from the title: the idea of a great friendship seems so revolutionary to me - putting this kind of deceptively simple language to what is such a complex and rich experience. I don't want to ask you to repeat the entire book, but can you explain what this term means to you and if that meaning has changed in the process of publishing the book to the world?
Aminatou Sow : We were really looking for a vocabulary and a language to be really precise about the kind of friendship that we have, which is a friendship that is very deep. It is a friendship that transcends geography and, ultimately, it is a friendship that we want to have for the rest of our lives. You know, the word friend can mean a lot of things, and we wanted to make it very, very clear that we were talking about this kind of friendship that is really rooted in the future. Not an acquaintance, not an old friend from college that you never see again, not the person you go to dinner with once a year, the person you want to be there with in the last days of your life.
CNN : Reading your book as a kind of argument for friendship, as a social institution, to get the same kind of language and support that other social institutions have (like marriage or family), it felt like social history. and politics of feminism. It was everywhere in the spaces of what you were saying. Can you talk about the role feminism played in your research and writing the book?
Sow : That's a great question. I love it. I think deep down one of the questions that we were really trying to answer in this book is: How should modern adults be able to live their lives? And I think feminism, obviously, is at the root of much of our friendship, the two of us, and how we have really related to each other and the ideas that we have shared about how we can be liberated people in the world. So I think it was very natural that when we were writing this book, we looked for other voices that would complement many of the ideas that we had. And I have to say that feminist scholarship has been really important to us, just as scholarship has been very important in the way that we think about these ideas.
We speak with Angela Chen, who will publish a wonderful book on asexuality later this year called "Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex." And that was a really eye-opening moment for me, talking to her. We also spoke with Stephanie Coontz, who is a marriage historian and someone who has really shaped much of the conversation about what marriage was like in America and what it is like now. And I think that was also fundamental to a lot of the ideas that we had. I'm sure Ann has a lot to add.
Friedman : No, that was great! Really, that's what I would have said!
CNN : You spend a lot of time in the book describing your ongoing investment in one another. You talk about it when you talk about "Shine Theory" and you talk about it especially when you make this incredible decision to sit together on a therapist's couch (to solve important problems in your friendship). Why is it so important to interrupt this idea that friendship should be simple?
Friedman : I think we were both raised with the idea that hard work is important. (Laughs) And working hard in whatever area of life you can consider is very important. So working hard to advance your career, but also to be your best self, to live where you want to live, to have the people around you that you want around you. That was kind of an environmental part of our education.
But it wasn't really directly said that friends are something you'll have to work on. We both also come from families where our parents are incredible correspondents; they are very good at keeping in touch with people who are far away and who are truly engaged in their communities. And so, in a sense, they were modeling this, but the idea that friendship in particular requires some kind of emotional investment is something that we hadn't fully assimilated yet. (We hadn't imagined) what that looks like.
It is silly to say out loud that we have had these contributions in our childhood and yet we hoped that our own friendship would remain easy, frankly, it would always feel effortless. And so we were caught off guard when it wasn't. I think part of the point of this book is to say that human beings are messy. Emotions are complicated. And when you mess up your life with someone else, even if it's "just a friend," you'll probably run into some trouble at some point, even if it's just a minor communication glitch. And instead of seeing that as a fatal flaw in friendship, because friendship is supposed to be easy, (we have to ask) what if we just normalized it as something that can happen in any kind of close relationship?
CNN : To switch more to the contemporary context of the book, I really found myself going back to the subtitle: "How We Stick Together." As you describe in the book, you work to stay connected, especially digitally. And it is so timely to see that, now that the pandemic has turned many more friendships into distant proposals. Has your understanding of the digital connection, or any other component of 'how we stick together', changed since the covid-19 pandemic began?
Sow : The reason we got to that subtitle in the first place is that we wanted to be really precise about the fact that this was not a book on how to make a friend, although that is a real problem that should be addressed to so many people and it's a sore spot. The revelation of much of the work we had done on our friendship and much of the work of writing this book was that showing up for each other and staying close is a choice that you have to make over and over and over and over again. . You are constantly choosing friendship.
And the pandemic really spreads both people in any friendship, because existential fear is everywhere. People are afraid. People are sick. People stretch in ways that are actually simply unimaginable. And I think (it's a) reminder that just because you weathered a previous storm doesn't mean you can set this relationship on autopilot. You have to show up every day with a renewed intention to be around your friend.
CNN : Do you get questions from readers, people who are faced with this during the time of the pandemic?
Friedman : We do. I think it's a time when a lot of people are evaluating their close relationships and thinking about what holds them together to the people who matter to them and who don't share physical space with them. And that has been something we are both thinking about as well. As Aminatou said, we have this long distance relationship, but I think everyone is recalibrating. Some of the questions that have been really difficult to answer are from people looking to make a new friend, or perhaps someone who moved to a new city during the pandemic. And it is very difficult to know where to start without even the germ of a connection.
That's been one of the hard things to answer because, referring to the caption again, it's a great time to double down on people you already know you want to keep around. But the part that precedes that, the part of making friends, I think has been really hampered by this time.
CNN : You speak very frankly and vulnerable in the book about how having an interracial friendship has affected your relationship. Has publishing this book at this particular time in the American dialogue on racial justice brought anything to the surface?
Friedman : Obviously we wrote this chapter (on interracial friendship) long before the widespread protests over George Floyd's death, and we believe that the racial problem didn't start happening in the spring and summer of 2020. I know that's something. that many people understand, but it almost underscores one of the themes of that chapter, which is that race and racism are affecting all friendships, certainly in America, whether they are interracial or not.
But (race and racism do) particularly affect interracial friendship, especially interracial friendship between white and black people, like ours. And if that's not something you're talking about openly in your friendship, it doesn't mean it's not having an impact. And specifically, speaking of my experience as a white friend in this interracial friendship, one of the things that we wrote about in the chapter is that if the effects that race and racism are having on your relationship arise in a friendship, the most it probably is. It is not the white friend who mentions it.
And if there's anything to say as a call to action right now, it's really looking at not only the conversations you're having externally as a white person in the world who is trying to do better, but also the way you race and racism is affecting your friendships. Ask yourself if you are in tune with that and if you are the one bringing it up. Because that's something that's been a long learning journey for me, frankly. To learn to see that and also learn to be the one who poses the problem.
That comment is really aimed at people who are in my position to be a white friend in an interracial friendship, but it feels appropriate because a lot of the people who are talking about this recently are white people. Everyone else has been talking about this for a long time.
CNN : As you say, this is not a new conversation for so many people. And for others, it feels new in a way that is generating a great desire to do better and a lot of uncertainty about what to do with that desire. I think some Americans are turning to the bookshelf or streaming device for material on how to understand race in a different way. That makes me curious as to what you think of this phenomenon: lists of books and films that are distributed to help whites find a more authentic or informed way to find out about black life. How would you feel seeing "Big Friendship" on such a list?
Sow : That is a difficult question for me. I'm trying to think it through. Ann, do you want to take this with you?
Friedman : I keep thinking about that too. I have a certain skepticism inherent in reading lists like this, essentially (with) the idea that simply sharing a list or just buying a certain set of books can be like, “Okay, I'm checking that box. My obligation is fulfilled ». But with that said, one of the reasons I'm so proud of this particular chapter of our book is because of some of the things I was talking about. I think it can be very easy to talk about racism as something that happens at the policy level, at the police level, even within the culture: the books, the television, the music and the movies that we all consume. It's easier to talk about it than to actually look at how it develops in interpersonal relationships.
I think it feels a little strange to me to be among some books that are actually claiming to be teaching guides for these concepts, something like "How to be an Anti-Racist" or "White Fragility." I don't know if our book is in line with books like that. But I do believe that white people who are new to this dialogue should be pushed to examine their everyday relationships and behaviors, and how they are perpetuating or working against racism in them. And in that sense, I would be happy to be included in a dialogue about learning and growth on this front.
And I also want to say that I really wish that more books would just talk about race in the context of other things. We don't write a book on "race and friendship," we write a book on friendship, and race affects friendship, so it's there. And I think some of my favorite nonfiction works and social commentary don't necessarily have to go to the ground and say, "This is all about the career goal, now we're racing." They are really explaining the fact that race is everywhere by addressing race while talking about other topics. That's another reason the reading list frame makes me skeptical.
Sow : That's so smart, that's so smart, that's so smart. Thanks for saying what I couldn't say.
CNN : Do you see that friendship is made or represented differently, culturally speaking, since you started working on the book? I'm thinking a bit about things like "The Babysitters Club" on Netflix here, but I'm also more curious about what you're seeing about how friendship is represented these days.
Sow : I think we are really living in a time where friendship is represented in the culture. I'm thinking about the last season of the TV show, "Insecure." There is so much energy and television about it. Historically there have been amazing novels about very complicated close friendships. I think what we were specifically trying to contribute to this conversation was to ask: what does a friendship look like when 2 people talk about it at the same time?
I think there will always be a desire for more friendship stories because every friendship is different, you know? And I think that really representing the depth of love and the depth of complexity is something that is going to be really important. Many movies, books, and television shows are ultimately about romantic love stories and tell the same story over and over again, and people feel seen and heard and felt represented. And I think that is also possible in friendship.
We are trying to say that the great loves in your life can also be your friends and that those stories also deserve to be told.
CNN : This question takes us back to the beginning, to what you describe in the book as your cute encounter during this shared viewing of "Gossip Girl." Has there ever been a cultural phenomenon (book, movie, TV series) that you radically disagreed on and couldn't find common ground?
Friedman : (laughs). This is a very funny question. (Laughs)
CNN : I knew I had to ask everyone about a lot of really important issues that are going on in the world, so I thought it would be fun to mix them up a bit.
Friedman : In fact, I feel that the most predominant dynamic in our friendship is that I am so slow in everything related to culture, that generally Aminatou has already consumed it and has developed a sharp position or a very intelligent vision of whatever. Like, a year before I even commit to it. So I confess that I hear this question and think less about something we disagree on and more about how slow I am to catch up with its cultural consumption.
CNN : Any thoughts on the other side?
Sow : I'm struggling to think of something that we just vehemently disagree on. I think part of the fun of sharing art with other people is that you get to hear their opinions about it. I don't think we have the same opinion about most of the art we share. But I always enjoy a vigorous discussion about it.
CNN : What strikes you the most when promoting this book? What comes next?
Friedman : It's just been great hearing other people's friendship stories. That is something that I am very excited to hear. As more people read this book, hear stories about how they make friends and how they experience some of these things, I think I will never tire of it.
SOW : Yes, that's the same for me. This book is truly an invitation for other people to share their stories. And I loved hearing them.
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