Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship

How to gracefully maintain boundaries and stop giving away too much information without damaging your friendships. This episode with my husband, Bryan, is a direct follow-up to the discussion I had in episode 23 when my guest and I spoke about kids' issues becoming too private to share with friends. I asked Bryan to share his advice for keeping information private because he's really good at connecting with people without feeling he has to overshare-- something I'm constantly working on improving. Many people agreed with me after listening to episode 23 that it's important to keep some information private, especially information about others. But how can we get out of these types of probing conversations without hurting anyone's feelings or making it seem like we don't trust them?There are lots of ideas in the episode!ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I answered an anonymous listener's question about how to still feel close to friends when you can no longer discuss issues that once might have bonded you like certain parenting conundrums. There comes a point when our kids' problems are really their stories to share and we have to honor their privacy.Here to help me is Twin Cities author, Rebecca Prenevost, a mom of two daughters who enjoys reading, writing, and listening to all things related to parenting tweens and teens. Rebecca is the author of the Mom Walks series, a women’s fiction series that follows a mom and her two best friends as they navigate the trenches of parenting tweens. You can find her on Instagram, which is where we met!ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Fast forward a friendship by hosting friends for a meal! I'm taking on two topics today, with one topic logically leading to the other. #1. How to go from being casual acquaintances to actually considering someone a friend. #2. How to make it easier to have people over for a meal.I have the only sensible guest to handle this challenge, and that is my good friend, Debra Arbit. In addition to being a consultant for women business owners, and raising three young kids, Debra has hosted TONS of friends and acquaintances at her house for meals over the past handful of years (pre-Covid). And then at some point when it became clear she couldn’t have people over like she used to, Debra took her love for cooking onto her instagram account, @fortheloveofcookbooks, where she brought her longtime passion for cooking her way through entire cookbooks and does much of it live on her stories. Before Debra and I discussed 10 tips for hosting, we told our friendship story, which is a great example of taking a casual friendship to the next level. Then we gave 10 solid tips for making it easier to host friends for meals, something each of us have a lot of experience doing at this point in our lives. We hope our ideas help.ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I loved my conversation with Pennsylvania-based author Rachel Levy Lesser, and I REALLY enjoyed Rachel's memoir, Life’s Accessories. In the episode, we discussed Rachel losing her mother so soon after Rachel had her first child. We talked about how close Rachel was with her mom and the ways friends stepped up for her when her mom was sick with cancer and when her mom passed away. We also covered the ways friends showed up for me when my dad died in December, at a much different stage of my life. It was a really touching conversation, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know Rachel even more since we recorded. Real life friend-making in action! ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I'm fascinated by what makes people click. Within minutes we often know whether we want to pursue a friendship with someone, or not. Is that fair? Maybe not, but it's reality. Time and experience together can overcome a so-so initial chemistry, but I want to talk about those magical friendship moments. Those "friends at first sight" feelings. Have you had them? I’d love to hear about them in the Facebook group if you’re willing to share. Today's post quotes Click: The Forces Behind How We Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do by Ori and Ram Brafman to explain why some people hit it off and some don't.ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Books about friendship! Today's episode combines two of my favorite topics—friendship and books--specifically, novels and memoirs about friendship for adults. Thank you to my guest, Rebekah Jacobs, who came up with all the book categories and was the perfect well-read guest to join me in this discussion. It was like the best giant book club meeting ever.You can find the show notes with the BOOK LISTS here.ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Scaling back, reaching out, overlooking flaws, and accepting boundaries. Taryn and I answered four listeners' questions about friendship in about 30 minutes. We jammed a lot in!You can find the full show note with the questions here.ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Episode #17: An important discussion about sobriety in friendship, from addiction to all levels of sober living and how friendships transition and sometimes completely phase out in early sobriety. Jen Veralle shared her personal story and offered extremely helpful tips. You can find the full show notes here. ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

This whole idea of "the in crowd" or "the popular crowd" comes up in questions I’ve received for many years.As a generality, I’m calling the issue in crowd vs out crowd, but let me clear, nobody uses that exactly language when they write to me. What I get instead are letters explaining how frustrated people are when they aren’t being welcomed into a certain group, or when their kids aren’t included to hang out with a certain group.Or perhaps a kid has encountered a "mean girls" situation where they were friends with a certain group and are now being excluded. In these various questions I get, so much rides on a particular group of people. As if being being part of that one special group will be the key to all the friendship problems without recognizing that being included in such a group can create new problems, like not trusting that these are your real friends. I find this worry comes especially from parents upset that their kids aren’t part of “that one group.”ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Making small talk is an essential step of making friends. There's no avoiding it. All relationships, casual or deep, start with those first moments of small talk.  I invited Ali Wenzke, author of The Art of Happy Moving, to give us lots of tips about making this kind of (sometimes) awkward conversation and how body language cues can help in making friends, too.You can find the show notes HERE.ALL THE DEAR NINA LINKS + CONTACT INFO📢 This week’s fabulous sponsor + how to purchase ad space on Dear Nina📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Dear Nina Facebook group📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question🔎 Want to work with me or need another link? That’s probably here.Thank you to this week's sponsor: https://www.sassythoughts.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands