This week's episode of TheCutPodcast is all about making friends as an adult — how to do it, and why everyone feels awkward about it
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images On this week’s episode of The Cut, producer Noor Bouzidi ventures out in search of a new social life. She goes on friend dates with strangers she meets on Bumble and talks to friendship expert Dr. Miriam Kirmayer and lifestyle vlogger Katherine Berry about how to connect when one is self-conscious about being the kind of person who needs to connect.
KATHERINE: Those types of relationships are easier to keep going when you’re in person and you can just go to dinner or go to a movie and there are other things that entertain you. But when you step digitally, now you’re just on FaceTime for an hour. You actually have to talk about what you have in common and the things that you both care about. When the pandemic hit, I sort of entered into this political radicalization and shift in the way that I imagined my relationship with my work.
KATHERINE: I figured out how to set the boundary of like, “I don’t really think I can support this relationship. I don’t think it’s fair to you to say we’re friends if I’m not going to actually put the work in. So I’d like to take a step back from this,” basically. I wouldn’t say it ended amicably, but I think it was inevitable. At some point, we would have had to come to terms with our incompatibility as friends.
This girl showed me why I find these apps so weird. Because when you craft a profile saying that you’re lonely and looking for love, there’s nothing devastatingly embarrassing about that — at least not anymore. But when you do the same thing looking for friends, for some reason, it becomes a totally different — way more raw — conversation.
According to her profile, she was also a 22-year-old Arab girl whose all-time favorite artists were Shakira and Nancy Ajram. She had a gaming obsession, and also some mommy issues. One of the three questions that she answers is “How would your mother describe you?” And she says “A disappointment” and I’m just like, yeah, that’s exactly where I’m at with my relationship with my mom. On paper, this girl and I are kind of the same person. But the conversation dried up immediately.
DR. KIRMAYER: There is this gamification of relationship-making. But it is important that we recognize when we are using them intentionally and when we’re being passive users. Am I in the right place to connect? Am I in the space where I’m willing to accept that this is awkward and vulnerable and uncertain? And if not, then it doesn’t have to be right now, right? We don’t always have to be in that place where we are working to make new connections. It should really feel right at the moment.
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