By Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman.
I hadn't heard of these two and their long-distance friendship podcast before this book, but it's an interesting take on friendship because it focuses on how their friendship was so good and then eroded with distance, illness, misunderstandings, unintentional gaslighting, the joys of interracial relationships and differences, and feeling that things aren't going well and the friendship is on the decline. The two write in a mutual voice (even when it's obviously coming from one person's perspective, they write in third person about it) and analyze the slow death that was going on and what went wrong. A spa weekend wasn't going to cut it for fixing things. What they do best here is the descriptions of a death by a thousand cuts. A difference of opinion as to what's a problem here, another one there, omitting information about guys you're dating for months when you'd normally blab....the distance.
]I admit: I'm kind of in slow motion ghosting/disappearing/de-escalating situation with a friend this year and that's why I picked this up. There were several moments of what I consider to be hurtful insult and it seems pretty clear the other person thinks of me in a not-good way deep down, and I can't get past that to have the same level of ...whatever...we had before. I don't think they've noticed if I'm gone since I had to be the initiator and we're not running into each other any more. I truly don't know if it's worth trying to save or not, knowing that truth, and knowing that they won't miss me. They might feel differently, but frankly I'm afraid to ask. I guess I read this book trying to figure out if it was worth trying and if so, how, because brutal honesty about my hurt fee-fees feels like it'd be blowing things up instead of letting it die slowly and quietly. I can't say I figured that out from reading this, but I certainly did relate to the thousand cuts sort of deaths these two were going through.
As for "how to fix it," these two have apparently made enough from jobs/podcasting(?) that they could afford to do couples therapy. Which is great for them, though they admit that's not an option for everyone. If anything kind of skimps here, it's that, but you can kind of understand why if they perhaps didn't want to go into their therapy sessions. It leaves the book a bit short, though. Maybe the point of it is to illustrate the problems and pitholes of friendships and how they can start to slowly go bad. Which makes sense, but not really going into "how to fix it" is why this book's getting about 3.5 stars from me.
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