'This is why we can't have nice things.'

The impact of patriarchy on female friendships and other notes: a conversation with Kelly McDaniel.

First: My 6-week writing and meditation course, The Practice, starts next Tuesday, May 2. There are still spots, so if you’re curious or ready to join, go here. *Paid subscribers: go to our chat function here on Substack, and you’ll see links to get a discount.* If you have questions, just hit reply!

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Hey, hi, helloooo. I’m back from my ten days of travel to San Diego and Portland. Home has never felt so good!

As promised, here’s the first of a two-part conversation on friendship with Kelly McDaniel, therapist and author of Ready to Heal and Mother Hunger. Kelly’s work has been critical to me in understanding love addiction and how attachment wounds influence our relationship patterns—specifically, the role the mother relationship plays. She’s warm, wise, and wonderful.

I had a bunch of ‘yesss’ moments during this conversation and am so grateful for Kelly’s time. I feel like we barely scratched the surface, so perhaps we’ll need to do more sessions. This is the first time I’m releasing an audio conversation/podcast format here, so let me know what you think. Are we into it?

In Part 2, which I’ll drop next week, we talk about how our relationships with our mothers determine our attachment styles, what different attachment styles look like in friendships, three types of friends a love addict typically has, and forming healthy friendships (there is hope!) in recovery. This will also be for paid subscribers only.

Highlights

• Why female friendships are so complicated (see: patriarchy and misogyny)

• The Whitney Houston movie (I just watched it) and our judgments of women, drugs, talent, and power.

• Misogyny: what it is, how it impacts our friendships

• Our inability to trust ourselves and other women

• What we learn about ourselves through our relationships with our mothers

• Kelly’s friendship in her twenties where they went to therapy together

• Falling in love with our friends (platonically) — it’s a thing, and a thing we don’t acknowledge culturally

• How devastating friend breakups can be and why we can’t process them well

• Laura’s update on the friend she wrote about in Part 1

• The myth of “an endless supply chain” of friends

• Discarding other women because we’re taught we aren’t valuable

• The marketing of “soulmates” (romantic) and how we don’t talk about the equivalent of friendships