Can Our College Friendship Survive Adulthood?

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

Esther Perel Global Media

Mental Health, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Education, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 15.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Friendship is a key thread of the social fabric. But what happens when the thread starts to fray? They met in college and have been close for a decade. Now, with long-term partners in the mix, their once-easy bond is under strain. Resentments—some spoken, many not—have started to pile up. Can their friendship adapt to this new phase of life? Or will it unravel? Esther offers them both some hope. Topic: Relationships with Family & Friends For the month of July, Esther is offering 20% off to join her Office Hours on Apple Podcasts. It's a place to continue conversations on important topics like sexlessness, infidelity or the perils of modern dating. It's also a place to follow up with couples and find out where their stories went. You'll also get an ad free version of all the episodes. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You know, in college, we'd show up somewhere, I'd be like, this is my wife, like, here's how we met we were in love.
0:04.6	And people would just assume we actually meant we were in love.
0:07.3	And I think we kind of were at the time.
0:09.8	But just not in a romantic, I mean, yes, in a romantic way.
0:13.2	Not in a sexual way.
0:14.6	No.
0:17.2	None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel.
0:21.6	Each episode of Where Should We Begin is a one-time counseling session.
0:25.6	For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality,
0:28.6	names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed,
0:32.6	but their voices and their stories are real.
0:39.2	In this following session, we discuss assault, and I want you to know this before you listen.
0:52.3	The Story of a Friendship. Two girls from very different backgrounds become confidants.
1:01.9	They experience a love story together, a platonic love story, but a love story nevertheless.
1:08.6	And they become each other's besties for four years, the entire college
1:15.5	duration. Being able to ask for help and receive help, I think is really foundational to our
1:23.7	relationship and our friendship and the caretaking that happens between the two of us.
1:29.8	They're there for each other. They're like the foundation for each of them to then go into
1:34.9	the world and do their own explorations. And so then the question becomes, how does a friendship
1:40.8	like that evolve after college, when their lives changes, when partners
1:45.8	enter into this story, or when they start to make choices that take them away from each
1:51.3	other?
	...

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