This show is about speaking your mind even if your opinion is unpopular, but we know

from empirical research that your real life is probably much more monolithic.

We surround ourselves with people who agree with us because that's more comfortable.

But whether you agree with your friends or not, friendship is a relationship and relationships are complicated.

We're often looking for or maybe clinging to the idea of the one, even platonically. And yet, relationships changed. They sometimes end.

So is the idea of a best friend forever really an exercise in wanting the impossible?

We all have different places that we can fill in in each other's lives and nobody has to be the

best among them.

Why do we have to rank them?

I don't think it

necessarily benefits us to do that in something that's so emotional as

friendship. Kristen Meinzer joins Hear Me Out once again in just a moment.

Stay with us.

Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Headley.

Look, if there's anything the last couple years of American life has thrown into stark relief. It just might be the

importance of having a support network, people you can depend on when you need help.

And sometimes to tell you like it is when social media keeps you in this delusion of fake lives and fake things.

There are a lot of different kinds of friends. That said, the people you talk to daily, the people you check in with every few weeks,

maybe the people you see only if you happen to be in their city, and sometimes friendships end.

Sometimes that's for good reason. But the question today is whether when it's

time for a friendship to end, it should end with a fizzle or a bang. Or whether those friendships are the most important thing for you invest your time and energy into.

Our guest is the returning Kristen Meinzer, a favorite, an author, podcast host, welcome back.

...