How To Build, Maintain, and End Friendships Gracefully With Nina Badzin

Nina Badzin is the Host of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, a podcast and newsletter that explores the ups and downs of adult friendship. She’s a Minneapolis-based writer who began offering friendship advice in 2014 and launched the podcast in 2021. Her work, now offered via Substack, is regularly featured in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, The Guardian, and NPR. Nina also co‑leads creative writing groups at ModernWell and reviews dozens of books each year.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:35] Nina Badzin shares how a winding writing career led to a decade-long focus on friendship
[5:21] Why science proves friendship is essential for long, healthy lives
[9:51] Redefining equality in friendships and avoiding unnecessary insecurity
[13:48] How to navigate conflicts when parents are friends with their kids’ friends’ parents
[26:11] The importance of choosing friends wisely and modeling these choices for kids [29:35] Building closer bonds by leaning into one-on-one connections in groups
[36:15] Developing discretion and protecting others’ personal information

In this episode…

Friendships can bring joy, support, and a sense of belonging, but they can also be challenging to navigate. How do you keep connections strong when life gets busy, or end them gracefully when they no longer serve you? What practical skills can help you model healthy relationships for your children?

According to Nina Badzin, a longtime writer and advice columnist on friendship, the key to lasting connections lies in understanding the natural stages of relationships and not getting in your own way. She highlights three main areas where most challenges arise: making friends, keeping them, and deciding when to part ways. By reframing how we define equality in friendships and letting go of rigid expectations, we can avoid unnecessary insecurity. Nina also emphasizes that friendships are a choice, and surrounding yourself with people you genuinely like improves your well-being and sets an important example for your kids.

In this episode of The Coping Podcast, host Dr. Leigh Weisz sits down with Nina Badzin, Host of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, to talk about how to build, maintain, and end friendships. They discuss redefining reciprocity to strengthen bonds, avoiding social engineering in kids’ friendships, and fostering deeper one-on-one connections in groups. Nina also shares how to protect trust by practicing discretion.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments:

“I really argue that those are equal, and that is a fresh way of looking at things.”
“If you can develop to be the kind of person people do not pry information from, you have done a very grown-up thing and become discreet.”
“Friendship is a choice, and you should be friends with people that you like.”
“Tolerating discomfort is really a difficult skill for kids, obviously, but also for adults.”
“It’s never too late, and it is important.”

Action Steps:

Redefine reciprocity in friendships: Shifting away from rigid “equal effort” expectations reduces unnecessary insecurity and preserves valuable relationships.
Choose friends you genuinely like: Surrounding yourself with people who bring out your best fosters healthier, more fulfilling connections.
Ask more questions in conversations: Demonstrating genuine curiosity deepens bonds, improves communication, and shows others that you value their experiences.
Model healthy boundaries for your children: Demonstrating discretion and resisting social engineering teaches kids how to build trust and navigate friendships independently.
Address difficult topics directly with friends: Honest, respectful conversations prevent resentment and strengthen trust, even in challenging social situations.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners.

Coping Partners is a mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and adults manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems and much more in the Chicago suburbs.

Our practitioners are devoted to building on our clients’ strengths and bolstering weaknesses.

To gain insight and tools for getting unstuck check out our website at CopingPartners.com, email us at support@copingpartnersgroup.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:01

Welcome to The Coping Podcast, where we share strategies for coping with the stressors of life, especially the difficulties of parenting. And here is your host, Dr. Leigh Weisz.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 00:15

This is Dr. Leigh Weisz. I am the host of The Coping Podcast, where I feature top experts on topics like raising healthy children, parenting, and so much more. Past guests include Dr. Doug Bolton, Dr. Teitelbaum, clinician Ben Kessler, Dr. Aryn Froum and many more. Just a quick disclaimer. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only.

This is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a client therapist relationship. The information provided is not a replacement for being assessed and evaluated by a licensed professional, and is not intended to replace mental health or medical advice. This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners. Coping Partners is a mental health practice in the Chicago suburbs dedicated to helping children, adolescents and adults. We help manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems, and much more.

Check out more episodes of our podcast and our website at copingpartners.com, and you can contact us with any questions you have. Before we dive into today’s topic, I wanted to introduce today’s guest. Nina Badzin. Nina Badzin is the host of the podcast Dear Nina: Conversations about Friendship.

She’s a writer, teacher, and mom of four in Minneapolis who has been writing about friendship for over a decade. We will share all about her info and how you can read her newsletter and tune into her podcast and Facebook as well. Nina has interviewed incredible people, including Gretchen Rubin and one of my absolute favorite psychologists, Dr. Lisa Damour. Today we will be discussing the nature of adult female friendships, and also talk a little bit about how moms can model and support their children in developing healthy friendships. So thank you so much, Nina, for being here.

Nina Badzin: 02:11

Thank you for having me. I love that we’re both Dr. Lisa fans, and she’s really, I quote her a lot because her wisdom has helped me personally as a mom, and it helps a lot of my listeners too.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 02:21

Yes, she is number one on my kind of. I’m like, I’m her biggest fan. She’s she’s up there in terms of of mentors in the field. She’s incredible. Yeah.

So I want you to share a little bit about how you got into this work on friendship.

Nina Badzin: 02:35

So I always love to make sure it’s clear to listeners of my own podcast, to other people’s podcasts. And I’m a writer, and writers often of non-fiction end up on a beat of some kind. You might be a travel writer, you might focus on politics, you might focus on health, you might focus on education. There’s, you know, people who go sit in school board meetings and all that. I have been on different beats throughout time and I, through a very winding road, ended up in friendship, but by my own choice because it’s a topic that I have always been really passionate about.

And even when I was playing with fiction for a while, it was always about friendship. And it started long ago with a novel I wrote and never got published. I’m so grateful because I still feel bad. I made anyone read it, but it was all about three different adult women who realized they were all dumped by the same person at different times in that person’s life, and they come together. And it was a great premise.

I almost got an agent with it, but I realized it was the true bits of friendship that drew me the most. And so I would write articles about it and then be asked to write more. And eventually I was hired by a website that was focusing on female friendships as their entire focus to have an advice column to go with it. But I was very reluctant at first. I was like, But I’m not a therapist.

I’m not a social worker. I felt funny about giving that advice. Now, I had had other advice columns on other topics, and I really liked that advice. Voice. And the editors of the website were like, don’t worry, that is what we’re going to make the thing.

We’re going to make it that you’re just a regular person who’s oddly obsessed with this topic. And friendship was very important to my parents. It was a big part of my upbringing was knowing who their friends were. Part of what we’re going to talk about today is this is something we need to be doing for our kids. My parents put friendship very front and center.

They were both very involved in their own thing, separately and as couples. They always had people over playing bridge. They were bridge people big into bridge groups. My dad would have guys over to play basketball on a Sunday morning. My mom had book clubs and all kinds of things and just socializing.

They went out every weekend with friends, and I basically took that on as an adult in my own social life, but also to explain to other people that it is so important to stay connected and keep those muscles going. Those social muscles.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 04:57

So it sounds like you again, from early on, had been exposed to really healthy social connections. And your parents are to thank for that. But why do you think it’s so important that you’ve devoted again? You’ve devoted ten plus years to this topic, and you obviously think it’s important in the lives of adults, of adult people, adult women. Why is it so important?

Nina Badzin: 05:21

I think it’s one of the most important things. And really, science backs me up on that because studies always show. And the biggest one that people talk about lately is the Harvard adult development. And I might be wording that wrong, but the is the long study. It’s one of the longest studies that has been done.

Generations of adults studying what has made people have long, healthy lives, both physically and emotionally. And it is the social connections. It comes up again and again that it is so important and where someone like me comes in. I actually don’t even spend a lot of time talking to people about why friendship is important. And you and I had talked about this piece of the topic.

When people pitch me to be on my podcast, I have guidelines for how to be on my podcast. A lot of people want to be on, which is great. That’s a good problem to have, but I had to develop a system, and one of the first things I say is do not put in your pitch that friendship is important. The entire thesis of my work is that friendship is important. That to me is a given.

It’s the next part that I really specialize in, which is how do we not get in our own way? So yes, friendship is important. You absolutely need to make time for friends. There’s a lot of issues that people create for themselves. I’m not saying it’s everyone’s fault, but some stuff is some stuff we we make harder than it needs to be for ourselves, for our kids.

Our kids make things harder than they need to be. And then we as adults, instead of modeling a healthy mindset, get right deep into it. Yeah. You’re right. She is a bully.

Yeah, she is the mean kid. Well, hold on, maybe we shouldn’t be labeling so quickly and we’ll get into some of that. I don’t know how or why, but I do have a very practical mindset. And I’ve been studying these things now for over a decade. The same issues come up again and again.

And yet ten years into this, I still always have new material, but it’s always in three buckets. It’s making friends, keeping friends, and what to do when you are ready to end a friendship. Every person that writes to me, I get a lot of anonymous letters and I have for over a decade. The details might be different, but they fall into those buckets. How do I make a friend?

How do I keep a friend? Those are the biggest. That’s we spend the most time on that. How do you keep a friend? And there’s a lot of details in there.

And then there’s unfortunately, of course, either somebody has decided to end the friendship with you and that’s not what you wanted, or you know that something has run its course. And it’s very tricky to do that in a way that is not hurtful. So those are the buckets.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 07:47

Absolutely. So I just want to piggyback on the part that you said is the premise, right? Like why are friendships important before before we quickly move on? Because I do think I work with a lot of parents in the community, and I think a lot of parents lose some of their own interests and their own self-care because they have no time and energy to focus on it. And they are really focused and they’re really more worried about their kids.

And I know that sounds really, you know, well-meaning, but it’s a problem, right? And so what you’re describing in terms of the studies and what we know is that when women experience supportive friendships, there’s actually a hormone called oxytocin that’s released, right. It’s like this feel good hormone. And it actually calms the body’s stress response by lowering the levels of cortisol, like the kind of bad the main stress hormone. And so we know.

Right. Actually having meaningful connections with friends helps us recover from stress and be healthier people. So I just wanted to make sure we’re all clear. It really is worth focusing on adult friendships too. And then of course, how we can help our kids too.

And I think they go together, like you’re saying.

Nina Badzin: 08:56

Yeah. And one thing I’ll add is a lot of people I’m hearing from lately, I’d say in the past couple of years are in their 50s and 60s. And they will say that I did not put enough time into friendships in my 20s, 30s, 40s. I was building my career. I was building my family.

And then they have a loneliness. And my message is always, it’s never too late. That’s I’m glad you’re focusing on it now. I see it as an opportunity and I’m optimistic for people, but they’re coming at me from a place of pain and seeing things on social media and feeling like it’s too late, I missed out. So I just want people to know it’s never too late and it is important.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 09:32

Absolutely. No, I like and I like that message too. So of all these letters that you get these anonymous letters, I’m curious, what are really common themes like you said that you, you know, get asked. It sounds like they’re very similar questions like, what are the most common pain points for people?

Nina Badzin: 09:51

A big one, and it really is coming from parents, and it might be from for their own friendships or on behalf of their kids. Is this real stress about whether things are equal or not? And I talk a lot about this on my podcast, that if we could redefine what it means to have an equal and reciprocal friendship, people would be so much happier. So that’s what I mean when I say sometimes we get in our own way, we all have different skills, and a lot of us are coming from the point of view of our own skills. So if you are a really organized person and you also are very extroverted and you like to have plans a lot, you’re going to probably be better at reaching out to other people because it’s important to you.

You’ve decided it’s a value. You don’t like to sit home. If you’re somebody who really doesn’t mind just being home and watching Netflix, and it doesn’t bother you and you don’t feel left out. If you know other people are doing things, you might not reach out as much. Well, now we might have a mismatch in how we reach out if those two people are friends, but it actually doesn’t mean there’s a problem in the friendship.

It’s just that the person who does, the more reaching out feels there’s a problem because they have defined a good friendship. As I text you this many times and then you text me exactly this many times back, and that’s just one tiny example. But a lot of the letters are in that that’s what they’re talking about in different details, describing it differently. But what the bottom line of is, is that they’re saying, I don’t really know if we’re really friends. I feel that if I were to stop reaching out, that friendship would end.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 11:24

Yeah. So there’s a there’s a feeling of insecurity. Yes. The initiator or call it it’s like I’m always the one putting forth the effort, you know, and it doesn’t feel good because I don’t know how this other person really feels. Do they really like me as much as I like them?

It sounds like a dating relationship, but that idea and it is true. I take this. I tell people all the time, like try not to take things so personally because like you’re saying, maybe they’re not the personality type or organized to do it. Maybe there’s a lot going on in their life, but they’re thrilled when you reach out and they’re equally happy to get together and want to, you know, so people do have strengths and weaknesses and it comes up. It comes out in friendships for sure.

Nina Badzin: 12:03

Yeah. And a lot of assumptions are made. Like you’re saying not to take things personally is important because you just don’t know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. And one thing I talk about a lot is that having healthy friendships takes a tremendous amount of humility, because you have to be able to say, no one knows exactly what I’m thinking, but I know what everyone else is thinking. Like, no, no one knows exactly what you’re thinking, and you also don’t know what everyone else is thinking.

And most things aren’t as personal as we think. And if we could let it go a little bit now, I would never tell somebody that they should constantly be chasing a friend. If somebody doesn’t respond back, that’s different than someone who doesn’t reach out as often. Those are two different things, but they are subtle. Sometimes people lump them all together.

I’m always the one who reaches out. I’m always the one who reaches out. Well. Hold on. Does your friend reach back pretty quickly?

Suggest a different date. I really argue that those are equal, and that is a fresh way of looking at things. Not everybody wants to see it that way. They want to say nope. Everyone has to do friendship exactly the way I do it.

We are all different people, including how we communicate with friends.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 13:11

I know without a doubt. Yes, I think that’s that’s spot on. So I guess one other question I’m curious about. And then we’ll kind of dive into some of the kind of friendship skills that we can hopefully model for our kids. But one question I’m curious about is if you hear from a lot of your readers or listeners about a conflict when the parents are friends, truly friends with their kids, friends, parents, and kind of like if you’ve had any advice for those for those people who, you know, inevitably will have something come up, right.

That’s uncomfortable.

Nina Badzin: 13:48

Oh my goodness, this is a major topic. Our combined or it’s not the right word I’m looking for. But you and I share our admiration for Doctor Lisa. One thing she says often, and it’s not something that I’ve really completely been able to follow, bless her that she’s been able to. She really said that she made an effort to not be friends with the parents of her kids friends, and I can understand not going out of your way to do it.

Sometimes it just happens that sometimes the kids become friends because you were friends. Like it’s a chicken and egg situation.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 14:20

It could be both ways, right?

Nina Badzin: 14:21

Right. So I understand though, where she’s coming from. I understand why she says that. It’s for this reason because it can get really tricky. And I do hear from people in this camp, a lot of this is how their kids made friends when the kids were little.

Maybe you chose where your kid went to preschool based on where you live and you know some of your neighbors. Or you chose it because your friends are there already. Maybe you have a kid a year behind or something, so you chose it for that reason. Your kids are growing up together. They enjoy each other’s company until they don’t.

And inevitably, this is so tricky. I’m dealing with this right now on a in a newsletter, and I’m so curious about your opinion on it. I’m going to tell you in a minute what the question was. What do you do when your kid has gotten to an age where they want to express some agency in who they are friends with, and then we have the other parents labeling your kid the ringleader, the mean girl, the bully. And when you’ve been in that position, I’ve been in both positions just as a parent.

Now, I’m not even talking from the friendship writer perspective. I have four kids and I don’t know if we. Yeah, we did say that in the bio, but.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:36

It’s worth mentioning I had to. Yes.

Nina Badzin: 15:38

And I have two girls and two boys. I’ve seen a lot of things and I do want to mention that their ages, just because I think it’s interesting to know I, I’ve spanned a lot of years and technology has changed in those years. So I have a 21 year old, I have an 18 year old, a 16 year old and a 13 year old. In the time that I’ve had kids, the 21 year old and the 13 year old, they’re only seven years apart. But think about those seven years social media exploded.

Even I now like the way my 13 year old will have to manage and deal with. That is so different from my older one. I bring up the kids because I’ve had kids who have been on the side of not wanting to be friends with people anymore, and I’ve had kids who’ve been on the receiving end of that, and sometimes it is when we’re friends as parents, and I certainly hear from a lot of people who they feel that you asked me earlier a common theme. This is a common theme, A friend of theirs has a kid who is in some way leaving their kid out. They may use expressions like my friend’s kid is being cruel to my kid.

It could be really extreme like that. Of course, I don’t get to ask follow up questions. What is being cruel is being cruel. They’re not included in the homecoming group for high school. Or is being cruel like genuinely being picked on?

Those are two different things, right? Oh, it’s so hardly. And one of the biggest pieces of advice I give that I had to learn through my own errors is adults should not be asking other adults to do a favor for the kid. That is my opinion and I’ve seen it time and time again. It blows up.

So what I mean is friend A calls friend B and says, you know, my kid has nothing to do for Halloween. And now I’m thinking middle school. You know, Halloween’s a big deal. It really is. And oh my goodness.

It’s one of the first things we think of in the school year is it’s such a comfort when you know your kid has something to do for Halloween. It’s like you just feel like everything’s okay in the world. And then when they don’t, it sort of feels like a symbol of. Or you put homecoming in there or anything, but I’m thinking a little younger. Halloween, something about Halloween.

I remember it even as a kid.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:47

Yes.

Nina Badzin: 17:48

If you had Halloween plans, it’s like, okay, you. That means you have friends. That means your whole school year is going to be okay.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:53

There’s a security of knowing what you’re doing, what your costume is. If you’re in a group and you’re belonging, it’s symbolic of so much more.

Nina Badzin: 18:00

So many things. Oh, the costume, everything about it. It’s very tempting if your kid has nothing to do to call the other mom. I’m thinking fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade. A certain age would be appropriate.

And you, as the professional here, might know what that age is, and I’m not sure what that is. I can tell you that around about junior high. Certainly high school. If you are still calling your friend, your mom friend and saying, you know, my kid has nothing to do, can you get him them included, or can we maybe get them in a group chat? Okay, sure.

Maybe you got your kid invited for Halloween, and now you’ve put a band aid on a situation where that band aid is going to come off because your kid was included as a favor, and that favor runs out. And it’s the I really believe it’s the kid who was included as a favor for Halloween in seventh grade, who all of a sudden finds himself in 10th grade without a homecoming group because really, those friendships were not deep and real. It’s all coming from a good place, so I don’t mean to be negative. Maybe the kids said yes. Okay, fine, we’ll include so-and-so because they actually don’t want to be bullies.

They don’t want to be mean. They do want to be inclusive, but the chemistry is actually not there. And now we’ve pushed forward. We’ve kicked the can down the road, a situation that probably should have been dealt with in junior high, which is let’s teach kids what it feels like to be in a friendship that is healthy. I don’t want to say equal in the way we were talking about before, but equal as in you are wanted there and you want to be there, right?

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 19:28

No, I think I think you’re spot on. That when the kids are really little, especially when you are friends with the kids. The kids? Friends, moms, right? Or parents?

It is. It is a whole different beast, right? That you’re, like, helping coach these little kids as they’re on their first playdates and they’re. You know, like, that wasn’t nice. You took his toy like.

Yes, that’s where it’s very appropriate. You know, or the other moms see something or you’re like, you know, just so you know, this happened. And it’s appropriate. And at some point, and I absolutely think middle school, we’ve hit that point. It really becomes usually counterproductive.

And and yet for the parent I do think it’s so hard. And I’m sure you get letters about this. It’s so hard because you feel like your friend should be intervening. And you’re a friend. Yes.

And so it’s really dicey. And I hear you what, Lisa, it sounds like, was saying in her. You know, in her episode with you was just like, if you can avoid it, it’s great. I also believe what you’re saying is that, you know, oftentimes we make friends naturally in this way. And so I don’t know that that’s always realistic, but it sounds like it’s also healthy to have your own friends and your own identity as adults separate.

Right. So that kind of stuff comes up that isn’t like your entire friendship circle.

Nina Badzin: 20:45

But let’s in reality, because the parents often are friends, what happens to happen next is the adults have to have a very difficult conversation, but you might only need to have it once. And that is especially if you are the parent of the kid who’s not being left out. You’re you’re the parent of the kid that has the Halloween plan and isn’t the kid with nothing to do. It may be necessary to have a frank conversation with your friend that says, I know that this is so hard. I wish that I can make things different.

Like I think we’re acknowledging it. Is it? Yeah, it really is, I think adults avoid those conversations because it’s like, oh, let’s just pretend this isn’t happening, but it is happening and it’s going to fester in the adult friendship if somebody doesn’t have a frank conversation. Even if you’re the parent in pain, you’re the one who’s in pain. Because when our kids are in pain, we’re in pain.

We cannot deny that.

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