389: Frenemies

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life distributed by Public Radio International.

Ira Glass

It took a while to figure that out, though. And in the meantime, this guy had the sheer nerve to introduce the two women to each other, Erin and Julie. And they became friends. And things kind of exploded with the guy and they stayed friends, at first with him, and then after that, with each other, in this emotional purgatory that I think most of us would never put up with after our 20s, which is exactly how old they were.

Ira Glass

That was Erin. Here's Julie.

Ira Glass

And they continued this way, as frenemies, having fun together now and then, but also getting into these huge, horrible fights all the time for four years. Long after they both stopped talking to the guy. And the real question is, when you're in this kind of situation-- and who among us has not been in this situation where you have some friend, where the thought of hanging out with his friend totally stresses you out. And you think, are we really friends then? The question is, why don't you cut it off?

And it turns out this is a question that science has actually looked into. Science done by a psychologist named Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues.

Ira Glass

Julianne Holt-Lunstad has done a number of studies on ambivalent and frustrating friendships. In one of them, she had people rate their friends and their family members. How supportive they are, how much stress they cause, on and on. And she found that half, half of our relationships, on average, are with people that we care a lot about, we feel positive towards, and we also have real conflicts and negative feelings about as well.

Ira Glass

When Hold-Lunstad and a colleague began their examination of why we don't just break up with these friends, they had a hypothesis. They thought, there must be external factors that made ditching these friends really, really hard. Like they're friends with all your other friends, or your kids are close, or you're part of the same church.

Ira Glass

But to their surprise, they found this is not why people stay in these troubling friendships. People stay, they found, for reasons that they impose on themselves. Either they tell themselves things like, I'm not the kind of person who just gives up on somebody. I stay friends. Or they tell themselves that the good times outweigh the bad. Like with these two women, Erin and Julie.

They stayed frenemies for years because they got something from it. They got caught up in this competitive thing where Julie would give Erin advice, and Erin would like the advice, or not like the advice. And somehow neither of them could let that go.

Ira Glass

In another study, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues wired people up to take their blood pressure every time they interacted with another person for three full days and found that friends that we feel ambivalently about raise our blood pressure more, cause more anxiety and stress than people that we actively dislike. In other words, frenemies are bad for our health. And they're all around us, 50% of our relationships. And today on our radio show, we examine them in all of their nefarious forms. The ones that we can only blame ourselves for having, the ones who simply cause agita without meaning any harm against us, and of course, the very few who actively scheme against us like characters on a TV soap opera. Smiling to our faces and then quietly going off and doing things that we do not like from friends or anybody else.

We hear all these types today, our show in four acts. Act one, Chasing Amy. What do you do when you're not sure but you think maybe your sister is starting to act like your frenemy? Act two, I am Here to Make Frenemies. In which we head into what we believe might be the world capital of frenemy behavior. Act three, Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace. David Rakoff in that act, and an impossible wedding toast, in rhyme. Act four, The Case of the Long Lost Frenemy, in which a childhood friend mysteriously shows up after years for reasons that are revealed over time. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

"Act one, Chasing Amy."

Family members can so easily be frenemies because you're stuck with them and you love them, and they sometimes do things that make you feel very weird. Jeanne Darst tells this story about herself and her sister.

Jeanne Darst

Amy's estrangement went undiagnosed for some time. Because in our family, someone retreating in anger is hardly a bacon cooler. People are always suddenly putting on their coats and requesting a ride to the Metro North Station, and my therapist said no contact for six months, and you can't come if you're drinking, and I won't come if he's there. And I'll come, but don't sit me next to her.

I always picture a sweaty John Madden frantically scribbling our Thanksgiving plays on a blackboard. So it took some time to notice, but maybe estrangement is by definition a matter of time. This is how it went.

Our white Volvo sulks through the traffic up the West Side Highway. My brother-in-law, Henry, is driving and I'm in the back seat behind him. His wife, my sister Liz, is in the passenger seat, and behind her is her four-year-old, Luisa, in her car seat.

We're like two car fractions. Henry and Liz being the numerators, Luisa and I, the denominators. We're on our way to Jersey City to meet our sister, Amy's, new husband, a Muslim from Tunis she met in an Arab chat room, moved in with, and married at the City Hall in Philadelphia in just under six weeks, [? Waleed. ?] My mother called me as soon as she got the news.

Apparently they met in a chat room, she tells me, whatever the hell that means. And he cooked her a lot of Tunisian dishes, and then he whisked her off and married her.

Wow. I wouldn't mind seeing what he's putting in those dishes, I say.

Oh, I think a lot of coriander. Probably cumin, garlic. That would be my guess. Now let me ask you something, Jeanne. Don't you think it's just a little peculiar getting married so fast? We haven't even met this [? Waleed ?] character.

Well, this is the same woman who went on a second date to Chile I point out.

That's right. What was she thinking? She could have been murdered.

The guy went to Dalton, Mom.

That doesn't mean anything, what about the preppy murderer?

Robert Chambers didn't go to Dalton.

Oh, for God's sakes, Jeanne. Be serious. Now, did you ever see the movie Green Card with Andie MacDowell? All right, well she plays an American woman who meets a Frenchman.

Mom, I know what a green card situation is.

Well, all right, [? dolly. ?] I didn't think you knew what these people do. I'm highly upset over here.

My mother has a few stock phrases. Highly upset is a big one. I don't know that she's ever been regular upset. She prefers to head straight to highly. I'm not so much supportive of Amy's hasty act as I am invigorated. Just the idea of having dinner with that kind of recklessness has perked my spirits up.

What is with this traffic, Henry says. Liz has thrown my big, black scarf over Luisa's head to block the sunlight so she can nap. We giggle when we see the effect the scarf creates, which is that of a burqa. Cover her ankles, Liz jokes.

This day doesn't feel unfamiliar. Beginning with Amy's first boyfriend, my parents were "highly upset." J.J. was a mechanic from Tuckahoe, the next town over from ours. He listened to Van Halen, didn't plan on going to college, and reeked of Polo cologne.

I'd be smoking, drinking some stolen warm beers up in my room, chatting on the phone, when a waft of that signature Ralph Lauren scent would hit me. Soon enough, our older sister, Liz, would fly in and shut my door.

Sheesh, the front hall smells like the ground floor of Bloomingdale's. God.

My parents had strategy sessions about J.J., held late at night in their bedroom after they'd both had quite a bit of red wine with dinner and a couple scotches. I'd be coming up from the kitchen and they'd trap me for a night cap interrogation.

Oh, Jeanne, Doris would yell from her bed throne. Come here for a minute my mother would say, casually, as if she were not asking you to make a quick betrayal of your sister before hitting the sack.

We want to talk to you about this J.J. character, Jeanne [? Jo. ?] Even by his fourth child, my dad was still tinkering with his father persona. I sat on the gold satin divan, shut my eyes, and stretched my legs, as if I were merely there to maintain my base tan.

Dammit, Jeanne [? Jo ?], your mother's talking to you.

Is he a thug, my mother repeated.

Well, what's the strict definition of a--

Someone who's having sex with Amy, my mother blurted.

All right, let's all settle down my father said. We're way off track here. Now how well do you know J.J.?

I don't.

He seems a bit wayward. Is that your impression?

I think Amy's smoking pot, my mother added. You can smell it a mile away.

My father paused for a moment. Maybe that's why he wears so much cologne.

Steve, please, my mother yelled, putting out one of the two lit cigarettes she had going in the ashtray.

Can I go to bed? I asked.

Yes, yes. We're not going to solve anything tonight, my dad said.

You just couldn't outlast these two, long distance meddlers. They could go on forever.

Amy and I were the close ones when we were younger. As little kids, when we had no money to go to the movies, we'd get a basket and go up to fancy houses on Egypt Lane, cutting people's flowers out front, putting them in the basket, and then ringing their doorbell and selling them their own flowers. Those people thought we were frigging adorable, and we made some decent money.

We drank, we smoked around the house, we snickered at curfews and poo-pooed the law. Amy took my road test for me when I was 16. But at some point, after college I guess, Amy started to seem less rebellious and fun, and more bitter and suspicious.

I remember more than once being on the subway with her, and her glaring at me to keep it down when I'd been talking about, say, whether we should get pizza or burritos for dinner.

Jesus, Jeanne, keep it down, she'd whisper.

She never cleaned. When I'd visit her place and see the dishes piled up, her sheets sort of half on, half off, I was often tempted to ask, what band is living here with you? When the shower broke in her apartment, instead of having it fixed she told me, I just shower at the gym now. Which was confusing because she didn't work out.

She seemed to still see the world from a teenager's perspective. If you commented on her Don King hair she might snap, everyone in this family is so totally judgmental and superficial. And she was probably right, but by 30 it was a slightly stale pose to strike.

Her relationships, romantic or otherwise, tended to end badly, and it was invariably the other person's fault. One day when I asked how Mark, her filmmaker boyfriend at NYU, was, she said matter-of-factly-- past tense-- he claims I tried to strangle him at the Lion's Head last weekend and now he won't return my calls. Total psycho.

She disliked everyone more and more. And at some point, that included me. One night I was drunk and flirting with the man who was about to take her to Chile for their second date. And I said to him, you should take me to Chile, I'm a lot more fun. Truly jerky thing to say, and I apologized more than once, but apologies have never impressed Amy. I was banished to some otherness, a place where suburban a-holes and parents who didn't approve of blue collar boyfriends went. And there seemed to be no getting back in.

As we drive around looking for Amy's new house, I realize I do know something about [? Waleed. ?] Amy called me a couple weeks after they met and said she was seeing this new guy and that he had a really big-- you know. But when the phone call came on Easter Sunday that Amy had run off and married some Muslim from Tunis no one had met, I didn't think, everybody stay calm, I talked to Amy about this guy two weeks ago, he's got a big penis, would quiet my parents' concerns.

After she first got married, I called Amy and asked how things were going. Fantastic. Marriage is great. I highly recommend it, Jeanne.

Amy, the happily married woman. I like it. It seems like magic.

What time is it, Amy asks.

3 o'clock.

You've got to be kidding me. 3 o'clock, she yells, I'm at the farmer's market waiting for [? Waleed. ?] We're supposed to be buying vegetables for a special Tunisian curry, and I've been here for an hour. An hour. Do you believe this guy? I swear to God, some people have no regard for other people. You ever notice that, she explodes.

A stretch of silence on the line.

Also, he's obsessed with cleanliness. He said my apartment on Sackett Street wasn't clean.

Longer pause.

OK, scratch everything I just said. Things are fantastic. I love being married. [? Waleed ?] and I just have some, you know, cultural differences. He's very, umm, driven. He's always following up with things. Like if I say I'm going to go get my driver's license renewed, he'll ask me later how the DMV was. You know, he assumes if you say you're going to do something, you're actually going to do it. He can be very funny, Jeanne.

That's funny, I say.

How can I stop my sister from blowing this, I think, without actually saying the words, don't blow this Amy? And she doesn't. Instead we've been invited to their new home for dinner. We find her building and ring the buzzer. Amy comes down to the door in a floral apron. They have curtains. Her new apartment is smoke free. Lots of sunlight, and clean bedding on the bed, which boasts a headboard and pillows of all different sizes. Her hair is combed. Apparently, they don't drink. Her bathroom seems to say, hello, I'm here for you. Look, my toilet flushes, and there's plenty of toilet paper. Should your scarf accidentally fall on the floor, there's no need to throw it away when you get home. Simply pick it up and put it back around your neck.

Back in the living room, you're greeted by smells of-- is that salmon in the oven? Excuse me? Oh, Tunisian salmon, with roasted vegetables, fresh tuna croquettes, chopped Tunisian salad. You're then greeted by the chef, your new brother-in-law. He's slightly petite, very handsome with black hair and olive skin, and a smile that makes you hungry. He's [? Waleed. ?] And you, like everyone else, instantly like him.

Our oldest sister, Caroline, who drove in from Connecticut with her husband, Jim, and their two boys, talks of her son's summer plans. He's taking a course at the local nature preserve called CSI: New Canaan. Isn't that cute? They investigate crimes in nature.

Ira Glass

Jeanne Darst. She's just finishing up her first book, Fiction Ruined My Family. It has no publisher yet.

[MUSIC- "MY SISTER" BY JULIANNA HATFIELD]

Ira Glass

"Act two, I Am Here to Make Frenemies."

And now we head into the natural habitat of frenemies. The ecosystem where they are perfectly adapted, where they thrive, and are rewarded as in no other place. I'm referring to the world of television. Especially those shows where frenemies are just built into the basic DNA of the drama that unfolds.

And let's get past the whole Gossip Girl, The Hills, soap opera type program and go straight to reality television.

Rich Juzwiak is a full-time blogger for VH1. And in his spare time, if that weren't enough, he has his own personal pop culture blog, which means that his days and nights are filled with watching, dissecting, and interviewing the people on reality TV. So he has given it a lot of thought. And last year he noticed something about the frenemy friendships that happen on reality TV.

Ira Glass

Rich Juzwiak. His blog, where you can watch both of his, "I'm not here to make friends" videos is fourfourtypepad.com. That's four four, write out the word each time. F-O-U-R. fourfour.typepad.com.

Coming up, David Rakoff and how to make a wedding toast for people that you have never wanted to see married. And what are you doing at their wedding anyway? That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show we chose a theme and bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Frenemies.

And if the word frenemy just seemed to show up in your life, arrive in your life a couple years ago unannounced, I think that is how pretty much everybody feels. Though, its first appearance in the world that anybody can find is all the way back in 1953. Gossip columnist, Walter Winchell, says in one of his column's, "Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies?" Didn't catch on.

Lexicographer, Erin McKean agreed to research this a little for us. She used to edit The New Oxford American Dictionary and now runs the online dictionary, Wordnik. She says the next citation of frenemy seems to be 24 years after Winchell, 1977 by the writer, Jessica Mitford.

Ira Glass

Mitford said that she and her sisters used the words as kids and they thought they made it up. It still doesn't catch on. The next citation is 15 years after that, 1992, in a book of word games. And that author also thinks that she is inventing the word. It's not until the late 1990s that it shows up and the people using the word seem to believe that any other people have ever used it before them. It's in a hit song by the New Radicals, "You Get What You Give" in 1998.

Ira Glass

After that, she says, it starts showing up all over the place. You get the executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, declaring that Google is one of those companies The New York Times quote, "refers to as a frenemy," end quote.

In 2008, it's put into the online Oxford English Dictionary.

In 2009-- just two months ago-- it enters Merriam-Webster's dictionary. But Erin McKean found it in one place much, much more than any other: young adult novels, targeted at teen girls, starting at around 2006.

Ira Glass

It's worth noting that while Erin found tons of citations referring to girl frenemies, she only found a couple in which men were each other's frenemies. NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt, is described in a book as being frenemies with Michael Waltrip on his team.

And the most random citation? It linked to the word with Hindu scripture from two millennia ago.

Ira Glass

Self is your frenemy. That sentence just proves that while we have all come to learn the word frenemy sometime during the last decade, any sentence with the word frenemy is probably not a sentence you want to try to get profound with. Frenemy's here. It's on the scene. It's here to stay as a word. But it is still not ready for the heavy lifting.

Ira Glass

"Act three, Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace."

Being not friend friends can get you into some very confusing situations. Take this example from David Rakoff.

David Rakoff

Nathan at one of the outlying tables, his feet tangled up in the disc jockey's cables, surveyed the room as unseen as a ghost, while he mulled over what he might say for his toast. That the couple had asked him for this benediction seemed at odds with them parking him here by the kitchen. That he'd shown up at all was still a surprise. And not just to him, it was there in the eyes of the guests who had seen a mirage and drew near, and then covered their shock with a, "Nathan, you're here." And then, silence. They had nothing to say beyond that. A few of the braver souls lingered to chat. They all knew it was neither a secret nor a mystery that he and the couple had quite an odd history.

Their bonds were a tangle of friendship and sex. Josh, his best pal once, and Patty, his ex.

For a while he could barely go out in the city without being a punchline or object of pity. Poor Nathan had virtually become his new name, and so he showed up just to show he was game. Though his invite was late, a forgotten addendum. For Nate there could be no more clear referendum that he need but endure through this evening. And then, he would likely not see Josh and Patty again.

Josh's sister was speaking, a princess in peach. Nathan dug in his pocket to study his speech. He had poured over Bartlett's for couplets to filch. He'd stayed up until 3:00, still came up with zilch.

Except for instructions he'd underscored twice. Just two words in length, and those words were, be nice. Too often he thought our emotions betray us and reason departs once were up on the dais. He'd witnessed uncomfortable moments where others had lost their way quickly, where sisters and brothers had gotten too prickly, and peppered their babbling with stories of benders or lesbian dabbling, or spot on impressions of mothers-in-law Which true, Nathan thought, always garnered guffaws. But the price seemed too high, with the laugh seldom cloaking. Hostility masquerading as joking.

No, he'd swallow his rage and he'd bank all his fire. He knew that in his case the bar was set higher. Folks were just waiting for him to erupt. They'd be hungry for blood even though they had supped. They'd want tears, or some other unsightly reaction, and Nathan would not give them that satisfaction. Though Patty a harlot and Josh was a lout, at least Nathan knew what he'd not talk about.

I won't wish them divorce, that they wither and sicken, or tonight that they choke on their salmon or chicken. I won't mention that time when the cottage lost power in that storm on the Cape and they left for an hour. And they thought it was just the cleverest ruse to pretend it took that long to switch out the fuse. Or that time Josh advised me with so much insistence that I should grant Patty a little more distance. That the worst I could do was to hamper and crowd her. That if Patty felt stifled she'd just take a powder. That a plant needs its space just as much as its water.

And I shouldn't give Patty that ring that I'd bought her. Which in retrospect, only elicits a, gosh, I hardly deserved a friend like you, Josh.

No, I won't spill those beans, or make myself foolish, to satisfy appetites venal and ghoulish. I will not be the blot on this hellish affair. And with that, Nathan pushed out and rose from his chair. And just by the tapping of knife against crystal, all eyes turned his way, like he'd fired off a pistol.

Joshua, Patricia, dear family and friends, a few words, if you will, before everything ends.

You've promised to honor, to love and obey. We've quaffed our champagne and been cleansed by sorbet, all in endorsement of your hers-and-his-dom. So now let me add my two cents' worth of wisdom.

I was racking my brain sitting here at this table until I remembered this suitable fable that gets at a truth, though it may well distort us. So here with the tale of the scorpion and tortoise.

The scorpion was hamstrung, his tail all aquiver, just how would he manage to get cross the river? The water's so deep, he observed with a sigh, which pricked at the ears of the tortoise nearby.

Well, why don't you swim, asked the slow-moving fellow. Unless you're afraid, I mean, what are you, yellow?

It isn't a matter of fear or of whim, said the scorpion, but that I don't know how to swim.

Ah, forgive me, I didn't mean to be glib when I said that. I figured you were an amphibian.

No offense taken, the scorpion replied. But how bout you help me to reach the far side? You swim like a dream and you have what I lack. Let's say you take me across on your back.

I'm really not sure that's the best thing to do, said the tortoise, now that I see that it's you. You've a less than ideal reputation preceding. There's talk of your victims all poisoned and bleeding. You're the scorpion, and how can I say this, but well, I just don't feel safe with you riding my shell.

The scorpion replied, what would killing you prove? We'd both drown. So tell me, how would that behoove me to basically die at my very own hand, when all I desire is to be on dry land?

The tortoise considered the scorpion's defense. When he gave it some thought, it made perfect sense. The niggling voice in his mind he ignored, and he swam to the bank and called out, climb aboard.

But just a few moments from when they set sail, the scorpion lashed out with his venomous tail. The tortoise, too late, understood that he'd blundered when he felt his flesh stabbed and his carapace sundered. As he fought for his life he said, tell me why you have done this for now we will surely both die?

I don't know, cried the scorpion. You never should trust a creature like me because poison I must. I'd claim some remorse or at least some compunction, but I just can't help it, my form is my function. You thought I'd behave like my cousin the crab, but unlike him it is but my nature to stab.

The tortoise expired with one final quiver, and then both of them sank, swallowed up by the river.

The tortoise was wrong to ignore all his doubts, because in the end, friends, our natures will out.

Nathan paused, cleared his throat, took a sip of his drink. He needed these extra few seconds to think. The room had gone frosty, the tension was growing. Folks wondered precisely where Nathan was going. The prospects of skirting fiasco seemed dim, but what he said next surprised even him.

So what can we learn from their watery ends? Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living, a life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact. Regardless of whether we kiss or we wound, still we must come together.

Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more, since it beats staying dry, but so lonely on shore. So we make ourselves open, while knowing full well it's essentially saying, please, come pierce my shell.

Silence doesn't paint the depth of quiet in that room. There was no clinking stemware toasting to the bride or groom. You could have heard a petal as it landed on the floor. And in that stillness Nathan turned and walked right out the door.

Ira Glass

David Rakoff is the author of several books, most recently, Don't Get Too Comfortable.

Ira Glass

"Act four, The Case of the Long Lost Frenemy."

Did you ever get into one of those situations with somebody where you can't really tell, you actually can't tell, wait, are we friends, are we not friends? What do you want from me exactly?

Elle Smith found herself in that situation with a woman that here on the radio we're calling Jennifer, who Elle Smith knew in high school. And who got in touch with Elle Smith out of the blue by email. And then they slowly began an email correspondence.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Jane Feltes and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Sean Cole, Sarah Koenig, Lisa Pollak, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from Aaron Scott. Seth Lind is our production manager. Emily Condon is our office manager. Our music consultant is Jessica Hopper.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who says that he doesn't care what we say about it him here at the end of the program every week for one important reason--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.