Anna Goldfarb: Wholehearted Friendship

Friendships aren’t always easy and fun. Like all meaningful relationships, they require work. They require nurturing and a willingness to grow. And in today’s world, explains author and journalist Anna Goldfarb, many friendships are being pushed to the brink and painfully ending. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Anna about her new book, Modern Friendship, an empowering guide to creating what she calls “wholehearted friendships.”

Enjoy this conversation that’s filled with insights and strategies you’ll find especially helpful in our isolated, hyper-fluid society. Tami and Anna discuss: the increasing ambiguity of 21st-century friendships; the false promise of social media; the core elements of a successful friendship strategy; memorial friendships vs. active friendships; Jacuzzi friends, bathtub friends, and pool friends; three main causes of friendship breakups; the three requirements—consistency, positivity, and vulnerability; choosing people with whom you can share meaning; the characteristics of wholehearted friendship; and more.

Anna Goldfarb: Wholehearted Friendship

Emily Nagoski, PhD: Pleasure Is the Measure: How to Ha...

Emily Nagoski — October 8, 2024

Why is it so hard to talk about sex? How can we be a better friend and lover for our partner? What’s the secret to maintaining “the magic” that first brought us together? Acclaimed sex educator and New York Times bestselling author Emily Nagoski views these questions through a unique lens that centers pleasure—not desire—in her counseling work with struggling couples.

In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Emily about the empowering insights in her newest book, Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. Listen now to their conversation on: breaking free from the desire imperative; the groundbreaking work of Helen Singer Kaplan; the dual control model of sexual response and the analogy of brakes and accelerators; “turning on the ons and turning off the offs”; reducing your stressors as a key aspect of centering pleasure in your life; friendship and admiration: two essentials for long-term relationships; trust, vulnerability, and emotional accessibility; creativity, play, and freedom; following your own rules; talking about sex; the fear of rejection; how “good communication gets you good sex; great communication gets you great sex”; incompatibility; the interplay of attraction and self-worth; body acceptance; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Elizabeth Earnshaw: ‘Til Stress Do Us Part

What if the problem in your relationship isn’t you or your partner but the mountain of stress you’re both dealing with? It’s a no-brainer to say that too much stress kills intimacy, but what do we really mean when we say “stress”? And what can we actually do about it? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with couples therapist and author Elizabeth Earnshaw about her new book, ’Til Stress Do Us Part: How to Heal the #1 Issue in Our Relationships.

Give a listen for a wealth of actionable insights and wise approaches to navigate and manage the stressors in your relationship, including how to comfort a partner under stress; the art of nervous system co-regulation; awareness: the prerequisite for change; learning the signs of dysregulation and how to self-soothe; Gottman’s “Four Horsemen”: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt; stress as a physiological cycle; step one: identify your own stressors; the narrative of a gap between who you are and who you want to be; intentional sacrifice; making structural changes that make life less stressful; discernment around what we can and cannot control; and more.

Dené Logan: Sovereign Love: The Evolution of Intimate...

Dené Logan — September 10, 2024

Sharing your life with another person is often as challenging as it is rewarding. And while many therapists say they’d choose any specialty over working with couples, Dené Logan says, “I’ll take them all!” In her private practice, Dené supports clients in rebalancing the feminine and masculine energetics of intimacy as the key to a thriving partnership.

Here, she speaks with Tami Simon about her new book with Sounds True, Sovereign Love, and the evolution of a new paradigm for relationship success, discussing: how intimate relationships can support us in the process of individuation; the impacts of centuries of patriarchy; reintegrating feminine wisdom; the “ownership template” and the sense of entitlement inherent in patriarchal relationship structures; the erroneous belief that we need someone outside of ourselves to be whole; eros and the restoration of vitality; why monogamy and the traditional nuclear family do not work for everyone; the wounded masculine paradigm; shifting energy dynamics with the “diagonal move”; relationships as divine assignments; re-parenting ourselves (not our partners); bringing “I’ve got you” energy into your partnership; the hunger to explore the “soul space”; Dené’s definition of sovereign love; and more.