011 Leslie Liao wants your friendships to be less crusty

You’re Doing Adult Friendships Wrong (and It’s Hurting Your Mental Health)

How to keep your friendships alive because your mental health depends on it. Quality time with friends works like Prozac, but your friendships might have gone crusty.

In this episode of xanyland, I, Alicia Racine Fink, sit down with comedian Leslie Liao, whose hypnotic voice lulls you in—until her wit snaps you out of it. She gets honest about being crusty, as we all are sometimes, and we talk about what makes adult friendships quietly dry up and what it actually takes to bring them back to life.

We talk about why she hates the “catch-up,” how voice memos feel so much more real than texts, and why I’m seriously tempted to get a rotary phone just to bring back the mystery and surprise of picking up a call you actually want to take.

I get to play her therapist for a bit as we talk about keeping friendships young and holding onto the same play and depth they had when we were kids. We normalize boring hangs, couch days, and parallel play. We talk about why you need different friends for different parts of yourself, and how diversifying your intimacy can even protect your romantic relationships.

We even referenced some of the best books on friendship as we went through real strategies to make your friendships feel as good as Prozac… and summertime.

Summertime Prozac.

Mmmm.

Keywords:

adult friendships, friendship advice, mental health, Leslie Lau comedian, Alicia Racine Fink, Xanyland podcast, parallel play, friendship strategies, diversifying intimacy, voice memos, rotary phone, nostalgia, summertime, Prozac