#165 - The Child-Free Friend: Honest Talk About Friendship and Different Life Paths (with Dani Alpert)

Different choices, same friendships—if you’re willing to speak up.

This week on Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, I talk with bestselling author Dani Alpert, who has always known she didn’t want children. While her five best friends all married and had kids, Dani carved out a different life. The result? Decades of navigating friendships where communication was extra necessary to keep resentment and misunderstanding at bay. Dani says it took a lot work, but she did not want to lose these important relationships and every hard discussion with close friends was worth the effort.

Dani has advice for listeners that goes beyond whether you have kids or not. Many areas of life and the decisions we make can set us apart from the path our friends chose. No matter the "topic," communication and honesty is key. There's no other way to hold onto the friendships that matter to you. Whatever the difference is between you and your friends, Dani’s wisdom applies: speak up, be honest, and trust that the right friends will stick.

Listen to my conversation with Dani for a funny, candid, and deeply relatable episode about friendship across different life paths.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• The resentment that can build when your life path looks different from your friends’ choices
• Why it’s so important to actually say the uncomfortable things out loud to friends
• How true friends will hear you, even if your words come out messy
• The loneliness that can creep in when “everybody” seems to be living a life you didn’t choose. For Dani the example is being child-free by choice, but this can apply to so many paths.
• Why naming your needs sooner (but also knowing it’s never too late) can save a friendship
• We also squeezed in a quick few minutes and doing art (writing, etc.) because you're passionate about it, not because you're expecting a certain outcome in sales or attention.

MEET DANI ALPERT:

Dani Alpert is the best-selling author of Hello? Who Is This? Margaret?—a new collection of humorous essays—and the memoir, The Girlfriend Mom, winner of the 2020 Story Circle Network Gilda Award for comedy, honoring Gilda Radner. Her work appears in numerous outlets. Dani spent decades working in theater, television, and film, performing, writing, and directing. She’s a Pilates instructress and advocate for the Down syndrome community. Dani’s first headshot was her mugshot taken after being arrested for tagging when she was a juvenile. She’s been trying to reclaim those glory days ever since.

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Special thank you, as always, to my assistant producer, Rebekah Jacobs!