A woman’s guide to upgrading “clickable connections,” finding face-to-face friendships, and building a mutual support system in her community.
The Friendship Upgrade
We’ve grown disconnected. Many of us live amidst strangers as we tally up Facebook friends— the new collectible you don’t have to dust—and settle for “Soon!” It’s often easier for an adult woman to find an online date than a real-life friend in her own neighborhood. The Friendship Upgrade illuminates the growing issue of personal isolation and equips women to exchange clickable connection for real time, face-to-face friendships. Through the deeply personal stories of real women, it examines our varied routes to isolation—divorce, an emptied nest, increased mobility—as well as the impact of technology, over-efficient living, and the patterned choices that can root us in chronic loneliness. More importantly, this book provides both a roadmap to creating anchoring connections and a model for building community with the disconnected “you go first” women around us who are silently hoping for the same outstretched hand. Women need friendship. Not in an unhealthy, life preserver sort of way—but in the organically good capacity of illuminating grow lights. In the right light, solid female friendships counter-balance the uneven weight of major life transitions and help us to be our best selves—often, better people than we dreamed we might be. “Heather Dugan’s book, The Friendship Upgrade is refreshingly real and witty. Dugan shares savvy wisdom and insight about how to build communities one relationship at a time and craft a life with meaning and purpose. I’m gifting it widely as a must-read for my friends and colleagues...” —Caroline Dowd-Higgins, Executive Director of Career and Professional Development, Indiana University Alumni Association
Heather Dugan
Award winning author, Heather Dugan, is the founder of Cabernet Coaches®, an “all ages, all stages” group for women that fosters self-betterment through face-to-face friendships and social connection. Her 2015 book Date Like a Grownup: Anecdotes, Admissions of Guilt & Advice Between Friends was a finalist (self-help/relationships) in the USA Book Awards and the Indie Next Generation Book Awards, and she speaks on topics pertaining to dating, relationships, social connection, and effective interpersonal communication. She has also worked as a professional voiceover talent for more than twenty-five years. An Indiana University alumna, Heather resides in Columbus, Ohio, but is an avid traveler and outdoor enthusiast who keeps hiking poles and her passport within easy reach. The proud mom of three adult children, she blogs about relationships, transitions, and better living at Tips from the Tightrope on her author website. Find her on Facebook, Instagram, at Cabernet Coaches, or at www.heatherdugan.com.
Trade Clickable Connections for Friendships that Matter
Heather Dugan
“Heather Dugan’s book, The Friendship Upgrade is refreshingly real and witty. Dugan shares savvy wisdom and insight about how to build communities one relationship at a time and craft a life with meaning and purpose. I’m gifting it widely as a must-read for my friends and colleagues…” —Caroline Dowd-Higgins Executive Director of Career and Professional Development, Indiana University Alumni Association “Heather Dugan brings a rare combination of insight, passion, life experiences and exceptional communication skills to The Friendship Upgrade. This book will prove to be an excellent resource, not only for individuals hungry for meaningful connections but also for any organization that claims to care about people and the health and productivity of its work force.” —Dennis Hetzel, Executive Director, Ohio Newspaper Association, Columbus Ohio; President, Ohio Coalition for Open Government; award-winning author of Killing the Curse and Season of Lies. “Divorce, an empty nest, a disconnected personal life; in The Friendship Upgrade, Heather Dugan nails the little secret that boomers never talk about… loneliness. Then she provides an action plan for creating a personal community to provide the connection and fulfillment that we all so desperately need.” —Donna Hull, Owner of My Itchy Travel Feet, The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Travel, boomer travel expert at Humana’s My Well-Being and PBS’ Next Avenue. “As an Executive in Human Resources, I find most of my professional energy spent on educating others about the nuances of meaningful relationship building. Most often, the primary impediment is a lack of self-awareness, but Heather Dugan has boiled that conundrum down in a way that anyone can understand and immediately begin to act upon. Plain and simple, this is a good read on both a personal and professional level for men and women alike.” —Jim McGannon, Vice President, Human Resources & Organizational Development at Sarnova “As a mental health therapist, I can attest to the isolation women experience when going through different life transitions. Heather helps us ‘feel’ the painful emotions that come with isolation and a lack of strong women friendships. Thank you, Heather, for bringing this important issue to the forefront and steering women to take charge of their own destiny!” —Shari Goldsmith LISW, Workplace Resilience owner
“Friendships are one of life’s most precious gifts at any stage of life. Not only am I eagerly seeking them after reading this book, but I’m equipped to do it in a new way thanks to Heather who generously shares what she’s learned in an uplifting and engaging way. This isn’t just a book; it’s a movement.” —Mary M. Byers, CAE, CSP, Author of Race for Relevance: 5 Radical Changes for Associations and Making Work at Home Work: Successfully Growing a Business and a Family Under One Roof. “Heather Dugan put Cabernet Coaches together from an intuitive understanding that loneliness was a problem in all lives disconnected by divorce, job loss, relocation, or other common events in modern life. Her research-based understanding has grown through study, enabling her to write a high credibility book, but there is no substitute for the knowledge that comes with weekly sessions that have grown through word of mouth evangelism from women who’ve found Heather’s outreach to be life changing.” —John Damschroder, News Producer, WKRC-TV; Columnist, USA Today Network
Heather Dugan
Headline Books, Inc. Terra Alta, WV
Foreword........................................................................................................................7 Introduction..................................................................................................................9 Section One: Easy Avenues to Isolation Chapter 1: It’s Not Just You................................................................................... 16 Chapter 2: Opportunity Clutter........................................................................... 22 Chapter 3: The Efficiency Effect........................................................................... 34 Chapter 4: Tendencies, Transitions, and Limbo-Living ����������������������������������� 54 Section Two: Focus on Friendship Chapter 5: My Cabernet Coaches........................................................................ 74 Chapter 6: First Friends......................................................................................... 85 Chapter 7: Why We Love Them and Why We Leave Them ������������������������������������������� 95 Section Three: Keys to Connection Chapter 8: Attitude............................................................................................... 120 Chapter 9: Access................................................................................................. 138 Chapter 10: Approach.......................................................................................... 150 Chapter 11: Upgrading Friendships in Your Community ����������������������������������������������� 155 Acknowledgments................................................................................................... 168 Bibliography............................................................................................................. 170 Endnotes................................................................................................................... 176
Foreword If you knew me I would intimidate you. That’s what I’m told. I run two companies. I speak in front of large groups. I train nationally in my field. I write articles for numerous publications. I hosted a national television show at age 24 and created/produced/and hosted a live radio show for three years because I had some white space on my calendar. And yet. In 2013 I sat in the parking lot of a restaurant looking through the plate glass window at a group of women laughing and talking. I was afraid to go in. I was afraid I had forgotten the skills I learned in kindergarten. Can I make a friend? I was overwhelmed by the insecurity of middle school. Will they like me? I was terrified at the possibility of being highschool-shunned. Will I fit in? I was 53 and recently divorced. I had spent the past three decades in the tsunami of activity that is suburban life: children and sports, work and mortgages, driver’s licenses, and SAT tests. All of which involve passing female acquaintances, but none of which give time for intimate connection with other women. My children were grown, my career all consuming, my still-warm-in-thegrave-marriage isolating. I had no friends. Heather Dugan had been a guest on my radio show and invited me to her Wednesday night gathering “Cabernet Coaches”—a group of diverse women with one thing in common: a desire for connection. On that night in 2013, I got the courage to get out of my car and found a simpatico world of like-minded women. Like me, many of these women came to the group with far more baggage than will fit in the overhead. Each came with initial, tentative steps afraid that, like an old Polaroid, too much exposure would lead to a tossed away print. Instead I found a group of women who patterned acceptance and kindness after the woman that brought them to this mid-week respite; the woman who had the courage to go first. Heather Dugan. As you will read in the book you are holding, Heather learned the need for friendship the hard way: through her own journey of brokenness, vulnerability, 7
and yes, the “L-Word”—loneliness. The difference is she decided to go first. First into admission of need, first into causal analysis, first in creating a space for friendship; first in courage to invite others. The result is our Cabernet Coaches and the book you are holding: a time and place to exhale and admit intimacy is in our DNA. (And . . .while men are icing, women can truly be the cake.) Read on. You’ll read about me. You’ll swear Heather knows you. She doesn’t. She just had the courage to put in a book what we all know to be true: We need friends. Real friends with skin who will watch our dog. Deep connection. We need the Thelma to our Louise. Pick up the tips (and the courage) to go find that friend. Invite a few more and go to dinner. Start your own Cabernet Coaches group. And while you’re at it, go out in the parking lot and invite that woman looking in. Kathy Chiero Greenzalis CEO and Founder of Downsize America, LLC
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Introduction I didn’t notice they were AWOL until a couple of years after I’d received the court-stamped “doesn’t play well with others” ruling on my life. In fact, if you’d asked “pre-divorce” me, I’d have quickly but emphatically explained how busy I was with raising kids, caring for family, being a wife...Tactfully speaking—Ahem. Would you just look at this schedule?—there was no time for non-essentials. No time for diversionary detours. “Kids, we have to leave in five minutes! Everyone hear me? Five minutes!” I was married. “I don’t care if Zak isn’t in the car yet. Somebody has to get in the car!” Had found my life partner, created three beautiful children . . . “Who threw up? OK. Everyone, out of the car!” And was way past the need for women friends. Unless you happen to be driving toward the Westerville Athletic Complex on Tuesdays and Thursdays around 4:30. Or in the opposite direction around 6. I can be flexible. Like many of you, I’d kept saying “yes” to obligations and responsibilities until finding complete efficiency was mandatory to keeping a most precarious balance. I was great at meeting the needs of others but couldn’t have envisioned meeting any of my own beyond an easy dinner that would feed five. And then came the divorce, at which point a challenging two-parent schedule became mine to manage all by myself. My new main objective at school meetings—besides sitting on my hands lest I accidentally volunteer to organize Teacher Appreciation Day—became scoping out the carpool options for the Mom Commute. Women were now essential because they tended to zip around in large minivans and SUVs just like me, and even the married ones could appreciate a good driving schedule.
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