Dr. Karl Pillemer

These relationships need to some extent, if they're successful, to translate into something a little more like friendship.

Mm-hmm.

So that you want to think about shared interests, for example, things you can do together.

There are those kinds of things.

Many people who overcame an estrangement

didn't do it by having a huge conversation about the past.

They started to go to a bingo parlor together, or they went to a weaving workshop together.

Or played golf together.

Played golf together.

They did.

So this idea, so I would say there, you know, a real key piece for making these intergenerational relationships work is in these family relationships lighten up

Lighten up about them.

I mean, you know, if somebody, you know, makes goofy jokes or whatever, I mean, everything is not something that has to be done.

So over and over, like, this is a message of older people again and again and again in all these relationships.

Lighten up about some of these things.

Everything doesn't have to be

you know, darkly serious.

And especially in marriage, that was a strong one.

Everything doesn't have to be this battle of the wills you can lighten up.

So that was a discursive answer to your question.