Kayleen Schaefer > Quotes

“My people push me to do better. They listen, but not in a quiet, passive way. They’re always on point for correcting me when I put myself down or fall into the trap of thinking things are my fault when they aren’t. My friends are brilliant, funny, fearless, wise, and generous. We champion each other in e-mails, in texts, in congratulatory flowers, or simply by saying how much we trust each other.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“In going back and thinking about my friendships and hearing about other women's, I see this: Our friends are not our second choices. They are our dates for Friday nights and for ex-boyfriends' weddings. They are the visitors to our hometowns and hospital rooms. They are the first people we tell about any news, whether it's good, terrible, or mundane. They are our plus ones at office parties. They are the people we're raising children with. They are our advocates, who, no matter what, make us feel like we won't fail. They are the people who will struggle with us and who will stay with us. They are who we text when we get home.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“Prioritizing friendship is sometimes tricky; society often indicates to women that it’s not on the same level as the other relationships in our lives, such as the ones with our romantic partners, our children, or even our jobs. Devoting ourselves to finding spouses, caring for children, or snagging a promotion is acceptable, productive behavior. Spending time strengthening our friendships, on the other hand, is seen more like a diversion.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“The women I love are like a life raft I didn’t know I was looking for before I got on it. But my friendships are not just about being nice. My people push me to do better. They listen, but not in a quiet, passive way. They’re always on point for correcting me when I put myself down or fall into the trap of thinking things are my fault when they aren’t. My friends are brilliant, funny, fearless, wise, and generous. We champion each other in e-mails, in texts, in congratulatory flowers, or simply by saying how much we trust each other.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“Our friendships—the ones we’re living every day—can stand on their own. They are supportive, enthralling, entirely wonderful, and, often, all we need.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“As we get older that prominence that a best friend holds can fall away—adult women are more likely to be asked if they have a boyfriend than a best friend and to wear an engagement ring instead of a BFF charm. Because of this, it can be frustrating for some women to get across how fundamental their attachment to their best friend”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“got lucky. When I started to make friendships my main focus, I rarely felt alone; what I gave out in friend love, I almost always got back times two. It was sort of like we were all starved for this kind of friendship, for straight-up, openly, and honestly being thrilled we were in each other’s lives.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“When women stop seeing each other as rivals, whom they nonetheless have to be nice to, we'll be free from this clumsy middle ground of being frenemies. We can compete against each other. We can face off and admit what we really want and that it hurts when we don't get it. But we can also understand each other—and with that kind of empathy, instead of disingenuous smiles, we might be able to lift each other up.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“For me, these are the love-drunk, sometimes actually drunk, near-exhausted thoughts I have to send out before I fall asleep. They could be the name of some cultural reference we couldn’t remember, a belated compliment (“your skin looked so great tonight”), or another twist in the same joke we’d been making all evening. It all feels important to say right then, and I think that’s because of both how happy I feel after I’ve seen my friends and the fear—rational or not—that these times we have together may disappear at any moment. So we say: Text me when you get home. Tell me you’re safe. I’m always here for you. Let’s keep talking. CHAPTER”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“I should have learned how to tell another girl she’d hurt my feelings or understand I’d hurt hers. I should have been able to figure out how to say that I didn’t know how to turn down a boy’s attention, or that I’d rather not come along, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still your friend.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“That night, being surrounded by my friends, being supported by them, made me understand that my heartbreak wasn’t as final as it felt like. In the morning, I’d get up. In the morning, I’d keep going.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“I read a quote once that said, ‘Friendships are the masterpieces of nature,’” Jane tells Madeline at one point. “I know it’s cheesy but you’re totally my masterpiece.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“But the longer I took to figure out what I wanted, the more comfortable I got with the uncertainty. As a result, on my best days, I felt like I was earning my achievements, after struggling with them both inwardly and outwardly. They seemed right and exciting when I got there, not like I was pushed into completing them because of my age.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“But when I decided I wasn’t ready to marry my long-term boyfriend in my early thirties, I looked around, and instead of being unsure, I was inspired. Surrounding me were a bunch of women who were doing exactly what I wanted to do: striving to do good work, setting themselves apart, and aligning themselves with other amazing people.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“We're reshaping the idea of what our public support systems are supposed to look like and what they can be. Women who might have assumed they could find care, kindness, and deep conversations only in romantic relationships are no longer limited to that plotline. Whether women marry or not, whether they have children or not, their friends are fundamental parts of their lives that they won't be giving up.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“The people who are part of my everyday right now—who invite me to dinners and plays and movies and yoga, who amuse me, and who understand me—may be less present someday.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“There is this delay of the full implementation of adulthood at the beginning of the life cycle, but there is also an extension at the end...The proportion of the population living to 80 or 90 is continuing to go up, so adulthood is shrinking at the younger ages, but extending at the older ages. It's a way I don't hear expressed very often, but if you didn't start adulthood until you were in your thirties, you would still have as many years of adulthood now as you would have in the 1950s or 60s. It's not just a delay, but it's a shift, too. The delay is the more important part of the story, but it's also an upward shift in the life cycle.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“If Black veterans did apply to school, Northern universities were slow to let them in, while Southern colleges refused them entirely. “Though Congress granted all soldiers the same benefits theoretically,” historian Hilary Herbold writes in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, “the segregationist principles of almost every institution of higher learning effectively disbarred a huge proportion of Black veterans from earning a college degree.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“What they concluded was that when women feel tense or agitated, they often instinctively calm themselves by reaching out to and nurturing others. Stressed women get a surge of oxytocin, a hormone that propels women to seek out their friends.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“During World War II in 1944, the government passed the GI Bill, which is best known for giving veterans free college tuition. By 1956, some 2.2 million veterans had taken advantage of this, but even though 1.2 million Black men had fought in the war, in segregated ranks, they were effectively excluded from the new law.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“I was devastated my ex didn’t want to be with me. I also thought, in the dark aftermath of all of this, that I’d never get married. At the time, not being married seemed like an overwhelming loss, one that took away from all that I was happy with in the other aspects of my life. I remember telling my mom that I had nothing, which in the moment felt indisputable, as if all I’d ever wanted was gone because I hadn’t gotten engaged. It will all work out, my mom reassured me as I cried in her arms, like I was five and it was story time. I’m sure my mom meant that I’d find my way to marriage eventually, but as I stayed in Texas longer than I’d planned because I was too crushed to go back to New York, I started to think about why I wanted to be married.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“In the scope of what I could do with my life, whether to have a child is the decision I struggled with the most. I saw it as the only one I couldn’t take back. What I did for work, who I dated, where I lived, even who I married, all of that could be undone if it turned out I’d made the wrong choice. But a child would always be mine. How could I know for sure that I wanted to raise someone?”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“I felt special around men, and with a woman I can really be put in my place, and I’m on the same level as them.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“But the reality of this prosperous era was that it disproportionately benefited white men. White women had access to the middle class primarily through marriage, not through their own achievements, and African Americans were kept out almost completely. Government policies, as well as universities, business owners, and housing developers were set on excluding them from gaining any wealth.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“it’s our friends who move us into new homes, friends with whom we buy or care for pets, friends with whom we mourn death and experience illness, friends alongside whom some us may raise children and see them into adulthood,”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“Before marriage I was wildly interested in sex,” she writes to Avis, “but since joining up with my old goat, it has taken its proper position in my life.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“We’ve always approached every discussion with, ‘You’re more important to me as a human than as a writing partner. This fight isn’t worth blowing that up to me.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“As she’s gotten older, though, dating has felt more fraught, as if she can’t spend a couple of months hanging out with a guy if she isn’t sure he’s the person she’s going to have a family with. “Everyone tells you your clock is ticking,” she says. “It didn’t seem like I could have fun anymore. I had to be on mission, but I couldn’t walk into a date and say, ‘Hey, are you marriage material or not?”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

“With most groups, I’m desperate to be part of them,” Ruthie says about Scandal Club. “And then when I am, I feel so isolated because I realize I’m my own person.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

“Someday, of course, there will be a flatness, a plateau where we know we’ve made most of our choices. When we get there we may be scraped or bruised. We may be exhilarated. We may be wondering, Is this it? But no matter what, the spot we stop at will be ours alone, where we’ve arrived because of what we went after, what we decided we didn’t want, and what we had to let go. And in all likelihood, we will be somewhere we couldn’t see until we were standing there because, before then, we were still so young.”
― Kayleen Schaefer, But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood