In this episode: I'm breaking down one of the most misunderstood dynamics in our relationships — the difference between friendship and community, why so many of us are building one while quietly craving the other, and how to intentionally cultivate both.

I've been having this conversation a lot lately — with women who have built beautiful communities, hosted hundreds of people, created incredible spaces — and yet still feel like something is missing. That missing piece? Often, it's friendship. And if we don't have the language to tell the difference, we'll keep trying to fill a friendship-shaped hole with community, and wonder why it's not working.

I'm sharing what I've learned from talking to women who are doing this really well, what I've experienced firsthand in my own friendships and community spaces, and the simple but powerful distinction that changed how I show up in both.

If you've ever felt lonely in a full life, or wondered why having so many people around still doesn't feel like enough, this one's for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Community and friendship are not the same thing — and one cannot replace the other.
• Community is about showing up in a shared space. Friendship is about being known without having to explain yourself.
• If you're building community but still feel like you don't have "someone in your corner," the missing piece might be friendship — and that requires a different kind of reach-out.
• Being a community member is a responsibility, not just a benefit. Showing up, even when you don't feel like it, is what keeps communities alive.
• If one-on-one hangouts feel awkward, take the pressure off by doing an activity — making memories together is how friendships deepen.

"Those girls might have started as my community, but they're now my best friends." — Teresa Stastny

Connect with Teresa

• Join the Becoming Obsessed Playground, the weekly email for curiosity-led women building a life they love.
• Instagram: @becomingobsessedpod and @teresaajean
• Leave a review on Apple or Spotify Podcasts. Reviews are the biggest thank-you, and reviews help ambitious women find the show.
• Website: teresaajean.com

Topics: friendship vs community, how to make friends as an adult, building community, loneliness epidemic, adult friendships, intentional relationships, how to find your people, personal growth podcast for women, building a life you love, becoming obsessed podcast

Mentioned in this episode:

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You hit a point where you just want to be able to tell somebody something and not have to explain the context or the backstory.

And to me, that is friendship.

That is what I have with my best friends.

And I think that's really the line where I start to say, like, they know me.

They really know me, my friends and my family, where I don't have to explain the context.

There's this deep knowing, this deep connection where you don't have to explain who you are.

You can just tell the story.

A lot of these women that I've been talking to who have built such incredible, beautiful communities actually are missing some of the friendship side.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed, where curiosity leads you to a life you love.

I'm Teresa Stasny, and after over a decade of traveling the world, working with small business owners, and creating a couple businesses of my own, I know a thing or two about playing by your own rules.

It's not always easy, and it's often messy.

It can be hard, especially.

Especially if you're doing it alone.

I've seen way too many incredible women shoot for the stars, only to burn out along the way, or worse, live on default and never chase their dreams.

We're done with all of that.

Together, we're gonna challenge what keeps us stuck and figure out what it takes to live a life we truly love.

So what is the difference between community and friendship?

This is a topic that I've been talking about on the podcast.

And as I've been talking to people about community, I'm realizing that a lot of women who are craving friendship are creating community and then not quite feeling like they're getting what they need and that there is this difference that a lot of us have never really vocalized.

So today we're talking about the difference between community and friendship.

Why I think you need both and how you can show up in friendship and in community to strengthen your relationships and just strengthen the people you have connections to.

So I have a lot of incredible women in my life who honestly created incredible community, created weekly meetups.

One is a podcast guest.

Her episode will be airing in August.

Alayna Strong created a community group of 10,000 women that are local to her in Texas.

Another friend who hosts a ton of events, she's always promoting, like five events at once.

It's crazy, but in talking to these different women and then talking to experts in community, I've really started to understand that a lot of us are confusing the two.

And in this loneliness epidemic that everyone is talking about, it is really important to have the language to understand what kind of relationships we are craving that we feel like we're missing so that we can feel fulfilled and live a life that we love and help the people around us do it too.

So I was having a conversation with somebody who hosts a lot of events, and she kept saying, I just want somebody in my corner and from the outside looking in.

This is a person who has huge community.

But.

But in our conversations, I was getting the feeling she didn't feel like she had close friendships.

She didn't have those people that she can just call and text.

Later this summer, you will hear from two of my very best friends, Emily Dean and Ashley Cruz, who will be on the podcast.

And those girls might have started as my community, but they're now my best friends.

They're the person that I'm in the group chat every single day, sending some crazy, silly voice, note processing whatever it is that's going on in life.

And they're there to hear me.

It is just this group of three in our group chat.

And those are my best friends.

Those are the girls that when I just need to tell somebody something, even if it's like a crazy anxiety dream that I had that I know they'll relate to, I just need to tell somebody.

I just want to be seen.

I want to be heard.

I want to have that deep connection.

And I think that's what it is.

Being seen, being heard.

Something that I've really learned in traveling is I love meeting new people because a lot of times you can be a different version of yourself.

Sometimes that might be the truer version of yourself.

Sometimes that might be a version you're trying on.

But after a while, when no one knows you and you're traveling and everyone else is traveling, so maybe you get to hang out with people for a week if you're lucky, but usually it's a few days and then they leave or you leave and you're meeting new people every few days.

You hit a point where you just wanna be able to tell somebody something and not have to explain the context or the backstory.

And to me, that is friendship.

That is what I have with my best friends.

And I think that's really the line where I start to say, like, they know me, they really know me, my friends and my family, where I don't have to explain the context.

There's this deep knowing, this deep connection where you don't have to explain who you are, you can just tell the story.

And I think that a lot of these women that I've been talking to who have built such incredible, beautiful communities actually are missing some of the friendship side.

And they tried to build community to create this feeling of deep connection and knowing.

But realize that community isn't the same as friendship and they don't replace each other.

So what is the difference between community and friendship?

For me, one of the big differences is if I am coordinating with you or not.

Can I show up without telling anyone I'm coming?

Maybe rsvp or do I coordinate with you with my friends?

I'm texting, hey, can we hang out?

And there's a few of us.

Sometimes it's the group of friends, but it's not open to the public.

I'm not posting on my story.

Hey, everybody, come to this meetup.

I'm like, no, it's a group chat.

You're invited, you're my friend.

I'm not opening it up to the public.

A community event, while it can also be private, just to the community, a community event is often inviting more people in or it's something that is being organized.

It is often great for you to rsvp, but you don't have to coordinate with people growing up community for me, and I think for a lot of people is your neighborhood.

You don't have to coordinate and call somebody to see if they want to play.

You might go knock on the door, but you might just go outside.

It might be multiple neighbors that are just sitting outside or doing yard work and they just start to communicate with each other.

It might not be somebody you're going to tell your deepest, darkest secrets to or call up when you're having a bad day, but it's somebody that you're seeing frequently and and you can rely on that is community.

I grew up next to baseball fields, so we knew all the kids would be at the baseball fields playing and we didn't have to coordinate all the time.

It doesn't mean you never coordinate or you don't create friendships with your community where you do hang out one on one or you do ask them to come over or whatever.

But there's a sense where, you know, people are gonna be in a place and you can show up without having to coordinate, without wondering if people will be there.

There's an ease to it.

For me now this is a Wednesday where I know it's happening every single Wednesday.

Actually, when I'm recording this in like two weeks, it won't be happening because Omaha is going to be completely taken over by the College World Series.

And this meetup is literally college World Series parking grounds.

So we won't have it one week of the year, two weeks of the year.

Maybe when it's the holidays that we don't have it.

Outside of that, I don't have to text my friends and say, are you going?

I will invite my friends to go, but I don't have to text the organizers of the community.

Hey, are you going to be there?

I just show up with your friends.

You're probably in the group chat, being a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more real.

You're seen in my community events that I go to.

They don't know everything about me, and they don't need to know everything about me.

They just know they'll expect to see me there.

We'll have conversations while I'm there.

Maybe we follow each other on social.

Maybe we do business together as it makes sense.

If somebody needs something, they know they can ask people there.

But we're not necessarily just hanging out.

I hope this is making sense, honestly.

Hit me up in the DMs and tell me if this is making sense or not.

Becoming Obsessed Pod on Instagram Because I am working through this language in real time.

I'm sharing what I'm learning to help myself process it better, to help myself understand my community, my relationships, how to show up better for them, but also so that we have this communal language.

This is not language.

I'm making up half of this language I've learned from the Internet.

And then some of it I'm learning in real time, having these conversations.

What I've been finding is that my girls like Elena Strong, whose episode will be airing soon, in August, I believe she shares this story on the podcast.

She created Community by just inviting some girls, actually from Humble bff, I believe, to hang out.

And then she found that more and more women were just looking for community, looking to hang out with other women, looking for friendship.

And so she made a Facebook group and now has anywhere from 50 to 500 people show up for these events every month.

But in that journey, she was seeing these women in the community pair off and create friendships, and they were making their own hangouts that she wasn't always invited to.

And she's saying that she doesn't need to be invited to all of them.

She's happy to see other women make friends.

But she realized whether she used this language or not, this is what we talked about in that episode.

She realized that while she had created Community, she was still missing those key friendships.

And so she started to actually invite just one or Two people to hang out because that is friendship and one is not better than the other.

But I truly think we need both.

Something my mom said to me when I was growing up and I was dating, she said, your boyfriend or your partner does not need to be everything to you.

Your best friend and your partner serve two different things.

And that's really what I'm saying here.

Your best friend, your partner, your other friends, they don't need to be and replace your best friend.

I'm a girl with multiple best friends.

No one's going to tell me otherwise, okay?

But your partner, your friends, your community, they serve different facets of your life and they do not all need to serve the same piece.

So often we lack connection with people, so we want just one person to supply us all of the connection.

We need all of the friendship and all the community.

And that's just not really how we were designed to be.

One of my friends, she throws events and she was like, I want somebody in my corner.

And it dawned on me, she's creating community and she's creating events and spaces for people to come.

But when you're hosting events, when you are facilitating community, you're kind of on the job.

You're in a different headspace.

You're probably not just standing back and enjoying or even if you're volunteering.

You can actually have more one on one conversations and kind of lean in with your friends and be like, lol.

And so I really encouraged my friend.

I was like, instead of throwing all these events, just invite one or two people to hang out.

And I actually have to shout out somebody else.

Jessica Olsen.

Because she is a woman who is doing this.

She is a woman who understands community and friendship and understands the different dynamics at play.

She is so, so good at lifting up Omaha's creative community.

She's just such a champion for the arts in Omaha and I am obsessed with her for it.

But she's not just creating events, she's actually attending them.

She's being a community member.

Because for a community to exist, we actually need villagers to be showing up.

That's what I do every Wednesday at this meetup is I might not be hosting it, but I'm a member of the community and it is my responsibility to actually show up.

And I think a lot of times we like to take a step back and not go to things if we don't want to.

But I challenge myself to go to my community events even if I don't want to, because we need warm bodies and you never really know what magical happen?

And, you know, we can't always go to everything, but if you want community, you need to actually show up.

Okay, so Jessica does an amazing job showing up, but she is also creating friendships.

She is also asking people to hang out one on one.

Her and I, we connected immediately.

I'm obsessed with her.

And then a month or two later, she actually invited me to go to a comedy show.

We went to Tiffany Haddish a couple weekends ago.

It was so much fun.

Honestly, it's so funny because talking about friendships, if you're looking for friendships and you're looking to create friends, I'm just going to tell you right now, there's going to be awkward, awkward first date vibes.

And it was not awkward with Jessica, but I definitely was like laughing.

I was like, this low key feels like we're on a date, we're going to a comedy show.

We're sitting just across from each other at a two person table.

She was on my podcast.

I'm gonna be on her podcast soon.

So we have chatted.

We've been in the same space, we've been in community spaces together.

But it's so different to be in a community space where you can kind of like, okay, I'm gonna go talk to somebody else now, versus hanging out one on one and being like, all right, well, what else are you into?

Or how do you feel about this thing?

Or what did you think of that comedy set?

Like, I was laughing, you were laughing, but like, what did you really think?

And so there's this difference in when it gets awkward or uncomfortable, you're kind of in it with a friend.

You're kind of figuring out, can you guys navigate that together?

Where in a community you might just be able to go find somebody else that you actually want to talk to in that moment, you don't have to necessarily navigate the awkwardness.

And a lot of people probably feel awkward at community events too, especially in the beginning.

But again, sometimes some differences between friendship and community.

And Jessica, I just love her because she's such a good example of showing up for her community because she wants that community to exist and thrive.

So she shows up.

Her and I on her episode even talk about showing up when you don't feel like it, showing up when you are like, you know what?

I'm in not a great mood today, but I'm gonna go anyway because part of being in community is showing up and maybe somebody else won't be in a good mood and you guys can commiserate and that is fine.

We don't always have to be the biggest top.

If you are a person who is creating beautiful spaces, creating community, creating events, but yet you're still feeling like you don't have somebody in your corner, or you don't have that person that you can just call up, or you didn't even know that that's what you were missing until listening to this episode and realizing, you know what?

I actually am missing that.

Then what I want to encourage you to do is actually find somebody that you want to be friends with and reach out, invite them to go do something.

And I'm going to tell you right now, it might be awkward.

Girl, be awkward.

It is.

Okay, be awkward.

Embarrassment and awkwardness are such under developed and underrated emotions for us to experience.

So put yourself out there.

And one trick is, a lot of times if there's like somebody that I want to talk to about something specific, a coffee date makes sense.

But if it's somebody where you're like, you know, I just don't want to go sit across from somebody at dinner or for coffee, maybe you're not a yapper like I am.

Take the pressure off and do an activity.

And this is something, whether you're meeting a new friend or hanging out with.

I love this with my family, actually, because a lot of times with my family, I don't know what to say.

So sitting down just for a meal, especially at the same place every time, it's almost like, what do we talk about?

And I just let them.

Yeah.

But what I think is so much more fun is making memories together.

Can we do an activity?

We've done a craft night.

Often we'll puzzle because then at least if you don't have anything to say for a moment, you're like all working on something together.

So do a friend date, do a play date.

Go do something fun.

Honestly, even a walk is really nice.

Do a paint and sip, do a workout class.

Go to a smash park, go to a batting cage and hit baseballs.

Especially if you've never done it before.

That might be fun.

Play pickleball.

Go to comedy set.

Go to a show something where it's going to give you something to talk about later.

It's going to help you create memories together because you're doing something and having an experience together.

So if you're creating community and feeling like something is missing, the missing piece might be friendship.

It might be that you're bringing so many people in that it's hard to create the deeper connection that you're craving.

But if you're like, I have friends on lock.

I actually have that deep connection.

It's just I kind of feel like I want to be in a community, and I don't even know what that means or what that looks like.

I really encourage you.

Find something you're interested in, find something you're maybe curious about and you don't even know that you like it yet, and go find a group of people doing it.

There are so many groups in Omaha.

We have, like, all the Facebook groups for the girls and The Girl Gang Nebraska, and Camp Oma on Instagram.

So if you don't have that, please look for it.

And it's not going to just happen to you.

You have to show up.

And maybe you need a volunteer to help make it happen.

Okay, we've talked about the difference between community and friendship.

We talked a little bit about how to show up as a friend, how to create new friendships, and how to just show up for your community, even if you don't feel like it.

My last plea for you, if you are in a community and you love that community or you like that that community exists, go talk to the organizers.

A lot of times it feels like the organizers are busy or they're intimidating because they've built this amazing community.

But it might actually be the organizers that built it so that they could actually have those friendships.

So go talk.

Ask how you can show up better for them as a community member.

Ask if there's any way that you can actually get involved and help support it, because that support goes a long way to keep communities going strong.

It is really hard to do it when it's all one person.

Shout out to Briar and Carolina, because I wanted to create a community called Omaha Loud for Omaha's podcasters.

And if I was doing it by myself, I don't know that I'd be doing it.

But two other women stepped up to say they want to see this happen.

And so now we all three work together to make it happen.

And I'll be honest, we were supposed to host an event in May.

A couple venues that we had talked to, they were either just honestly too expensive for a free community event, or we're not hosting events anymore this summer.

So we didn't host the event last month, and we're doing it this month because the three of us know our capacity and we know that if we're going to help create this community.

It has to be something we're able to do with the capacity we have for it.

So when that event fell through, all three of us had immense grace with each other to be like, okay, if we figure it out, we figure it out.

None of us did.

And then we're like, okay, great, somebody figured it out.

So now we're going to just do it a month later.

But we're all three pitching in a little bit, and it's creating a big impact.

All right, I love you.

Come hang out with me on Instagram at Becoming Obsessed Pod.

I want to hear from you.

Send me a voice note.

Send me what you think about this podcast, Leave a five star rating and review.

Tell me your thoughts because it really helps me in building this community to know what you want to talk about.

All right, let's go get obsessed.

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All right, let's go get obsessed.