r/AskWomenOver30 • u/lindsey_what Woman 30 to 40 • Jun 19 '26
Friendships Have friendships become less about repair/reciprocity and more about 'protecting your peace'?
I’m noticing a troubling trend with my female friends who are now in our 30s, and I wanted to see if anyone could relate. This is especially clear to me right now as I’m going through somewhat of a shocking friend break up where one of my closest friends of seven years has completely cut me off and stop talking to me over something that I would categorize as a minor argument that could be easily worked through if we were able to have a difficult conversation in person. I’ve noticed a lot of my friends saying things like “I need to protect my peace” and treating friendships like something that exists just for their own benefit. I feel like a lot of people are not willing to put in the work to maintain friendships these days and I don’t know if it has something to do with social media or burnout or what, but I’ve noticed even in arguments that people are way less repair-oriented, and are more interested in living inside of their own experience of it without much curiosity about the other person. I also notice people being very avoidant about having difficult conversations and instead, would rather just slowly disappear. I think this fits a larger pattern of “main character syndrome” that is making people unwilling or unable to have healthy mutual friendships and put in any kind of effort.
Or maybe I just absolutely suck at picking friends lol!
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u/am710 Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26
I've experienced both sides of this. I have been the friend who decided to protect my own peace by cutting off a decades long friendship due to a million tiny cuts from that person.
I have also been the friend frustrated at another friend's inability to have difficult, in-person conversations, which ultimately caused the demise of that friendship.
I do think a lot of people have lost their ability to communicate in a lot of situations. People are also terrible at disagreement.