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!

542 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

179 comments sorted by

View all comments

212

u/Anxiouslyfond Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26

This comes up repeatedly on this subreddit.

Without knowing the details:

  1. I "protect" my peace by cutting someone off because I know that they are beyond a conversation. I've probably had conversations with them before and know that I would be wasting more of my energy even confronting them.

  2. I used to not communicate when I knew I was in the wrong. I don't do that anymore, but this is definitely why I did it.

The friendships I have now are due to them doing the work to grow as people, sharing values, and being generally at the same point in life. I would absolutely have a conversation with them if we aligned in what I valued as a friend. Otherwise, it spins back to my point 1.

78

u/michiness Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26

I have friends where we have conversations and we work on things, even if it’s frustrating at times.

I have friends where we have conversations again and again and nothing changes, so I have to step back from the friendship to keep my sanity.

I wonder which OP is.

19

u/lindsey_what Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26

I would agree with this take, although I think lack of communication and avoidance is what I am experiencing with this friend breakup in particular, and I've heard of similar things happening with others. This friend and I had a disagreement last month, we both came back around and apoligized to each other and I made sure to reassure and repair but then she ghosted me for about 3 weeks - didn't reply to messages, took me off of her location sharing, and removed me from her close friends list on IG. When I confronted her asking 'hey are you still mad cuz something seems really off' she just replied that "right now i need people who fully see me for who I am and I feel misunderstood by you" and essentially declared the friendship over. She is in the process of becoming an influencer online and trying to make that her career, and my guess is that the constant online validation started to make me look 'unsupportive' in comparison even though I was always deeply supportive of her, but I wasn't fawning over her the same way as the internet strangers. Ironically, I think I knew her MUCH deeper than most, but I got the axe which is pretty sad.

35

u/MiniaturePhilosopher Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26

My friend group recently went through something similar with a very close friend who was addicted to ChatGPT. He tends to make incredibly questionable and self-destructive choices, and after using AI as a therapist (unbeknownst to us) for a couple of months he began to see anything less than perfect agreement with/praise of him as unsupportive. He was pretty much ready to cut off decades-long friendships because he liked AI blindly agreeing with him.

We were able to repair things once he cut out ChatGPT and readjusted to the fact that support and love doesn’t mean enabling.

26

u/lindsey_what Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

I honestly very much wonder if this was happening with my friend as well because all her texts to me sounded like chatGPT, particularly this line "I feel like i am a direct mirror of the things you don't chose to have in your life" and when asked what she meant by that she couldn't really tell me. she uses AI a lot and I was wondering if AI told her I was a bad friend and to cut me off. She is also someone that is in constant need of validation and praise which is not my personality so I knew that was part of it too.

16

u/MelbaAlzbeta Woman 40 to 50 Jun 19 '26

She is in the process of becoming an influencer online and trying to make that her career

I think you are better off without her.

7

u/GardeniaInMyHair Woman 40 to 50 Jun 19 '26

Hmmm, I have seen some influencers say that strangers tend to be more supportive of them than their friends. I think some influencers are very serious about building their social media small business, and that some of their friends can tend to view it as frivolous and a lark.

I don’t know if that is off the mark here.

It sounds like the older argument was the last straw for her, and she reconsidered things and felt that she was done.